Category Archives: Inspirations

Tarot and Writing

by Andrew | Leave a comment

I’m launching a new series of workshops on Zoom called Tarot For Writers that explores the potential of the tarot in creative writing as well as writing for personal growth. Starting with Magicians and Fools on 2 February 2025, we will talk about tarot and write and share resources, and writers who come along will take away plenty of ideas to explore at their own pace.

I’ve long been interested in tarot. My hippie auntie Marion is an astrologer, and she often used tarot. My old flatmate Mark from my first years in London had tarot cards, and he inspired me to acquire my own, a Rider Waite Smith deck I still have today. 

I delved into the cards, doing Celtic Cross readings and cribbing interpretations from The Complete Book of Tarot by Juliet Sharman-Burke. Later, as a freelance editor I copyedited books on tarot and numerology. When we lived in Boulder there were several new age shops I loved to visit, and I added a couple of other decks to what become a collection. I have over thirty today – see a few at the end of this post. 

When we moved back to London I took classes on tarot at Treadwell’s bookshop in Covent Garden with the late Sue Merlyn Farebrother. Sue was a brilliant teacher: intuitive, good-humoured, organised, attentive to detail, and rich in her knowledge. I’d later help her in developing a proposal for her first book on astrology, and introduced her to an editor at Rider, who published this book and her next. I’m sorry she never got to publish her book on tarot – I know it would have been excellent. Her teaching certainly was.

Sue’s classes were the place where I grew a deeper understanding of the powers of tarot. We did all sorts of exercises in class and at home. We did visualisations, we discussed the archetypes of the Major Arcana, we explored the representations of the court cards and the symbolic powers of numbers and elements. We looked at the different images of various decks. We drew one card every day for a month, and I remember being surprised – and eventually not so surprised – that I drew the same card (out of seventy-eight) seven times in thirty days: the Ten of Pentacles. 

Working with tarot in writing

Around that time I remember reading the manuscript of a very well-researched historical novel that felt pretty static. It read like a sequence of richly rendered tableaux, but not much more. And I realised: this book was all Earth. It lacked Fire and Water – energy and feeling. For that matter, it lacked Air too, in that it lacked the clarity of organisation and structure that could carry a story forward. Earth (tarot’s Pentacles), Fire (Wands), Water (cups), Air (Swords): suddenly the Four Elements of the suits of the Minor Arcana were giving me a framework for reading books and understanding the balance – or imbalance – of creative productions.

I continued to use this Four Elements framework, initially only in my own mind as I took stock of manuscripts I was reading, but later on developing writing workshops too. 

This Four Elements practice has become a cornerstone for much of my work, even when I’m not using it explicitly. It integrates my interest in contemplative education and holistic approaches towards creativity with my firm editorial grounding in the craft of writing as well as the practical matters of publishing.

I always explain that traces of the Four Elements that we see in the four suits of tarot can be found in other contexts, such as astrology, Jungian psychology, Myers-Briggs tests, and cognitive behavioural therapy. Someone at a workshop identified the Four Elements in the characters of The Wind in the Willows: Water for Rat, Earth for Mole, Fire for Mr Toad, and Air for Badger.

But the Four Elements always leads me back to the tarot. Once upon a time, the idea of memorising very specific interpretations for all seventy-eight cards daunted me, but then I realised I wasn’t approaching it in the right way, at least in the right way for me. I needed to establish my own interpretations and reference points. 

I occasionally take courses or trainings as refreshers, and as guides I also consult resources such as the ones listed below. That sort of bookish inquiry always takes me deeper and gives me fresh insights and plenty to think about. 

And most of all I’ve learned about the cards by using them, not least in areas where I have expertise, such as writing and editing.

The Major cards have, perhaps, more accessible or obvious meanings, but there’s always more to find in those archetypes, particularly when we pay attention to their meanings and manifestations in different contexts and cultures. Jungian approaches add valuable perspectives.

Something that once gave me pause in the number cards of the Minor Arcana was the great variations in imagery between different decks; some number cards, such as those of the Marseille decks, have few pictures at all beyond images of the Batons (Wands) or the Cups themselves. How do we make sense of that? Increasingly, I have come to give greater weight to the numbers themselves and their correspondence with specific energies and actions, in conjunction with the relevant elements, e.g., the Aces with beginnings, or the eights with organisation and order.

I’m also interested in the ways in which the court cards represent people or aspects of our personalities: venturing forth into the world (the traditional Knights), or embodying maturity and self-assurance (the Queens). I’m also intrigued by the ways in which various decks shift the genders of the court cards, or translate them into other forms: Princess instead of Page in the DruidCraft tarot, or the Place, Knower, Gift and Speaker in Rachel Pollack’s Shining Tribe tarot. 

And then there are decks with additional cards, such as the Shining Tribe’s Sphinx in Eden. And there are divination cards, such as the Wild Unknown Animal Spirit deck, whose gorgeous artwork by Kim Krans prompted me also to acquire her original Wild Unknown tarot deck.

All of these rich images and symbols and connections give us a powerful framework that is constantly refreshing itself. It offers food for the imagination, and it also allows reflection for personal growth and spiritual development. I often use tarot cards for daily reflection or as part of my regular meditation practice.

Approaches to tarot

My fundamental take on the seventy-eight cards is that they contain all that we are and all the questions that we have to ask – of ourselves, and in the context of writing of the stories we have to tell. When we encounter a tarot card we can ask: what does this mean for me right now? And in writing: what can this mean for my story? How is it present, or how might it be made present and brought forth in the work and in the world? What, importantly, what aspects of writing craft will help in this task?

That being said: I never fail to be amazed by the recurrence of certain cards and patterns. That’s just a fact. I recently did two three-card readings using two different decks, and two of the same cards appeared in both readings.

I am sometimes guarded around certain aspects of tarot, to the extent I was once scolded by someone attending a workshop for what they took as cautions or apologies for the use of esoterica. And she was right: no, we shouldn’t lean away from all those mysteries and wonders the tarot conjures up. We should not be defensive about using tarot, and I don’t want to give that impression.

I guess I have been put on the back foot a bit as I am aware that some people are fearful of tarot. A writer who was coming to a Four Elements workshop told me she couldn’t attend after I emailed in advance a handout using pictures of the four Aces from the Smith deck. Another friend won’t have tarot cards in the house. I discovered this only after my arrival, oops, but at least I kept them tucked away in my suitcase. 

In both cases, I suspect religious traditions have created fear and superstitions about tarot, and I wonder if some subscribers will unsubscribe after this post. I doubt cards representing the Devil and Death and the Hanged Man help either, particularly as they have been used in popular culture: remember Tales of the Unexpected and Live and Let Die?

I only recently found out that tarot cards were only freely printed and sold in England after the repeal of the Witchcraft Act in 1951! Now I am asking myself whether under consumer legislation I need to declare that my new workshops are ‘for entertainment purposes only’. Does writing count as entertainment?!

But I have observed a few too many boundaries getting crossed at the fringes of those worlds where we find tarot. I remember taking a tarot course where, unasked, someone started to tell me about specific messages that my dead grandmother was channelling to me through an angel. Those messages had a couple of details that seemed unnervingly accurate until I recalled a conversation with another student in the tea break the week before, and realised those details had been overheard – and misinterpreted. It was the misinterpretation that was the clue.

And a tarot illustrator once slid into my DM’s on Instagram offering me a psychic reading based on the energy in my profile picture, saying that afterwards ‘something good will happen in your life’. Suddenly I remembered why I’d previously unfollowed their account and stopped using their deck, as they’d done this before.

I have to call bullshit on that sort of thing. I think it’s patently unethical to make such approaches without being invited. People often come to tarot with vulnerabilities, or grasping for specific outcomes, and we must be sensitive to all that that presents. Life has many mysteries, and I want to remain curious and open about them, but fraudulence and inauthenticity shut things down for ourselves as well as for others. We need a welcoming and respectful approach. As in writing, as in life.

New workshops on tarot for writers

Back to the writing. I think tarot is a remarkable tool for writers. Its form gives us an invitation to the imagination, an instrument for creative focus, and windows into our unconscious drives. I really love how tarot blends structure and symbol with artistic expression, and helps us compose divine messages all of our very own.

I first taught a workshop devoted to tarot and writing at the Hastings Book Festival in 2023, and now I’m happy to be launching Tarot for Writers on Zoom. The class are designed to be stand-alone and will run on Zoom at 5-6pm London on Sundays: let’s bring some light into the long dark teatime of the soul! Please note that recordings will not be available right now, as I want us all to take part free of inhibition about joining in. 

The first four classes will survey the archetypes of the Major Arcana and investigate the elements, court cards, and number cards of the Minor Arcana for what they can bring to our writing. 

  • Magicians and Fools (2 February) – we’ll consider the Fool as a student and the Magician as a teacher to guide us through the archetypes and big themes of the Major Arcana 
  • Aces High (16 February) – we’ll take a closer look at the Four Elements through their purest and most powerful expression in the Aces, and particularly for the ways they strengthen voice, feeling, texture and focus in our writing
  • Courtiers and Coronets (2 March) – we’ll use the court cards as the basis for thinking about character and perspective 
  • Write By Numbers (16 March) – we’ll identify specific actions and gestures in the number cards that can be used in plotting and structuring our stories, paying special attention to odd vs even numbers

In each workshop we’ll discuss specific cards within the structure of tarot, and we’ll do some in-class writing experiments, and you’ll take away ideas to try at your own pace. I’ll also share a handy reference on tarot for writers, and I’m hoping that writers who come along will also share their own interpretations, as tarot is rich with associations and there are always new perspectives to gather. Throughout the emphasis will be on finding inspiration and points of departure to explore in writing. 

Over the weeks we’ll also look at various resources on tarot and investigate different styles of tarot decks and divination cards. Feel free to bring your own cards to class to share with us too.

And yes – the class titles indulge my fondness for puns and alliteration. There may be more.

I’m planning these classes as we pass through the rites and thresholds of late winter and early spring: Imbolc, St Brigid’s Day, Candlemas, Valentine’s, Lent, St David’s Day, the Spring Equinox. The crocuses and daffodils and the early tulips will be arriving as the sun gets higher in the sky and the days get longer: perhaps there’s no better time to stretch ourselves into new creative endeavours with such powerful inspirations.

Resources

During the classes I’ll also introduce various resources, including:

  • Rachel Pollack, the classic Seventy-eight Degrees of Wisdom and also the magical inquiries of A Walk Through the Forest of Souls: A Tarot Journey to Spiritual Awakening
  • Joan Bunning, Learning the Tarot – this is my go-to reference when I want to refresh my memory on card descriptions and keywords, and it’s based on an free online course that is most generously shared here: www.learntarot.com
  • Jessica Doré, Tarot for Change – I love this book’s thoughtful takes, which often question the usual interpretations and find something new in the cards – you can also find her on Instagram
  • Other social media accounts illuminate and inform. Try Laetitia Barber, Amanda Barokh, Biddy Tarot, Noah Rogers
  • Margaret Atwood, Three Tarot Cards
  • Tarot For Writers at my page on Bookshop.org

Apps

Nothing beats shuffling and cutting the cards, but it can be a good idea to carry tarot resources on your phone, if only as a reference.

Maybe I’ll review some of these apps as well as decks and other resources in more detail in the future. If you have recommendations of your own, do suggest in a comment below.

A few favourite decks

My first deck was the classic Rider Waite deck. Now that I know more about its history I try to remember to call it the Smith deck, because illustrator Pamela Colman Smith’s colourful and whimsical illustrations are what captivated me then and what still captivate me now. It’s the one I always go back to. 

Thank goddess that’s over, and the Sun is coming up! But yes, first I must plant some tulip bulbs. The Smith deck.

My current fave is the Morgan-Greer deck, whose full-bleed colour-saturated hippie imagery is close to my heart. Artist Bill Greer studied at the University of Colorado, where I once taught, so it also has that Boulder connection. Does anyone know anything more about him?

With these Morgan-Greer cards some decisive Big Emperor Energy is needed to cut through all these words (you should see my desk).

I’ve not always favoured very culturally specific decks, but someone gave me a gift of the DruidCraft Tarot and I’ve been consistently impressed. Its guidebook always gives me something to think about. 

Variations in the DruidCraft Tarot: Princess for Page, Fferyllt for Temperance, High Priest for Hierophant.

I also love the artwork of the Wild Unknown tarot and the Wild Unknown Animal Spirit deck, which uses the Four Elements and also adds a number of Spirit cards. 

Fire, Water, Earth and Air are joined by Spirit in the Wild Unknown Animal Spirit cards.

The two most recent additions to my own collection are Rachel Pollack’s Shining Tribe tarot, recently back into print, and Chris Riddell’s Cloud Tower tarot. 

Rachel Pollack’s Shining Tribe Tarot.
Chris Riddell’s new Cloud Tower Tarot.

The Tarot For Writers workshops begin with Magicians and Fools on 2 February – I hope to see some of you there.

(Posted on my blog as well as Substack. I’m trying both places out for now.)

Books of the Year 2022

by Andrew | Leave a comment

I can’t pick a single book of the year, so I’m choosing five that really left a impression on me in 2022:

* Annie Ernaux, The Years (translated by Alison L. Strayer)
* Julia May Jonas, Vladimir
* Annie Ernaux, Getting Lost (translated by Alison L. Strayer)
* Peter Matthiessen, The Snow Leopard
* Joshua Cohen, The Netanyahus

A few patterns emerge: campus novels; middle-aged women having affairs with younger Russian studs; natural history and geology; the house of Fitzcarraldo; the truth of closely observed details – of crazy obsessions, of everyday life in the suburbs, of wild birds in remote valleys I’ll never visit.

If I were to round out to ten books of the year, I’d also include:

* Lauren Groff, Matrix
* Ocean Vuong, Time Is A Mother
* Robert Macfarlane, Underland (narrated by Roy McMillan)
* Katia Oskamp, Marzahn, Mon Amour (translated by Jo Heinrich)* Barbara Kingsolver’s Demon Copperhead

Other notable reads in nonfiction: Laura Cumming’s On Chapel Sands, Tim Flannery’s Europe, Peter Frankopan’s The Silk Roads, Helen Gordon’s Notes From Deep Time, Cat Jarman’s River Kings, Robert Macfarlane’s Landmarks and The Old Ways (both narrated by Roy McMillan), Francis Rose’s Wild Flower Key, Henry Shukman’s One Blade of Grass, Stanley Tucci’s Taste, Jia Tolentino’s Trick Mirror, and Boel Westin’s Tove Jansson: Life, Art, Words (translated by Silvester Mazzarella).

And among works of fiction: Junior Burke’s Buddha Was A Cowboy, Katie Kitamura’s Intimacies, Sang Young Park’s Love in the Big City (translated by Anton Hur), Torrey Peters’s Detransition, Baby, Adrian Tchaikovsky’s Elder Race, Sarah Tolmie’s All The Horses of Iceland, and Camila Sosa Villada’s The Queens of Sarmiento Park (translated by Kit Maude).

Special mention goes to short stories by Mavis Gallant – this is an ongoing project in reading, not rushed as I’m taking her advice: ‘Stories are not chapters of novels. They should not be read one after another, as if they were meant to follow along. Read one. Shut the book. Read something else. Come back later. Stories can wait.’ I imagine a volume or two of hers might appear among books completed next year, or the year after that. Another excellent story collection I’m working through is Florida by Lauren Groff.

Maybe I’ll keep another list for specific short stories and poems next year – alongside nonfiction, short fiction and poetry certainly outclassed novels for me this year. So much product from the spoon-feeding cookie-cutter hard-sell school of creative writing is either not to my taste or just plain boring. Don’t waste my time with high-concept formulas and cheap reveals: gimme voice, gimme character, gimme setting, gimme mood.

Telly is a bit of a blur, and a lot of tv reviewers need to find new jobs. Off the top of my head, a highlight was the Star Wars prequel Andor. What a wonderful slow burn that series achieved. Again, gimme character and setting and mood – gimme depth – and while we’re at it gimme wardrobe too: so much of that mood in Andor was achieved through the costumes. And after so frequently looking up details for its UK broadcast, I’m very much looking forward to the second season of Reservation Dogs. Oh – and incoming, incoming: last night we very much enjoyed the movie of White Noise – what a good adaptation.

I also enjoyed the Masterclasses of Amy Tan and Joy Harjo. I guess learning can be a form of entertainment too. Another profoundly good book-adjacent experience was the Introduction to UK Natural History that I took with the Natural History Museum. How exciting that natural history is going to become a GCSE subject on the national curriculum – let’s hope it will be available in all schools.

Another fascinating foray: the Druidcraft Tarot. I’m not sure I’d have chosen this deck myself, as these are not cultural associations I was particularly drawn to, but it was given as a gift, and it’s turned out to be a remarkably powerful and rich resource – and now I am making sense of those cultural associations too. There is perhaps something in that idea that special tarot decks are given to us, rather than purchased. I also discovered Jessica Dore’s Tarot for Change this year – highly recommended.

I’ve enjoyed a lot of Substacks this year too – though the cheerleading in some of the writing ones gets a bit wordy and cheerless for me (are they paid by the word?!). But ones worth following include: Austin Kleon, Chuck Palahniuk’s Plot Spoiler, Lincoln Michel’s Counter Craft, and Anne Trubek’s Notes from a Small Press. In podcasts I enjoyed various interviews with Tim Ferriss, as well as anything with Kara Swisher, the sort of feisty, well-informed advocate anyone wants on their side in a culture war.

Digital subscriptions to the New York Times and the New Yorker are perhaps my greatest indulgences, but they feel well worth it – in particular the NYT’s coverage of the war in Ukraine shows the value of real reportage. I’m tired of British newspapers and the space they devote to property and panic-mongering, though maybe they are just reflecting their readers. The Cooking newsletter from the New York Times is perhaps the greatest joy in my inbox: great recipes, but also a lot of first-rate cultural writing.

Also, as a final note: praise be for libraries! They saved me a lot of money this year, and saved my bookshelves (and floors) a lot of space, and I also listened to numerous audiobooks on library apps. And in visiting the library in person I made a few discoveries too. I end the year giving thanks for libraries and librarians.

Rites and Writes for the Autumn Equinox

by Andrew | 4 Comments

It’s that time of year again – autumn always seems to be the favourite season of writers. Our inner nerd must associate the cooler air and autumn leaves with the wide-open prairies of unused exercise books. And we’re off!

Not that there are as many leaves left to turn orange and fall round here after the summer that we’ve had. Summer: increasingly my least fave season, though this year I did enjoy an excellent Zen meditation course as well as a wonderful introduction to natural history with the Natural History Museum. It’s been a weird year – heat and drought and war and politics and divisions, plus loss and grief that never really seems to budge. Perhaps the cycle of the year puts us in a space to start again.

Autumn, though. It’s something about the light, I think – the slant of the light in September, a thinner yellow that catches something: what? It was there in Orleans House Gardens in Twickenham this morning (see above). It was there on the English Channel last week when I taught a Four Elements workshop at the Hastings Book Festival (thanks for having me!). Something that changes in the light makes me see or maybe just feel things differently: a certain lift happens.

Thinking about that: as a writing experiment, take an old piece of writing and rewrite all or some of it by telling it slant.

A different perspective, a new setting in time or place, a fresh register: bring the subject matter in another direction.

Perhaps think about the quality of light this work might sit within, and let that feel its way into the writing. And maybe you could prepare by doing a meditation or visualisation that draws on a particular quality of the light.

To illuminate (ha!) this writing experiment, try this ritual for the Equinox from Bhanu Kapil, first published in the Ignota Diary 2019:

23 September
Ritual for Autumn Equinox
Invert yourself at the edge of the water, so that the top of your skull or your hair makes contact with the current or wave. And if this is not possible, if your capacity to take this posture is restricted in any way, then feel it in your body first. And if that is not possible, or if feeling is not possible in this moment, then take a glass of water and add some pink Himalayan salt, fresh lemon juice and pepper. Drink this. And if this is not possible, then lift your face to the rain. And if it never rains, then wait until the water finds you. Wait for the unexpected emotion that changes or charges your very real heart. And then: step through the indigo door, as Rachel Pollack said, into another world.

All of that! Some Bhanu (and Rachel) magic to send you on your writing way. Let the light lead you into another world of your own creation.

And spookily (or maybe not), as I type this post Bhanu also informs me about this. If you’ve ever enjoyed the great wisdom of Rachel Pollack’s writings, you might want to show your assistance. (And if you are interested in tarot but have never read her Seventy-Eight Degrees of Wisdom: you must seek it out! It is widely regarded as the best book on the subject.)

***

While I’m here, coming soon:

* Reawakenings, a Four Elements workshop run with Words Away, at a central London location tbc, 26 November 2022. Thinking about the changes we’ve experienced in the last few years since we last came together in person, let’s explore together ways to reawaken our writing: reset or reboot it, rebirth it even!

* Masterclasses on craft and practice, structured around an updated syllabus for my DIY MA in Creative Writing, on Zoom, January 2023 onwards.

Happy Autumn!

How Not To Get A Book Deal But Write The Book You Want (FREE version!)

by Andrew | 8 Comments

I still can’t get over the fact of a literary agency charging £649 for a daylong course called How To Get A Book Deal. We all have to earn a crust, but I thought literary agents did that by taking a commission for selling author’s books.

There are some very good courses run by agents and publishers (and writers and editors and writing teachers too …). And there are also plenty of festivals and writing conferences where writers can pay to hear the advice of industry professionals and sometimes even pitch to them – hey, we live under the system of global capital, right? And until the Revolution comes the exchange of money is often the foundation for the use of other people’s time and expertise, okay?!

But £649 is a lot of money to shell out for a day. I trust the pastries will be first-class!

So, for FREE, I’ll let you into a secret.

The way you get a book deal is to write a book someone else wants to read.

It’s as simple as that. And if lots of people want to read it, you could be very successful commercially.

I am not being facetious! I really do think there is great value in grasping the clarity of these facts. Too much can be overegged and overpromised in the world of creative writing, and promises made are rash ones. No one can really predict what a publisher will acquire, or whether a book will sell once it is published.

Stop grasping – just write a good book. If you want to be published, it really comes down to the simple matter of writing something that readers want to read. And it doesn’t even have to be a good book: look in a bookshop!

But, too, what is a good book? Taste matters as much as technique, and we know there’s no accounting for it.

However: it does help to develop your craft and technique, and also to gain inspiration in establishing an effective creative process. And though there are many excellent resources out there that you can pay for, there are also many that are FREE. Here are some of the ones I recommend most frequently.

On intention
Carmen Maria Machado, On Writing and the Business of Writing: a powerful essay on the intersections of art and commerce, grounded in real-life examples. If you are serious about getting published, this is required reading.Alexander Chee, How To Unlearn Everything: written to address that contentious topic of writing ‘the other’, this essay in fact goes to the heart of three of the most important things in writing and publishing: your purpose in writing; your chosen narrative style; and understanding your readers. All writers should read it.

On creative practice
Charlotte Wood and Alison Manning on the Writer’s Life: a series of podcast interviews, with plenty of practical guidance on matters ranging from finding focus and discipline to working with feedback. There are so many podcasts on writing and books, but I’d certainly make room for this one.

On understanding how craft powers your story
Lincoln Michel, On The Many Different Engines That Power A Short Story: or novel or memoir or any narrative form. And while you are there, I highly recommend you sign up for the LitHub Daily – plenty of excellent craft essays and reviews and matters book-related.

On the intersections of plot and character, and how they connect with readers
Parul Seghal, The Case Against The Trauma Plot: lots of food for thought here for how stories are presented as tidy fictions – or messy ones. Valuable reading.

On developing a narrative style
Tell Me A Story and A Book Is Not A Film: blog posts of my own about narration, showing and telling, and knowing who or what is telling your story.
Emma Darwin, Psychic Distance: What It Is And How To Use It: I tend to use the term narrative distance, which I feel is more accurate for relating both interior and exterior modes of storytelling; whatever the language, understanding this concept can really empower your storytelling. And there is a whole textbook’s worth of writing advice in Emma’s excellent Tool-Kit.

On story types
Ronald Tobias, 20 Master Plots: a checklist for the 20 types of story is made available for free by the publisher – really handy for marshalling your narrative content and shaping it into a story. The book it’s based on is a good investment for writers too.

On story structure
Michael Hauge, The 5 Key Turning Points Of All Successful Screenplays: okay, a book is not a film (see above), but it helps to develop an understanding of ways to pace and plot your action. I often suggest that writers watch a favourite movie and look for those key developments in the story such as the Point of No Return and the Major Setback.

On prose style and voice
Chuck Palahniuk, Thought Verbs: a niche matter, but choosing the best verbs to power your sentences is imperative. Lots of other useful craft essays on the LitReactor site too.
Constance Hale, Sorting Out Grammar, Syntax, Usage & Style: there are lots of other resources on Constance Hale’s site too, and her book Sin and Syntax is *the* book on style, grammar and usage I always recommend: practical, witty, and breezy.

On publishing
Margaret Atwood, The Rocky Road To Paper Heaven: a pithy overview of the path from writing a book to getting it out in the world.
Jane Friedman’s Writing Advice Archive: should answer most questions about the business of publishing. Jane Friedman is a good one to follow.

On being realistic
Michael Neff, Why Do Passionate Writers Fail To Publish?: fierce but necessary! I disagree with a few points, e.g., that you must publish short fiction before submitting a novel, but a lot of sound advice here.
Editor’s Rejection Bullets: insights from the world of publishing.

On making yourself comfortable with uncertainty
Masterclass, John Keats’ Theory of Negative Capability in Writing: or cultivating the habit of being ‘in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason’. Masterclass has a lot of free articles on other topics too.

On returning to the page
National Writing Project, Thirty Days Of Lockdown Writing: because we don’t want you spending *too* much time doing the reading, a month of daily prompts, many inspired by that guru of writing practice, Natalie Goldberg.

All of that advice: for FREE!

If I were doing this next week, I might have different suggestions. And ideas for podcasts and YouTubes could form entire other posts. Lots out there! Feel free to suggest in comments below.

And if you are really keen, and don’t mind shelling out on a few textbooks or going to the library: here is my DIY MA in Creative Writing. FREE. But you might want to find classmates or writing partners for that.

And there are lots other resources and writing experiments on this site, of course. FREE!

*

I’m right now not blogging as frequently; call this a special edition for the spring equinox, and maybe I’ll try to do something quarterly. But you can also find me on Twitter, and especially on Instagram.

NB: Revised 28 July to include Carmen Maria Machado’s essential essay.

Books of the Year 2021

by Andrew | 2 Comments

Some old, some new, some rereads – my books of the year, roughly in order of reading:

Raven Leilani, Luster
Isabel Wilkerson, Caste
Natalie Goldberg, Let The Whole Thundering World Come Home
Nora Krug, Heimat
Merlin Sheldrake, Entangled Life
M. John Harrison, The Sunken Land Begins To Rise Again
Louise Erdrich, The Night Watchman
Louise Erdrich, The Sentence
Claire Keegan, Small Things Like These
Frances Wilson, Burning Man: The Ascent of DH Lawrence
Joy Harjo, Crazy Brave
Patrick Radden Keefe, Empire of Pain: The Secret History of the Sackler Dynasty
Thomas Savage, The Power of the Dog

There were other good reads – Ash Before Oak, Three Simple Lines, Gathering Moss, Everybody, Just Kids, Miss Iceland, Red Love, Dragman, Second Place, The Weekend, The Promise, Oh William!, The Luminous Solution, Moonstone. Hilary Mantel’s Giving Up The Ghost was an excellent reread for book club. And this morning I finished The Fifth Season – what an introduction to the imagination of NK Jemisin, but maybe I need to let it linger a bit. If I’d finished listening to English Pastoral I suspect that might have made my selection too.

But the titles in the list above are the ones that really cast the greatest spell over me: drew my curiosity, got under my skin, fired me up, touched my heart, or equipped me with strength during what turned out to be a difficult year.

My standout read of 2021 is probably The Sentence. Before I read that, it would have been The Night Watchman. Clearly the year of Louise Erdrich. I love her. I just love her. Funny. I love that she is so funny. I love her characters: Tookie, Patrice. I love her political engagement. A couple of readers thought parts felt rushed, but to me that very rush of energy – the anticipation of what was coming – provided much of the pleasure of this book about books and book people set in a bookshop.

Enjoy this YouTube of Louise Erdrich’s launch interview held at Birchbark Books, which also provides the setting for The Sentence. ‘Sentences that bring people solace and comfort’ – just heard her utter those words again. And the thing about books is that you ‘can be alone but in the most splendid company’: another gem. UK readers: The Sentence comes in January.

If I had to ration myself, the other books I’d press on readers would be The Power of the Dog (clever western! fantastic prose! such pacing! such detours! see the movie too!), The Sunken Land Begins To Rise Again (its mood! its mystery! its sense of place!) and Luster (the voice! the sheer bravura! the sheer lustrousness!). And Small Things Like These for an exquisite quickie, and Empire of Pain to fill you with fury and make you want to change the world.

There were a number of books I was looking forward to but their moment hasn’t come yet. The TBR piles teeter and totter.

And, as usual, hype (publisher/reviewer/social media) mars the experience of reading. Each to their own, etc., but! You *really* didn’t mind all those plot holes? You really fell for all that high-concept gush? I got the appeal of The Appeal – its format and its humorously observed characters were fun to start. But the closer you look, the less it makes sense. Surely those characters would be sending texts rather than emails, wouldn’t they? And don’t those insertions of additional evidence to the case seem a bit convenient? And those law students really hadn’t encountered this unusual legal case in the press: come on!? The foundation of the story’s drive starts to wobble, and isn’t this all getting a bit grating and silly now … But what do I know? It was book of the year here, a chain selection there, some notable blurbs. Are we really so easily pleased? Though I might not have cared so much if I’d not been led to expect something better. The hype: it was a problem.

And then Crawdads: insert horror emoji. It just didn’t add up for me – not least, one narrative prop is a poetry anthology that contains poems written maybe thirty years later than that book would have been published. A small detail – it’s not so much that it’s factually incorrect (I’m not that much of a purist), but it’s tonally off, and felt sloppy. At that point I started looking for flaws, and found many in the plot and the characterisation. I was no longer suspending disbelief that that child could have raised herself like that.

And then there was Kate Clanchy’s memoir, which in some ways is the book of the year in terms of how it generated, for me, so much thought about what constitutes good writing and good publishing. We can do better.

I sometimes feel bad about expressing criticisms of books. I mean, someone went to all that trouble, and authors can be sensitive souls (don’t tag them!). But I am a booklover, goddesssdammit, and making books better is part of my job. I task the writers I work with on ways to improve their manuscripts, but certain published books – and sometimes, it seems, whole genres – seem so mediocre that I wonder why I bother. Just rustle up a high concept that will satisfy the marketing department, then flesh out a synopsis (how I’ve come to dislike that word ‘twisty’), and hone a first page that will grab the attention of an agent or a judge. That sounds cynical, but so is publishing.

I really enjoyed Parul Seghal’s The Case Against The Trauma Plot in the New Yorker this week (27 December), not least as she seems to share my taste: Reservation Dogs was one of my favourite shows of the year. I like how this article identifies how trauma can provide too easy or tidy an explanation within stories:

The trauma plot flattens, distorts, reduces character to symptom, and, in turn, instructs and insists upon its moral authority. The solace of its simplicity comes at no little cost. It disregards what we know and asks that we forget it, too—forget about the pleasures of not knowing, about the unscripted dimensions of suffering, about the odd angularities of personality.

Hanging on ‘twisty’ reveals that milked shocked responses to characters’ suffering, the trauma plot was what spoiled It’s A Sin for me on tv too (I’m clearly going against some grains of popular taste this year). Ooo, and trauma porn reminds me that the follow-up to A Little Life is out soon. I promise to read with an open mind, honest! But I retain the right to judge harshly.

Many of my favourite books this year did in some way or other go to the heart of suffering and injustice, but they did so without implausible contrivances and mawkish stitching. They worked their magic with humour, with affection, with complexity, with an awareness of mystery, with a sense of negative capability. They usually had well-crafted sentences and paragraphs, and a voice. A personality.

Though I carefully observe professional boundaries, I am giving a special mention to Jo McMillan’s The Happiness Factory, coming in January 2022. I read earlier drafts, and perhaps am biased, but it gives me great joy to see this very funny and bittersweet novel make its way to publication, and from the esteemed indie Bluemoose too. The premise is fantastic: an estranged daughter uses an inheritance to buy a sex-aid factory in China just as the country is opening up to the global economy. And the concept is matched with a real voice and plenty of heart.

I vowed to blog every month this year – and I did that, and even managed the first of the month most of the time. This one: the end of the month, an hour to go. Because. Sometimes these things become chores, and sometimes we need to move along a bit. I am going to blog this coming year only if/when I have something that requires the longer form.

Blogging, is it over?! Should I be doing a Substack? Newsletters are an exciting format, though I find I don’t actually have the time to read various of the ones I’ve subscribed to, and some are quite mansplainy. Austin Kleon’s is one I always find time for.

But what do I have to add? And everyone’s a teacher now, everyone has an offering. Masterclass does it so well. I loved the David Sedaris one recently, and we’re working through Shonda Rhimes currently – both are funny, both are practical.

One thing I’ve noticed during the pandemic is that there are lots of people with lots of things to say, but sometimes there’s a value in quiet. I’ve muted and unfollowed a lot of people this year. Maybe I’m just a bit jaded at the end of 2021. ‘Just sitting: what a relief in this busy world’ – something Natalie Goldberg said as she led us in meditation during a virtual retreat earlier this month.

The solace of sitting and sentences. Maybe that’s something to aim for in 2022. And tulips! And crocuses, and daffodils. More to plant this weekend while I continue listening to English Pastoral. Priorities.

You can also find me at my new Andrew Wille Writing Studio account on Instagram, which seems an easier place for engaged interactions. More there, and Happy New Year! I’ll leave you with this beautiful poem from Joy Harjo’s Crazy Brave: Eagle Poem.