REVELATIONS AND REVELRY

“Chick lit is genre fiction within women’s fiction which addresses issues of modern women often humorously and lightheartedly.^[1] The genre sells well, with chick lit titles topping bestseller lists and the creation of imprints devoted entirely to chick lit.^{[citation needed]} Although sometimes it includes romantic elements, women’s fiction (including chick lit) is generally not considered a direct subcategory of the romance novel genre, because in chick lit the heroine’s relationship with her family or friends may be just as important as her romantic relationships.^[2]” – www.wikipedia.co.uk

Do you write chick-lit or do you not write chick-lit? That is the question. Right up until Things He Never Knew was published, I didn’t really give the actual genre it fell into much thought, besides being happy to say that it fits comfortably into the commercial women’s fiction bracket. It was only after it was released and I started publicising it heavily and looking for reviews and things like that that the words ‘chick’ and ‘lit’ started featuring more and more often. The first time it happened was in a bookshop where I was discussing a possible book-signing and the manager asked rather guiltily if the book was “chick-lit” and then apologised profusely in case I considered that a slur. I was rather taken aback, because at that stage I did not perceive chick-lit as a bad thing. After all, a book is what it is and falls into the category that suits it best. However, this negative attitude was one that I came across again and again. Sentences often began with “I’m not saying it’s chick-lit or anything, but….” And my bemused brain would immediately shriek “But it IS!” – not audibly, thank goodness. I just couldn’t understand it, the term is not an insult as far as I’m concerned and I certainly didn’t want to attach literary pretensions to Things He Never Knew – it’s a good book, but it’s not literature (writing that word always makes me think about Educating Rita where Michael Caine enunciates the word so carefully in that scene – “…li-tar-rit-ture…”)

Anyway, after about a month of the same, recurrent situation happening, I did some in-depth research into a genre that I already thought that I knew pretty well. After all, Carmen Reid, Adele Parks, Jane Beaton and Jill Mansell are some of my favourite authors. Not to mention Jilly Cooper, Jenny Colgan and Catherine Alliott. And indeed I did know it well. The section of it that I chose to read. When I explored the available titles within the chick-lit range more fully, I discovered that the ‘chick-lit’ term refers to nothing more than a scale, and there are wild extremes at either end of that scale. In my opinion there is a trashy end, and there is a more refined end. And what’s more I think there is a distinct over-lap at that end between chick-lit and literary fiction, which is a whole other sphere.

Chick-lit is commercial women’s fiction, i.e. novels pitched at primarily younger women (the ‘chick’ bit) and usually containing a romantic element to the story. However as the Wikipedia definition at the top shows, there’s not always a romantic element; with which I wholly agree. Chick-lit as a genre was born in the 90s and much like a real child has continued to grow ever since, now encompassing many, many different types of books. Which is where the trouble comes in, because chick-lit has different associations for different people. The lady I talked about in my last blog, for example, would have refused to buy anything carrying that label, yet when she read the synopsis of my book, she was intrigued enough to buy it. Personally, I think that shows prejudice towards the genre, but why is she prejudiced? I imagine it’s because of some of the rubbish that can be found on the bookshelves of Waterstones these days. By rubbish I mean the fiction books written by people who are not authors, and furthermore haven’t actually written the book themselves; it’s been visited by the hand of a ghostwriter. That’s the bottom end of the scale in my opinion. As we move further up there’s a whole host of different titles jostling for position which in all probability can muddle along together. And then at the top of the scale, the boundaries between chick-lit and literary fiction (hereafter referred to as lit-fic to save my nails which are suffering as I type) become blurred. Like my vision after the amount of wine I drank the other night.

When I googled the term ‘literary fiction’ it brought up a list of books which have been defined as just that and whilst most weren’t familiar to me, one did leap out. It was a book called The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield. I read this a while ago, a year or more, and yet I recall it distinctly as one of the best books I have ever read. At the time I declared it to be my favourite book, which as any avid reader will know is a ridiculous concept. But I was so gripped, intrigued and impressed with the book (encompassing therefore the writing and the plot) that it was how I felt. I would thoroughly recommend it even now. So why is that book defined as literary fiction and not chick-lit? It’s fair to say that the appeal of that specific title does not lie in superficial storylines, i.e. girl meets boy, girl likes boy, boy does not like girl – oh oops, yes actually he does like girl but by that time girl is seeing someone entirely unsuitable – or similar. The Thirteenth Tale demanded deeper thinking and presented more challenging ideas. The point of the story appeared to be not just entertainment but to inspire deeper thought and requiring a degree of cerebral analysis. Using those criteria I would also place Kate Mosse and Kate Atkinson into the lit-fic category. Labyrinth by Kate Mosse is a stunning, intellectual and passionately researched book. It’s not an easy read, it does require concentration, but is no less enjoyable for doing so. Perhaps therefore that is one of the elements of lit-fic.

At this point the old adage of ‘don’t judge a book by its cover’ must be mentioned. Because whilst I don’t agree with doing that, you do actually need to read a book to judge it, it’s definitely true that a person can be lured or otherwise by the colour, composition and other details of a book cover. For example, chick-lit books usually have covers depicting variously women, shoes, handbags or all of the above. The cover of Sophie Kinsella’s “Twenties Girl” is one of my recent favourites. They are bright, cheerful and frivolous, giving an idea of the contents. My mother refuses to buy a book with a pink cover (“I Don’t Know How She Does It” by Allison Pearson being an exception) and my mother does not read chick-lit. She did however read Things He Never Knew so does that therefore mean that it is not chick-lit? Absolutely not. I would place my book directly into the chick-lit category (sorry lady who bought it at the signing) but I would also place it further up towards the lit-fic end of the scale. I don’t think the book is a superficial tale, I think it does require some thought, some exploration of morals and emotions, but at the same time it is not iconoclastic in any sense, nor a particularly demanding read. So maybe it is chick-lit for the more intellectually-inclined chicks?

There’s so much more to say on the subject, yet I think the main points have been covered. And just to be clear – I am not being derogatory towards any type of book. There are many and varied titles available on the market and each with their own degree of merit. Choosing a book is a necessarily subjective thing and I would hesitate to say that one book is ‘better’ than another. ‘Different’ is about the best and most general description that can be applied.

Here endeth the lesson 🙂

I hope everyone has a bright, cheerful and frivolous weekend!

Outside the studio

Triangles have three sides. There. That is the official “Sarah Haynes theorem on triangles”. I don’t think Pythagoras has a rival in me just yet. It’s possible that from this you would think that I don’t have the wherewithal to write a book, but I promise you I do. And not only that but one book is rapidly turning into two! I have written a few thousand more words of my second manuscript and I am ever so pleased and excited with how it’s coming along. Such a great feeling to watch a manuscript unfold as it’s supposed to. I am also working on my chick-lit/lit-fic blog, which interestingly was something that came up both in my radio interview yesterday morning and at the book-signing.

First of all – book signing! Thank you very much to everyone who came along. It was a great experience and a rapid learning curve. It felt a bit surreal at first to be sitting there surrounded by copies of my book and knowing that they were just waiting to be signed by me. But I very quickly got the hang of it; the shop was quite quiet for a couple of hours so I had plenty of time to people-spot, which I LOVE. Just trying to guess from the way they look and what they’re doing what their job might be, are they married or single, happy or sad in life? It fascinates me to watch people drifting by because I am so incurably nosy. I also got the chance to read some of Mrs Fry’s Diary which I quickly realised was a bad idea because it made me laugh so much I was shaking, which is just not a good look at your own book-signing. I imagine for anyone glancing over at me then I looked like a bit of a lunatic. But when I was reading things like “…We told Stephen Junior that he was adopted tonight. He isn’t, but there was nothing on TV.” I really couldn’t help it. Great book, very funny. And I am now consumed by curiosity as to who Mrs Stephen Fry is. More about that later.

I didn’t have an easy start to the signing; the first chap who came up to talk to me spent a long time looking at the back of the book before saying to me “I can’t read, you know,” – to which I didn’t really know what to say. Short of offering to read him the entire thing I didn’t see that there was a lot that I could do. I suggested audiobooks, but he told me that he preferred to attend talks and get his information that way, so that was that. And then the second lady who came up picked up Things He Never Knew, looked at it suspiciously and said “It’s not chick-lit is it?” in tones that suggested that she equates chick-lit with pornography. Obviously I didn’t know quite what to say, as the answer is probably yes, if I’m brutally honest. To the chick-lit bit, not pornography. It’s certainly on the chick-lit scale, but as quickly as she had said that she announced that she liked the sound of it and could I sign it for her? I was quick to reassure her that it is slightly more cerebral than some of the books out there, and that I had in fact written it myself. It was interesting to watch people react to me – some stuck like glue to the shelves so that they didn’t have to come near me and some people came straight over the minute I caught their eye and smiled. I was particularly interested in why people picked up Things He Never Knew, I asked one girl and she said it was the colour of the front cover, which is nice, I’m glad I got the cover right.

And in the bits when I wasn’t signing books or chatting to people I was able to look around the shop and see all the books that I don’t have time to read, e.g. The Distant Hours by Kate Morton. She is one of my absolute all-time favourite authors and I’ve been waiting for her latest book to be released for ages. But I simply don’t have the time to dedicate to reading it and I don’t want to read it in fits and starts so I have forced myself to delay buying it. The other thing that I noticed as I glanced around the shop was the calendar stand – and I was astonished. The first one that caught my eye was a 2011 calendar entitled “Beautiful Sheep”. BEAUTIFUL SHEEP???? Swiftly followed by “Girls on Chairs” – which has a slightly kinky ring to it if you ask me. Which probably no-one will after this. What extraordinary things to do calendars on. Whatever happened to naked WI members and Chesney Hawkes?

However I didn’t have time to think about it because I then had to get home and go to sleep essentially, to be up at 6:30am to read the Sunday papers ahead of being on the Nick Girdler show on BBC Radio Solent. Or I thought I had to be up at 6:30am, my mother had different ideas – she texted me from America at 5:38am and woke me up, thereby ensuring that I lost almost an hours sleep. But no matter, the interview went very well and it was lovely to meet Nick, he’s so nice. I didn’t dare listen to the show for about twelve hours in case I sounded awful, but I don’t. I don’t even sound as nervous as I was. I chose to comment on stories about fraudulent benefit claims (which nearly gave my husband a heart attack as we had agreed that I would steer clear of politics), overly thin women which I think are becoming a serious issue in terms of role models for young girls, and then the recently revived rumours that Prince William and Kate are getting married. Again. I hope they do – I think they will – it would be absolutely lovely. And Kate must be getting fed up of waiting by now. And then to my absolute delight I found a story on page 11 of the Mail on Sunday about Boris! Dear old Boris, who, according to the paper, is no longer sleeping at his family home but instead in a flat 100 yards away. But why is this????? How can Marina bear those 100 yards?????? I’m glad he is though because it meant that I was able to mention him on the radio, ending my contribution perfectly.

So all in all it was a thoroughly good weekend full of firsts for me. Oh – I was going to talk about Mrs Fry’s Diary. As I said, I read it on Saturday and that evening I sent Mrs Stephen Fry herself a tweet saying how funny I’d found it. The next thing I knew ‘she’ had replied to me and re-tweeted it and my number of followers leapt by thirty in a matter of hours! Including a follow by Mrs Stephen Fry which I’m pleased about seeing as ‘she’ has over 71,000 followers and follows less than 3,000 ‘herself’. I feel ridiculous saying ‘her’ because I’m sure it’s not. And I’m so curious now as to whom it actually is. I’m delighted to have so many new followers though; I look forward to hearing from them all.

As some of you will have seen from facebook and twitter, I have a very quiet week ahead of me this week. My eldest daughter is in Portugal and my husband is away on a course. Rather delightfully this means I can eat what I want, watch what I want on TV, go to bed when I want, get up when I want and also spend hours and hours crafting my new manuscript – which is a thrilling thought. Lucky me!

Fareham book-signing

According to the countdown on my blog site I have just one day and one hour to go until my first-ever book signing! It’s clever of it to know that because I haven’t confirmed with Waterstones what time I’m starting yet. I’m sure they said 9am but I personally think that 10am would be a much more sensible time. Those customers who are in at 9am will want to ease into their day gently by browsing shelves and not talking much, it will take until the people who have stayed in bed so long that they didn’t make it in till 10am arrive before anyone begins to engage with me. I’m sure. And also I don’t like getting up early. No, I’m joking. I do quite like getting up early actually. I think it’s because it takes me a long time to wake up in the morning, I’m not one of those people who can bounce out of bed at 8am and start earnestly discussing Pythagoras’ theorem over a cup of tea. To be brutally honest I’m not sure that I could discuss Pythagoras’ theorem at any time of the day or night. Is it something to do with triangles? It fascinates and slightly horrifies me that anyone could be so interested in triangles that they come up with a theory about them. Can you imagine how bored you would have to be? I find maths in its entirety frighteningly boring. But at least it’s easy to date Pythagoras’ theorem – it simply must have been before the days of Sky + and Coronation Street. I wonder how many new theories are developed these days? Not many, I’ll bet. Everyone’s too busy watching Come Dine With Me and Michael Macintyre’s Comedy Roadshow.

Anyway, that’s why I like getting up early so I can have a good long time to properly wake up before I need to be coherent. But don’t worry, I shall be fully awake and coherent by the time I start signing books tomorrow. I am going to spend today flexing my book-signing muscles and deciding what pen to use. I normally use a fountain pen but I’m not too sure how good an idea this is; it certainly looks very nice but the ink can be unreliable sometimes and there’s nothing worse than signing a book for someone and having to go over the words again. I know because it happened at the launch but luckily it was someone I knew. I think if a person buys a book tomorrow and I sign it they have a right to expect a decent, legible signature. Not something that looks like someone’s old aunt has signed it. Mind you, if someone’s old aunt starts signing my books in Waterstones her signature will be the least of my worries.

And talking about getting up early it’s a good job that I don’t mind doing it because on Sunday I shall have to be up and about super-early to be on the radio! I don’t mind admitting that it’s something I’m mildly nervous about, simply because I’ve never done it before. Fear of the unknown and all that. But everybody that I’ve spoken to has said there’s nothing to it and it’s just like having a conversation with someone. Let’s hope so……..! For those who don’t know, I am going to be a guest on the Nick Girdler Show on BBC Radio Solent between 9:30-9:50am. With that and my book signing this is a real weekend of ‘firsts’ for me. It’s certainly the first time I’ve ever turned down an invitation for Saturday night in favour of going to bed early and getting a good night’s sleep.

And finally, some of you will be pleased to hear that progress on Manuscript Number 2 is well under way. I’d already written a few thousand words (20,000 to be precise) but they needed heavy editing which is nearly completed. I’ve taken bits out, simplified some of my characters and generally made it as good as it can be – and I’m very pleased. As an author you know when you’ve got it right because as you read your own words a sense of excitement sort of fizzes up inside you and you think – yes! I’ve done it! I have the basis of a very good book and I am excited about writing the rest of it. It’s going to be a fun thing to write. I need to do more planning which I find terribly dull and frustrating, I don’t want to be planning what will happen, I want to be writing it, creating it, bringing it all to life and seeing what happens next. Because a lot of the time the characters write themselves and I’m sometimes surprised with what they say and how they behave. I censor them occasionally, they can’t be allowed to run amok, but I have a good collection of characters this time which is nice to work with.

I shall leave it here for today as I have several thousand things to do and nowhere near enough time to do them all. I would like to say a massive THANK YOU for all the feedback I’ve been getting. It’s both rewarding and useful to know what people are thinking about me and my book. And I’m so pleased that so many people are reacting to Steph in the way that they are meant to, it means that my writing has worked.

The countdown on my blog site now reads just twenty two hours to go, so you can all see how long it has taken me to write this! What can I say……I’ve been so distracted by developing my new theorem for triangles that I couldn’t concentrate properly on writing this. If there is sufficient interest then I shall publish the results of my theorem next time; it can form the first sentence of my blog.