The word

George Orwell tackled it in Nineteen Eighty-Four (in 1948) and Sir Humphrey Appleby was a master of it in Yes, Minister (circa 1980), but Newspeak or Bureauquackery is still with us in 2007. However, maybe its days are numbered. The Victorian Department of Education, who hitherto have been a major sponsor in the promotion of Eduspeak (as they refer to it), have now withdrawn their support. In fact, they are running a Jargon Busting competition this month to identify and expunge Eduspeak, even though someone in the Department is still dreaming up project and division titles such as the Thinking Forward Design Teams Pilot Project and The Innovation and Next Practice Division (responsible for organising that even more tautological "new innovation initiative").

Whilst I get a kick out of playing with words and watching them perform little tricks, I don't get too precious if other people abuse them somewhat, because they're amazingly resilient mites after all and are determined to have the last laugh. It does concern me though when, as with Newspeak, people try to enslave them into serving a particular ideology or try annihilating them when they resist.

Supporting their resistance are the authors of the website Weasel Words, which is well worth a visit and which may well bring a smile to your lips. It was here that I discovered the following description of an Arts conference: ‘... remapping cultural globalisms from the south is a conference project about the remapping of global orders, histories and cultural production from the perspective of a critical matrix positioned geographically south and outside the dominant hegemonies of European and North American traditions. This conference is positioned at the very edge of the politics of difference. The postcolonial space is a site where the experimental cultures of the periphery converge to define new modalities for cultural inclusion. The Conference functions as a set of dialogues between civilisations, in a project that begins with the assumption that the margins are redefining and transforming the worlds of the centre ... The Conference will move beyond the closure and limits of current definitions that continue to divide and separate, whilst engaging with the possibilities of new convergent positions and space of shared cultural experience and knowledge. Global multiculturalism is a key logic of the cultures of the future.’

Having mentioned Yes, Minister, it's only fair that I (almost) finish this post with a quote from Sir Humphrey before taking myself off to enter the Jargon Busting Competition in the hope of scabbing $50 from the Department of Education.

Sir Humphrey Appleby: Minister, the traditional allocation of executive responsibilities has always been so determined as to liberate the ministerial incumbent from the administrative minutiae by devolving the managerial functions to those whose experience and qualifications have better formed them for the performance of such humble offices, thereby releasing their political overlords for the more onerous duties and profound deliberations which are the inevitable concomitant of their exalted position.

In the beginning was the word.

Long live the word!

Interview

As noted in the last post, Mike French interviewed me recently for THE VIEW FROM HERE . The interview is now posted, so be my guest ... or rather, be Mike's guest and visit:

http://mike-french.blogspot.com/

Mike's blog is an interesting blend of book reviews, discussions about writing (including his development of The Dandelion Tree), art work, and now interviews. No more words needed here. Go visit.

Books, blogs, blokes and blondes

Guess I should fess up before anyone gets too disappointed that, whilst this post has something to do with books and blogs, it's really got nothing to say explicitly about blokes or blondes. It's just that, when I was thinking about a catchy title for this little beast, the four words melded together, and then I tried saying them fast, and then repeating them fast ten times, and then backwards ... and by the time I'd amused myself doing this sort of thing for an hour or two they'd sort of grown into the title of the post, and there was little I could do about it.

Seven weeks after starting the latest round of edits on The Snowing and Greening of Thomas Passmore, I think I'm almost done. Problem is, though, that after a break of four or five weeks, I'll see things I want to refine further. And will keep on doing this until I'm told I can't do any more. Hopefully, when the printed book is in my hand I'll be able to stop and won't feel inclined to scribble out words, replace paragraphs, etc. Maybe I just need to lock myself back into the next project.Have been a pretty tetchy reader of late, and reluctant to stick with books that don't grab me early on. Either this, or I've just been unlucky in what I've picked up. Couldn't make headway with Burning Bright (see 16/9/07) and didn't persevere; it felt like it was a Young Adults book (which I often enjoy) but mis-pitched at adults. Something didn't work for me. So I was a little concerned that a collection of short stories that was written and pitched for the YA market, and which had been highly recommended by a school librarian, might also leave me feeling short-changed.Margo Lanagan's Red Spikes is a Children's Book Council of Australia Book of the Year for Older Readers and, as my librarian friend noted, is "seriously weird". However, it's seriously weird in the best kind of way, and I couldn't help but see parallels between what Margo Lanagan does (with the subject matter and her use of language) and everything I enjoy about Angela Carter's short stories. It may well be aimed at the Young Adult market, but these stories have a much broader appeal than that. What I like most is that they seem to take our dreams, rip out the innocence we might associate them with and transplant them with something more enduring and sinister. Quite fantastic---in every sense. I took this anthology with me when I went to Robe, South Australia, for a short break recently, and it helped make the holiday a delight.STOP PRESS: In Googling Margo Lanagan to see if there's anything else I MUST include, I note there is: she has a blog. So click away. I also note---and no prizes for me here---the comparisons with Angela Carter have already been well and truly established. Must get hold of Black JuiceWhite Time next. and Apart from this, I've also been interviewed recently by Mike French for his blog The View From Here. I discovered Mike's blog in July (see Comments 30/7/07) and the approach he was taking to get The Dandelion TreeThe Snowing and Greening specifically) for his blogsite and this will be appearing soon. Watch this site. published. He generously extended an invitation to interview me recently (about writing generally and That's all for now, folks! Almost. But, if you haven't already done it, try saying fast, ten times: books, blogs, blokes and blondes. And then say it backwards.

How silly.

Print on demand

Perhaps it's because of the weird way my brain works (or doesn't work) that I've come to associate, at some point in the past, the term 'Print on Demand' with daylight robbery. In terms of the structure of the phrase, it seems closely related to such strings of words as 'Stand and Deliver' and 'Your Money or Your Life.' Whether it's simply the result of such word association or because I misunderstood something about it the first time I heard it mentioned, I've come to think of 'Print on Demand' as a Bad Thing.

I assumed the notion of being able to print off a single copy of a book was part of some dastardly plot hatched by computer nerds to undermine the time-honoured traditions of the publishing industry and, consequently, would make the industry even less interested in investing in new writers. I imagined that instead of having a print run of 2,000 or 5,000 or whatever, the idea was that a slice of a book could be accessed via the internet and, if someone wanted to read it, then they'd type in their credit card details and would have access to printing off a single copy through their own printer. The ideal solution for those heretics who refuse to embrace e-books! And if not exactly this, then I imagined it was something to do with bookshops no longer carrying stock as such and having a hole-in-the-wall ATM (or ABM) instead: swipe your card, choose your title, and wait for your book to be dispensed.

However, it seems that this is not the case and that I need to curb my imagination and that Print on Demand is in fact a Good Thing.

I was reading a back issue (spring 2007) of The Author recently and came across an illuminating article ('One small step') by Linda Bennett, who knows a good deal about the topic. Through this I learned that POD allows books to be printed (at printing houses) in small numbers amongst batches of other titles, and that most of the ramifications of this are positive:

• allows publishers to run specialist titles because they don't have to invest in large print runs, which is good news for publishers and good news for specialist authors;
  
• keeps titles in print because small orders can be more easily filled;
  
• more rapidly responds to customer demand (if the warehouse is empty, it's not a matter of having to wait for enough backorders to justify a large print run) so fewer sales are lost;
  
• may create efficiences that allow publishers to invest in additional titles and new authors.

It's been an interesting few months in this respect. Working towards getting The Snowing and Greening of Thomas Passmore published (though not necessarily through POD) has led me in lots of different directions. Writing this blog and reading other blogs and chatting with other writers and kicking into Facebook and constructing a website (more on this another time) are all activities I had no idea I'd be involved in a few months back. It's been a steep learning curve at times, but the view's worth it.

Recent Reads

Have just about managed to get to the bottom of the pile of books I've been wanting to read or needing to read for a while. Tracy Chevalier's Burning Bright kept getting pushed to the bottom of that pile, simply because other priorities took over, but I've finally made a start on this. William Blake apparently features in this story, which has made it something to look forward to because I've always been a fan of Blake. However, how it stacks up against Girl with a Pearl Earring will be interesting. It must be a tad nerve-wracking writing the next book after one has been so successful. No wonder Harper Lee decided to leave well alone after To Kill a Mockingbird.

Revisited Slaughterhouse 5 by Kurt Vonnegut Jnr and still rate it as an all-time favourite. But also had a look at three Australian titles in the hope I could find one for a Literature booklist.BYPASS The Story of a Road by Michael McGirr is a delightful, humorous non-fiction account of the Hume Highway, which stretches from Melbourne to Sydney (or Sydney to Melbourne, depending which state you're from). It's a travelogue in a sense and put me in mind of Bill Bryson---but grittier. I'm not sure why it matters that Michael McGirr is an ex-Jesuit, but he mentions it himself and so does everyone else when they talk about this book, so I mention it too. I suppose this piece of information adds to our understanding of the man who's undertaking this journey and the stories that he uncovers and relates along the way. It's a nice touch citing bumper sticker slogans as epigraphs, and I found myself flicking through the book to read all of these in one go. (For instance: 'Your Carma Just Ran Over My Dogma'; 'The Older I Get, The Better I Was'; 'This Is No Time For The Present'.) Haven't finished Bypass yet, having decided it's not for The List but will keep it on hand as something to dip into and enjoy between other books.

I probably wasn't in the right frame of mind for picking up The Rose Notes by Andrea Mayes, and gave it a couple of sessions but then gave up. Didn't feel like persevering. Found the narrator's voice a little too measured and old and intrusive, but I wasn't feeling patient at the time so may well have misjudged it. (Gave the book to someone else and they enjoyed it!)

The absolute gem of these three, however, and the book that I knew was going to be on my list before I'd read 20 pages is The Patron Saint of Eels quote the blurb, Noel Lea 'longs for a time when life was less complex and unexpected magic seemed to permeate the ocean town and its people. When spring rains flood a nearby swamp and hundreds of eels get trapped in the grassy ditches ... he and (oldest friend) Nanette encounter the vibrant Fra Ionio and get more magic than they bargained for.' It's certainly a magical tale. by Gregory Day. Every once in a while there's a book that's worth giving up sleep for, that leaves you itching to carry on reading and that you know you're going to want to come back to read a second time at least, and this was one of them. To And with that, back to the editing.

Editing

Editing, editing, editing ...

Love it. Nudging a word or two and watching the nuance of meaning shift a story even more in the direction it needs to go. Occasional delicious surprises.

Battling with new software, which pig-headely refuses to recognise Australian English and UK English, wanting to change everything to American English. Streuth!

And sleep---well, I've split each day into 26 units rather than 24 hours, but that doesn't seem to help. To misquote John Lennon: I've got blisters on my eyeballs!

And as for having to go earn a crust!!

Would spend the whole day putting words into characters' mouths if I could, and exploring their world, and getting inside their heads, and, and, and ...

But to do as much as I want, something else has to go, so all my other communications are getting reduced to short, staccato sentences and occasional outbursts of gibberish.

Editing, diting, ting! Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

Hyperfiction --- Boldly going where?

Though I've never been a fan, I could always appreciate the appeal of the 'Choose Your Own Adventure' genre. You know the sort: a basic framework for a story with three or four diversionary tracks the reader can follow:

• If Noddy goes home to wash and wax his little yellow car, turn to page 78;
  
• If Noddy summons up courage to ask Mrs Bear out to dinner at Chez Big Ears, turn to page 101;
  
• If Noddy trades his car in, buys an AK47 on the Toy Town blackmarket and goes postal, turn to page 132.
  

If one pathway doesn't excite, then come back and try another. It's like getting three books in one, and might even be seen as the literary precursor to the video game, Nintendo 64, Xbox, etc. It certainly attracted a lot of kids into reading.

With this in mind, I thought I should overcome my prejudice about reading novel-length slabs of text on a monitor and get hold of some examples of hyperfiction, which I duly did a few months back. I'd come across a couple of excited articles about the wonderful potential of hyperfiction and wanted to sample them for myself, so loaded one on to my pc and one on to my work laptop, began flicking from page to page ... and felt my interest sink faster than a lead balloon. Since then, they've been sitting there, sulking or skulking on my hard drive, and I've failed to interest anyone else in having a read.

Why?

It isn't just the fact that these texts can only be viewed on screen, which kills my eyes, because if the hardware was any better this still wouldn't win me over. No, even with a hand-held digital book, I can't imagine being enthralled by the notion that what I have in front of me is not so much a story as an almost-endless series of permutations without direction: turn right if you like, or turn left, turn back if you're in the mood, jump forward perhaps, make your own choice, make another choice, read this character's thoughts, discover another character, and another, or another setting. Navigating the menu alone makes me feel as if the story-teller's craft has been sacrificed to creating endless links and cross-overs instead. Whilst a sense of design undoubtedly exists, the sense of being taken on a journey, the sense of purpose, has been replaced by the frustration of being left to wander in a random manner through an unnavigable maze.

But I also find it frustrating that I can't make more of the experience than this, so I'm posting this blog to see if anyone can enlighten me. Does anybody have a better experience with hyperfiction and, if so, how did you approach it? What did you get out of it? Help!

Down at the Factory of the Imagination

Here I am doing a spot of overtime down at the Factory of the Imagination. The machinery is humming fairly smoothly for the moment though, so I thought I'd take a late lunch-break and post a quick blog.

Yep, every lever in the place points to EDIT and the pistons are chattering: "the-snowing-and-greening-the-snowing-and-greening-the-snowing-and-greening..." All I have to do is make sure nothing seizes or wears loose and that no gaskets blow. Mind, these machines have been running full bore for several days now and the quality of engineering wasn't crash hot to begin with.

The other week, I was taking a break from the factory floor and decided to wander upstairs, along to MARKETING. They're a different breed up there, with a different outlook, and chewing the fat with the Marketing gurus made a pleasant change to the grinding of gears and pressing of plates. Came across the following in my travels: Click here Don't think we'll be using anything like it for The Snowing and Greening of Thomas Passmore, but thought you might enjoy.

Bad news on the doorstep

Gob-smacked by the news that Angus & Robertson, one of Australia's largest bookshops have invoiced publishers for books they can't sell, and are attempting to charge publishers up front in order to stock their titles---or will refuse to stock them. Read full details here. However, if all the publishers signed an accord and refused to supply Angus & Roberston, it would be one empty bookshop very quickly and every bookshop could expand to fill the gap. Bad news turned good!

Recent reads: Bombshells by Joanna Murray-Smith. A play in six parts, each with a different character played by the same actor. Quite enjoyed this, particularly the stories of overworked housewife Meryl Louise Davenport, bride-to-be Theresa McTerry and widow Winsome Webster. Am looking at it as a text to use at work, and think it'll do nicely along with a couple of novels and a film. Also finished with Caroline Smailes' In Search of Adam, which leaves me ready to start Mark Hayhurst's Friday at the Nobody Inn.

Desert Island Discs

Since posting a list of 10 books I'd happily revisit, and mentioning the radio program Desert Island Discs in passing, I've discovered it's still running ... into its 65th year! That's a stunning feat. However, with all those celebrities stranded on desert islands over so many years, what's even more amazing is that any islands are left on which to dump yet another. Not only this, but I can't get over the fact that no one's fully considered that you don't find many functioning record players washed up on desert island beaches, nor that you'd find an electricity grid and power socket to plug the thing into.

It all seems a tad cruel to pluck a celebrity from stardom, to encourage them to select 8 records, and then to abandon them on a desert island without any real chance of listening to the things. They might come in useful as frisbees, I guess, but the frustration would outweigh any pleasure. It's either cruel or pleasantly absurd.

Maybe the additional items they're allowed to take (a book, other than a religious or Shakespearian text, and an inanimate luxury, without any practical use) will somehow compensate for the futility of having carefully chosen the 8 records they can look at but can't hear.

Now, I can't just sit back and let other people create lists of their top 8 records without wanting to do the same. So, after great deliberation and much consternation at having to leave out a few hundred favourite tracks, here's my list:

1. Amsterdam - Jacques Brel (David Bowie did a cover once---everyone's covered Brel---but the live version of Amsterdam, performed by the Belgian, reminds me of a small town in France[!] where I bought the album and had a great holiday)
   
2. Mahli (remix) - Souad Massi (impossible not to tap your foot to, to start dancing to, to start bouncing round the room to)
   
3. Soleá - Radio Tarifa (love the soulful passion of flamenco)
   
4. Burn One Down - Ben Harper (probably not representative of Ben Harper at his best, but a fun song that'd remind me of his other work)
   
5. Little Red Rooster - The Rolling Stones (couldn't choose between Muddy Waters and all the other Blues greats, but the Stones did a great job with this song)
   
6. Exit Music (For a Film) - Radiohead (evocative and strongly linked in my head with Baz Luhrmann's Romeo and Juliet, which I like a lot)
   
7. Trois Gymnopédies - Erik Satie (something classical, pensive, mellow)
   
8. No Woman, No Cry - Bob Marley and the Wailers

If I was ranking these records, I'd have to put No Woman, No Cry first. Which is why I've left it till last! It's a no-brainer for me. One of the best tracks of all time, with many excellent covers and a few terrible ones too. Many years ago, when I was on the way home from Northampton School of Art and College of Technology, where I was doing my 'A' levels, a friend told me that a band called Bob Marley and the Wailers were playing in the town that night and that I should come along. I'd not heard of them at the time and thought they'd be a two-bit band so didn't go, but within a couple of months I'd learnt what I'd missed out on. Ouch!

• For reading material, I'd probably want to take an encyclopedia. Something to dip in and out of and never quite finish. No beginning, no end.
  
• For that little luxury, I'd either negotiate to take my collection of Northern Exposure DVDs (and something to watch all six series on) or, failing that, a large bottle of good Irish whiskey.

Well, that's me on my desert island. What about you?