Will Self at the Manchester Literature Festival

Manchester-Literature-Festival-Logo

Robert Cutforth reports back from the Northern Lights Writers Conference at Sale Waterside, where he has an unsettling encounter with Will Self…

The Northern Lights Writers Conference starts pleasantly enough with writers Joanna Kavenna and Jo Bell discussing the difficulties in extracting money from people who ask us to write something for them. It’s tough out there, new writers, but not impossible. You simply need to lower your expectations, be willing to make an arse of yourself and do the odd bit of lecturing or burger flipping to avoid the breadline. It’s a bitter pill for most prospective writers with JK Rowling-style delusions of glory to swallow, but it is very useful advice and delivered with a “hey, we’re all in it together” kind of spirit that leaves us with a modicum of hope.

And then a man who is clearly undead wafts onto the stage.

I don’t mean the gaunt, altitudinous figure before us is a vampire in the metaphorical sense, no. It took me precisely one second to determine with extreme certainty that this man spends his days sleeping in a coffin and his nights flying above the streets of Whitby looking for living things to eat. Behold, William Woodard Self, the destroyer of worlds.

He begins his talk by asking genre fiction writers to identify themselves. Proud hands go up. Having read some of Self’s fiction beforehand, I suspect it would be unwise to raise my hand despite the fact I’m writing my second novel that just happens to have post-apocalyptic Manchester as its setting. I am right to be suspicious. “I have nothing to say to you,” he says and snaps his fingers. The fools with their hands aloft vanish in puffs of foul smelling smoke.

For the stunned few of us who are left, he has some practical advice: Ostinato Rigore which he says means “constant rigor” but I am pretty sure is some sort of spell. He elaborates. Ostinato Rigore in the writerly sense means to keep busy. Write anything and everything you can, especially when first starting out. He proves his devotion to Ostinato Rigore by regaling us with tales of his early days writing questions for pornographic board games and ghostwriting Ronnie Biggs’ joke book. I laugh and allow a single buttcheek to unclench.

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Sensing we are warming to him a bit too much, Self shakes a bat out of his cloak, draws a graph on a whiteboard that illustrates his tumbling sales figures and proclaims the death of the novel as an art form is nigh. I re-clench.

A woman asks him what a young writer is to do if their chosen vocation is indeed on the brink of extinction. “I would look into a different medium,” he says and produces a flawless human femur from his back pocket. With a flick of his wrist, the femur hurtles through the air and finds purchase in her left eye socket with a distinct ker-chunk. Self blows a disinterested raspberry into the microphone as her head rolls down the stairs.

After lunch, he reads a particularly cheery excerpt from his new book, Shark, that centres on a delirious sailor as he floats amongst the wreckage of the USS Indianapolis with his dying comrades. While singing an American folk song, the protagonist unlatches another sailor’s life jacket and watches the boy slowly disappear into the shark-infested deep.

A journalism student accidentally misquotes Self whilst asking a question. Before the last word leaves his lips, Self leaps from the stage and promptly chainsaws the student into bite-sized pieces and stuffs them down his throat one after the other. His jagged Adam’s apple jumps and clicks with each gulp gulp gulp. As he dabs the chunks of bloody student from the corners of his mouth with a silken hanky, he suggests aspiring journalists should perhaps get their facts straight before asking stupid questions.

Trembling and suffering from a debilitating case of Stockholm Syndrome, I approach the man afterward and ask him to autograph my copy of Shark. To break the icy stillness that descends as he scratches his name onto the title page in phlegm, I ask his opinion on MAs in Creative Writing. He has already implied that the genre in which I write is silly and that long form fiction in general is toast, so why not go for the trifecta and have him ravage my academic choices as well?

He arises from his seat, takes me in his arms and twirls me about the room. A tuxedoed string quartet appears from behind the bar, playing The Blue Danube. The floor falls away and everyone but us plummets screaming into a pit of fire. Faster he spins me above the flames, his terrible eyes focussed on something out the window, his terrible mouth tutting my crap waltzing technique. “Come on, man, one two three, one two three…” I am terrified and enraptured in equal measure.

As the fire snuffs out the cellist’s final note, Self dips me. “An MA in Creative Writing is a waste of time,” he says and brings my face so close to his that I expect to feel his hot breath, but there is none. “Stretch yourself by getting a proper degree, like philosophy” and plunges his fangs into my neck.

This one book: IT by Stephen King

IT is a ridiculous book. It’s silly, it’s disgusting, it was written by a drunk and worst of all, it’s a book about a gang of kids who save a town from a scary clown. Well sometimes “It” is a clown. Sometimes It’s a big spider and other times It’s Paul Bunyan or a leper. Did I mention the book is ridiculous? Basically, It shape shifts into the things children are most afraid of and then kills them. Sound familiar? I don’t know if IT (published in 1986) ripped off Nightmare on Elm Street (released 1984), but who cares? If there is one thing we can all agree on, it’s that there can never be enough stories about murdered children, am I right?

If you’ve not read IT, I suppose this is the part where I should warn you of impending spoilers but as you probably have no intention of reading IT anyway, what difference does it make? Besides, most of the spoilery bits are above anyhow. I don’t even feel bad.

“Why is this ridiculous book the one that changed your life?” I hear you not ask. Let me tell you anyway.

Before reading IT at thirteen, I had read precisely three novels: Jacob Two Two meets the Hooded Fang, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe and The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz (Yes, two books by Mordecai Richler… Canada innit). Needless to say, I wasn’t exactly hooked on reading. In fact, I found the idea of sitting down with a book a fairly tedious activity, especially once the NES came out. Remember how awesome Super Mario 3 was? Why would you read a friggin book when you could play that game instead? Finding your first secret coin room… oh, MAN.

Stephen King changed all that.

Stephen King books are bad. And I don’t mean the writing is shit. Ok, yes, he spends too much time describing scenes and characters that have no bearing on the plot and maybe he does love an adverb or two (despite the surprising diss he gives them in On Writing), and oh I guess it’s true his books are way way way too long, but oh my dear lord, they’re fun to read.

When I say they’re bad, I mean they are properly off-side. Some are a bit racist, women are often battered, dudes are sleeping with their own moms and, of course, the stacks upon stacks of dead kids.

Even now, in these days of overprotective supermoms and paedomania, you can still find Stephen King novels everywhere. Book shops, airports, car boot sales, Oxfam… you name it. I found IT in my school library. In Junior High! I read it on the bus, I read it in the cafeteria, I read it on the couch at home and no one seemed to care. It was so strange. Everyone knew Stephen King books were a bit wrong, but they just seemed happy to see me reading an actual book. A tut here, the odd eye roll there, but that was it, no one said I couldn’t read it despite the grisly murders, the occultish baddies, the domestic abuse or the graphic sex. It was like discovering a socially acceptable porno mag. “Ah, is that porn you’re reading young sir? Good lad. More kids should be like you. Don’t forget to look at the tits!” You know the bit where Stan drags a razor blade lengthwise down both forearms and paints the word “It” on the shower wall in his own blood? I read that bit during church youth group while the pastor was giving a lecture on the evils of heavy metal. It was amazing.

King novels are the crack cocaine of the literary world, and IT is crackiest cocainiest. It has to be to keep you reading a book about a scary clown for well over a thousand pages. As soon as I finished, I immediately withdrew all the Stephen King novels from the library and read them all, then I went to the public library and read all of the ones they had and then when I was finished with those I went to the book store and used my own money to buy some more. Birthdays, Christmases, books had made their way onto my gift lists. I looked forward to reading the books we were assigned in school and English had become my favourite subject. I even found love for Mordecai Richler!

Stephen King is largely responsible for getting a dummy like me to read and even moreso to write. In fact, it wasn’t long after reading IT that I wrote my first story; a bit of flash fiction entitled “Barnyard Bob and his dog named Phil”; a story about a dog who has sex with his degenerate owner in exchange for room and board. It was god awful, but shit it was fun to write.

Sounds from the other city

I have been to Salford exactly three times and always by accident. I suppose that’s odd considering Salford is precisely 2.1 miles from my front door (thanks Google Maps) but I just never felt the need to go there. On purpose.

The area around Chapel St has been described to me as an “ungentrified Northern Quarter”, and if you think about it, it is quite like Manchester’s Northern Quarter except that it is nothing like it at all. The Northern Quarter has bars with DJs, gourmet burger joints, music venues, art galleries and craft beer shops. Salford has a Premier Inn with all the letters in the sign burned out, a pub off Coronation Street and a boys home you can cycle around like him from The Smiths. Salford has beards like the Northern Quarter, but unlike a well-coiffured NQ beard, a Salford beard has things in it. Like fluff. Or chips.

Only a music festival in a place as odd as Salford could you see a band called Kult Country in a pub called The Old Pint Pot, or Grumbling Fur in an old mill. Only at a Salford festival could an active parish church be home to ambient techno. There is an actual tent as well (just so you know it’s a festival), but I imagine it exists solely as a place to self-righteously tut. Yech, a tent? So Glasto.

With a festival as bonkers as this, I thought it might be a good idea to do some research. For you. I had big plans. I was going to listen to every band and create a fancy infographic, dividing the acts into tidy genres so you could decide in which venue you should plonk yourself down and at which time. A good idea, right? It was impossible.

How do you classify a band who does Spanish surf rock, punk and dub all on the same album (Las Kellies)? Or a band with a name that is unpronounceable (ZZZ’s)? How do you classify a band who has yet to release an album or who are in fact not even a band? How do you classify an activist? It’s really annoying for an OCD, data dork like myself; that infographic was gonna be awesome. With bespoke images and everything.

Mark Carlin, SFTOC head honcho describes it thus:

”We tend to favour promoters and programmers that are blurring the lines between disciplines, be it art, music, theatre, film; so rather than having music in one place, visual art in another place, theatre in another space, we really enjoy when they all meld together as in one in chaotic cross section.”

Music is in a strange place at the moment. The pop juggernaut that is currently steamrolling everything is making it difficult for anyone without electric teeth or a push up bra to get on a festival stage, so it is nice to find a festival that hasn’t a single act I’ve heard of on the bill. A festival with an eclectic mix of underground acts, artists, producers and venues. A festival in a city 2.1 miles from my house (or a quick train ride from Liverpool).

One thing is for sure, this is not a festival for planning ahead. No lists, no diaries, no apps required. Like the city itself, this is the festival for flipping coins and hoping for the best. This is a festival for winging it.

Published 1 May 2014 by The Double Negative.

TDN

Self publishing: The truth

So you’ve got your finished novel. It’s gripping, the characters are suitably complex, you’ve knitted an intriguing narrative and the twist at the end rips the reader’s heart out. You’ve cleaned up the tense, grammar and narrative glitches, dropped bombs on the adverbs and you’ve saved yourself a lifetime of embarrassment by heeding your writing group’s advice to deep six the bondage scene.

You know it’s just the greatest novel since Nineteen Eighty-Four despite the fact it’s been rejected by loads of agents. Hang on, you’ve not sent it to any agents?

Step Zero: Send the manuscript to loads of agents.

If there is one thing I’ve learned, it’s that self-publishing should never be your first port-of-call. No matter what the self-publishing brigade tells you, getting properly published is always better. There is only one Hugh Howey. If you live in the UK, be sure to send the manuscript to The Blair Partnership and AM Heath (if, like mine, your book is sci-fi be sure to get a copy to Robert Dinsdale). TBP was very close to accepting mine, but after a very useful and productive back and forth, I decided the changes they wanted were too drastic and I chose self-publishing over making their changes.

What a colossal mistake that was.

Moving swiftly on… Get yourself a copy of the Writer’s Yearbook and send your manuscript to all the agents listed unless they specifically say they don’t accept your genre. “But my amazing book transcends genre,” I hear you say. Has it got time machines and space aliens in it? It’s sci-fi. Wizards and Orcs? It’s fantasy. Deal with it.

TIP: Most agents accept e-submissions these days, don’t waste your money on postage to the ones who don’t.

 

Now go ahead and submit, I’ll wait.

Finished? Good.

So you’ve got your finished novel. You know it’s just the greatest novel since Nineteen Eighty-Four despite the fact it’s been rejected by loads of agents. You’ve made their changes, resubmitted and been rejected again. Now’s the time to consider self-publishing.

Or is it? This is the point where you need to be very truthful with yourself. You need to read the comments people who’ve read it have made and ask yourself if you really want this work out there in the public domain. This is your name we are talking about and THE INTERNET IS FOREVER.

Yeah, yeah… I want to release this book no matter what!

See, I knew you wouldn’t listen to me. How did I know that? Because I am the same as you. Here are the things you need to consider:

Your book is probably crap.

The thing that no self-published author will admit is that most self-published books are crap to the point of being unreadable. If any of the following apply to you, it is almost certainly crap:

  1. No one has read your book but you (and possibly your mom)
  2. You don’t read much fiction yourself
  3. You wrote it for NaNoWriMo
  4. You wrote it for NaNoWriMo and everyone in your NaNoWriMo support group loved it
  5. You wrote it for NaNoWriMo, everyone in your NaNoWriMo support group loved it and it’s got zombies in

Because a proper editor hasn’t gone over it line-by-line, there is no guarantee your book isn’t crap. However, having one of The Guardian’s twelve best new novelists in the country review it can’t hurt. Jenn Ashworth runs a brutally honest service called The Writing Smithy that does just that. I would recommend her services whether you choose to self publish or not. Her report is largely responsible for my book getting any agent attention at all. Want to know what one of her reports looks like before you buy?

Have a look at mine. SPOILERS (obviously)
[THIS HAS BEEN REMOVED AS THE NOVEL IS IN THE PROCESS OF BEING RE-WRITTEN SOZ]

No matter how good your book is, everyone will make this face at you when you tell them it’s been self-published.

Man with condescending face

Seriously, get used to that face.

Your book will contain typos.

Listen, yeah, you think your spelling skills are, like, totally the best, yeah? Well, in Grade 9, I was in the 92nd percentile nationally in spelling. 92nd percentile. That means in Canada, I was the… uh… 92 times 26 million… divided by the square root of Pi… carry the 1… what I am trying to say is that I am a very good speller. Were you in the 92 percentile in spelling in your country? No you weren’t. I am a better speller than you and my finished book has six typos in it. Your book will have typos in it. CreateSpace (more on them below) provide an editing service, but expect to pay around £2000 for even the most basic package. I didn’t pay for it so I cannot tell you whether they would’ve spotted my six typos, but I can tell you that every time I see those six typos in my book I want to kill myself.

How many typos do you see in books that are traditionally published? Answer: Not many.

The quality of the printed book will be crap.

I got my book done with Amazon’s CreateSpace. CreateSpace is the one Hugh Howey goes on about and is by far the most popular. See that bent cover? That book hasn’t even been read. Don’t get me wrong, CreateSpace is good, probably the best self-publishing service out there. The customer service is fantastic (Americans innit), they’re interior design package is worth every penny, but the quality of a print-to-order book simply isn’t great. Also, whatever you do, do NOT pay for their Promotional Text Creation. Here is the Createspace promotional text for my book.

Pretty crap, right? Guess what. They don’t actually read your book. No one will.

“But I’m not going to bother getting physical copies made, everyone’s got a Kindle these days anyway, I’ll just save the money and go ebook only.”

Here let me show you your mate’s self-published-book-face with added ebook-only angst:

Man with condescending face and speech bubble that says

If I removed the paperback sales from my total sales, there would be almost nothing left. Going ebook-only also means your Grandma and your Uncle Cletus who’ve never touched a computer can’t give the book out to people at Christmas. And believe me, if you are self-published, these are your core readers.

Your book will not get reviewed.

I sent mine to loads of places from tiny blogs to indie publications, to Gav Reads, to proper newspapers. I got two reviews. One from (an albeit awesome) magazine I wrote a bi-monthly column for five years and one from a dude who runs a Climate Change blog.  Big Al’s books and pals is not your friend. I submitted mine last August and have heard nothing back. And because they review so many self-published books, a Big Al’s review is pretty much meaningless anyway unless of course you have a go at them for a bad review. If you are lucky enough to get a review, for god’s sake do not respond no matter how bad it is.

Have a look at the books that won a Big Al’s Readers’ Choice award. These books are the best of the best of the thousands of books Big Al reviews on a yearly basis. Besides Wool, have you heard of any of them? Me neither.

Your book will not win any awards.

There are loads of book awards out there that accept self-published books. If they are free, by all means, fire away. The Kitschies are a great award, but they also accept books from properly published authors so you really haven’t a hope in hell. The mighty Thomas Pynchon was nominated this year and didn’t even win, so don’t be surprised when you look at the shortlist and find it doesn’t contain any self-published books. There are many others out there, like the Bath novel award and the IPPYs that charge you to enter. I would say it’s probably a waste of money, but I entered them anyway. Because, like you, I am a chump.

You better like marketing as much as you like writing.

Do you like marketing? If you’re a jaded, middle-aged writer currently typing in a stained, woollen cardie like me, the answer to that question is probably: “Hell no”. If you self-publish, you will not get any writing done for a good six months after you launch your book because you will be spending all your time making a fool of yourself trying to get your mates to buy it. And then, despite your best efforts, you will still sell very few copies. Unless, of course, you are very good at marketing and have no soul… then you might sell a few more.

Now, I know exactly what you’re thinking. I was thinking the same thing when I read all the anti-self-publishing articles before I self-published. You’re thinking: “This Cutforth guy’s book is obviously crap. There are loads of self-published books out there that are great.” Well, you could be half-right. One thing I didn’t do before I self-published (and what I highly recommend you do) is actually read some other self-published books. Since my book has come out, I’ve read two winners of Big Al’s Readers Choice awards. Well, I say “read”… I didn’t finish either because (you guessed it) they were crap.

First review!

LeftLion 55 cover

Remember the Canadian In New Basford column we used to run in this magazine? Well, the writer of that classic Leftlion feature has been keeping himself busy over the last couple of years by penning this post-apocalyptic Manchester-based tale. Seth wakes up with amnesia to a city that has been destroyed and all around him there is a scramble to survive. Standard currency has changed from coins and notes to fresh food and WD40. The only person he has to turn to is a sadistic doctor who tortures him to try and glean some information about ‘the machine’. Oh, and the dictaphone recordings of a little girl who appears to be long lost. Eventually this mystery begins to unfold as he pieces his broken life back together. A strong debut novel, full of twists and turns. Since he left us, R T Cutforth seems to have progressed from writing like a Canuck Charlie Brooker to a young Stephen King or Dean Koontz. Long may his progress continue. Jared Wilson

photo of the review as it appeared in the magazine.

A young Dean Koontz or Stephen King? Wow, that’s pretty good.

Bits and bobs

Hugh Howey

Ok, just a few things.

  1. Sorry for the lack of posts in here. The book has kinda taken over my life, I will try to rectify that in the future.
  2. My other blog site robcutforth.com is still hacked and still pumping out garbage. There is nothing I can do to stop it. If you subscribe to that blog, please delete your subscription
  3. There are reviews forthcoming for the book. Creative Tourist, Leftlion magazine, Northern Soul and a few assorted environmental campaigner types are reviewing it. I will post them here when I get them.
  4. I am writing for Creative Tourist again. Here is the first bit of non-fiction I’ve done in awhile… readers of my Leftlion column will recognise the style 🙂 Polari Mission at the John Rylands

Got a nice message from the uber-famous Hugh Howey in response to putting him in the back of my book.

"Rob, what an honor, man. Thanks for the kind note. And I love the acknowledgement. Not dirty words indeed.

Best of luck to you with your work. Keep writing, my friend!

-Hugh"

So that’s quite cool. If you don’t know who Hugh Howey is, he’s basically the biggest selling self-published guy going. He’s sold millions of books and the film rights to his book Wool have been bought by Ridley Scott. Not like he needs any more help, but if you haven’t read Wool, you should. It’s immense. Industrial Revolution would not have been self-published if it hadn’t been for him. I’ll let you decide whether that’s good or bad.

If you are reading this and have a blog or a magazine or whatever and want a free copy of the book to review, email me at robcutforth [AT] gmail [DOT] com. Be honest, I can take it!

I promise I will write more in here once all the book stuff dies down!

The book launch!

Book launch poster, post apocalyptic scene with Come, Armageddon Come! on the front


Come, Armageddon, Come!

You are cordially invited to the launch of my book, Industrial Revolution.

The Times calles it “a post-apocalyptic romp through Manchester […] Fun for the whole family! (Not just your goth stepson)”

The Guardian says “Basically, if JK Rowling, Richard Nixon, The Pope, Dweezil Zappa and Dostoyevsky wrote a book together, this would be it!”

The Daily Mail calls it “offensive”

They didn’t actually say any of that, I did. That is just a taste of the hijinx in store for you inside the book and on the night itself. PLEASE COME!

Readings by ultra awesome Manchester writers, Benjamin Judge, Dave Hartley and Fat Roland!

Tuesday, 20 August
7.00pm
Dulcimer bar, Chorlton, Manchester

Book signing! Midweek drinking! Aforementioned hijinx!

My other website has been hacked and cloned

As some of you may have noticed, my old website robcutforth.com has been taken over and cloned and is selling some sort of growth hormone whilst still claiming to be me.

If you were one of the six or seven people who had feeds pointing to that site, you may want to redirect them to this one or just delete them altogether.

So annoying with a book coming out. I blame Obama.

In proper book related news, the date for the book launch has been set for 20 August. More details to follow shortly.