Essays & stuff I don't want to forget

orig. posted Oct 2009

I have a piece in the latest issue of The Dublin Review. It was one of those occasional long stories that engage me fully. I get caught up in the characters and the story keeps demanding greater space for development rather than cutting. But as the finish comes into sight I get more depressed. There is nowhere to publish a story more than about 5,000 words long. The knowledge of my wasted effort gets me down.

In this case however the story escaped. Before submitting to the DR I emailed the editor, Brendan Barrington, and asked if he would even consider one that length. He said he would, and off it went.

This issue also has a prison story by Carlo Gébler and a gaelic pastiche by Robert Cremins. I haven’t yet read all the non-fiction articles, but what caught my eye was Adrian Frazier’s essay on Yeat’s late play Purgatory. Oddly enough, I’d made an attempt to read that play some weeks before. It struck me then as being non-Irish, drawing from some tradition I was unaware of. I read it as an uncompromising study of those whose lives are cursed and who have moved beyond hope. Few such reports are returned from the world of despair.

Frazier points out that Yeats believed in such things as hauntings and spirit voices. The play, he writes, is not a gothic ghost-story or a modern version of a Noh play; it is realism.

But apart from this Frazier’s essay mentions a late work (around 1938) by Yeats, On the Boiler. I have to get my hands on this. It seems to be a diatribe against the consequences of over-democratization as Yeats foresaw it. Modern society has proceeded in a diagrammatically opposite direction to every sentiment expressed here. Here are three quotes:

Most Irish people should not be taught to read or write.

Representative democracy has given Ireland to the incompetent.

The success of the Abbey Theatre has grown solely out of a single conviction of its founders – ‘Not what you want, but what we want.’

When I worked on the sites in London I used to shake my head in incredulity at the headlines in the tabloid press. The crass jingoism, chummy language, and the cunning commandeering of the man-in-the-street’s opinion were obvious to every hod carrier, even the Mayo ones. Crap like that would never go down in Ireland.

An English workmate explained that the Brits weren’t stupid, they would just buy the paper for a laugh to see what stupidity was in it that day. Most would buy two papers – one for the news and one for the tits and a laugh.

Read on …

August 2007

I’ve been invited to give a reading as part of the CLE author editor tour. Haven’t decided yet what piece to read.

Tuesday 23rd October 8pm

Letterkenny Library

featuring from The Stinging Fly Press

Authors Neil Hegarty and Aiden O’Reilly with Editor Declan Meade
More information

originally posted April 2009

I came across this article on the salt publishing website. It’s by an experienced literary agent, Luigi Bonomi.
The style is jaunty, familiar, nudging – like a tabloid columnist. It’s addressed to the wannabe writer:

some part of you wonders whether it really is publishable and will make you your fortune

Hold, stop right there. Real writers don’t think their books will suddenly earn a fortune. Enough of the patronising tone.
But it gets worse.

Now here comes the important bit ­ you will be solely judged on what you have written in your covering letter and on your first page. 

I can’t believe he wrote this. In moments of disillusionment, I’m sure most writers think that agents spend more attention on the cover letter than they do on the manuscript. But it’s a cold shock to see it stated here with a perverse kind of pride. In the cover ketter, Luigi continues, you should take pain to avoid any suggestion of “Difficult Author syndrome”. Hmm. Do I sound like I might be suffering from “Difficult Author syndrome”?

The cover letter should say

what you are currently doing with your life apart from writing, and how far you have got with the novel

I had always thought you had to submit a complete novel. I mean, what agent would begin to work with an author who hasn’t even finished the work? Or what kind of writer would submit a novel he/she had only started?

If it’s good ­ the novel will be put aside and read more carefully later in the week. If not, it’s sent straight back ­ with nothing else having been read except for the first page!

He makes clear that he’s only talking about the slush pile here. But I’m genuinely confused. What books/writers are not on the slush pile and how did they get there?

you have on average around 60 seconds to impress an agent with your covering letter and first page. ONLY 60 SECONDS. 

I don’t know any writer who would claim to be able to make a judgement on a novel within 60 seconds. Nor any editor. But you split that amount of time between the novel and the cover letter! This is just beyond any speedy gonzales jokes. If you were a professional working for a company and admitted to making crucial decisions in 60 seconds you would have your sorry ass kicked out the door.

And yet there are brilliant authors out there waiting to be discovered. We know there are − this year a police constable sent us his first novel and it went for £800,000.

– Even a policeman can become a writer, is that what you’re saying?
I won’t be sending you my manuscript any time soon, Luigi. No sane non-celebrity would send you his/her work. You will miss the opportunity to discover me, another “unknown”. But I have discovered you – to be a dickhead. It took me longer than 60 seconds – but that’s because I took the time to read what you had written. And I took the time to look at your website, and analyse what kind of writers you take on, and what might have been on their cover letter that attracted your attention.

These are the jobs of the very first 6 fiction authors on the LBA’s list:

TV producer, PR & communications consultant, Television drama scriptwriter, military pilot, broadcaster & Guardian columnist, host of TV’s The Gadget Show.

I gave up then and never got as far as the policeman. This kind of bullshit-sniffing just makes me feel dirty and degraded. Before I go I’ll take the opportunity to call you ‘ arrogant dickhead’ again Luigi. With your 60 second attention span you won’t read this far. Oh, and if you ever give a talk entitled “How to become a writer” I’m gonna throw a scoop of horse poo at you. Courtesy of Smithfield horse market.

Sue me. It’ll make me famous and then I can sell a book.

A child of eleven can understand it. It goes like this:

There is no truth outside what people decide is true. People vie against each other in argument, and the consenus that emerges is what we call the truth.

If you yourself are involved in the debate, then it is accepted you will appeal to “the truth” in order to convince your opponent. It’s human nature. If you manage to convince enough people, then you will feel vindicated. You can’t help it; you’re human.

Go ahead, support whatever view takes your fancy: it’s a free world.

originally posted January 2009

In my efforts to get published, I feel like I am slowly becoming part of a large corporation. This corporation has its own company culture which you need to become familiar with in order to move ahead. There is a certain manner of speaking, a way of talking about yourself. You need to be able to acquire friends and influence people. You need networking skills, good presentation; you need to be open and confident.

Some get promoted to the upper levels. The talented, that is. Do you too have talent? You won’t know yourself. There are talent spotters in the corporation. You can be lucky and run into one by the water cooler. Or you can try to get the attention of one – be assertive, but not too pushy.

Doing your job excellently can be enough to get promoted; it just takes years and years, or else a lot of luck.

After some time you want to get out. You feel you don’t understand the unwritten rules, you never will. You want to clear your head of the institutionalised thinking. Just why is someone universally lauded for talent when a couple of weeks before their work was universally ignored?

The corporation requires a particular kind of personality to succeed. You have to ask yourself: are you that type? You might instead be an individualist, a non-conformist – a creative type.