100TWC - Day 34: Shades of Grey

How many shades of grey do you think there are? I'm guessing that, unless you've been entirely out of touch with the zeitgeist over the last few months, the first and possibly only answer that's popped into your head is: 50.

I haven't read it. I don't intend to read it. Not my kind of thing at all. But I have read reviews of it, and while I'm the first to admit that one should never judge anything solely on the basis of reviews of that thing, the reviews I've read of 50 Shades of Grey have been universally condemnatory. Sometimes exceedingly eloquently so. And other times side-splittingly amusingly so.

So, armed with my Shield of Smug, I will continue to protect myself from being sullied by any and all exposure to the actual text of the document in question. Unfortunately my shield is of little use against other works of similar "quality," many of which regularly crop up as book club choices. I can't remember how old I was when I began to think, while reading, "God. I could write better than this," but I was almost certainly still in short trousers.

In the intervening (*counts on fingers*) 46 years, things haven't got much better. Of course, I've read some good stuff during those years. Many, many examples of excellent writing that have thrilled, captivated, engaged and transported me to their writers' worlds. But there's an almost equal number of appalling turkeys in the mix, and the question that comes back to me, time after time, is: how on Earth does this drivel ever get published?

As a writer myself (if you hadn't noticed) I'm all too painfully familiar with the concept of a publishing gatekeeper. Enough of them have slammed their blimmin' gates shut in my face over the years, so I should be. They have SUCH little time, and SO many submissions, and they can ONLY take on ONE new writer this year. So I'm sorry, your manuscript is not what we're looking for, or we're not actually looking for anything at all, or we're too busy with our existing client base, yadda yadda yadda.

So if all that's true, wouldn't you think that they would expend their oh-so-precious time and resources actually sifting out the nuggets from the endless piles of dross that fly across their desks every day? Is it just that they become so exposed to utter crap that when they eventually bother to read a piece that's just this side of crap, they think they've uncovered the next Virginia Woolf? A woeful lack of perspective brought on by living too close to worthless rubbish.

A little while ago I read an interesting bit of speculative insight into what might be going on. It debated the success of books that are really quite badly written, versus the opposite story, often told, of the well-written book that doesn't do well with sales. There's an example of this latter category in the side bar over there on your right. Cough. It's a common theme with self- or e-publishing that the gatekeeper I referred to above -- agents and traditional publishers, editors, etc -- has been removed from the process and hence (potentially) the floodgates have been opened to (yet more) half-arsed dross. But through all this, the interesting point of the article was that really successful books have a compelling story AND are well-written, but books will also generally do reasonably well if they have the former but not the latter.

That is to say, a poorly written book that has a compelling story will still be read. A well-written bore will not. This is an unpalatable truth for those of us writers who take utmost pride in the craft of writing. Grammar, spelling, punctuation, tone, vocabulary -- selecting EXACTLY the right word to replace the ALMOST right one -- this takes a lot of effort. It took me, for War of Nutrition, years. Literally. Although admittedly part-time. To the majority of readers? It doesn't matter. They absolutely do not care if I chose one word or the other. Whether I keep to the point-of-view rules or not.

Whether they can't tell the difference, or they don't notice, or they DO notice but they don't care because the story is SUCH a page-turner… I don't know. But even quite a few 1-star reviews complaining about grammar and spelling will not slow the sales of a book that also has a good smattering of 5-star reviews saying "I couldn't put it down." It's galling, and I would never lower my standards to get a book out faster based on that truth, but that doesn't make it any less of a truth.

In the case of 50 Shades of Grey, many many reviewers bemoan the awful English. The poor sentence structure and grammar. The parroting of hackneyed phrases. The bad word choice. But the sad fact is the subject matter had a popular launch point (as Twilight fan fic) and has an even more popular, naughty, faux shocking, main subject. And it sells by the million.

So have I told you how good my book is? It's got chases and set backs and world-wide sickness and a hero who... [spoiler deleted]. And it's got a bit of risqué sex. And some regular sex. And every single person who has read it has told me how much they enjoyed it, and what a page turner it is, and some of them have even gone into print on t'Interweb to say so. Publically. For which I'm sincerely grateful. But as of now, it's not selling millions. Unfortunately.

I live in hope.

100TWC - Day 23: Failure

I'm a few days ahead of myself with this challenge (always good to have a few posts in hand with something like this, in case of unforeseen eventualities) so by the time you read this a week will have passed since the closing ceremony of the Olympics and I expect by now, in the way of these things, it's all just a rapidly fading memory. Normal service has been resumed on all channels and maybe even the interminable post-mortems will have become terminable, or terminated.

But for me, it was just last night. A madcap three hours of social networking as friends from as far afield as the other side of the world and literally as close as next door came together in our living room while I sat with iPad in hand both reading and writing a staccato running commentary.

So as the glow of what has been heralded as the best Olympics ever fades, I wanted to say a word about failure. And it's a good job I did, because that's the theme for today!

In among the many superb golds, world and Olympic records, and personal bests that have been clocked up over the last 17 days, I've been struck by the number of athletes who didn't win, and having had a microphone shoved under their noses before they've even had chance to catch their breath, felt compelled to say how sorry they were that they'd failed and "let everybody down."

Dear Athlete, Gymnast, Swimmer, Competitor: In what sense can you be said to have failed? Have you stopped trying? OK, maybe this was your last chance at an Olympic medal. Coming round so rarely, in many sports competitors only have two or three attempts to "medal" (one of the many dire "new verbs" we've been introduced to recently). You may have set yourself the goal of gold, but not achieving your goal is not the same thing as failure. Your attempt at the gold medal depended on so much more than your own efforts. How can you allow for others' training, skill, talent and preparation? Wind conditions (a particular bugbear in the pole vault, and some throwing events)? The last minute sore throat or dodgy stomach? None of these things are under your control. All of them can prevent you winning a medal.

Did you do your best, perhaps even achieving a personal best? You haven't failed.
Did you even make the attempt in the first place, when most of us can only lift ourselves off the sofa long enough to fetch another beer? You haven't failed.
Did you inspire even one young person to visit their local sports club this week, who wouldn't have otherwise gone? You haven't failed.
Did you make one person shout out in support, make one heart skip a beat, make one tear fall for joy or hope or pride? You haven't failed.
Did you turn one person, even for only a moment, from the weary path of the cynic to the sunny broad track of the committed competitor?  You haven't failed. And on that basis alone I can tell you that none of you failed, because I was that cynic. And I was turned. If not into a believer then certainly, and perhaps only briefly, into an enthusiastic supporter.

Failure is a big word. And it is also, similar to opportunities and threats on which I wrote a few days ago, one of those things that can disguise itself very well. What might appear at first to be a failure could turn out to be nothing more than a stepping stone. A doorway to another future. A fork in the road. Or a bump.

Many people think fear of failure is a barrier to success, and it can be. What isn't often realised (except among coaches ;o)) is that an even bigger barrier is fear of success. At least that's one problem our Olympians don't have to worry about.

The Z Factor

I haven't written much about this year's X Factor. In fact, on checking, I haven't written anything at all about X Factor on this blog, ever. Which is strange for someone who used to write between 1 and 5 "TV critic" posts a day on TV Scoop. Why is that, I wonder? Well the title of this post might give you a clue. I honestly don't think I've seen such an array of total bollocks claiming to be singers in my life, and last night reached the absolute nadir of the dregs of the pit of Hades.

"Rock Night" it claimed to be, so you'll pardon me for expressing some surprise at the collection of bland ballads we were subjected to, all (naturally) greeted with effervescent enthusiasm by the four judges who are, apparently, increasingly losing the plot when it comes to having any discernable clue what they're listening to. Take, for example, Rebecca. One of the best of the bad bunch, I'd have to agree, but what's with Dannii's comments? The acts performed two songs last night, as we're getting down to smaller numbers now and they need to pad the show out a bit to maximise the ad revenues. So for her first song, Rebecca, as is her wont, stood rigidly behind the microphone and sang sweetly. "That was nice," Dannii enthused, "but I'd like to see a little more performance. You know, move about a bit." (I'm paraphrasing). So here's Rebecca's second number, where she stood rigidly behind the microphone and sang sweetly. And a couple of times, still standing on the spot, swayed her hips a bit. "Now THAT's the kind of performance I was looking for!" gushed Dannii. HUH?

But it would be wrong to single out Dannii in the stupid comments stakes. They're all just as bad as each other, trotting out the same old (and I mean... OLD) clichés time after time, making it their own, believable, relevant, true recording artist, with a liberal smattering of the usual "do you know what"s and "let me tell you"s added in to make absolutely sure that we all fall asleep.

If I didn't believe this show had jumped the shark before, I certainly reached that conclusion very early on in this series. The "vote for the worst" campaign has literally its worst contestant this year in Wagner, and while the thought of "sticking it to the man" is mildly amusing and diverting it doesn't make up for the pain of having to sit - sorry "fast forward" - through his performances week after week. The predictable stories of judges' in-fighting, vote rigging, and production hoopla to keep the most controversial contestants in the show as long as possible have verged on the disgusting this year, but above all the media hype towers the dark truth of an almost incredible lack of serious talent in the line-up.

Of all last night's dross only Matt Cardle's Nights in White Satin (or "Knights..." as the ITV X Factor home page has it this morning. LOL) came anywhere close to being what I would call a half-decent performance by a new artist and even that started off weak and ended up edging towards a shout. And yet after every screeching, out of tune, boring repetition of songs we've heard a million times before, we're treated to the spectacle of four "experts" telling us we're listening to pure gold, when it's clear to anyone who can be bothered to open up their eyes and ears that they're watching, at best, glorified karaoke without a shred of originality and only the merest hint of musicality every so often.

Come on, Cowell. Haven't you made enough money yet? Piss off to America with this worn out formulaic crap, and give us our Saturday nights and our traditional Christmas No. 1s back again.

What was that about killing the radio star?

I better keep an eye out for that video, because last night at 6pm for a little over half an hour I, along with my partner-in-crime (well, songwriting) Annie, became a radio star.

We'd been invited in to Chorlton Arts Radio - an Internet-only, temporary radio station set up in an empty shop in the precinct to promote Chorlton Arts Festival - to do a bit of an interview and play a few tracks on Mike Bulfield's "The Festival" programme.

We had no idea before we arrived what form the slot would take, so we'd sat down together on Saturday and come up with a simple schedule of enough tracks and what we wanted to say about them to fill just over 30 minutes. We'd have been quite happy to fill the half-hour ourselves but as it turned out Mike had also prepared a few questions, and did an expert job of dovetailing his questions with what we wanted to say, giving us time to plug the website, and our forthcoming live gig at the Hotpot. During one of our off-air chats while our music was playing he congratulated us on being the most well-prepared interviewees he'd ever worked with.

Sorry if you missed it. No idea if they repeated the show at all (they were a bit short of content at one stage), but the entire radio station will be gone by the end of the week anyway. I'm told we'll have access to a recording of the show in due course, so I'm sure it'll end up being featured on one or more of our websites eventually :o)

Raging against the machine

Bloody brilliant.

Whether you like Killing In The Name or not, whether you hate Simon Cowell or not, whether you watch X Factor or not, whether you'd rather poke your own eardrums into your brain than listen to a charmless, tuneless, passionless, charismaless cover of the blandest of bland Miley Cyrus numbers or not, there's no denying the reality of people power.

This was never about who makes the money, who owns the songs, or whether the charts are a fading anachronism of yesteryear. It was all about flicking the finger at the man who never listens to music in his own home, yet thinks he has the right to dictate what we listen to in ours, every Christmas. Well, he doesn't.

Like I said, bloody brilliant.

And if you can't find two better singers out of 200,000 entrants than the wired jiggler Olly-the-Essex-boy Murs and the Bland Balladeer McDingleberry maybe it's time to call time on the X Factor, which became a parody of itself several series ago.

The culmination of 2 years' work

What seems like an age ago, I reported on here that we'd won a big piece of work. Slightly earlier than that, I'd been pondering whether or not I wanted to win it, given that the delivery was bound to be long, hard and fraught with problems. Well, the last 10 months have been...umm...long, hard and fraught with problems (and, if you count the time spent on the procurement, and the months before that spent on the prototype, I've been working on this for nearly two years in total), but finally - and on time - the UK immigration "Points Based System" went live today.

At one point I felt as though I would have preferred to be in Bracknell or Slough for a change, rather than sitting alone in my home study. The reflected buzz of excitement from darn sarf was palpable. The surreal start to the day - waking up to the clock radio set to Radio 4, where a Today programme reporter was discussing...Points Based System! - was matched many times over with bulletins, TV reports, and messages of congratulations from various senior managers which dropped into my mail box at various times during the day.

This is only the first release. There are at least three more releases to plan, design, implement and test and the remaining work will occupy at least the rest of the year and possibly stretch into next, but for now and for a few precious hours, we can at least afford to pat ourselves on the back and raise our glasses to a job well done.

Fame at last - even if only for a few seconds

The moment we've been waiting for since we entertained the Granada film crew back in April finally arrived this evening when I appeared on the BBC4 programme The Book Quiz.

We almost missed it. The other four programmes in the series had been broadcast at 11pm but this one - the fifth and final one in the series - was brought forward for some reason to 9.30pm. If it hadn't been for the eagle eyes of two of the other book club members we would not only have missed it but also failed to record it.

You can read my full review of the programme here but basically the programme is a pretty standard quiz with several different rounds, one of which is where the contestants watch footage of a book club discussing a book and try to guess which book it is. The discussion is very cleverly edited to make it tantalisingly difficult to guess, and any references to the title, author, or obvious plot points are edited out.

It was a bit of a schizo experience seeing myself on the telly. On the one hand it was desperately weird. It is, after all, quite out of the ordinary. On the other hand, it was me, and I'm very familiar with seeing me every time I look in the mirror, so in a way it seemed perfectly normal. I don't know if that makes any sense, but as the whole programme is only 30 minutes long and this is but one short round, I was hardly on screen long enough to register if I'm honest.

We're going to be on the telly!

About three weeks ago I was emailed out of the blue by a TV producer. She was scouting for book clubs who would be prepared to participate in filming for a new book-related quiz to be broadcast later this year on BBC4, and had found our website. Would we be prepared, she wondered, to field 6 or 7 members to sit around discussing a couple of books we'd already read while they filmed us?

There followed a flurry of emails while I solicited the group for potential telly stars and asked for more details from Emma, the producer. After a few false starts we finally settled on a date for filming - last night at 7pm - and a venue: our house. They had originally wanted to film in our normal meeting place, but since we got together as a group a year ago we've nomadically wandered from bar to bar throughout Chorlton without finding an ideal place that combines a good pint with an environment conducive to good discussion. Emma had concerns too about securing permission to film in public places and the background noise we would inevitably encounter in a bar, so I offered our lounge.

The film crew arrived at 6.30pm and quickly agreed that the lounge was the best location in the house. All it took to give the impression of a cozy group was to pull our smaller sofa forward a couple of feet so we could all sit around in an "L" configuration while the cameraman positioned himself in front of the TV. Most of the filming was done in extreme close-up with the boom microphone buzzing around above our heads like an enormous crazed wasp.

We were ready to roll by 7, and when the last member of the group had arrived and we'd charged our wine glasses (with wine for some, and diluted cordial for the drivers!) we launched straight into a discussion of our first book. We'd been coached not to mention the title, author, or the names of the principal characters because the quiz panel watching our discussion will have to guess the book we were talking about, but there was no pressure as Emma had also made it clear that any slip-ups could be edited out when they came to make up the package for the programme.

Conversation flowed very naturally for about 15 minutes, made easier than normal because we'd already discussed the book before, and it was the first time we'd had chance to talk about it without competing with loud background music or other people's conversations! We were still in full flow when Emma called a halt, saying they had tons of material and it was time to move on to the second book.

Twenty minutes later our second book was in the can (get me, with my professional telly talk!) and it was time to recharge our glasses and shoot some additional footage for links and edits. Basically this consisted of the cameraman taking shots of every person in the group turning their head to look at every other person, to provide shots they can use to move the conversation naturally from one person to another and include the others in the group. He also filmed each of us sipping our wine, and then moved out into the conservatory to take a couple of "establishment" shots of the whole group that they will use at the start of each piece, just to give the audience the idea of where everyone is sitting. Two members of our group also had to repeat observations they'd made during filming that the director had especially liked, and wanted to make sure they had clear shots of.

At around 8.30 they declared it a wrap and started packing away their gear. I can't speak for the others, but I found this an utterly fascinating and enjoyable process. The whole film crew were great at putting us at our ease, but in any case I hadn't felt nervous at any time. It was easy to forget the camera and mic were there and just get on with the conversation. The crew seemed pleased with the results and have promised to let us have copies of the final package on DVD. The new quiz programme airs sometime in July, so be sure to watch out for us if you're in a BBC4 reception area!