Any budding author now has a new route to success. Shut down the PC and get singing. That's right. Singing. Kareoke is King and Creative Writing Courses are now officially dead. Get an audition on a Reality Singing Show, come second, join an all girl band. Become successful, sell bucket loads of records and shed the odd tear whilst listening to the stories of other budding contestants. You see Cheryl Cole has just landed a Book deal to write a series of 'Chick Lit' books. I don't know how many zeros she's been offered and I'm sure she's a delightful soul, but can she write? Perhaps she will prove us all wrong and produce a brilliant novel. We'll have to wait and see won't we. But it brings us back to 'Bling Publishing.' All commissioning editors have to do is Secure a Star personality, produce a book and the tills will be awash with credit crunch lucre. And the literary tradition is once again secure. Perhaps with Cheryl's previous record of fisticuffs, she could call her book, FIGHT CLUB. I don't know but it's certainly raised the antlers of the Moose as well as some other well known authors like Freya North. Read her comments on her website. www.freyanorth.com . She has a point, several in fact.
I received several emails yesterday from other people concerned with the closure of libraries up and down the country. Swindon and Argyll and Bute are just a couple of authorities that are following the Wirral in their zero library policy. If you have the time could you write to these councils and state your objections. Perhaps Ms Cole could launch her debut novel at a local library to show her committment to the written word. Now where is Simon Cowell's mobile No.?
Hullo Moose,
ReplyDeletethanks for linking to me - I'm new to all this blogging stuff (I tend to dedicate my hours to writing my novels!!) but blimey, if something raises my hackles, I'll go for it. Must be the flip-side of spending my working life in complete silence surrounded only by people who don't actually exist... ;-)
Which brings me to an anecdote that I thought you'd like - about libraries. I do ALL my writing from my local library here in Haringey. It has the requisite peaceful, studious, reverential atmosphere - as befits an institution of that nature. Down the road, Camden Council are 'rebranding' their libraries as 'discovery tanks' or 'information depots' or somesuch ridiculous moninker. The are encouraging mobile phones, eating, drinking and chatting... Thank goodness Haringey understands that libraries are actually libraries - a place of quiet where reading matter in all its forms can be perused...and written! At my library I am joined by childrens' author Jonny Zucker as well as some unpublished writers and poets. It's a hive of creativity. I am so grateful. I frequently do talks etc at libraries (the next one is in Whitby, 17th April) because I want to give something back to a system I've been grateful for since I was a child... Right, I'm off to write... Bye!