on the life of a new author...

Read it and weep (but, literally)

Read the incredibly powerful Dragonslippers: This is What an Abusive Relationship Looks Like a couple of days ago. It's a quick read but unputdownable (that over-used publishing ersatz adjective, but really true in this case). Started reading in bed at 1am thinking I'd look at a few pages and then go to sleep, finished at 2.15am, sat in the dark shivering till 3am.

It's not the kind of book I'd usually read: I guess I feel like I've seen enough documentaries/episodes of ER and Eastenders to understand what domestic violence means and to go, in a fairly detached way, 'oh yes it's terrible, and so often these women stay with their abusers.' But this is a totally different level of understanding: of the way that a relationship like this is essentially a kind of slow brainwashing, that it breaks down the will, that behaviour that, if it happened at the start, would have made the woman call the police can come to seem, drip, drip, drip, normal.

I was shocked that, at the start of her relationship with 'Brian', 'Roz' (all pseudonyms) was 35, a successful businesswoman, winner of the Woman of the Year award from her local chamber of commerce. I really had - it turns out - presumed that women who get into these relationships are badly-educated, poor, unable to find other economic options for themselves. (This despite the fact that I have a friend whose husband was also physically violent to her who is successful and brilliant.) Roz's website contains a list of warning signs of an abusive relationship which I really think everyone in the world should read: both to spot it if it begins to happen to you, and to understand why some 'romantic' behaviours can actually appear very threatening and scary.

The book also made me think about the ways in which our social construction of relationships, and of women's roles, facilitate abuse. Several times in the book, Roz - having been emotionally and physically abused - comes out with cliches about relationships. 'Relationships are about forgiveness', or 'he must love me, otherwise why would he get so jealous?' And Brian emphasises, and she agrees, that relationships mean 'becoming one', 'being absorbed into each other', 'not trying to be so independent'.

It made me think that an abusive relationship is just a relationship that really follows some of these pieces of hideous folk 'wisdom' to their logical conclusions. If a relationship means 'becoming one', then surely it's OK for your husband to ask you to give up friends he doesn't like? You're one now, so you shouldn't be trying to pull away from him by having hobbies he doesn't enjoy too. Or by going on vacation without him, or by taking a job when he'd really like you to be home.

The truth is that however close you are to someone else you will NEVER become 'one' with them, and a good thing too; we remain wonderful individual beings with our own hopes and dreams and likes and dislikes. But the rhetoric of relationships is that 'becoming as one' is somehow supposed to be a good thing.

And everyone knows that women are more 'verbal' than men. So, like those books say, you can't always expect him to be able to tell you what he thinks in words. Sometimes he might have to storm off into his 'cave'. Or shout. Or throw something. Or hit you.

The truth is that everyone, both men and women, sometimes need to be quiet and uncommunicative. If you are in a relationship, though, it is a good idea to be able to say this quite clearly. "I need to be quiet for a while. I need to be on my own for a bit." [Of course if you believe that you have to 'become one', even voicing that idea can be difficult...]

Looking back through the book, it seemed clear that from the very first moment they met, Brian was breaking Roz's boundaries. They met at a friends' house at a pool party. He picked her up bodily and, even though she was saying 'no, no!' [but we all know what it means when a woman says 'no', but keeps smiling, don't we?] he threw her into the pool and jumped in after her. Flirty behaviour? Or a total inability to respect her autonomy?

In the 1990s, Peggy Orenstein did some amazing research into how boys and girls are treated in the classroom. Essentially, it goes like this: a teacher asks a question and some kids put up their hands and others shout out. If a girl shouts out the answer, whether it's correct or incorrect, the teacher says "don't shout out, put your hand up". If a boy shouts out the answer, the teacher responds saying either "yes that's right", or "no that's wrong". Boys are rewarded for being impetuous, breaking the rules, going aggressively for what they want. Girls are rewarded for obeying the rules, and being placid and accepting.

This goes on in all areas of society. Babcock and Laschever did some research in 2007 that investigated why women don't push as hard for pay rises as men do (which is always what's blamed for the pay gap: of course, it's women's fault). The researchers found that there's a good reason for women not to ask for more money: they receive stiff social penalties when they do.

"women who do rebel against these standards by pushing more overtly on their own behalf often risk being punished. Sometimes they're called "pushy" or "bitchy" or "difficult to work with." Sometimes their skills and contributions are undervalued and they're passed over for promotions they deserve. Other times, they're left out of information-sharing networks."

Plus, women don't even get very far when they try to negotiate, because employers simply don't respond in the same way as they do to men.

"They make worse first offers to women, pressure women to concede more, and themselves concede much less."

We live in a world that rewards men for aggressively pushing for what they want, and rewards women for accepting what's given to them uncomplainingly. It's a world that says that relationships involve self-sacrifice, and giving up autonomy. It's a world that says that women's autonomy is less important than men's. It's a world that tells men 'if you don't get her the first time, just keep on pushing', and tells women 'don't make a fuss'. And although of course there are women who are violent and abusive to their male partners, it's far more common the other way around and one can see why. It's not because men are 'just more agressive' any more than women are 'asking for it'. We live in a world that is set up for abusive relationships; that's what I learned from Dragonslippers.

The library at the moon under water

Some internet rambling recently led me to this - an essay George Orwell wrote about his ideal, platonic perfect pub, The Moon Under Water. Apparently this is where the Moon Under Water chain took its name from, which I didn't know. I don't think they follow all his rules anyway! Carraway seed biscuits?

And then yesterday I was interviewed by Mslexia magazine, an excellent publication can highly recommend it. They asked me about my 'writing day' and I realised that I'm actually quite superstitious, or ritualistic in my writing-in-a-library practices. [I find a desk, I leave my things at it, I wander the shelves, find a book that I like the look of, take it back to my table, read a few paragraphs and then I'm off.] And also that I have a very good idea of what my ideal platonic library would be. So here we are. The library a few streets over from the Moon Under Water.

1. It should have open shelves, with a good collection of both modern and older books covering all the academic disciplines but with a special emphasis on fiction, poetry and drama of course, and history, classics, psychology, religion and anthropology. There is an excellent collection of medical books, and several shelves of photography. At the Moon Under Water Library, skillful and well-educated librarians have chosen the best of modern works, but haven't weeded out older books hard. A Victorian edition of Ovid rubs shoulders with a modern commentary. Occasionally one still finds books with the pages uncut.

2. The librarians know what they're talking about. A reader in trouble can turn up at the front desk and say 'help, where do I start on Byzantine architecture?' and they know where to point you. For more esoteric questions, they know who to ask and will take your details and get back to you.

3. There is no cafe in the Moon Under Water library - food smells do not penetrate its halls nor is there any danger of spillages on the books. However, one is permitted to take in a bottle of water and there is a charming refectory in the Moon Under Water university building next door where readers are admitted on presentation of their Moon Under Water library card.

4. The building is large and its bookshelves are serpentine. There are plenty of little corners with a desk next to a tiny window (and next to a power supply and a good light source. Although the library has existed in some form for centuries, it makes sure that every desk is adequately supplied with power and light.) Although there is a large central desk space, it is easy to find a more private area in which to work. The seats are comfortable. They do not, in general, have arms.

5. There is wi-fi, it is fast and easy to access but - and this is important - the password changes every day and must be picked up from a box of small slips on the front desk. Writers completing a manuscript are grateful that they have to make a conscious decision to be able to log on that day.

6. All the members of the library understand that silence is not a forgotten virtue. Any member found conversing on a mobile phone outside the designated 'conversation area' on the fourth floor knows that they face immediate expulsion.

7. The library is open every day from 8am to midnight. The loan period is typically three months. Loans can be renewed online, reservations can be made online, you will receive an email when your book is in.

8. Although the library allows some leeway to its members - and the members are in general completely trustworthy - those who are found to 'reserve' a desk at busy times by placing a jacket over the chair and then go for a three-hour lunch will be sternly reprimanded. However, this reprimand rarely has to be issued - the miracle of the library is that there always seems to be a quiet desk for those who need it. There are also a number of private lockable carrel rooms - big enough for a desk and a chair - which can be rented by those who want them for a minimal charge. There is a waiting list, but progress along it is brisk.

9. The library is a part of the community, with a noticeboard and an interesting speakers' programme in the evenings. It also has an excellent children's library - well-stocked, with an array of storytellers, reading times, beanbags for lounging and toys for the not-reading-yet children to play with. The children's library and the speaker's area are soundproofed.

10. I'm amazed I didn't mention this first. The library is beautiful. The proportions of the rooms are elegant, the desk-spaces simple and workmanlike but with a grace to them. Even though the library is extremely easily accessible from north-west London (it only takes me 20 minutes to get there from my house) it has glorious views of rolling countryside. How lucky I am to work there.

Sigh. If only if only.

[picture stolen from the Trinity College Library, Dublin website]

Retro shopping

Remember 'shopping'? Not for food or clothes, things which one really wants to select by sight. I mean, shopping for the perfectly-packaged, homogenous items Jeff Bezos targetted as being ideal internet-commerce stock. DVDs, books, CDs (who even buys CDs now?).

I used to really enjoy that kind of shopping. I remember as a teenager (yes, I was a geek), I used to take tremendous pleasure in standing in the basement of WH Smith on the Finchley Road, comparing different Dr Who videos (what? I told you I was a geek). I'd look at the titles, the photographs, the descriptions, see which Doctor it was and which companions. I could spend half an hour comparing the different videos available, before deciding on one to take home and watch as a reward for finishing my Latin homework (I *said* I was a geek already.)

I rarely do it now though. Books, DVDs - why not just order them online? Saves schlepping to a bookshop in town, or dealing with the depressingly warehouse-like massive local Borders. One click, it's done, they arrive in a couple of days.

Except... by the time those couple of days have gone past I've often forgotten why I wanted them. Or the moment has passed, that perfect moment when I really wanted to sit down *right then* and read that book or watch that movie. I have to try to recreate my enthusiasm, and sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. And if it doesn't I'm left with a movie whose perfect moment was last Tuesday, waiting to see if that moment turns up again.

So today I went to 'Retrobloke', or to give it its full title 'Retrobloke.com', a shop down the road from me and yes the '.com' is on the storefront. It's a little shop, full of sci-fi and horror DVDs and videogames in the front, and vinyl in the back. The stock is good, eclectic and interesting. Looking at the shelves reminded me of things I'd always wanted to see and never got around to - unlike Amazon, no one was trying to push new releases on me.

It was a slow Friday afternoon. I stood for a long time flicking through the DVDs until I picked a couple of discs with three episodes each of original series Star Trek on them - total £6, very reasonable. I was the only person there. No one was hurrying me, or making tannoy announcements or trying to entice me with the piped-over smell of coffee. I'm looking forward to watching them over the weekend, because I've chosen the time slot to fit them into along with my purchase - you can do that if you walk out of the shop with them in your hand.

As I made my purchase I asked the friendly shopkeeper whether he did most of his business online nowadays.
"No," he said, "it's strange but we find a lot of people still want to come in."
But if you're looking for a 'retro' experience, I'm not sure that's so surprising.

Are we nearly there yet?

You know what writing a novel's like? It's like waking up one morning in London and saying to yourself on a whim "hey, I know what'd be fun: walking to China! That sure would be a great place to walk to." And you sit down with your atlas and a ruler and you say "OK, so it's 5,057 miles to Beijing*, let's say I walk 8 miles a day, with one day off a week, that's 105 weeks, so I should be there in just about two years. Awesome!" And you pack up a bag and set off**.

And inevitably, it doesn't go quite as smoothly as you imagined. Some days you just lope along, eating up the miles, but some days you can barely walk at all, and sometimes, horrible desolate times, you discover you've taken a wrong turn and this whole Yemen excursion was a mistake and undoing it is going to take forever. And sometimes the whole thing seems so pointless you just have to sit down for weeks at a time and eat chocolate digestives and watch daytime TV. (My analogy may be breaking down here.)

All in all, it takes more than three years for you to get past Mongolia, and by that time you're barely the same person you were when you started, and just to make yourself get up and walk every morning you've spent the past 18 months just thinking about the next 8 miles and maybe, if you're brave, the 8 miles after that.

And then suddenly, one morning, you're walking along and you realise that you can *see* China. There it is. Maybe you're on a high peak and you take out your binoculars and yup, there's China. There's Beijing***. And the thing is, by that point you have literally almost forgotten that Beijing is actually real. That there was ever going to be an end to the walking. That there was a point to the whole blooming enterprise. But there it is: the end.

And you walk towards it, and you go "huh. China. I walked to China." And then for some reason people keep asking you about China. What do you think about China? What is the meaning of China? What is the reason for China? How should China be changed to make it a better China? What can we say when we are trying to market China? But the truth is, all you really know now is how to walk, not how to be in China or understand it, or appreciate it.

So all you can really think is "I wonder where I'll walk next."

Do you see what I'm saying?

*Actual distance from my house.
**Warning, please do not attempt this.
*** I do not actually know if Beijing is visible from a high peak far away.

Unaccustomed as I am

I went to a wonderful Women Novelist's salon a little while ago, which is the sort of event that always makes me feel that I am Actually a Real Writer, and perhaps not Just Pretending. Much of the chat revolved around horrible evenings giving readings to unappreciative audiences. From what I can tell, I've been lucky: I haven't had any really awful experiences, but I expect they await me eventually.

I also recently had a chat with a friend who's trying to arrange a big education event.
"Can you imagine," she said, "I tried to invite Mr Very Well-Known Writer to speak at my charity event, and he asked for £20,000! For one night!"
The thing my friend failed to understand was: this isn't a way of asking for a lot of money. Really, it's a way (a very English way) of saying "no". Let me break it down for you.

Writers are by nature usually people who are capable of enjoying time in our own company. We often prefer imaginary people to real ones, and get childishly attached to our own chair, our own desk, our own routine. If we'd wanted a life of glamorous foreign travel and meeting new people, we'd have become management consultants.

Admittedly, there are times when it's dead exciting to be asked to speak anywhere. It's the Real Writer thing again: even accumulating horror stories makes you feel more writerly. But then, time goes past and the new novel really does need to be worked on - there's nothing, after all, that makes you feel more like a writer than writing.  And you do reach a point where you've frankly said all that can be said about the old novel not once but many times.

But still you get invitations to do things. I love getting these invitations. Every single one still fills me with happiness that someone actually liked my book enough to ask me to speak. But, *accepting* any invitation means time away from writing, or away from spending relaxing time with friends, or with a book, or at the gym, or with anyone or anything that doesn't ask me the same questions about my book that I've heard so often before. (It's no one's fault - those are the questions everyone wants to know the answer to. But it does get tiring.)

So, I think to myself: is this an interesting event? Will there be interesting people there? Is it somewhere fun? And, more personally: am I really in a mental place where I'll be able to enjoy doing this, or will I, however fun the people are, be longing to get back home? I'm *very much* more likely to do it if it's come via my publisher and has thus already been vetted. If it's far away and would entail staying over, it depends on when it is, what else is going on at that time (I'm not going to do anything over the Jewish holidays, for example), how much I want to go to the place and how much I desperately need to spend concentrated time with my next book.

So it's when I get invitations to speak in places that are far away, that are at inconvenient times, that would mean at least a week of disruption (and it is a week, at least, with planning, packing, unpacking, exhaustion, organisation, re-entry into normal life) that I find myself thinking, in a rather cowardly way: "I don't want to have to say no. It's a privilege to be asked. But... I don't want to go. So how much money would make it OK to spend time doing things I really don't want to do, going places I don't want to go, realising that my novel was growing cold again? How much would make it really OK?"

And so, though I've never asked for £20,000 (or anything in any way like it), I can understand that that's when you do it. Perhaps Mr Very Well-known Writer regularly gets £20,000 a night. But perhaps he asks for it because he knows it's ridiculous, that no one would ever pay it, and that this lets him get back to his tricky next chapter. And if someone turns out to have much deeper pockets than he expected... well, at least he knows when he's on the plane facing the jetlag that he can pay for a writing holiday somewhere sunnier to make up for it.

but no one's yet asked whether I write with a pen or a pencil

My paperback's going to be published next month, so I'm back into readings-mode: going places, reading from my novel (which I finished almost two years ago now, I've pretty much forgotten what it's about, all I have is the memory of the other times I've described it), answering questions. Which leads me to this rather uncharitable but psychologically necessary act: a list of the bizarrest questions I've been asked in the past year. I may come back and add to it if more return to my memory, but for now my top favourites are:

• As an author, do you call for more compassion in the world? (A: Yes? I expect so?)
• How has your childhood affected the person you've become as an adult? (A: See the works of Sigmund Freud.)
• Out of 10, how many marks would you give yourself for this novel? (A: Out of 10, how many marks would you give yourself for that question?)
• In what ways has being Jewish influenced your personality? (A: It's made me more miserly, conniving and inclined to control the world through the twin weapons of communism and capitalism, obviously.)
• (Not so much a question, but anyway....) I liked the story, but your book had too much detail in it! I got bored reading about all these details of Jewish practice! You should have put less in! (A: Um. Skip over those bits then?)

Spent last night in Dublin at the Glen Dimplex New Writers Award, for which I had been nominated in the 'fiction' category but did not win. It's interesting, not winning - it felt different to how I expected. I would have thought I'd've been disappointed, at least a bit, but in fact I wasn't really. I had a good, if slightly bizarre, night, the best part of which I spent moaning to my fellow nominees Rodge Glass, James Scudamore and Philip O'Ceallaigh (the winner) about my New Book. I'm currently at the 'it's the *worst book in the world*' stage with it, and seem to have got very vocal, shouting at everyone about how incredibly bad my book is. I went through this with Disobedience too, though, so I think it'll pass.

The evening made me think about the nature of prizes. In general, authors don't have to apply for literary prizes. Someone at the publishers keeps an eye on what we're eligible for and submits our manuscripts, or is asked to submit. We only hear about being part of that process at the point when we're longlisted or shortlisted. So, it's strange. After the award was announced, several people commiserated with me on not having won as if I must be disappointed but the truth is (money aside; money is always nice) that you can't be that disappointed about not getting something you never asked for or decided you wanted.

I suppose it's all about how much you wrote the book (or made whatever creative work it was) with the aim of winning the award. Which, unlike Kanye West apparently, I didn't. I did, however, have hopes of writing not-the-worst-novel-in-the-world as my second book. Sigh. Back to work.

And another thing

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/arts/openbook/openbook.shtml

in which I appear in a discussion about The Short Story. I'd had a terrible day before we taped this, there'd been a huge accident on the North Circular which jammed up most of north west London and meant that 10-minute journeys suddenly took two hours. (Although, to be fair, I'm sure I'd had nowhere near as bad a day as the people involved in the crash, and I hope they're OK.) It was a very irritating day, though, and when I taped this programme I thought I did really badly, coming across as an over-enthusiastic A-level English student next to Andrew O'Hagan's sensible, intelligent thoughts. The editors have done a marvellous job of making me sound as if I had something more to say than "OMG! Short stories! Squeeee!" Which just goes to show why one should always be nice to editors.

Roundup

Some stuff I've done lately.

A podcast: http://www.nextbook.org/audio/podcast_feature401.mp3
Which I have finally persuaded myself to listen to all the way through, while being slightly amazed at how an American twang creeps into my voice when I'm talking to Americans.

Two articles for the Guardian: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/story/0,,1844196,00.html
and
http://www.guardian.co.uk/medicine/story/0,,1851040,00.html

Part of the first was, in my mind at least, a response to an article about Harry Potter academia which enraged me (http://books.guardian.co.uk/departments/childrenandteens/story/0,,1838086,00.html). What I object to in this article is not only the lack of engagement with the academic side (and I agree that some of it is tosh, and interesting things could have been said about this) but the female self-loathing which oozes from it. The way the writer refers to herself and other women as "girly swots", as if any academia done by women couldn't possibly be serious. Honestly, we have enough to contend with without calling each other demeaning names. None of these people are "girly swots" - they are brilliant women. Whether or not you find their disciplines convincing is quite another matter. Harrumph.

Seriously now

I've heard of teaser ads, but a teaser review seems a bit ridiculous. Apparently, there's some massive error on the third-to-last page of my book. I've read and re-read it, but to no avail. Anyone who's read the book have any ideas? Is it really bad form to contact the reviewer to ask to be put out of my misery? (Preferably not with the revolver in the locked room.)