#lionelshriver

the color purple, alice walker

mrs dalloway, virginia woolf

we need to talk about kevin, lionel shriver

i swallowed all 3 because i couldn’t put any of them down & haven’t really had that experience in a while. would v v much recommend - and if anyone out there has also really enjoyed these books and has any others that they really like and would like to recommend to me, that would be fab.

Reading from Eternal Pollution of a Dented Mind, 2009, London

To be or not to be a writer. After publishing ten books can I call myself a writer? I still don’t. Why is that? It’s a complex question. Growing up in Thatcher’s Britain and being educated in the UK I was never taught any other literature apart from stuff written by white people. My literary diet consisted of Enid Blyton, Roald Dahl, Thomas Hardy, Wilfred Owen, Jane Austen, Alexander Pope and Shakespeare of course. Tagore was not on the syllabus. Then I went through a phase of devouring books, staying up all night reading plays, and feeling my brain light up and getting excited about Chekhov and Arthur Miller. Actually, I was never supposed to be the writer in the family, it was my sister who was the chosen one. She just had a way with words that seemed effortless. As a teenager she had aspirations to go into the theatre, we would perform sketches together; visit the Royal Exchange in Manchester. It seemed inevitable that she would do something with words while I was more interested in art. Yet a career path in the arts was nothing my parents understood or advocated. The key question was could you make money out of art and writing?

And here lies the problem. Is a career in the arts a viable career path for anyone let alone kids from more diverse and impecunious backgrounds? 

How did I fall into writing? My first attempts at writing were disastrous, my sentences muddled, confused, nothing flowed or made any sense. I started to write because my sister wouldn’t. She was not interested in ever being published. How I could even dare to think I could write was bordering onto delusional? When I decided I wanted to be an artist there was no tradition of the arts in my family yet it felt like the right decision. I remember drawing almost religiously, willing myself to get better. Perhaps if I applied the same logic to writing - and kept on doing it - surely I would improve?

My first novel was about a woman falling in love with a boy, I wrote it very fast when I was twenty three, and the manuscript appeared at the opening of my exhibition on Dray Walk, off Brick Lane in 1999. Why did I write it? The book wrote itself. Then my second attempt was ‘Gungi Blues’, it was loosely based on my mother’s story of ending up in Manchester. It was this book that caught the attention of Leo Hollis at 4thEstate. I was 26-years-old, and an email exchange ensued and several meetings. He wanted me to make changes, I obliged, but the novel became a story that was no longer mine. Leo dropped it in the end. And I shelved it. But I continued to write and was even asked to perform my work, reading with Hari Kunzro at the Whitechapel Art Gallery for example. Hari was later signed by Simon Prosser at Penguin and is now a respected published author.

Still I always felt like an imposter.

The Head of Literature, Nick McDowell, at the now Arts Council, saw me read at the Globe Theatre and suggested me meet. He asked me to come up with some ideas. So I did and one of my projects included publishing a book, ‘From Briarwood to Barisal to Brick Lane’. This is how I published my first book, learnt about book design, editing, and printing. The Arts Council and British Council funded five of my book publications.

A few years passed and I was invited to a literary event hosted by Cultural Co-operation. It was here where I met Simon Prosser from Penguin and my future literary agent. After reading my manuscript, Watson Little signed me and Simon liked the first 30 pages. Then they both asked me to make some changes. I obliged. The book was subsequently dropped.  My literary agent then told me she was leaving Watson Little  to spend more time with her family; I lost my agent, too.

It was 2007, how many years had passed since I first penned Gungi Blues? How many drafts had it gone through? I had published six books in the interim. It was the Arts Council who told me about Chipmunka Publishing. I met Jason Pelger, he signed me up and finally published ‘Gungi Blues’. But it wasn’t the book that I had originally wanted to write; I could write a better novel now, I know it.  My lack of self confidence meant I was too eager to please the white publishers who were critiquing my work. The book was no longer written in my own authentic voice. I will never make the same mistake again.

Jason Pelger has never interfered with my work in that way. He also published ‘Eternal Pollution of a Dented Mind’, my first book of poems and prose.  In 2017 Chipmunka published ‘Dented.’ We have had a tumultuous relationship over the years, but I feel Jason is a better publisher now and he’s always believed in me as a writer. It’s been a steep learning curve for both of us, perhaps.

In 2009 I had psychosis and in effect suffered a mental breakdown. During the years in London when I had struggled to be an artist and a writer, perhaps it had also taken its toll on my mental health. There was also the issue of never being good enough to have a career in the arts. That feeling doesn’t go away.

In 2014 I published ‘Schizophrenics Can Be Good Mothers Too’, a dissection of psychosis and maternal mental illness. It is in this book that I finally found my voice as a writer. Muswell Hill Press published this book and my publisher was a psychiatrist, which has a certain irony, doesn’t it? But Dr Tim Read had final editorial say, which was irksome; he totally mutilated the final chapter. This was painful to accept.

It’s been a long, lonely and arduous road.

And a fight, too.

As I prepare to publish my 11th book, working with a third publisher in Malaysia, I still don’t feel that I am a writer. Over the years I have sent my writing to my friend, the writer and broadcaster, Stephen Fry, or posted poems on social media, published blogs and articles for Huffington Post and others. People sometimes say they like my writing. Now writing is such a natural part of my life. I just have to do it.

Whether it is any good, I can’t say, but it seems my words resonate with others - sometimes.

The solution to the issue of diversity is actually very simple. Encourage people to write, to read, to formulate their ideas and thoughts and articulate them. Give them platforms to be heard and seen. If their work is of merit support, mentor and encourage them. Don’t try and change or mould them though. You do not become a great writer overnight. It can take years to find your voice. I am still finding mine.

In response to the recent furore between Penguin and Lionel Shriver I penned this short sketch. Make of it what you will but it was written from the heart and I do believe if you write with integrity this is really all you can do as a writer.

To Write or Not to Write

‘I want to write To paint To take photos To shoot films To make music.’ 

A woman is sitting in a spacious office with a view of the whole of central London. She is nervous, her armpits are sweaty, she looks stylish, maybe too stylish to be deemed credible.

The man opposite is diminutive, she can tell because of his small hands and short arms. He is wearing glasses, is well dressed and his eyes are vacant.

‘Sorry it’s not possible to do be good at all those art forms let alone one.’ ‘Who says?’ ‘I say.’

 A bomb has detonated in the woman’s brain and she decides to hell with etiquette, time to have a real conversation, the worse that can happen is this toss pot chucks her out and all her literary aspirations turn to shit. ‘Who the hell are you to make that assumption?’

The man leans forwards and smirks, ‘I am white, male, went to Oxford and what I say counts in this world. You are just a brown piece of scum and you can have a token crumb because that’s all you will ever get.’ ‘A token crumb.’ ‘Yeah go and apply for peanuts at the Arts Council.’ ‘Why won’t you give me a chance? I have been doing this shit since I was three-years-old.’ ‘It doesn’t matter. Your face doesn’t fit. Your face has to fit. Only a few people can join the club. It’s full. So fuck off. You will never get in. Never because you won’t stick to the rules, you will always try to break them and we want palatable brown writers, stuff that is digestible - we don’t like writing that is incendiary or too controversial. If I were you just fuck off and do some community art projects, it’s a safer bet.’ 

She would like to slap him now, it’s always better to be polite even when faced with racist bile, but sometimes you just have to just speak your mind. Who wants to be known as a coward? ‘Ok what does it take to be a good writer or artist, tell me you supercilious prick,’ she fires back.

‘You need to be very well read and not be abusive. You are far too rebarbative. Swearing does not constitute good writing. Going to Oxford helps. Or Cambridge...’ ‘I went to the LSE, I got into Oxford, but my place was withdrawn when I dropped a grade. So did I blow it?’ She already knows the answer. ‘Yeah you totally blew it. It’s cute that you have these creative aspirations but risible, you don’t have what it takes to make it and you never will.’

The man gets up and starts to walk towards the door.

The woman follows him raising her hand to stop him from leaving. She doesn’t touch him though.

‘Listen, I will tell you what good writing is you mother fucker. It’s opening your eyes. Seeing shit that no one else sees. Going to places that no one wants to go to. And writing with a serrated edge that’s trying to cut to the truth. I don’t give a toss if you think I am shit. I am not stopping, but I ain’t begging for your scraps either.’