Reports hell

[Madeleine Conway]

All I want to do is get on with my own writing and all that happens is that work keeps interfering - am writing the last reports tonight, marking coursework like a maniac all week and weekend. Sometimes I wish I could win the lottery and spend all day on my chaise longue eating bonbons and dictating to my amanuensis....

 

[Robinne Weiss]

Truth is, it doesn't seem to get better if you do quit the day job. I closed my education outreach and consulting business to write...then ended up spending the better part of a year homeschooling my daughter instead of writing

 

[Paul Whybrow]

All I want to do is get on with my own writing and all that happens is that work keeps interfering - am writing the last reports tonight, marking coursework like a maniac all week and weekend. Sometimes I wish I could win the lottery and spend all day on my chaise longue eating bonbons and dictating to my amanuensis....

Eek, you're surely not saying that you want to be reincarnated as Dame Barbara Cartland, for that's how she used to write her many, many books.

 

[Madeleine Conway]

Eek, you're surely not saying that you want to be reincarnated as Dame Barbara Cartland, for that's how she used to write her many, many books.

Definitely - ideally accompanied by a pug called Tricky-Woo and accused of plagiarism by Georgette Heyer

 

[Paul Whybrow]

Definitely - ideally accompanied by a pug called Tricky-Woo and accused of plagiarism by Georgette Heyer

Clive James once described her face as “Twin miracles of mascara, her eyes looked like the corpses of two small crows that had crashed into a chalk cliff.”

 

[J. Rook]

All I want to do is get on with my own writing and all that happens is that work keeps interfering - am writing the last reports tonight, marking coursework like a maniac all week and weekend. Sometimes I wish I could win the lottery and spend all day on my chaise longue eating bonbons and dictating to my amanuensis....

You would probably drive an amanuensis insane; I know I would.

 

[J. Rook]

Eek, you're surely not saying that you want to be reincarnated as Dame Barbara Cartland, for that's how she used to write her many, many books.

A phenomenal woman! I have read two of her books: I borrowed them from the library about fifteen years ago. Has anyone read any of the Victorian/Edwardian Romance novelists - Ouida or Jeffery Farnol, for example?

 

[Patricia D]

Clive James once described her face as “Twin miracles of mascara, her eyes looked like the corpses of two small crows that had crashed into a chalk cliff.”

You can't do that with mascara alone. those are false eyelashes, which, when not on a person, look like little caterpillars. Still give the woman credit. She accomplished a lot and as Frank sings, "Did it her way."

 

[Madeleine Conway]

I read I don't know how many Barbara Cartland books when I was about 12-13...they were available in our school bookshop, and each of us used to buy 3-4 and we'd circulate them in a matter of hours. This was a long long time ago, each book cost about 25p or maybe 35p. We would read them aloud paying especial attention to the frequent ellipsis....when ... the heroine gazed innocently into the hero's steely-blue eyes...as his mouth....his cruel-but-beautiful-lips....descended on her delicate face...pouring kiss upon kiss....on her pale....smooth....skin....What continues to amaze me is how she got away with repeating the same book over and over. Matt Lucas has her bang to rights.

 

[Paul Whybrow]

Repetition takes different forms, with some readers unaware of what's happening. When I worked as a librarian, the Mills & Boon romances were popular, with some people reading only them. As a profession, we were glad that they were reading at all, and the theory went that if they started with something easy then they might move onto more challenging stories. But ardent fans of these bodice-rippers stuck to them like glue.

The sameness of the plots was given away by readers marking the books they borrowed with secret codes, their own special signature on the corner of the flyleaf for instance, as a way of avoiding reading it again. Some endpapers carried multiple glyphs, making them look like a wall full of graffiti.

One old lady commented to me that the book she'd just returned felt familiar to her, as if she'd read it before, but that couldn't be so, as her initials weren't marked within. I had a look at the copyright page, seeing that it had been published five times before over the previous 40 years with different titles.

She could have read the same story many times before. This was one of the first indications to me that a book is essentially a product, there to be marketed and sold for a profit, even if it means changing the name over time to attract new buyers.

 

[Patricia D]

Some contemporary series start to feel a little to similar for my taste, but I suspect there is a larger legion of fans who would be upset if the next book weren't like the previous ones.

 

[Katie-Ellen]

I haven't read her books as yet, I ought to, but I encountered her twice while on holiday in Helmsdale, NE Scotland. Once face to face, once our car bonnet came nose to nose with her chauffeured car bonnet. She was frail by then but dressed as ever all in pink, at the annual fete, which she had been attending practically forever, apparently.

She had a nice way about her.

 

[Madeleine Conway]

Repetition takes different forms, with some readers unaware of what's happening. When I worked as a librarian, the Mills & Boon romances were popular, with some people reading only them. As a profession, we were glad that they were reading at all, and the theory went that if they started with something easy then they might move onto more challenging stories. But ardent fans of these bodice-rippers stuck to them like glue.

Paul, this was fascinating - we also read copious quantities of M&B at school, but there, tastes developed in different directions - if we liked a particular author, we'd head down to the second hand bookshops of Brighton (there were many such in the North Lanes in those days) and buy up as many as we could find. I can still remember certain recurring tropes from my own favourite writers. The need for repetition and a reliable 'hit' from a writer is part and parcel of the romance genre, I think. My romance reading has fallen off sharply over the past 10-15 years, not sure why, but right through my 20s, there were periods when I would just guzzle HEA stories, or re-read my favourites.

When I talk to my students, they too read and re-read favourites. I have students who have read the HP books over ten times, or LOTR, and more recently, Twilight and the Game of Thrones books.

What strikes me is that publishers are still taken by surprise by what really sells. There are books that are heavily pushed e.g currently, Maestra, but I am not convinced that they actually last that well. Then there are the books that take off by surprise. I read somewhere recently that the dip in ebook sales was connected to the fact that there haven't been runaway best-sellers in various categories including YA during the course of 2015 - does that strike anyone else as true?