Alex Bell - fantasy author

I have been thinking recently about the question of age when it comes to writing. This is partly because of the podcasts I did at Alt Fiction which touched on the issue. Links below:

New Writers and Breaking in with Alex Bell, Kate Griffin and M D Lachlan: http://unboundblogzine.podbean.com/altfiction-new-writers-and-breaking-in/

Fantasy - The New Generation with Alex Bell, Kate Griffin and Mark C Newton: http://unboundblogzine.podbean.com/altfiction-fantasy-the-new-generation/

There’s also the fact that people increasingly ask me for advice about how to get published, which always makes me remember one spectacularly ludicrous piece of advice I once got. When I was fifteen I was really enjoying the work of a particular author (who shall remain nameless) and so I decided to write her a gushing email, telling her that I wanted to be an author one day as well. She sent me a very nice reply, which I was very chuffed to get, but in it she said that her advice about writing (I do not recall actually asking for any) was that I shouldn’t even try to write a book until I was at least forty. ‘I know that sounds hard,’ she said, ‘but you have to have stuff to write about.’

Eh? Stuff to write about? What nonsense is this? I remember being quite miffed by the suggestion that my age meant I was not qualified to write a novel, especially since the author knew nothing about me or what I had done, or where I had been, or what I had lived through.

I would expect anyone to become a better writer as they get older and more experienced – both at writing and at life – but I don’t think it’s as black and white as there being a fixed minimum age – not when everyone’s experience of life is so vastly different. Besides which, a lot of the authors I know got their first book deal before they were forty. But there is this idea that if you’re very young, you won’t be able to write a novel of any worth. I’ve realised that I’m even guilty of this prejudice myself. If I find out that a book was written by a teenager (Eragon, for example) I am instantly dubious about reading it, despite the fact that I was a teenager when I wrote my first published book. Hypocritical of me, I know but there it is - I ain’t perfect. It seems to be a sort of sliding scale, where everyone has their own idea of how old a writer has to be in order to write well.

But what is it that we think a writer should have experienced before they can start? Love seems to come up a lot. Does someone have to know what it’s like to fall in love before they can write a book? Do they have to know what it’s like to get their heart broken? Should they have had a near death experience? Should they have travelled all over the world? The travel requirement is often mentioned in The Waltons (yes, I do watch it, and I love it too). John-Boy wants to be a writer, but he believes he can’t be one whilst he’s living in the mountains. He thinks he has to move to a city and see more of the world. Is this true? I have been very lucky with how much I’ve travelled, and there is no doubt that those experiences have influenced my writing. But is it a necessity? I’m not sure. Imagination, after all, is the key part of writing a book. You can be a recluse sitting in a mountain hut and still have a fantastic imagination.

And that leads on to the other point that your characters are not you. Your experience of being in love, or travelling to remote places, or whatever, will not be the same as theirs. My characters do not react to things the same way that I do. Still, there can be no doubt that experiencing something yourself is going to aid the process of describing it. But that’s all it does – it helps. It is not essential. You do not need to cut off your own hand before you can imagine how it would hurt. And you know you’re taking the writing thing just a bit too seriously when you find yourself bemoaning the fact that you never broke any bones as a child (as a result of being the careful, bookish type) and so don’t know what it feels like for the character you’re writing. I was quite shocked to find myself looking at my hand and thinking: ‘Wouldn’t it be great if I could break a finger or something?’ – just so that I would have direct, first-hand experience of what it was like, and so could write about it better. Where did I put that hammer anyway . . . ?

I think my conclusion at the end of all this is that as you get older and experience different things, your writing should improve. But as for when it is legitimate to start, I would suggest that so long as you have experienced some form of happiness and some form of misery then you are qualified to write a book. The rest can be fleshed out using your imagination. We are writing works of fiction, after all, not the world’s dullest autobiography.

A few weeks ago, I joined the Labour Party. I did this because not only am I in agreement with them regarding the majority of their policies, but I am also extremely sympathetic to their general ideology and that, I believe, is one of fairness and equal opportunity .

I have not always been a Labour supporter. When I was studying Politics at college, I had more sympathy with the Conservative Party. What changed my mind was taking A-Level Sociology. This is, of course, the study of society, and during the course we covered class, culture, racism, modernity, personal identity, and other topics. I had always got high grades at school, and I believed this was because I had worked hard to get them. I saw my good grades as a well-deserved reward. Indeed, I’m sorry to say I was actually quite arrogant about it – especially since I didn’t go to a private school. Anyone can get good grades, I thought, if they work hard enough. What I totally failed to take into account was the massive amount of help and encouragement I had always had from my parents; the happy home I completely took for granted because I had never known anything different; the fact that I had been born white, English, and middle class and so therefore had never had to experience racism or prejudice, either of the class or race variety. Of course you need to work hard to get good grades, but some children have to work much harder than others to achieve the same thing, and that is unjust any way you look at it.

During my two years of studying Sociology, I learnt a lot about the various obstacles and prejudices that certain people have to struggle to overcome in society. I learnt about institutionalised racism; and domestic violence; and the standard of life one can expect to receive on benefits; and how a person can be defined by their disability or ethnicity or class or gender or sexuality or nationality. When you look at the stats from studies exploring which children do well at school, and which don’t, there are definite patterns that emerge, and it is quite evident that, even from such a young age, certain people are already at a disadvantage. There is a sort of lottery going on when a baby is born – it might end up in a secure, loving, stable home, with family who will encourage it to do well, and give it all the help possible, or it mind end up in a home that is broken or abusive or severely poor.

I believe that the Labour party does the most to rectify this unfairness. I believe that it stands up for the many, and not just for the few. Its commitment to public services alone helps to correct inequality rather than perpetuating it. Ditto for their child tax credits and Sure Start centres. I don’t want a government that will give inheritance tax breaks to the richest 3,000 estates; bring back fox hunting; and arbitrarily reward marriage with tax cuts; to say nothing of the risk to economic recovery.

I do not disagree with the Conservatives over everything. Nor do I agree with the Labour Party over everything, but I do agree with them most of the time. Human beings are fallible. Governments and political parties are made up of human beings and are, therefore, also fallible. It’s not rocket science. So I do not think that the self-satisfied accusation of “Imperfection” levelled against Labour by the other parties can possibly carry any weight at all. Surely no one believes for a moment that if the last thirteen years had been spent under the Tories or the Lib Dems, no mistakes would have been made. That is the fallacy of the rhetoric. “Whiter than white” is simply an impossibility where human beings are concerned. If an infallible government is what the public wants then I fear they will be perennially disappointed. What it must come down to is which political party has found the least bad way of doing things, and which one’s ideology is most in alignment with your own. For me that party is definitely Labour. That is why I joined the party, and that is why I will be voting for them tomorrow.

I currently include a hedgehog in my varied menagerie because it seems that my Great Dane has something seriously wrong with her lips – in that she has no feeling in them. I caught her a few weeks ago running around the garden tossing the hedgehog around, apparently in the belief that it was a spiky ball. I got it off her and, fortunately, it did not appear to be hurt. But it was seriously underweight, and the hedgehog rescue people told me that it would be unable to survive hibernating as a result. I therefore have to look after the hedgehog until it warms up in the spring, at which point I can let it go.

I have been calling the hedgehog Spiky Harold, which has got me thinking about the original Spiky Harold. For those who don’t know, Spiky Harold is a fiendishly difficult retro computer game back from the days when computers didn’t have mice. It’s the first computer game I can remember and, even now, just hearing the name of it gives me that childish excited feeling. Having said that, my brother and I could never get very far on it before poor Harold got killed.

But after Spiky Harold came the Sega. I know 99.999% of gamers will probably deride me for saying so, but I regard the Sega as by far the best games console. These were games that you could just sit down and play without having to spend hours and hours and hours practicing first. The original Sonic, for example – absolutely loved it. Spent many happy hours battling Dr Robotnik and co. But a while back I tried to play a new Sonic races game with my brother on his Playstation 2, and I couldn’t even finish the race. Stupid bloody New Sonic kept running off the edge of a cliff, damn him.

My eight year old cousin got a Wii for Christmas, and when I saw her playing on this recently I was like ‘jeepers!’ It all looks so complicated! A far cry from the pick-up-and-play games of yester-year. And I can’t help but lament the decline of the Sega because for people like me – who are not hard-core gamers but wouldn’t mind whiling away an hour every now and then – we need games we can just plug in and play. Things like old Sonic and the absolutely tremendous Castle of Illusion.

Perhaps the new games have better graphics, and the remote controllers vibrate now and all the rest of it, but I will always prefer the Sega, and I miss that clunky old games console even now. I could actually beat my brother in the occasional Sonic race or Bloody Roar battle back then (which infuriated him, and made me feel tremendously good about myself). Now if I ever try to play a game with him on one of these modern consoles, I get pitifully thrashed within minutes. Seconds, even. If I want to play a computer game now, it’s pretty much a question of tetris or nothin’. And - let’s face it - there’s only so much tetris a person can play before they get the urge to kill someone. So my plan is for the shops to scrap all this PS3/Wii/X-Box nonsense and just bring back the good ol’ Sega. Games ain’t so much fun when you have to spend hours perfecting your technique before you can even start. It was all so much better in my day . . .

I love politics. I love the questions and the debates and the search for a better way of doing things. I even wanted to be a politician once, and still toy with the idea even now. But I hate all the cynicism that goes with it. I really do not understand why, but people seem to take an almost hysterical glee in hating politicians. Quite frankly, I find this absurd. The vast majority of people who go into politics do so because of a desire to do some good. They are amazingly hard working people who have to work exceedingly long hours. And yet people just love to hate ‘em.

Last night, I watched Frost/Nixon:

Loved it. It’s a superb film that I would recommend to anyone with an interest in politics. Or, indeed, anyone with an interest in entertaining, thoughtful, intelligent, perceptive, films. I even forgot to drink my Heineken – that’s how gripped I was. So, this film has prompted me to write a post I’ve been meaning to do for a while – one that was originally to be titled ‘I Love Iain Duncan Smith.’ I have decided to rename the title because the above film reminded me of the fact that this modern day witch hunt against politicians is no modern thing. It did not all begin with President Bush and Prime Minister Blair (both of whom – although it is astonishingly unfashionable of me to admit – I have a great deal of respect for) – these witch hunts were going on back in Nixon’s day and, no doubt, before that as well.

What I loved so much about the film was its refusal to demonize President Nixon. It approached the Watergate issue in a balanced way that, I felt, made allowances for human failings because of the fact that Nixon was human and, therefore, imperfect, rather than suggesting Nixon was a villain and, therefore, evil. People love to look at it in black and white, but surely there is only a great big mess of grey in politics – and especially in Presidential politics.

It seems to me that politics suffers from something that I shall refer to as the Spiderman Effect. Everyone loves Spiderman at first – in the same way that people suddenly ‘love’ reality TV contestants (despite the fact that they don’t actually know them), and everyone loves a political party when it first comes to power because ‘everything will be different now’. But no matter how much Spiderman gives to the people, they will always turn against him sooner or later because even Spiderman cannot make peoples’ lives instantly perfect. That is why if any politician or political party is around for long enough, the public will always turn against him (or them) in the most vicious way imaginable, quite blind to any of their past achievements. It’s stupid nonsense, of course, like deciding you suddenly hate Spiderman, but it’s true just the same.

I often cringe to see the way the audience behaves on Question Time. I can practically see the pitchforks. When I was studying politics at college, I went to a Q and A thing in Westminster, with John Reid representing Labour, and Iain Duncan Smith (then the party leader) representing the Tories. Being 2003, Iraq was high on the agenda and, in fact, John Reid and Iain Duncan Smith were saying more or less the same thing on this issue. Imagine my astonishment, therefore, when John Reid was earnestly applauded by the audience, and Iain Duncan Smith was enthusiastically booed. Even though they were both saying the exact same thing! It was as if people were so set on disagreeing with Duncan Smith that they did not even hear what he was saying. They began to boo even before he had finished his first sentence. In fact, as soon as he came on the stage, people started jeering and holding up signs mocking the ‘quiet man’. I realised then that it didn’t actually matter what Iain Duncan Smith said to us, he was never going to receive applause. What a truly sorry state of affairs. I was ashamed to be part of such an audience. I must say, though, that he handled it all with extraordinary grace and eloquence, and even though I am a staunch Labour supporter, I was terribly impressed and wrote him an extremely gushing letter when I got home. I take my hat off to him for his patience, but I don’t think I could remain quite as cool in the presence of such dire stupidity, and would be very tempted to pull a John Prescott which, no doubt, would go down very badly indeed.

It seems that at least one out of every three ‘questions’ on Question Time is not a question at all but rather an audience member’s rant about all the things they think the government is doing wrong. And then – the cherry on top of this ridiculous cake – is that when the panellists actually debate a point of policy, they are very often maligned for ‘squabbling.’ Honestly, what an absurd choice of word. Disagreement is the entire point of a debate. It allows for the exploration of, and search for, new ideas. No matter how much people might wish it were otherwise, there are no pantomime villains in politics. If someone is after fame and riches then politics would be the very last route they would choose.

I particularly hate hearing people refer to a political leader as ‘stupid’. Take President Bush, for example. You can disagree with his policies all you like – indeed, I disagree with most of them myself, just as I would disagree with any other Republican – but to suggest that the man is stupid is nonsense. You don’t get to be the President of the United States unless you are an extremely intelligent man, and any suggestion to the contrary is an utter fantasy. Wild, emotive insults of this type only serve to give less credence to genuine criticisms.

If politicians or parties are instantly dismissed as a ‘waste of space’ then, no doubt, this makes the speaker feel very clever and superior but, let’s be honest, it is a cop out. To sneer at the efforts others make whilst making no effort yourself is a childish sort of strategy. As Charles Dickens remarks in A Christmas Carol: ‘it is always the person not in the predicament who knows what ought to have been done in it, and would unquestionably have done it too.’ I have no problem whatsoever with people disagreeing with my political views on any or all counts (indeed, I very much enjoy it if we can debate it intelligently). What I have no patience, or respect, for is this trend for politician-bashing. One that, as Frost/Nixon shows, is not a new craze, and is not likely to end any time soon. Vapid insults directed against politicians are boring to me. As Father Copleston once said: ‘If you refuse to sit down at the chess table, you cannot be checkmated.’ Genuine political debate has therefore got to be more than simply bleating in a whiny voice: ‘the politicians are doing it wrong’ – it’s got to involve some suggestion as to what would be doing it right. Repeatedly shrieking ‘burn the witch!’ will achieve nothing, and, if you’ve really got nothing more condemning to say than that, makes you look a bit of a fool. Criticise politicians by all means, but at least have the sense to do it intelligently if you want to be taken seriously.

Maybe - just maybe - the truth is that there are no easy answers in politics, no quick fix solutions, no secret money trees growing round the back of 10 Downing Street that the PM guards jealously because he doesn’t want to pay out on health care etc. This is why the debate is so fundamental - because it is the search for the least bad way of doing things. I have found few people able to rationally discuss politics - especially at university where everyone liked to think they were against ‘the establishment’ which, to hear them, you would think had been doing things wrong for years out of pure stubbornness - but it is a real pleasure to find the odd person who is willing to engage in genuine political debate rather than a playground-like exchange of insults.

My point in all this is that if only a few more people in the audience in Question Time would actually ask a question when they get the microphone (rather than shrieking: ‘burn the witch’), and then, once they get the response they requested, extend the politician the intellectual courtesy of accepting it as the best answer they are able to give at the time (being only human rather than Spiderman), then perhaps debate would be calmer, more rational and more productive. It never pays to hate Spiderman, after all.

This post has gone on long enough, although I’m sure I will blog about specific political issues in the future because I just find it all so interesting – like getting a little brain workout. But now, because every political rant should end on a light note, here is a snap of my Great Dane – the most beautiful dog in the entire world – getting into the Christmas spirit:

I’ve recently been reading Jessica Morrell’s Bullies, Bastards and Bitches, which is, ostensibly, about writing villains, but also discusses heroes, unsympathetic protagonists, dark heroes and bad boys. It’s a fantastic book, nicely set out, with some very interesting observations about characterisation, and I would highly recommend it to any aspiring (or, indeed, professional) writer. At one point it talks about alpha males and beta males and uses Mr Darcy as an example of the former, and Mr Bingley as an example of the latter. Morrell suggests that women want to marry a Mr Bingley but want to read, and fantasise about, Mr Darcy. It’s an interesting and, I think, accurate suggestion.

Mr Darcy – and most of the romantic male leads in the Madeleine Brent books – are, in some ways, anachronistic. Women do not depend on men in the same sort of way in the modern world, and marriage is not a woman’s sole preoccupation. When I studied A Level Sociology, we looked at articles from the 1950’s giving advice to wives and I remember being particularly horrified by a passage suggesting women take a nap shortly before their husbands were due to arrive home so that they would be suitably refreshed to receive him. They were then to change their dress, put a new ribbon in her hair, and greet the husband at the door with his slippers. In addition, they should not be the ones to instigate conversation because the husband has had a long day and might be tired etc. That being the case, the last thing he wants is a chattering wife bleating dull, domestic trivialities in his ear. Garghh! It’s just too awful! And only fifty years ago!

So, this is a problem with some male romantic leads like Mr Darcy. It might have been fine back then, but modern women do not want such over-bearing coddling. The feminist in me revolts against this character type.

And yet . . .

Who can deny that there is an appeal in spite of all this? I have recently watched the excellent Lost in Austen and am now re-watching the definitive Pride and Prejudice (of Mr Colin Firth renown), and I will admit that I am as much enamoured with Mr Darcy as the rest of the female audience/readership. I will also admit that I am an avid reader of the Madeleine Brent books, even though I feel they are something of a guilty pleasure. I feel I ought not to like them – being modern and all – but I am hooked regardless.

But much as I enjoy Darcy’s character in the book and TV adaptations, a real life version is really the very last thing I would want. And that is because, for me, a Darcy ceases to be interesting as soon as he professes his love. As soon as he does that, he is no longer cold and immovable but just another silly sap mooning after a woman. The book has to end with the marriage because nothing would be interesting after that. You want the characters to get to that point but have no interest in reading beyond it. Nobody likes gooey love, after all.

This is why I think that Jessica Morrell’s suggestion above is an accurate one. Marriage to Darcy may sound great on the face of it, but in reality? Surely one of the most important aspects of a relationship is that you are able to have fun with your partner. For example, I’m not sure that I could have a long-lasting relationship with a guy who refused to wear a silly hat at a Christmas party. There is always one whose vanity forbids it. And there is always one who collects the spare hats, and ends up wearing two, or even three silly hats all at the same time. The cold aloof Darcy routine is fine for creating mystique etc, but it might start to wear a little thin once you were actually married.

So although at first it seems quite odd to suggest that women might prefer one kind of man in dreams, and another in real life, I think there is definitely some truth to this. I don’t know if the same thing applies to male readers having an ideal female character in film/literature but quite a different ideal woman in real life. Presumably the same principle might apply, although I haven’t seen as much evidence of it.

I suppose the point is that characters like Mr Darcy drive the story more, so they are far more exciting and entertaining to read about. Characters like Mr Bingley (or, say, John-Boy Walton, or George Bailey), whilst being ideal husband material, are not exciting, so they do not get to take on the smouldering romantic roles in a book (or film). Perhaps the difference is that real life cannot be exciting all the time – and who would want it to be? As Morrell points out, alpha males are not going to be the types to stumble out of bed to see to the baby in the middle of the night, or clean out the cat tray – or, indeed, take great delight in wearing lots of silly hats at a party. And, much as I love Mr Darcy in the context of his own little fantasy world, in real life I would always rather be with the guy wearing three hats rather than the guy who is too far above himself to even pull a cracker with someone, let alone wear the paper hat inside it.