To the far north, in search of Penguins
Major excitement (and writing vaildation) this week as I found out I've been lucky enough to get a place on the Penguin Random House WriteNow insight day in Newcastle. This means, among other things, I get to talk to an editor about an extract of the semi-rural fantasy novel which they'll have read in advance. I'm sure you can imagine the walking on air/dancing on lino that's been going on here. Penguin books had a similar status to the BBC when I was growing up so even without making the trip north, meeting anyone or getting any further along the route to mentoring, I feel like I've won the pools and been anointed with the sacred oil of authorhood, extracted from the typewriter keys of earnest 1950s writers in suits. Back in June I rather cheekily asked if from a London perspective their criterion of being 'socio-economically marginalised' meant that simply being northern was enough (and since then there continues to be evidence of the north-south divide, such as in premature death rates) but to their credit they gave me a considered answer:
3/4 We think that Northern working class voices are under-represented in books & would love submissions from writers from this background
— Penguin Random House (@PenguinRHUK) June 21, 2017
They also said they'd consider applicants as eligible "If you define yourself as working class/ from a working class background". We can argue about class till the cows come home, whether going to university catapults you into middle class territory regardless of accent, outlook, or what your sister does for a living, but there's no denying my background, my roots, and the words I write with a loud northern working class voice. As Mark the artist pointed out while congratulating me, this surely highlights the importance of being true to yourself. On the face of it a combination of politics and urban (semi-rural) fantasy set in northern England in the wake of Brexit doesn't sound like it would have mass appeal and I've worried a few times that I've sunk so much time and energy into a novel that no-one will be interested in. Yet that's the novel I sent them an extract from and a synopsis of, and that someone has presumably seen potential in. The lesson to take away from this is: write with passion and originality, and you'll get there (somewhere) eventually.