Tag Archives: Ayrshire

Mediocrity Prevents A Peoples Revolution Against Publishing Giants

The world is full of writers but has this led to the rise of mediocrity? image: philosophyslam.org
The world is full of writers but has this led to the rise of mediocrity? image: philosophyslam.org

When I was growing up, I imagined being a novelist meant I would write for a living.  This is not always the case.  There is a darker side to the writing and publishing profession, even more disturbing than the constant criticism, rejection and pirating of e-books.  We’re not all dedicating our lives to the manipulation of words for entertainment value.  Most habitual readers I know don’t realize that gone are the days when writers were intellectuals and academics spending their whole lives with their nose in a book.  In 2013 every other person I meet online claims to be a writer, many of them bestselling authors at that.

A writer in this decade is an everyman.  You probably know one yourself because anybody can claim the tag now.  They could be writing e-books, blogs or letters to the editor of a newspaper to supplement their income, but the fact remains that if you are trying to make a living from writing, your time will mostly be spent promoting and networking, and networking means you’ll come across the type of people who will inspire you to write a murder mystery just so you can make them the victim.

Life just might be creative literature...or at least a series of punctuation marks CP
Life just might be creative literature…or at least a series of punctuation marks

 

What’s brought about this change in the profession?  I’m not one of those intellectuals or academics, so I can’t say.  I am a person who has had a series of dead-end jobs but naively dedicated the last twelve years of her life to the craft of creative writing, making numerous sacrifices to find fulfillment.  To me it’s a vocation rather than a career or hobby because no matter what I do I can’t stop writing.  I mentally plot the story of job interviews during the event to cope with the pressure.  When my husband had a stroke, I imagined the blood clot that caused it as a series of ellipses in our lives, whereas the birth of my son was an exclamation mark.  People I don’t like have faces like twisty question marks and any bad luck I have is merely a comma.  I ceased to become part of my own reality a long time ago.  It verges on mental illness.  This is not particular to a writer in the 21st Century and could be said of anyone so obsessive about the craft at any time.

Now there are so many would-be writers, there is no people’s revolution against the publishing giants, despite what many independent authors, including myself, have thought and said in the past couple of years.  There are hundreds like me to whom writing is like breathing but thousands of bandwagon jumpers who rush out book after book then market them in questionable ways.  I even had one man send me private messages on Twitter every day for almost a year in an attempt to get reviews for each book his wife has written – a total of twenty three in the last two years.

"Tractor beam" - Dr. Evil
“Tractor beam” – Dr. Evil

 

I self published through choice, without knocking on agents’ doors because I knew my novel was too contemporary to wait and within a few years would be dated.  Self publishing is what the majority of wannabes do but it tars us all with that opportunist brush.  The Internet is awash with distinctly average literature written on a whim by someone who never had ambitions to be a writer and was bored one day so self published on one of the many websites that allow you to do so without a book deal.  I suspect many of them aren’t even readers.

Stories of people who have written twenty or more titles over the course of a few months and sold hundreds of thousands of copies both impress me and rile me in equal measure because despite having spent years working at it, as an independent writer without a publishing deal and only Amazon et al behind me, we are all on the same level. For the Silo, Lacey Dearie.

I Am Content To Keep Watching While Men Dominate F1

Author Lacey Dearie moved her marriage date and delayed her honeymoon departure so that she didn’t miss any of the French F1 Grand Prix coverage that year.

The first time I watched an F1 Grand Prix was the race in Australia in 1998. I’d been persuaded by a friend who loved Canadian driver, Jacques Villeneuve, to watch and found myself gripped. Being a Scot, my instinct was to cheer for my fellow countryman, David Coulthard. I was thrilled when he led the race, then devastated when he pulled over and let Mika Hakkinen win due to a “gentleman’s agreement” made before the race had begun. As disappointing as the situation was, I couldn’t help but adore the spectacle I’d just witnessed. It’s that kind of exhilaration that has kept me tuning in to watch every race since March 1998.
The drama is just part of why I’m a fan. I love the pre-race interviews with the drivers who can be either insightful or guarded and often humorous, the anticipation when the red lights go out, the horror when someone crashes, the relief when drivers walk away from mangled wrecks and the bliss when my favourite team or driver win and receive their trophy on the podium. I have the whole spectrum of emotions while watching a race. It just makes you feel alive.

Being a female fan of a male dominated sport means most of my girlfriends find F1 boring, or they just don’t get it. To them, it’s a bunch of foreigners driving in circles. To me, it’s so much more. However, there are advantages to being a female fan. A shared love of motor sport is the only thing I have in common with my middle aged male boss and fills awkward gaps in conversation during lunch breaks or trips away from the office. When my male friends roll their eyes because I don’t understand soccer’s offside rule, I counter that with a sarcastic sigh when they ask me to explain how KERS works.
The only thing that ever concerned me, as a female fan, was the lack of merchandise available for women, but it has greatly improved in the last couple of years. Ferrari even sell their very own bikini, although I can’t imagine any of the female fans I know wearing one while watching a race.

At the time of this writing, only five women have ever reached the fringes of Formula One and only one of them has ever won a race in a Formula One car- Desiré Wilson.

My husband doesn’t share my passion for F1, but was extremely understanding when I suggested we got married on a Friday and delayed the departure for our honeymoon to the following Monday so that I didn’t miss any of the French Grand Prix coverage that year. He’s accompanied me on several trips to the David Coulthard Museum in Twynholm, Scotland and humored me when I suggested that, if our son grows up to become an F1 fan, we make the family holiday each year a trip to a different Grand Prix. I even joke that I planned the birth of my son for February to ensure I didn’t miss any races due to childbirth. Obviously I’m not serious, although my friends and family are skeptical.

Women who don’t appreciate my love of the sport can be critical of the lack of female participants, but it’s honestly something that never occurred to me until I heard men discussing whether it was wrong or right. All the current F1 drivers are men, and the majority of people involved in the sport are male too. I genuinely don’t care. I’m sure if there were any women out there with the skills and talent to participate, they wouldn’t be denied the chance to race. I don’t believe in positive discrimination, so until such a woman comes along, I’m content to keep watching while men dominate.

Lacey Dearie is an indie author from Ayrshire, Scotland and a new writer for the Silo. Her first novel, The Tangled Web became #1 in the Amazon UK Free Download Chart in January 2012. If you would like to read more about The David Coulthard Museum, please visit the website www.dcmuseum.co.uk/museum

Supplementalhttp://www.f1fanatic.co.uk/2008/04/21/where-are-all-the-women/ [circa 2008 data]