#2: I made a promise I'm not going to keep
and other rationalisations
A Thing I Wrote about the research we are doing on AI and Writing was published on the MyWorld website - MyWorld is a 5 year UKRI-funded research project on immersive technology on which I’m a Co-Investigator (Co-Investigator is an academic term that has nothing to do with solving murder mysteries, sadly): Will AI Destroy Great Writing?
The American lawsuits between writers and AI companies rumble on: The Author’s Guild has launched a survey to find out what writers are thinking about AI, and there’s a new lawsuit launched by writers of non-fiction as well.
A Broken Promise: I ended my first post to this newsletter by making myself a hostage to fortune by promising to write about Horrible Things Famous Literary Men Have Said to Me. I wrote the post and decided to share it with three of my novelist friends in advance of publishing just in case. These three women who, like me, have been writing and publishing for many years, are very wise. They read the post and responded gleefully - the horrible things famous literary men have said to me really are truly horrible. But then one of them said - wait a minute, what’s the point of telling these stories now? What will you achieve?
I've started this newsletter because while I'm weary of social media, that sense of talking with people I used to get from Twitter is something I miss. I follow a couple of writers' email newsletters - Holly Gramazio, Brandon Taylor, and Christina Patterson, for example - and I enjoy them. I feel like after 35 years (Tiny Lies came out in 1988, I had the date wrong in my last post because I am so incredibly old, or rather, I was so incredibly young then - 26. 26!!!) I have stuff to say about writing and publishing and reading and technology - so that's my primary impetus.
When I talk to young writers I always say that self-deprecation is not a good look, especially for women. The post I wrote wasn’t self-deprecating, but it was definitely exposing a decades-old bruise. It’s a story about sexism, book reviews, young men and their careers, and a middle-aged male editor who didn’t think women should write about sex. One thing I’m certain of is that what happened had a much bigger impact on my career than it would have done if I had been a young man. In the late 1980s/early 90s literary culture in the UK was both macho and posh and all the blokes wanted to be Martin Amis. As my friend said, as young women writers how were we to know we could be so easily damaged by casual and show-offy misogyny of the sort that was endemic to that generation of literary men?
On the whole, I’ve led a charmed life when it comes to writing novels, short stories, television, and digital media projects. I’ve collaborated with amazing and kind people; I’ve had invitations and commissions and prizes and all manner of the good stuff that can accompany a writer’s life. I’ve also benefitted from the work of countless writers and publishers who have advocated on behalf of women who write. Publishing is a weird industry for many reasons. Women dominate the lower echelons of the industry and have had considerable success at the top of the profession as well. And yet.. and yet… it turns out misogyny is still a thing! And publishing is subject to it, just like everything else in this world.
Why am I still thinking about this thirty years later? That’s what writers do, sweetheart, we let things fester because that’s where the good stuff comes from as well as the bad. The moral is - there is no moral. When Martin Amis died recently a wash of memories came over me from those heady days when publishers paid for lavish launch parties and for a brief moment I believed I was a bright young woman and that the whole world of reading and writing and publishing open to me. That moment ended. But I carried on anyway, which is another thing that writers do.
I think this experience is part of why I became interested in digital media and interactive storytelling back in 2001, why the potential of the internet to open up both access to knowledge and access to tools for all manner of publishing was so beguiling. And for a while the internet did see an explosion of writing and publishing - a fundamental democratisation of access - and in many ways the best of that legacy remains the wonder that is Wikipedia and other non-profit platforms for sharing.
I still find myself thinking about horrible things famous literary men have said to me from time to time. But for now I’m keeping schtum.
Thank you for reading! Please share with anyone you think might be interested.