Adieu 2020, you won’t be missed! Although we won’t be fully done with you until we’ve all been vaccinated (and for we poor Remoaners, until we rejoin the EU). Nevertheless, our internal clocks insist it’s stocktaking season: the time to review our successes and failures, to measure ourselves against January’s goals. Starkly unblinkered this year, we gaze back at what seems the Age of Innocence, adjusting our aspirations for 2021. But however we’ve fared, since the pandemic makes staying alive an achievement, we can congratulate ourselves on arriving here. Amid the lows and lows, I’ve made some progress with my reading, writing and promotion, with some positives that wouldn’t have happened without lockdown. Let’s have a closer look! |
6 Comments
Is there discrimination against women writers? (Is there even more discrimination against older women writers?) Probably but, there being even worse things to get hung up about right now, I’ll gloss over the fact that these two novels about under-appreciated female writers – one in 1960s Iceland, the other in 21st-century New York – come from fairly successful female authors. With a couple of caveats, either or both would make great lockdown reads.
If you’re reading through the lockdown, or listening to more music, you might be interested in these two books featuring dual narratives connected via an “instrument” of the arts. The second is a translated novella set in and around a real-life bookshop and publishing house; the first is about heartbreak compounded by the fear of letting go from a publisher who mostly does translations.
When Inspired Quill, who published my first three books couldn’t find space in this year’s schedule, I considered self-publishing, and, for a whole week in January was convinced I was going with a pricey but prestigious assisted self-publishing outfit until it became clear that, even setting aside printing costs, I’d lose money on Amazon sales unless I ratcheted up the price. Now, of course, with events cancelled for the next several weeks, I feel remarkably lucky to have finally signed with Inspired Quill for May 2021.
Appraising and reflecting on the old year’s authorial achievements and my aspirations for 20206/1/2020
Although I’ve never been sure about novels about writers, I was keen to read these two: the first about an unpublished novelist ghostwriting a memoir and the second about a poet anticipating a different kind of creativity with her first child. Both these fictional writers are brought into close contact with an unexpected other – for the first, the character whose memoir he is writing; the second, another poet who used to live in the town to which she’s recently moved – with life-changing consequences. Both novels explore the nature of the self and the permeability of the boundary with the other (and, incidentally, feature graphic scenes of childbirth). For another novel about a writer, see my review of My Name Is Lucy Barton.
|
finding truth through fiction
latest book:
Annecdotal is where real life brushes up against the fictional.
Annecdotist is the blogging persona of Anne Goodwin:
reader, writer, slug-slayer, tramper of moors, recovering psychologist, struggling soprano, author of three fiction books. LATEST POSTS HERE
I don't post to a schedule, but average around ten reviews a month (see here for an alphabetical list), some linked to a weekly flash fiction, plus posts on my WIPs and published books. Your comments are welcome any time any where. Get new posts direct to your inbox ...
or click here …
Subscribe to my newsletter.
Popular posts
Categories/Tags
All
Archives
January 2021
BLOGGING COMMUNITIES
|