Category Archives: The novel

Novels written for stupid people – which particular group of stupid people?

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Alina, who has two degrees in literature that she doesn’t know what to do with, opens this video with the question: “Does anyone else feel like contemporary novels are written like we’re stupid?” She then proceeds to favour us with her views in a world-weary way that characterises her videos. It’s an interesting discussion – you hope it would be with two degrees – but a little too long and too focused on her demographic – twenty-something girls.

I don’t have much to say about her views because I don’t read contemporary novels. That’s mainly due to my being sick to death of the woke assumptions that are either in the foreground or the background. Now, Alina slings off at a right-winger like me (actually, I’m a Burkean conservative, but I rather doubt Alina knows what that is) who complains about the left-wing bias in contemporary novels.

She says political ideas are an essential part of literature. Well, they are, but that’s not the point. The issue is how political ideas are handled in woke novels and how they characterise their political opposition.

In the first place, they are assumed, which is intellectual surrender or, worse, the woke writer does not possess the ability to justify his ideas philosophically. In the second place, woke writers have no idea of the philosophical underpinnings of a competent, serious conservative writer. Such a philosophical defence is not imaginable.

Self-editing for self-publishers

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This is an edition of Joanna Penn’s highly regarded podcast. The section on self-editing begins at the 29-minute mark:

How can you improve your self-editing process? How can you find and work with professional editors and beta readers? How do you know when editing is done and the book is finished? With Joanna Penn.

Writing us out of our civilisational collapse

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From the Novel Marketing channel:
There’s a culture shift underway that most authors aren’t seeing. Even traditional publishers can’t figure out why their titles are resonating. If your book isn’t selling, it could be a cover or craft problem, but it might be a zeitgeist problem. In this week’s episode, you’ll hear from fantasy and LitRPG author Seth Ring. We discuss the biggest cultural shift in storytelling in two decades and what it means for your books.

Tier-ranking of Dickens’s novels

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Katie Lumsden of Book and Things ranks Dickens’s novel across several tiers and categories. I pretty much agree with her final rankings except for OLIVER TWIST, which I would raise several places, and HARD TIMES, which I would drop several places. My criteria do not always align with hers.

The one category I would disregard is GENDER, which she should really name FEMINIST, because her interest is really only in how Dickens portrays women according to feminist gender theory. She really has little interest in male characters except to speak about toxic masculinity when, in her mind, it’s warranted or when they behave according to feminist notions.

A dark age of literature?

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That’s the question that Joomi Kim asks in this excellent presentation of the modern novel. For years, I have only had to get a whiff of wokism in books, movies and television, and off they go. I haven’t bothered to delve into novels, for example, to justify my action. I was confident I didn’t have to. In this presentation, Joomi Kim does just that. She discusses a range of book titles, many of which are high on book award lists, showing that they are all in the same unexamined woke bubble. At the end of this video, I was inclined to answer yes to her question.

Writing update

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I would not be surprised if many visitors to my website (there are many) get the impression that I do nothing but post comments on my blog. Actually, the opposite is true. A small percentage of my time is spent providing links and making brief comments. Most of my time is spent on my writing, specifically on my novel writing.

My daily routine (except Sunday) is to begin writing at 8 am and finish around 12 pm. By that time, my brain is exhausted. In the afternoon, I attend to domestic matters, post links to comments and YouTube videos, do research, and sometimes revise my already published books. This last is a constant process that covers small adjustments to the text and the rooting out of typos, etc.

My present writing project is Book 5 of the Sixties Series, Love in the Counterculture. I’ve almost finished the first draft. Against most professional advice, I’m one of those writers who constantly revises as he writes, not only what’s been written the previous day but also the thus-far completed draft.

I find this necessary because my novels are long – more than 100,000 words. I need to keep the course of the story in mind. I’m at the 120,000-word mark with Love in the Counterculture. It will take at least another 20,000 words to finish the story. I have a tentative cover which I may replace by the time I’m ready to upload to Amazon and Draft2Digital (D2D). I would welcome comments about it.