I paid a very high powered Irish editor to read and comment on the Ash Grove (she'd laugh if she read that I think). She was far less critical than I expected, but did make some very valid points about the story and how it ends. She wasn't keen on it being part of a series, but when I'd explained my grand scheme for it, she seemed mollified, but wanted to feel it would be a stand alone novel with its own characters that could be read on its own. Which I would of course make it. My model is Pat Barker's Regeneration but I don't pretend to her level of research and insight and I doubt I could achieve anything quite as brilliant as that.
The joy is that G liked it - she liked the writing and found the characters fascinating - which was wonderful, because I was worried about some of those characters - a bit too formal I wondered....but I think it's good, because they gradually unbutton a bit during the book...and will do even more in the next one, if I ever need to write it.
She made several practical suggestions which I agree with - but I am going to find it hard to decide on a new title... I may go back to calling it Conscience again. I do like The Ash Grove - because I understand the play on ash, as the tree - but also the ashes from burning, of something lost, of the destruction of war...but we will see... G is thinking of a less literate and more hard of thinking audience than I am, and no doubt she is right. Let's face it - would I rather write a bestseller or a great literary novel - Anna Karenina or Princess Daisy? Can you do both? Could I ever do either? I expect everyone dreams of writing a bestseller, but probably the best one could expect is a solid slog through a series of popular, commercial fiction. In the late 20thC have there been literary novels which were best sellers? I have a long pause and I think - Captain Corelli? Not great literary exactly; Unbearable Lightness? was it a best seller? Given the opportunity, would I rather write a novel that is being read in 50 years time or one that brings £50,000 or more...Can you do both? And isn't it all just a blip of the market in some way...the luck of the draw - appearing in the right season, in the right mode, with the right cover even?
Perhaps I could keep the title The Ash Grove if I used a line from a poem like Ash on a young man's sleeve, is all the ash the roses leave - then readers would understand the play on the word, the song itself is about lost love etc. Perhaps I could have that as the epigraph? I'll have to think about a lot of things, probably for quite a while, which is why I am going to deal with TMoF first..
The joy is that G liked it - she liked the writing and found the characters fascinating - which was wonderful, because I was worried about some of those characters - a bit too formal I wondered....but I think it's good, because they gradually unbutton a bit during the book...and will do even more in the next one, if I ever need to write it.
She made several practical suggestions which I agree with - but I am going to find it hard to decide on a new title... I may go back to calling it Conscience again. I do like The Ash Grove - because I understand the play on ash, as the tree - but also the ashes from burning, of something lost, of the destruction of war...but we will see... G is thinking of a less literate and more hard of thinking audience than I am, and no doubt she is right. Let's face it - would I rather write a bestseller or a great literary novel - Anna Karenina or Princess Daisy? Can you do both? Could I ever do either? I expect everyone dreams of writing a bestseller, but probably the best one could expect is a solid slog through a series of popular, commercial fiction. In the late 20thC have there been literary novels which were best sellers? I have a long pause and I think - Captain Corelli? Not great literary exactly; Unbearable Lightness? was it a best seller? Given the opportunity, would I rather write a novel that is being read in 50 years time or one that brings £50,000 or more...Can you do both? And isn't it all just a blip of the market in some way...the luck of the draw - appearing in the right season, in the right mode, with the right cover even?
Perhaps I could keep the title The Ash Grove if I used a line from a poem like Ash on a young man's sleeve, is all the ash the roses leave - then readers would understand the play on the word, the song itself is about lost love etc. Perhaps I could have that as the epigraph? I'll have to think about a lot of things, probably for quite a while, which is why I am going to deal with TMoF first..
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