The Deserving and the Undeserving Arts

My deserving great grandad, next to the man with the tar barrel.

Back in Victorian Britain, if you were in desperate straits, you had to prove that you were one of the 'deserving' as opposed to the 'undeserving' poor. Heaven help you if you didn't tick the right boxes in terms of general worthiness and conformity with the values of the time, because your bum would be right out of the window and you'd be heading for the streets or more likely the workhouse because 'sleeping out' was illegal too. 

When I was writing A Proper Person to be Detained, it struck me that there are now some correspondences between the deserving and the undeserving poor (at least some of my forebears would probably have been labelled undeserving) and the current state of the arts in this country, where professional creative people who find themselves down on their uppers can expect to get funding only if they are classed as 'deserving'. You have to tick all the right boxes in terms of the dreaded 'outcomes'. There have to be 'outcomes' and if these can be described by buzz words like 'community' and 'well-being' and 'inclusivity' and 'diversity', so much the better. We all have to do good, and prove that we're doing it. 

I can hear the outraged counter-arguments even as I write this. 'Why do you think you should get any funding at all?' But this isn't a post about me. I've done pretty well out of funding support and I expect to carry on working hard at what I do for as long as I physically can. Also it should go without saying that those charged with distributing public funds should certainly make sure that those same funds aren't going to be frittered away on - say - a new kitchen or a holiday. If public money is being distributed, the public should surely get some benefit out of the results. (Wish our politicians would play by those rules though, don't you?) And yes, diversity and inclusivity are well worth supporting. All of this is true.

But not all worthwhile arts projects have obvious or measurable 'outcomes'. And therein lies one of the problems.

I once tutored a writing group in an area of social deprivation in a small Scottish town. It was a pleasure from start to finish. We were inclusive and diverse and I think we fostered a whole lot of well-being. But at some point in its long history, we were told we needed an 'outcome' in order for me to get the vanishingly small sum of money I'd been paid for doing it. And by 'outcome' they meant something that could be weighed and measured. 'People enjoy it,' didn't come into the equation. 'It's good for people's mental health' might have swung it, but how on earth do you measure that? We soldiered on, producing end of year anthologies for a while, but in a mixed group of writers of all ages and stages and literary forms, it was a thankless task. I eventually did it for nothing so that we could jettison the official demands but the wonderful group voluntarily decided to pay a little each week and gave me some cash so that I was never out of pocket with the travelling. 

Over the years, when it comes to the arts, and the need for some kind of funding, I have come to believe that the bodies charged with distributing the cash should, in a good proportion of cases, focus less on 'outcomes' and more on the nebulous set of criteria that go to make up the kind of professional art or writing or music that can seldom if ever be defined in terms of stodgy dodgy box ticking. 

Wonderful writing, as with every other art, comes straight out of nowhere and practically hits you between the eyes with its quality. It doesn't have to be opaque or difficult or snobbish. It can be as popular as you like, but you know it when you experience it and it can be life changing. And it's often art or music or writing that nobody would have predicted beforehand would prove to be so absorbing for so many people. Or as William Goldman says, 'nobody knows anything.' 

Take Craig Mazin's extraordinary Chernobyl. Who could ever have predicted its success beforehand? 

Chernobyl? Who would be interested in that? (Well, I would, but that's another story!) Besides, they would have said, Mazin writes comedy. And I doubt very much if it would have ticked any boxes at all about community involvement or well-being. Definitely not well-being. It might have slid under the funding wire with 'environment' of course. But that would have told you very little about the quality of the writing, the acting, the production, everything about it. 

I don't pretend to know what the answer to this conundrum is, but I know it isn't what we've got right now. The power of professional arts to entertain and inform and enlighten and move and  - yes - to include is too often hedged around with constraints that seem to reduce those arts to very much less than they could be. Practitioners spend too much time jamming their fascinatingly diverse and imaginative projects into a set of uncomfortable one-size-fits-all holes. 

Why are we surprised when what often emerges is deserving but irredeemably 'square'. 

Writing a Synopsis Part 2 - Here's One I Wrote Earlier!

Sometimes it's easier to see how you might do something by looking at a familiar example. So just for fun, I wrote a brief but detailed synopsis of Pride and Prejudice, a novel I love. For a different take on it, you could always try this one, here!

Of course your own project will dictate how your synopsis goes - but you can see that you don't need to be too formal. Nor so complicated that you confuse your potential publisher or agent. You're aiming for clarity and entertainment and you're trying to persuade the recipient that they will want to read on. I'd go so far as to say that when you send 'three chapters and a synopsis' most writers imagine the recipient reading the three chapters first. The truth, however, is that most people will read the synopsis first and if it's rambling and confused, they might not go on. If you're submitting to a competition, the judge will, of course, give you the benefit of the doubt and read everything, but if you're submitting to an agent and a publisher, you have to realise the sheer volume of submissions. Get your synopsis right, and you've given yourself a head start. With the benefit of hindsight, I can see that I've always been quite bad at writing synopses, although it helps when you have a fully revised novel already written.

PRIDE AND PREJUDICE

The novel is set in England, around the year 1800. Mr and Mrs Bennet of Longbourne have five daughters and Mrs Bennet is desperate for them to marry well. Jane, the eldest, is beautiful and sweet natured. Lizzie is clever, witty and sharp. Mary is self consciously studious, Kitty is not very bright and Lydia is incorrigible and selfish. There is a certain urgency about the need to find good husbands, because the house is entailed on a remote cousin, a clergyman called Mr Collins, and the girls will not inherit. Mrs Bennet worries that if her husband dies, she will lose house and home.

A pleasant single gentleman, Mr Bingley, rents the nearby manor house, Netherfield, and sets local hearts a-flutter. At a village dance, Mr Bingley is obviously attracted to Jane, but his proud friend, Mr Darcy, refuses to dance with Lizzie and insults her within her hearing. She laughs it off, but it stings.

Mrs Bennet’s attempt to throw Bingley and Jane together results in Jane catching a bad cold while on the way to Netherfield in the rain, and having to stay there for a few days. Lizzie visits and is insulted by Mr Bingley’s snobbish sisters. But Mr Darcy has changed his mind about Lizzie and seems to be falling for her.

Mr Collins, the remote and, as it turns out, unbearably pompous cousin, visits and proposes to Lizzie who refuses him, much to her mother’s rage and her father’s joy. Lizzie is alarmed to discover that her best friend, Charlotte, has accepted him. Charlotte explains that this may be the only chance she has of obtaining an ‘establishment’ – a home of her own.

Mr Wickham, single and attractive, arrives and bad-mouths Darcy to Lizzie who believes him, because she is predisposed to despise him– (the prejudice of the title.) Mr Bingley and Darcy leave for London, breaking Jane’s heart in the process.

Lizzie goes to stay with Charlotte and Mr Collins after Charlotte’s marriage. She meets his appalling ‘patron’, Lady Catherine, who lives nearby, with her pallid daughter, at Rosings. She is surprised to find Darcy there because Lady Catherine is his aunt. One of Darcy’s friends confides in Lizzie that Darcy recently saved Bingley from an unwise marriage. Lizzie realises that he is unknowingly talking about Bingley’s attachment to her own sister. Much against his better judgement, Mr Darcy proposes to Lizzie. He makes it clear that he loathes her family but loves her! She refuses him, furiously accusing him of ungentlemanly behaviour to herself and to Mr Wickham and of ruining Jane’s life.

Shocked, he leaves, but also sends her a long letter, explaining that his conduct towards Wickham was exemplary but Wickham is a bounder who almost persuaded Darcy’s innocent little sister to elope with him.

Confused and unhappy, Lizzie goes on a trip to the north of England with her charming and respectable Uncle and Aunt Gardiner. They visit Darcy’s massive house, Pemberley, as tourists, and she realises just what she has turned down. She also begins to understand how well his staff, especially his housekeeper, think of him, and what a loving brother he is. He arrives home unexpectedly and is kindness itself to all of them. Will he propose again?

Then – disaster! News comes that Lydia has eloped with Wickham. If he won’t marry her (and she has no money to tempt him) she’ll be ruined, and the whole family – socially - with her. Much angst ensues, but then Lydia and Wickham arrive home, married. Lydia lets slip Darcy’s secret role in the whole affair. Lizzie is mortified to realise that he has pursued the couple and paid Wickham to marry Lydia. She now realises the true nature of her feelings for Darcy.

Prompted by his friend, Mr Bingley comes back and proposes to Jane, who accepts.

Lady Catherine arrives in a towering rage. She has heard rumours of an engagement between Lizzie and Darcy and asks Lizzie to deny it. Lizzie admits it is not true, but won’t make any promises for the future. Then Darcy proposes to Lizzie and she accepts. Cue deep joy all round: riches, secure futures, Mrs Bennett overwhelmed with happiness - and they all live happily ever after.

The tale is told in the third person and the author herself sees all and knows all, but it focuses very much on Lizzie, her feelings, her perceptions. She is very clearly our heroine. The tale is deeply unsentimental, with realistic dialogue. It is a surprisingly passionate love story (lots of sexual tension between Darcy and Lizzie) with some sharp observations on Georgian society and the ‘marriage market’ as well.

Bad Advice

A room with a view.

I'm at an age where - although not even considering retiring  - I've been looking back and taking stock of my career so far, wondering how and why I got here, what I'm planning to do next (that's easy - write a lot more novels) and what advice I might give to younger writers.

I do a lot of reflecting as I sit up here in my room-with-a-view, indulging in a certain amount of displacement activity before I get on with the next project. But regrets come when you wake up at four in the morning and can't get back to sleep, and fret over roads not travelled, decisions made or not made. Well, we do the best we can, and we forge on. I'm an optimist at heart.

But just sometimes, I think that I ought to try to pass on a little of my own experience because the internet is awash with advice for writers and so much of it seems to come from people with not as much wisdom, to quote my beloved Robert Burns, as 'a midge could rest its elbow on.'

Bad advice. My biggest regret is that over the years, I've heeded too much of what turned out to be bad or inadequate advice, even when my heart was telling me to ignore it. Often, it came from professionals. Often, they were wrong and my instincts were right. I should have taken the leap of faith and done what my impulses told me to do.

So what do I mean by 'bad advice'?
I mean situations where I trusted a fellow professional, but didn't pause to examine their motives and didn't give enough weight to my own instincts, the small voice inside me that told me to think again.
Examples?
Plenty, and not just about writing. But that's what this post is about. So:
Being advised not to go along with a request to adapt a piece of work for the stage because of the sensitive subject matter. I agreed with the advice, but it was the wrong decision.
Being saddled with the director from hell for a major stage production and being advised not to talk to the press and not to take my script and leave. Weeping in the loo was not a helpful option but it was the one I chose.
Was advised to stick my head above the metaphorical parapet on behalf of a certain organisation. Got shot down in flames. Said organisation decided there was nothing they could do about it.
Was advised by my then agent, producer and script editor, to work without any payment on a detailed proposal for a television serial because 'something' would come of it, it was such an original idea. Wasted the best part of a year on treatment, episode breakdown, pilot episodes. The whole thing was kicked into touch - then I saw the very same idea emerge as a successful movie for somebody else, years later.
Worked on another television idea, this time suggested by a large commercial organisation, again with no development money, revising it many times to suit their changing requirements, attended endless meetings, only to have it kicked into touch again. Unpaid because another adviser had told me that it would be worth it in the end.
I could go on.

Was I culpably foolish? You bet I was. Especially since in all these cases, the various organisations had approached me. I was still quite young. Very hopeful. Are writers doing exactly the same thing right now? Of course they are.  A career in writing is always the triumph of hope over reality. The only way to avoid some of the pitfalls (you'll never avoid all of them) is to step back and assess everything on its merits for you, personally. Even then, you'll make mistakes, but perhaps not quite so many as I did.

The reality is that you'll always have to do some work up front. Every creative entrepreneur does. Small companies go in for competitive tendering. Writers and artists work on proposals. Novelists write whole novels on spec. I know I do. Now that self publishing is an option, even if you're trad published, or hybrid, there's no real reason not to. But you need to know the limits, know when the game isn't worth the candle. If - for example - a large commercial media company wants a significant amount of work from you beyond that first detailed proposal or first draft, work that you can't really take anywhere else, then they should pay development money. If they aren't prepared to pay something, they don't want you enough and you've lost nothing by politely walking away.

The single most important thing you can do in all areas of writing, is to take charge of your own career, and make decisions based on what feels best for you. Expect to be a partner in any enterprise that involves your work. But remember that being a business partner involves significant responsibilities as well as rights: keeping to deadlines, keeping promises, not throwing toys out of the pram when you can't have everything your own way. In other words, you should be as professional as you can be.

Finally, take all advice with the largest pinch of salt possible. Including - I might add - this post!