Ged Gillmore and his friends figure out how to deal with rejection—-by publishers and by women.
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Saturday morning Lauchie finds me in my car scowling at my phone. I don’t hear him approaching and he takes great delight in hammering on the window and making me jump. I try to find that funny, but Lauchie can see I’m struggling, so he walks around the car and opens the passenger-side door. He has a coffee in one hand but uses the other to sweep crumpled cardboard, dead water-bottles and sand off the passenger seat. Then the car dips under his weight, the door closes behind him and we sit there in silence for a full minute. This is the closest Lauchie will get to asking me what’s wrong.
“It’s nothing” I tell him. “It’s fine. I just got another rejection email from a publisher. Which is great, right? Because you have to get a hundred rejections before you get an acceptance, and so this is one less to go. Yay.”
He holds out his free hand and I pass him the phone. It takes him less than ten seconds to read the email and I’m waiting for the wisecrack, which, again, I’ll have to find funny.
“It says you write well” he says. “It just says you need a female lead. So make your main character a woman and send it back in again.”
◊♦◊
I tell him writing doesn’t work that way, you invest a lot in your characters, I can’t just put an S in front of every “he”. There’s a loud bang and this time we both jump, Lauchie spilling a fair amount of coffee onto his lap. He swears and starts panic-sweeping it onto the floor, spraying everything else down there with little brown specks, desperate to protect his most-prized possession. This, I admit, really is funny. Then one of the back doors opens and Tom the Pom’s face appears, a picture of joy.
“Gotcha!” he says. “Got the both of you. Don’t try and deny it. How’s your dick, Lauchie?”
“Burnt, thanks for asking”
“What you two doing in here?” Not waiting for an answer, Tom climbs into the back pulling the door shut behind him. “Is it gossip? Did you get laid again last night, Lauchie?”
We do tend to live our sex-lives vicariously through Lauchie’s stories. I blame this on married life, I’m not sure what Tom’s excuse is. But Lauchie’s still reading my phone.
“Says here men don’t read fiction any more. The market is dominated by female readers who want female lead-
The market is dominated by female readers who want female lead-characters.
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characters. Sounds like that’s your answer right there, just rewrite it.”
“That’s bollocks” says Tom. “I read fiction.”
I sigh. “I’m guessing they’re basing their conclusions on a sample size of more than one.”
“Andrew reads fiction” says Tom huffily. “You read it. Michael’s always going on about some bloody novel or other.”
There’s a tiny silence until Lauchie looks up and finds us both looking at him.
“I do read” he says.
“Fiction?”
“Yeah. Sometimes. I mean, occasionally. It’s just, well, there’s not that many books out there I like the look of. It’s all chic-lit and melodrama. I was talking to Annia about it last night. I was saying I can’t remember the last time I saw a fiction book advertised which I thought I wanted to read.”
“Annia?” Tom leans forwards between our two seats. “The girl you saw last week was called Annia. And you said you’d seen her before. So that’s three dates with the same girl.”
“You were talking to a girl about books?” I say. “Are you sure?”
Lauchie drains his coffee cup and places it carefully between his feet. Like I’m the kind of guy who’s fussy about his car.
“Annia works in publishing” he says. “She was telling me that most people who work in publishing are women, and it’s almost always women who buy books. She says she’s given up trying to pitch books by men for men, because no-one in the room gets them, and even if they did, they wouldn’t think anyone out there would buy them.”
“Aw, that’s nice Ged” says Tom, who’s pulled my phone from Lauchie’s hand to find out what we’re talking about. “It’s not that you’re a shit writer, it’s just that no-one wants to buy your books.”
◊♦◊
The car thumps again and none of us jump. This time the door behind me opens and Andrew climbs in, pretending he hasn’t tried to surprise us. “What are you all doing in here? Where’s Mikey? What’s wrong?”
“We’re talking about books” says Tom. In the rear-view mirror I can see him rolling his eyes. “Apparently the reason men aren’t buying fiction is because book companies won’t publish for them, which is because men don’t buy them, so they won’t publish for them, because…”
“It’s dumb really, because men would get laid more often if they read more fiction. Studies have shown that reading fiction increases your empathy and your ability to read people, work out what they want and stuff.”
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“Oh yeah” says Andrew. “I was reading an article about that.” Of course he was. “Publishers can’t afford to take risks these days, so they put all their advertising revenue into non-fiction for men and fiction for women. You pick up a GQ or something, see how many fiction books you see advertised. According to some research, men’s brains are more naturally attuned to non-fiction, and women’s are better for fiction.”
I close my eyes, remembering to add this to Andrew’s Facts About Women. But wait, the world-expert on everything has more.
“It’s dumb really, because men would get laid more often if they read more fiction. Studies have shown that reading fiction increases your empathy and your ability to read people, work out what they want and stuff. Mark Twain said ‘The man who doesn’t read has no advantage over the man who cannot read.’”
◊♦◊
When I open my eyes again, I find I’ve leant forward, my forehead resting on the steering-wheel. It’s time to change the subject.
“Michael’s away with Michelle” I say. “They’re on a pre-Valentine’s weekend.”
“Pre-Valentines?!” Lauchie’s aghast. “What the hell’s that?”
“I think it means Michelle’s ovulating. Listen, are we getting into the ocean or what?”
I sit up straight and open my door but no-one else moves.
“Lauchie’s got a girlfriend” says Tom. “That Swedish one.”
“Nor way!” says Andrew. “I thought that had Finnished. That one you took up the…”
Andrew catches the look on Lauchie’s face and stops. There’s obviously a rule that the stories you hear about a girl on a one-night stand are to be forgotten when that girl becomes a regular fixture. Andrew goes in for a recovery.
“Well, that’s nice, mate” he says. “Good for you.”
“She’s not a girlfriend” says Lauchie, unconvincingly. “She just….alright.”
“Shame though in a way” sighs Tom, at last opening his door and prompting the others to do the same. “I’m going to miss your stories of who you’ve been up to.”
So there’s clearly one class of fiction men still enjoy. I make a mental note to put more unlikely sex into the next draft.
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Need more from The 5 Bad Surfers? Here it is!
Photo: Renaud Camus/Flickr
Well, ain’t that the truth. It’s certainly an uphill struggle. I think the market for masculine fiction is small, but that’s my target audience, so I’ll continue plugging away at it. Maybe, one day I’ll make it.
I’ve just been at a writing conference and the message from the publishers and agents was loud and clear. I discovered that what I’ve been writing is actually Women’s Fiction (because men wouldn’t read the stuff I write). But you’re right: this is chicken and egg. Perhaps nobody is supplying what they want to read. How hard has anyone tried? I’ve been translating a friend’s novel about a man who has a lot of hard, wild sex. It’s not an erotic novel, just incredibly honest. And it includes fast cars, a luxury yacht on the med. I find it hard… Read more »
As you said books with a female lead don’t appeal to me. Why , do I hate women? No. I simply can’t identify with a female character. I assume females don’t identify with a leading man.
Haha! That’s great. Got a laugh out of me when I put together the ‘how to deal with rejection from publishers’, the talking about what kind of fiction men like, and the ending when it said, “So there’s clearly one class of fiction men still enjoy. I make a mental note to put more unlikely sex into the next draft.”
Just clicked together. Great short story or real story, whichever one it is! Entertaining and a good lesson. Find your mishaps and then do it again. Perfect advice for writers.