I had thoughts, I really did. A useful laundry list of wonderful tips for making your prose shine and your plots glitter.<\/p>\n
But \u2013 maybe another time.<\/p>\n
I can\u2019t help noticing that it is not merely Good Friday, but Good Friday in the Age of Plague. A lot of people are feeling isolated or scared. The wheels of history are grinding and they don\u2019t care too much who they overrun.<\/p>\n
I\u2019m not fearful for myself or my family. We\u2019re comfortably isolated in the country. The weather is wonderful. We have a big garden and our village community is actually more active and friendly than it ever has been before. Likewise my brother and sister, my mother, their families, my in-laws \u2013 they\u2019re all fine. They\u2019re OK.<\/p>\n
But one of the things that fiction achieves is to take us to the edge of strange inversions and new recognitions. Fiction takes you to a place where you realise something unexpected \u2013 or actively impossible \u2013 is also true. In Pride and Prejudice<\/em>, we know for sure that Lizzie doesn\u2019t love Darcy. She makes it clear. She turns down his proposal with force and asperity.<\/p>\n Lizzie does not love Darcy. FACT.<\/strong><\/p>\n But \u2013 boom \u2013 fiction does its thing, it turns its wheels, and we realise she loves him with all her heart, and all her soul, and all her mind. The Lizzie\/Darcy love is as complete and perfect as any we could imagine. FACT<\/strong>.<\/p>\n Fiction isn\u2019t as crass as to say the first view of things was false. More like, it was incomplete. The old binary view of truth buckles a bit at the hands of good writing. Those inversions and completions are an essential part of fiction.<\/p>\n But reality is pulling the same trick right now. We\u2019re a celebrity obsessed culture, right? Any teenage YouTube vlogger can sell some weirdly huge mountain of books just because they know about (I don\u2019t know) eyebrow threading or vegan yogurt.<\/p>\n FACT.<\/strong><\/p>\n But cometh the plague, cometh the inversion. It turns out we have no interest in these posing celebrities. (Billionaire David Geffen putting pics of his yacht on Instagram as he outlines his isolation strategy. The moron.)<\/p>\n We have an interest and respect for the people who work in healthcare, without acclaim and often enough without much cash either. We turn out in our city streets to clap and cheer and bang saucepans and say, these are our heroes. Not just today, but forever. We have loved you always and have only known to say it now.<\/p>\n FACT.<\/strong><\/p>\n And we here at Jericho Writers are the same. We\u2019ve had some emails from healthcare workers who have told us that they\u2019d love to become JW members but can\u2019t afford the fee.<\/p>\n In more normal times, we\u2019d act like commercially responsible businesspeople. Ones with budgets and targets and marketing plans.<\/p>\n But you know what? Stuff that. Our budgets are have been completely shredded and our marketing plans are in the bin.<\/p>\n So here goes:<\/p>\n If you are a healthcare worker, We don\u2019t care if you\u2019re a trainee nurse, a top consultant, or a citizen volunteer. If you\u2019re supporting the health service at this time of crisis, just tell us. All we need is a picture of some form of ID that shows you are what you say you are, and we\u2019ll tell you how to get your 75% discount.<\/p>\n This isn\u2019t a clever marketing strategy, so there are no strings attached. No ulterior purpose. Just \u2013 the world doesn\u2019t really need more writing mentors at the moment, but it sure as hell needs more nurses. This is our version of standing outside our homes and clapping.<\/p>\n (I should probably also say that we won\u2019t see your email before Tuesday at the earliest and we\u2019ll have a huge backlog of emails to get through at that point. So if you do want to take us up on this offer, please bear with us. We\u2019ll be with you as fast as we can.)<\/em><\/p>\n That\u2019s it from me \u2013 or almost.<\/p>\n When I write these emails, I often discover something I hadn\u2019t realised at the start. And that thing about fiction inverting an apparent reality to reveal a true one underneath \u2013 the Lizzie\/Darcy love story, for example \u2013 I wonder if that is true of all great fiction? Or all fiction? I wonder if it\u2019s true of mine.<\/p>\n Just now, I don\u2019t know, but it\u2019s a damn interesting thought.<\/p>\n Stay safe. Keep writing. Keep clapping.<\/p>\n And tell me about your fiction. Does it achieve that inversion? I think mine probably does – or aims for it anyway. But I want to hear from you. Tell me about how your fiction upends expectations and makes the impossible true. Or do you disagree completely ? Either way, let’s all have a Heated Debate.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I had thoughts, I really did. A useful laundry list of wonderful tips for making your prose shine and your plots glitter. But \u2013 maybe another time. I can\u2019t help noticing that it is not merely Good Friday, but Good Friday in the Age of Plague. A lot of people are feeling isolated or scared.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":32,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[29292],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6147","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-harrys-friday-email"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n
then tell us \u2013 and we\u2019ll give you 75% off your JW membership.<\/strong><\/p>\n