If you like literary fiction can you tell me gently what you think?

[LitCrit]

Hello everyone
I'm at the very early stages of mapping out a lit fic novel, and in order to try and get myself ready I thought I'd join Marian Keyes' instagram writing challenge. I've written 700 words following one of her first line prompts, and not thinking too much or editing too heavily.

I'm really struggling to see what I've written with any objectivity, and particularly about whether it feels authentic, or whether it's too self-conscious even in the context of literary fiction. I am quite wordy and self-consciously thinky naturally, and I think it's probably best not to fight that too much (I will never be Raymond sodding Carver however hard I try) - but is it too much?

I've put it on a Google doc - not sure if that's the best way, happy to follow the protocol if someone can let me know.
Also very much hoping that I've managed to detach the google doc from my real name etc... please tell me if I've failed (quickly!)

Thanks very much.

@Time40 "The quality of much writing has improved, but on the other hand, we have lost something - some of the real genius and special weirdness."

I so agree with this. I used to read relentlessly, but when I had children I stopped. It wasn't only that I suddenly yearned for empty silence - I also fell out of love with fiction, having read most of the miraculous twentieth century women authors, and already feeling quite weary of the Franzen/Wallace/Tartt lot and their acolytes.

I'm back in - but in a more wary way, I think - and I haven't really had that 'god THIS IS SO GOOD' feeling for a long time. Everything does feel too tight, you're so so right.

(If I'm honest, I'd also started to feel that I should have written my own novel by now, and began to be shamed and then repelled by the whole concept of Fiction )

I'm so grateful for the time you've both taken to respond. Can I ask one last question - which are the writing books that you'd most recommend? On my Kindle I have, painfully unread, the Guardian's How to Write Fiction (I think bits from some of their masterclasses) and John Mullan's How Novels Work, which I think is aimed at readers rather than writers, but looks useful nonetheless.

I haven’t read the books — I remember AL Kennedy’s being funny, but think it was also her Guardian columns? — but I thoroughly recommend Emma Darwin’s writing blog This Itch of Writing which is sane, clear, intelligent and well-indexed — go straight to her Toolkit for Writing to start with.

Trying to think of novels I’ve read recently that I thought were very good. Have you read Miriam Toews? All My Puny Sorrows is brilliant. If you like something very much itself, Claire-Louise Bennett’s Pond? Nicole Flattery’s short story collection Show Them A Good Time. Nicole Flattery and Claire-Louise Bennett have novels coming out this year.

I think you should mix up the colloquial and the literary styles a bit more. So speech should come as a refreshing break to the literariness, perhaps? I don't like the use of "spilled" for example when she speaks...too self conscious.
It is really enjoyable to read otherwise..and I desperately wanted to know what happened next.
Jamesian??

Can I ask one last question - which are the writing books that you'd most recommend?

I agree with Prawn about Emma Darwin's blog - that was the first online resource I thought of. It really is excellent. (However, as we were saying yesterday, beware of rules. Everything Emma Darwin says is sensible, and if you follow her advice you won't go wrong; but in some cases, her way isn't the only way - I'm thinking particularly of her ideas about handling viewpoint.)

Here are some older books about writing that I have found useful:

Bestseller, by Celia Brayfield. Don't let the title put you off, as her advice applies equally well to literary work

The Novelist's Guide, by Margret Geraghty

Writing Down the Bones by Natalie Goldberg. This one is about writing in general, rather than writing a novel.

How to Write a Million by Dibell, Scott Card and Turco. It's actually three books in one, and again, don't let the trashy title put you off, as it's full of useful and solid advice

Rewriting by David Michael Kaplan. In this, he gives early drafts of his stories and shows how and why he went from those to the final versions. Very interesting and useful.

I hope that helps.

It does - thank you both SO much. I will start with these books and try and move forward under my own power.

I'm so glad I did this - everyone has made more or less the same criticism, and I can see how to fix it. I think there is something there that I can access and work on, but it's also shown me that people have different tastes and I won't suit them all without being not me, as it were.

Cheers everyone.

Last thing - I'm going to buy the novels that you recommended @PrawnCorset, and then use them as fodder for analysis when reading the 'how to write' books. A PLAN.

Oh, have a look at them first on the 'Look Inside' bit in Amazon, @LitCrit -- the Nicole Slattery is short stories, rather than a novel, anyway, and my taste isn't everyone's, but she has a strong and recognisable dark-comic voice, which may not translate into longer fiction, though she does have a novel coming out soon. And Claire-Louise Bennett's Pond is highly original in a strange way, but I'm not sure I'd recommend it as any kind of pattern (it's kind of fictionalised life-writing stream of consciousness...?)

Miriam Toews' All My Puny Sorrows is definitely the most conventional of the three in terms of characterisation, plotting etc, and what I like so much about it is its lightness of touch. It manages to have enormous heart as well as intelligence, and to be extremely funny about a situation that in someone else's hands would just be grim -- two sisters, one a gifted concert pianist who makes repeated suicide attempts, from a dysfunctional Mennonite background.

I've also read and liked Jenny Offill's Weather recently, but again, she structures her novels in a very specific way -- in very short blocks of text which seldom have more than four or five sentences in them. I find her very interesting on what you can leave out.

They all sound very much worth reading - and perhaps their diversion from the standard will be more useful, since the idea is to sharpen my awareness of structure etc.

I will start looking at Emma Darwin tonight.

@Nettleskeins I forgot to say thanks - I'd never considered that before but it's a lightbulb. So much is about just not being overwhelming and relentless. Variation, breathing, light and shade etc.

Today/yesterday I wrote a couple of pages of introduction to one of the main characters in my actual story - then hacked it all back, and simplified, with all your points in mind.

He's partly based on someone I used to know a very long time ago, and both the RL person and the character are pretty much sui generis so I knew it would be v hard to get on paper without twattishness on my part. It's not perfect at all but it's good enough to move on and come back later. (OH read it and was moved, or made a good job of seeming so!)

You will all be gratified to know that I did indeed kill my darling, viz the description of a camp and alcoholic 1980s intellectual as a "grubby parakeet"