A bran tub (apparently)

by Linda Watson-Brown - 13:26 on 26 September 2008

Last night, I was at Yeadon's bookshop in Banchory - Banchory is one of those places that I know about in very little detail since moving up this way.  I've been to the park - that's it; so when I arrived at the shop, it was an absolute pleasure to see what Vicky and her team have achieved.  The atmosphere makes browsing seem perfectly acceptable, and every book seems to have been chosen for a purpose.  I found so many that I had no idea existed, and so many more that seemed much more beautiful in 'real life' than on a website page.  It was also lovely to meet Esther Woolfson, the author of 'Corvus' which is storming besteller lists and enchanting reviewers and readers across the globe.  Esther has to be one of the most unassuming successful writers I've ever met and I look forward to having many long natters with her now that I've found her.

Anyway, after a good browse, it was off to Crathes Castle for the event in which Nicola Morgan of the Society of Authors Scottish section attempted to bring many writers to heel and force them into doing two minute spiels of their work.  I'm quite scared of Nicola so I think I managed it, but there were a few who risked her wrath.  The best bit of the night was probably when one member of the audience implied (or did they?) that Mills and Boon books were maybe a tad formulaic and pulpy.  At this comment (or hidden comment), Eileen Ramsay jumped to the defence of the genre - and I have to say I'm on her side.  I've never written (or read actually) the aforementioned bodice-ripping-doctor-catching-Victorian-chambermaid tomes, but the whole argument sounded very much like the broadsheet/tabloid one which I do have some experience of.

Having written for both, I know which is harder.  In broadsheets, there is the opportunity to ramble and there is the opportunity to be less than precise about matters.  In tabloids, you don't get that luxury.  Tabloids, in my experience, also have much stricter legal restraints that readers just don't know about.  At broadsheets, I often knew that I was sailing pretty close to the wind (I've still got the many complaints from the Procurator Fiscal's office to remind me just how close), but I always got away with it.  At tabloids, I knew to never even bother suggesting such things.  I think that's very similar to what happens when people decry what they see as trash fiction. Yes, if you write to Mills and Boon, you'll get a standard response telling you what they want and how they want it, but 99.9% of writers won't be able to deliver that precise product.  However,if you want to write a 600 page poetry anthology about the intrinsic beauty of bubble bath, you can go ahead and you can claim it has literary merit till the cows come home, because there isn't a market for it anyway.

So, the 'bran tub' event (and I still don't know what that means) did have its moments - and the best one for me was probably finding out that there's a genre even more despised than ghostwriting.  Maybe I'll read a few bodice rippers in gratitude after all.

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