LEARNING FROM THE SUCCESSES AND FAILURES OF OTHERS by Victoria Cornwall

'Literature cannot be the business of a woman's life: & it ought not to be.'

Poet Laureate

Robert Southey

 Letter to Charlotte Brontë.

At the beginning of her writing career, Charlotte Bronte sent copies of her verses to the poet laureate, Robert Southey, for his feedback. His harsh assessment, quoted above, must have been painful to read, but the path to publication is often littered with criticism and rejection, a lesson Charlotte was about to find out.

It was not until May, 1846, when she joined forces with her sisters, Anne and Emily, did Charlotte finally see her poems in print. However the momentous day came at a cost, both financially and emotionally. Although the verses were published by Aylott and Jones, Charlotte and her sisters had to use their inheritance from an aunt to pay the expense of publication. Yes, they self-published! They would not have the joy of seeing their names on the cover as they felt it necessary to use male pseudonyms to avoid discrimination based on their gender.

Following this, Charlotte and her sisters tried to have their novels published. Charlotte's first novel, The Professor, was repeatedly rejected. It would be published later, but not until after her death. Her second attempt, a novel called Jane Eyre: An Autobiography, was more successful and was finally published in October, 1847. Once again Charlotte used her male pseudonym of Currer Bell. It went on to become a best-seller. Following its success, Charlotte finally revealed herself as the writer. I wonder if she recalled Robert Southey's harsh words as she walked into her publisher's office to introduce herself as the author.

There are many stories relating to an author's bumpy journey to publication. The international best seller, Stephen King supposedly nailed his rejection letters to a wall, replacing it with a spike when it could no longer cope with holding them. It would take six years of rejection letters before his first short story was published. His first novel, Carrie, was rejected thirty times, but eventually went on to sell over a million copies. King takes us on his painful writing journey in his memoirs and writing tips, Stephen King On Writing and, like many writers, it took him many years to be an overnight success.

Through her detailed and technically accurate illustrations, Beatrix Potter became a scientific illustrator long before her fiction career took off. Her first work of fiction, The Tale of Peter Rabbit, was initially less successful and turned down my several publishers. Determined to see it in print, Potter felt compelled to publish it herself. A traditional publisher finally took it on and published it in 1902 on the agreement that Potter would replace the black and white illustrations with coloured ones. Needless to say, The Tale of Peter Rabbit and her subsequent books, quickly became children's classics.

Agatha Christie is world famous for her detective novels, but her quest to be published was as difficult to solve as the majority of her crime novels. Magazines rejected all of her early short story submissions and her first novel, Snow Upon the Desert in Cairo, also received the same fate. Hercule Poirot, the detective who feature in so many of her novels, finally came to her rescue. His first appearance in The Mysterious Affair at Styles was initially rejected, but the manuscript finally found a home with John Lane at The Bodley and was published in 1920. Christie went on to write  66 detective novels, 14 short story collections, the world's longest-running play, The Mousetrap, and (under the pen name Mary Westmacott), six romances.

So what can we learn from these successful writers? I think H.G.Wells sums it up very well.

The only true measure of success is

the ratio between what we might have done and what we might have been

on the one hand

and

the thing we have made and the things we have made of ourselves

on the other hand.

H.G.Wells

In other words, keep going and keep improving ... and you will be more successful than if you didn't try. It is a valuable life lesson to learn, whichever path we choose to tread.

In April, I celebrated the publication of my fifth novel, Daughter of the House. Were my first attempts at being a published author initially rejected? Yes, several times! Those rejections crushed me and I nearly gave up writing, however today they are just distant memories of an experience I once had ... an experience shared by many of the bestselling writers of our time. My conclusion is that I am in good company and the challenges we face are nothing to be ashamed of.

Fiction by Victoria Cornwall.

By

Victoria Cornwall

Rewriting the Classics

For today's joint blog, we discuss which classics we'd like to rewrite, or see rewritten.

Jo Allen kicks off the discussion:

I love the Brontes. Who doesn’t? (I mean, surely somebody, somewhere, doesn’t, but…)

So the novel I would like to rewrite for the modern day is the most rip-roaring of them all, Anne Bronte’s fabulous, scandalous The Tenant of Wildfell Hall. These days we’d call it romantic suspense and it has everything, so much so that if you don’t know it I recommend you go and look up a plot summary.

In short, Gilbert Markham falls for the mysterious widow in the neighbouring hall who it turns out, isn’t a widow at all but on the run from her drunken, violent husband. He, of course, comes after her and we have a chase and a misunderstanding, in the midst of which poor old Gilbert (who always struck me as not quite able to keep up with the extraordinary Helen Graham) doggedly pursues her, the love of his life.

If there’s a real kickass heroine in any of the Bronte novels it has to be Helen, unprepared to stand for the kind of nonsense her debauched husband and the restrictions of society place upon her. I love her to bits.

Having said all this, I don’t quite know how one would go about modernising a novel so far ahead of its time. Dare I say it, but I think Gilbert could do with a bit of a makeover. Then perhaps he’d be a match for Helen… and imagine what a film Hollywood could make of that…

Victoria Cornwall also chooses the Brontes:

Wuthering Heights was Emily Bronte’s only novel and was originally published under the pseudonym Ellis Bell. The initial reviews were mixed, some critics finding the unsavoury characters, hatred, revenge and violence difficult to accept, despite the novel being a compelling read.

Even today I find Heathcliff, the “hero” of the love story, difficult to accept. He starves a trapped bird, verbally and physically abuses his wife and damages the lives of all those around him … all in the name of love. Well in my opinion, loving someone does not give you the excuse to be a violent thug who destroys people who happen to be in their orbit. My adaptation would have Heathcliff coming to his senses and rescuing the bird in time and being emotionally distant from his wife (as he still loves Cathy) but not intentionally cruel to her. As he is Heathcliff, I will still allow him to behave badly, but ultimately he has to come to his senses and regret his behaviour. For my adaptation, Heathcliff has to deserve meeting up with Cathy in death, and unless he has changed his ways, I just wouldn’t let him. No woman deserves to be with a violent man, in life, in fiction or beyond the grave.

Rae Cowie picks something completely different:

Which literary classic would I re-write and why? For this writing challenge I’m reaching over to the dark side, choosing Daphne du Maurier’s chilling short story, The Birds (adapted for screen by Sir Alfred Hitchcock).  However, I would never presume to improve upon such a perfect piece of Gothic literature, but instead would have a bash at composing a modern-day version.

In du Maurier’s original story, ever more violent flocks of birds attack the family of farmer Nat Hocken, who responds by fortifying his home. Today, many farmers feel assaulted not only by the usual stresses of unpredictable weather and rising costs, but also from the increasing divide between urban and rural life. This leads to a feeling that society no longer appreciates their work, compounded by abuse on social media from activists interested in veganism, animal welfare, the climate change lobby and so on… Pinching tricks from du Maurier, I’d build on the farm’s isolated location. What begins as a stranger trolling my farming family online, quickly turns towards the even more sinister, where barricades may not be enough…

Kath McGurl kind of dodges the question:

You know, I don’t think I’d ever attempt to rewrite any of the classics myself. I would be terrified that doing such a thing might open me up to loads of criticism from anyone who loved the original! Of course, like any other writer, I might ‘borrow’ elements from the classics, either intentionally or accidentally. I had a phase of reading nothing but classics in my twenties and am sure they rubbed off on me.

Having said that, I do quite like reading reworkings of great stories. Funnily, many writers like Victoria are drawn to rewriting Wuthering Heights! I’ve read Juliet Bell’s The Heights – which retells the story but set in 1980s Yorkshire. And Sue Barnard’s Heathcliff  does something a little different – it fills in the missing years in the original tale, letting us know what happens to Heathcliff in the years when he disappears. 

Sue Barnard is quite a master at reworking the classics. Her novel, The Ghostly Father, retells Romeo and Juliet, but gives the story a completely different, much happier and to my mind more satisfying, ending. 

The reworkings I have not yet managed to bring myself to try are the ones where the original text, now out of copyright, is used with some weird additions. The ‘classic’ of this genre is Pride and Prejudice with Zombies. I suspect the title tells you all you need to know about it.

As well as rewrites of classics, I’ve also enjoyed books where a contemporary author has imagined mysteries in the life of a classic author. For instance in Dan Simmons’ Drood, Wilkie Collins is forced to confront the possibility his best friend Charles Dickens may be a murderer…

Finally, another book in this vein that I am looking forward to, bringing us neatly back to the Brontes again, is Bella Ellis’s The Vanished Bride. In which the Bronte sisters use their considerable talents to discover what happened to the bride in question…

What classics would you love to read a rewritten version of?