“I Used to Be Snow White, But I Drifted…” Guest Blog by Author Linda Gillard

Today I have the pleasure to turn this blog over to my guest, award-winning U.K. romance novelist Linda Gillard. Her book Star-Gazing (see my review here) is the loveliest book I’ve read in ages, and she has two others I hope to read soon as well. And now, Ms. Gillard (in front of one of her quilts that she makes when not writing):

An author’s lot is not, on the whole, a happy one (unless you think being able to spend your working day in your pyjamas is a plus.) Frustrations abound; remuneration doesn’t. One of our biggest frustrations arises from the fact that authors and publishers don’t share an agenda. An author wants to write the best book ever. A publisher wants to sell as many copies as possible of the best book ever. This conflict of interests means author and editor can find themselves at creative loggerheads over what you — the reader — want.

To the best of my knowledge, the only publisher to have done reader market research is Harlequin Mills & Boon. Nevertheless editors always claim to know what readers want. I suspect what they know is, what readers buy and that isn’t the same thing. Think of all those much-hyped books you’ve bought that disappointed.

Authors who get emails and letters from readers and have leisure to browse (in their PJs) book blogs and chat forums know precisely what readers want and just how far they might be tempted to step outside their reading comfort zone. But money talks and what it says, I gather, is that heroines in popular fiction must, above all else, be likeable. Ideally they must also be morally spotless. (But not holier-than-thou. No one loves a do-gooder.)

Along with a lot of writers (most?), I think a protagonist’s first duty is not to be likeable, but fascinating. In my experience, the flawed tend to be more interesting than the flawless, yet editors look for a cross between Pollyanna and Mother Teresa, with sex appeal. Heroines must in addition be young, pretty and thin because… well, because popular women’s fiction is about the young, pretty and thin, isn’t it?

Mine isn’t. The heroine of Star Gazing is middle-aged, widowed and blind and she’s not too happy about any of that. I write about spiky, awkward, real women and most of them aren’t young, pretty or thin, which only compounds their felonies. Over the years my heroines’ bolshy behaviour has led to some editorial conflict as I’ve resisted attempts made by patient and longsuffering editors to make my female protagonists nicer.

It’s not just that I think, in fiction, nice is generally boring. It’s that I’m steeped in the classics and know niceness is not necessary; that many a book has stood the test of time despite the heroine’s lack of social skills.

Let’s face it, Jane Eyre is not exactly Miss Amenable. And I’m surely not the only one who’d like to slap Emma Woodhouse. Cathy Earnshaw is a minx at best, demon at worst. Becky Sharp, Anna Karenina, Emma Bovary, Scarlett O’Hara … None of them would have made Head Girl. Even everyone’s favourite, Elizabeth Bennet, is tricky. At a time when marrying for love was just a fanciful notion, turning down Collins’ marriage proposal was a selfish act that would rebound on her whole family. But we love her anyway.

These problematic heroines haven’t exactly blighted the books in which they appear. On the contrary, they are the reason we read and re-read. We relish their complexity and moral ambiguity.

But times have changed. There seems to be a belief now among editors of popular women’s fiction (who mostly seem to be young women) that female protagonists must set some sort of an example. They mustn’t drink to excess or swear; they mustn’t desert or even dislike their children; they mustn’t have casual sex and should always be kind to old people and animals.

It’s not that publishers see themselves as moral arbiters, rather they’re convinced readers won’t like a woman who is less than perfect and if they don’t like her, they won’t like the book.

This might be true occasionally, but not invariably. In my second novel, A Lifetime Burning, my anti-heroine Flora, a clergyman’s wife, commits every sin apart from murder, but when she dies, some readers cry their eyes out. I know because they’ve told me. They don’t like Flora, but they do pity her.

Now call me old-fashioned, but I think evoking readers’ compassion is a higher goal for novelist and publisher than avoiding readers’ censure. (This opinion may have some bearing on why I’m not rich or famous and spend my working day in my PJs, instead of signing books for queues of avid readers in bookshops.)

I sometimes wonder how the Brontës’ novels might have fared in today’s slush piles. In an idle, possibly vengeful moment, I composed an imaginary rejection letter sent to an aspiring Charlotte Bronte. I tried hard to emulate the tone and content of the kind of helpful editorial feedback that many authors receive…

Dear Ms Brontë:

We enjoyed your manuscript JANE EYRE. You write well and most of your characters are believable, but I’m afraid we found your plot relentlessly downbeat and depressing. Does Helen Burns really have to die? Does Rochester have to be blinded? A disfigured hero is not appealing and spoils your otherwise feel-good ending. We wondered whether superficial burns and a partial loss of sight would serve just as well?

We found Rochester himself problematic. He isn’t likeable, nor is he physically attractive. He is wealthy (a point in his favour) but you fail to clarify whether or not Adèle is his illegitimate daughter. In short, he just isn’t hero material.

Sadly, Jane herself is not very appealing as a heroine. She’s feisty, but physically unattractive and a little prissy. There’s little for a female reader to identify with here. Something more upbeat is required for a romantic heroine. Readers might forgive Jane rejecting Rochester’s immoral proposal, but to reject St John Rivers as well makes her look priggish and ungrateful.

You might want to think about demoting Rochester to a subplot and upgrading Rivers to main hero, perhaps dropping the unappealing religious aspect of his character. (No one loves a do-gooder.) You could then dispense with your frankly unconvincing plot device of Jane hearing Rochester call to her after the fire. (We don’t think paranormal romance has a future.)

You write well and with passion, but JANE EYRE belongs to no clear genre and this would make it extremely difficult to market. Sorry not to be more encouraging, but in a fiercely competitive field, a romantic novel has to have stand-out qualities to be commercially viable.

Thank you for letting us read your manuscript.

Yours sincerely,

A N Editor.

I thank Ms. Gillard for guest blogging today. (Her own website is here.) I am so delighted to have discovered her as an author (serendipitously as it turns out, from having won her book from the blog Books Please.) If you are looking for a modern day author that reminds you of Charlotte Bronte but with a wonderful sense of humor, I highly recommend Linda Gillard. In addition to the two books of hers mentioned above, she also has written:

Synopsis: Rose Leonard is on the run from her life. Taking refuge in a remote island community, she cocoons herself in work, silence and solitude in a house by the sea. But she is haunted by her past, by memories and desires she’d hoped were long dead. Rose must decide whether she has in fact chosen a new life or just a different kind of death. Life and love are offered by new friends, her lonely daughter, and most of all Calum, a fragile younger man who has his own demons to exorcise. But does Rose, with her tenuous hold on life and sanity, have the courage to say yes to life and put her past behind her?

If you are interested in her books, they are unlikely to be found on U.S. bookshelves but must be ordered. Fortunately, The Book Depository in the U.K. not only has discounted prices but free delivery worldwide.

Let us know: how do you prefer your protagonists? As for me, I tend to become very annoyed over women characters who are thin, gorgeous, sexy, and moreover, subsist on a diet of chocolate and cheetos! What about you, readers?

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