Typewriters may well be a thing of the past but it was still a shock to learn this week that the last ever typewriter factory is about to close its doors for the last time.

Based in India, the factory has been manufacturing typewriters for over 50 years and in that time, has produced 100,000s of them.  That’s a heck of a lot of typewriters.  But it’s no surprise that demand has fallen given the computerisation of so much of literary output.

I haven’t used a typewriter in years, not since my student days but I’ve always been fascinated by them, especially the old, antique versions.  That’s why I used one in the design of my website. Their clunky solidness and sturdy keys fit with romantic notions I have of what being a journalist was like years ago when you had to write your copy on the hop, deadlines waiting for no one.  Or the grandees of literary fiction, people like Hemingway and others who relied on their trustee typing machines to write the most beautiful prose.  There’s just nothing romantic about typing on a Mac or an iPad no matter how much we love them.  It’s just not the same.  Old typewriters are in a league of their own.

There are loads of typewriters still rattling around of course.  It’ll be a while before they become completely obsolete.  The antiques among them have even become collectibles.  And there are probably still one or two writers who to this day still use their typewriters for their everyday writing (and I am full of admiration for them). But it’s sad nevertheless that there will no longer be a bright, sparkly brand new typewriter rolling off a production line anywhere in the world after the factory in Mumbai closes.

“I grew up in a council flat decorated with books; hundreds of them. I never paused to wonder where my mother found all these books given the tightness of money generally.  I just read them.  A decade later we moved into a maisonette, where she filled the extra space with yet more books, arranged in a certain pattern. Second-hand Penguin paperbacks together, then the women’s press books, then Virago. Then several shelves of Open University textbooks on social work, psychotherapy, feminist theory.  Busy with my own studies and oblivious the way children are, I didn’t noticed that my brothers and I were not the only students in that flat.  By the time I did, my mother had a degree. We were reading because our parents and teachers told us to, my mother was reading for her life.

About two-thirds of those books had a printed stamp on the inside cover explaining their provenance: property of Willesden Green Library. I hope I’m not incriminating my family by saying that during the mid-80s it seems as if the Smith’s were covertly trying to move the entire contents of that library into the living room.  It was a happy day when my mother spotted a signed pinned to a tree in the High Road: Willesden Green Library Amnesty.  Next day we filled two black bin bags with books and returned them.  Just in time – I was about to start my GCSEs.

I spent a lot of time in libraries since then but I remember the Spring of 1990 as the most intense study period of my life, probably because it was the first.

To choose to study with no adult looking over your shoulder and any other students for support and company; this was a new experience for me.  I think it was a new experience for a lot of the kids in there.  Until that Spring, we’d come to the library primarily for the cafe or the cinema or to meet various love prospects of whom our immigrant parents would not approve, under the cover of that all-purpose-immigrant-parents-silencing-sentence: ‘I’m going to the library.’

When the exams came we stopped goofing off. There’s no point in goofing off in the library, you’re acutely aware that the time only person’s time you’re wasting is your own.  We sat next to each other at the long white tables and used the library computers and did not speak. Now we were reading for our lives.

Still it’s important not to overly romanticise these things; Willesden Green Library was not to be confused with the British Library.  Sometimes whole shelves of books would be missing, lost, defaced or torn.  Sometimes people would come in just to have a conversation while I bit my biros to pieces in frustration.  Later I learnt what a monumental and sacred place a library can be.

I spent my adult life in libraries that make a local library look very small indeed; to some people clearly quite small enough to be rid of without much regret.   But I know I never would’ve seen a single university carrel if I had not grown up living a hundred yards from the library in Willesden Green.

Local libraries are gateways not only to other libraries but to other lives. Of course I can see that if you went to Eaton or Harrow, like so many of the present cabinet, you might not understand the point of such lowly gateways or be able to conceive why anyone would crawl on their hands and knees for the privilege of entering one.  It’s always been and always will be, very difficult to explain to people with money, what it means not to have money.  If education matters to you, they ask, and if libraries matter to you, well why wouldn’t you be willing to pay for them if you value them? They’re the kind of people who believe value can only be measured in money.  At the extreme end of which logic lays the dangerous idea that people who fail to generate a lot of money for their families cannot possible value their families the way people with money do.

My own family put a very high value on education, on bookishess.  Like many people without money we relied on our public services, not as a frippery, not as a pointless addition, not as an excuse for personal stagnation, but as a necessary gateway to better opportunities.  We paid our taxes in the hope that they’d be used to establish shared institutions from which all might benefit equally.  We understood very well that there are people who have no need of these services, who make their own private arrangements, in health care, and education, and property, and travel, and lifestyle and have a private library in their own private houses.

Nowadays, I also have a private library in my own private house and a library in the university in which I teach.  But once you’ve benefited from the use of shared institutions, you know that to abandon them when they’re no longer a personal necessity is like Wiley Coyote laying down a rope bridge between two precipices, only to blow it up once he’s reached the other side so that no one might follow.

But no matter how many individuals opt out of it, community exists in Britain.  And the commons of British life will always be the greater force practically and morally.  Community is a partnership between government and the people and it’s depressing to hear the language of community, the so called ‘Big Society’, being used to disguise the low motives of one side of that partnership as it attempts renege on the deal.  What could be better than handing people back the power so that they might build their own schools, their own libraries?  Better to leave people to the already onerous tasks of building their lives and paying their taxes.  Leave the building of infrastructure to government and the protection of public services to government, that being government’s mandate and the only possible justification for its power.  That the grotesque losses of the private sector are to be nationalised, cut from our schools and libraries, our social services and our health care, in short from our national heritage, represents a policy so shameful I doubt this government will ever live it down.

Perhaps it’s because they know what the history books will make of them, that our politicians are so cavalier with our libraries. From their point of view, the fewer places you can find a history book these days, the better.”

Why? Well it seems that while we’ve all busy hiding behind electronic social media walls, people with clout and who really want to connect with people, pick up the phone and fearlessly expose their true selves, without the buffer afforded to them by electronic media.

There are obvious advantages to having a phone conversation over a 140 character tweet say, or a post on a Facebook wall or even an email.  We all like the personal touch and outside of a face to face meeting, nothing beats a phone call where you can get a sense of someone by the very tone of their voice.

Phone conversations allow us to pick up on a range of nuances that would be lost in an email. We get a sense of a person’s mood, their temperament, even their environment.  It allows us to set the pace and tone of our conversation, picking up thoughts that are spoken out loud that would otherwise be deleted in an email, opening the way for more honest and open communication.

You wouldn’t that think someone who makes their living from the written word would be espousing the merits of phone calls over email.  My overriding passion is good communication.  Whether it’s in a phone call or a combination of words delivered in a speech, a business report or a leaflet, the essence remains the same – simplicity. Keep it simple, be concise and stick to the point.  Do that and you can’t go wrong.

Some see this as the long-overdue admission that publishing is still predominantly white and middle-class.  Nearly 50% of people working in publishing feel that they’re working within a white, middle-class ghetto according to a 2004 survey by the Arts Council.  Many think it will stay that way, with non-white authors struggling to be heard unless they occupy key editing and commissioning roles.

As a notion, it sounds reasonable.  There are countless examples where increasing diversity has led to change – a kind of shared, positive outcome.  Why wouldn’t the same approach work in publishing?

The thing is, while the notion of better representation has been mooted, there is no evidence that it will lead to more non-white authors being published.  So the question is just how does representation, specifically non-white representation, affect what’s being published?

DipNet, the Diversity in Publishing Network was launched in 2005 with the explicit aim of promoting diversity in publishing.  Unfortunately, my calls were not returned but had I been successful in speaking to any of the people behind DipNet, I would certainly have asked, what discernable success have they had in increasing the number of non-whites in publishing and related roles and if that has in anyway led to a difference in the diversity of authors being published?

Certainly there is an expectation that in the years since its launch there has been change; sadly there just appears to be no evidence of it other than the pervasive opinion from every corner of the publishing industry, that whiteness remains.  Along with an inherent assumption that opening up diversity, will deliver change. What evidence if any is there of this and what do people working in the industry and writers across the board, really think about it?

I talked to a number of London-based publishers and writers.  Some were happy for me to use their names but others were not so their names have been withheld.  Conventional advertising is not always effective in getting a diverse pool of candidates so I wanted to speak to recruitment agencies too.  Employers can action their commitment to diversity by using specialist agencies and I was interested in finding out whether this was current practice.

Caroline Law, from Atwood Tate Limited, a Publishing Recruitment Agency agreed that there should be more diversity, along with “a wider breadth of material from whoever wants to and is good enough to get published”.  It was just something that she never has had to deal.  No publisher has ever asked her to specifically field a broader range of diverse candidates and her own view is that given that adverts are widely placed, in Bookseller and the Guardian for example, it was simply a case of people applying.

Jen Hamilton, a Director at Salt Publishing, said they set out to be diverse, having always wanted to bring a good range of writing from around the world.  Impressively, they are the largest publishers of native American writing.  She suggests that the key to being diverse depends to a large extent on how a publisher decides to set itself up.  Salt decided that they wanted to publish a range of work and needed people within that community who could pick up the best writing out there.  And they did it by being well-connected.  Finding the right people, she says, isn’t something you can rush into. It takes time.

The skill-set they were looking for was the ability to judge the writing, to make value judgements and to have an element of commercial thinking as well as the ability to understand the audience.  It’s a big role and it’s often filled by someone who is already an established writer.  It’s a vicious circle!

Matthew Duffy has been a freelance editor in education publishing for over 15 years and has never commissioned a non-white writer.  He believes that the glass ceiling remains firmly in place with only lip service being paid to the notion of equality.  He sums up publishing as being a repository for white, middle-class views.

Would representation make much of a difference to what’s being published? In education he says there’s a lot of sensitivity and a need to show a diverse range of age groups, ethnicities and classes but in a tokenistic way.  There are different rules for different markets and he gave the example of a request from a Brazilian publisher which insisted that only non-dark faces appears in illustrations throughout a particular course book.

Another editor believes that the problem of the lack of diversity can be traced to education, teachers and the low expectations generally held of non-white students and pupils.

Andrea Stuart is the author of two biographies about Josephine Baker, co-edits the Black Film Bulletin and is Fiction Editor of Critical Quarterly.

She believes that it is inevitable that projects are always being mediating through the eye and areas of interests of white editors.  All the people who are going to make choices about your book and your work, to commission it and put it together are going to be white.  Well read and interesting maybe but nonetheless lacking awareness of the complexities and nuances of black lives.  She thinks that this is something that black and non-white authors are always going to have to deal with in mainstream publishing.

Toni Morrison, one of the most famous black American authors ever, was also an editor for over 20 years and a lot of enormously significant black writers were commissioned by her as a result.  She gave them the breakthrough that they would more than likely never otherwise have had. All the big houses in America now have black editors which means they will always have someone who can potentially appreciate a black author’s work in a more sophisticated way.  Inevitably, the lack of black editors in this country means that fewer black books are published.

According to another black writer, the whole scenario can be very intimidating for black authors.  It doesn’t even come down to talent, according to another one, unless you’re a confident person and able to enter an industry that is so overwhelmingly white, you will stand little chance of success.

Many talented black writers have no how idea how to negotiate this structure; it’s challenging.  There’s so much to be written about in terms of the black contemporary experience yet almost all the gate keepers in our culture whether you want to get a film made, a book published, a television programme commissioned, are white, says another.  Inevitably a lot of the ideas that do get commissioned don’t appreciate the subtleties and are destined for a mono-coloured audience.

Andrea explained that she was working at a particular publishing house when The Color Purple by Alice Walker came in. The reader responsible for submissions said it was an alright book but of very limited popular appeal.  She asks, why would this Oxbridge education white male from a public school ever imagine how this book could grasp people?  And concludes, if all the gatekeepers are white, then you’re in trouble.

Most of the black authors I spoke to echoed Andrea’s views.  Some white authors too.  Many talked about wanting a more nuanced representation of black and non-white lives.  You don’t get the breadth or the complexity.   It’s a very frustration scenario for most.

Many also talked of their frustration of hearing publishers speak of striving for more diversity while doing nothing about it.  It is as though, publishers feel that it is enough to assert the statement, rather than to be conspicuous in their efforts to do something about it.

The conclusion for black and other non-white authors does not bode well.  The decks are most certainly stacked against them.  But there is hope.  DipNet and its work continues and the likes of Salt Publishers are still out there.

When I asked John Skelton, director and founder of Salt Publishing how diversity will affect what’s being published he said this: ‘Equality is good within poetry, but diversity is bad within some houses. We need more independent BME publishers: an area where public sector investment is crucial to help get businesses off the ground. We also need more information about demand and how to develop new markets. I suspect that needs pubic funding.’

I don’t doubt that he’s right but who’s listening?

Gervais is clever with words.  Most good comedians are.  Words that on their own convey nothing more than benign sentiment in the hands of a top comedian can be worked into something with more with bilious intent.

It’s impossible however to consider Gervais and his Golden Globes performance without considering the controversy stirred up by Frankie Boyle and his use of racial epithets in his Channel 4 comedy show, Tramodol Nights.  Was he being racist or at the very least was he shoring up insulting stereotypes? Quite possibly both but he was being funny and many people enjoy his humour.  In the minds of Channel 4 and Boyle’s many supporters, that makes it ok.  It was satire, we are not told, and not racism.

But this distinction may be lost on those people for whom such epithets can be a regular form of abuse.  Surely any discussion weighing up the extent to which jokes that use stereotypes based on race, culture or religion are offensive, should include them?  More often than not the debate happens without their voices being heard.  The comedy arena where such things are discussed, seems to exist solely for comedians and their loyal supporters.  Which may explain why Mark Watson entered the fray with this:

“In my time in comedy clubs I’ve seen scores and scores of gags at the expense of fat people, gay people, disabled people, women, pretty much every minority group other than 45-year-old, slightly paunchy stand-ups in suit jackets.”

Boyle’s response was to call Watson a c**t.

The debate about what is and what isn’t allowed in the hands of comedians isn’t something that will ever go away.  Not so long as comedians like Gervais and Boyle are willing to be combative and to risk crossing certain lines.  What should change is who gets to be heard in the ensuing debate.

Obama literally has a way with words.  It’s tempting to mark this speech out as being one of his best but there is so much more to come.  Obama has shown time and time again that chief among his many strengths is his facility to use words that inspire and give hope.  I suspect that we will see much more of his brilliance between now and 2012 when the next presidential elections are due.

A eulogy, which in every sense this was, is one of the most challenging occasions for any speechwriter.  The aftermath of a bereavement is a tender, fragile place.  Emotions are raw and the sense of loss so great that it overwhelms even the strongest among us.  If that loss is wrought from an act of mindless violence, as this was, then in every extent, that process of finding the words that could adequately sum up that sense of loss, must be chosen with care.  This he did.  There is nothing to criticise in a speech that was designed only to heal and comfort.

A transcript of the speech follows along with the video.

Transcript of President Obama’s memorial speech in Arizona

THE PRESIDENT:  Thank you.  (Applause.)  Thank you very much.  Please, please be seated.  (Applause.)

To the families of those we’ve lost; to all who called them friends; to the students of this university, the public servants who are gathered here, the people of Tucson and the people of Arizona:  I have come here tonight as an American who, like all Americans, kneels to pray with you today and will stand by you tomorrow.  (Applause.)

There is nothing I can say that will fill the sudden hole torn in your hearts.  But know this:  The hopes of a nation are here tonight.  We mourn with you for the fallen.  We join you in your grief.  And we add our faith to yours that Representative Gabrielle Giffords and the other living victims of this tragedy will pull through.  (Applause.)

Scripture tells us:

There is a river whose streams make glad the city of God,
the holy place where the Most High dwells.
God is within her, she will not fall;
God will help her at break of day.

On Saturday morning, Gabby, her staff and many of her constituents gathered outside a supermarket to exercise their right to peaceful assembly and free speech.  (Applause.)  They were fulfilling a central tenet of the democracy envisioned by our founders –- representatives of the people answering questions to their constituents, so as to carry their concerns back to our nation’s capital.  Gabby called it “Congress on Your Corner” -– just an updated version of government of and by and for the people.  (Applause.)

And that quintessentially American scene, that was the scene that was shattered by a gunman’s bullets.  And the six people who lost their lives on Saturday –- they, too, represented what is best in us, what is best in America.  (Applause.)

Judge John Roll served our legal system for nearly 40 years. (Applause.)  A graduate of this university and a graduate of this law school — (applause) — Judge Roll was recommended for the federal bench by John McCain 20 years ago — (applause) — appointed by President George H.W. Bush and rose to become Arizona’s chief federal judge.  (Applause.)

His colleagues described him as the hardest-working judge within the Ninth Circuit.  He was on his way back from attending Mass, as he did every day, when he decided to stop by and say hi to his representative.  John is survived by his loving wife, Maureen, his three sons and his five beautiful grandchildren.  (Applause.)

George and Dorothy Morris -– “Dot” to her friends -– were high school sweethearts who got married and had two daughters.  They did everything together — traveling the open road in their RV, enjoying what their friends called a 50-year honeymoon.  Saturday morning, they went by the Safeway to hear what their congresswoman had to say.  When gunfire rang out, George, a former Marine, instinctively tried to shield his wife.  (Applause.)  Both were shot.  Dot passed away.

A New Jersey native, Phyllis Schneck retired to Tucson to beat the snow.  But in the summer, she would return East, where her world revolved around her three children, her seven grandchildren and 2-year-old great-granddaughter.  A gifted quilter, she’d often work under a favorite tree, or sometimes she’d sew aprons with the logos of the Jets and the Giants — (laughter) — to give out at the church where she volunteered.  A Republican, she took a liking to Gabby, and wanted to get to know her better.  (Applause.)

Dorwan and Mavy Stoddard grew up in Tucson together -– about 70 years ago.  They moved apart and started their own respective families.  But after both were widowed they found their way back here, to, as one of Mavy’s daughters put it, “be boyfriend and girlfriend again.”  (Laughter.)

When they weren’t out on the road in their motor home, you could find them just up the road, helping folks in need at the Mountain Avenue Church of Christ.  A retired construction worker, Dorwan spent his spare time fixing up the church along with his dog, Tux.  His final act of selflessness was to dive on top of his wife, sacrificing his life for hers.  (Applause.)

Everything — everything — Gabe Zimmerman did, he did with passion.  (Applause.)  But his true passion was helping people.  As Gabby’s outreach director, he made the cares of thousands of her constituents his own, seeing to it that seniors got the Medicare benefits that they had earned, that veterans got the medals and the care that they deserved, that government was working for ordinary folks.  He died doing what he loved -– talking with people and seeing how he could help.  And Gabe is survived by his parents, Ross and Emily, his brother, Ben, and his fiancée, Kelly, who he planned to marry next year.  (Applause.)

And then there is nine-year-old Christina Taylor Green.  Christina was an A student; she was a dancer; she was a gymnast; she was a swimmer.  She decided that she wanted to be the first woman to play in the Major Leagues, and as the only girl on her Little League team, no one put it past her.  (Applause.)

She showed an appreciation for life uncommon for a girl her age.  She’d remind her mother, “We are so blessed.  We have the best life.”  And she’d pay those blessings back by participating in a charity that helped children who were less fortunate.

Our hearts are broken by their sudden passing.  Our hearts are broken -– and yet, our hearts also have reason for fullness.
Our hearts are full of hope and thanks for the 13 Americans who survived the shooting, including the congresswoman many of them went to see on Saturday.

I have just come from the University Medical Center, just a mile from here, where our friend Gabby courageously fights to recover even as we speak.  And I want to tell you — her husband Mark is here and he allows me to share this with you — right after we went to visit, a few minutes after we left her room and some of her colleagues in Congress were in the room, Gabby opened her eyes for the first time.  (Applause.)  Gabby opened her eyes for the first time.  (Applause.)

Gabby opened her eyes.  Gabby opened her eyes, so I can tell you she knows we are here.  She knows we love her.  And she knows that we are rooting for her through what is undoubtedly going to be a difficult journey.  We are there for her.  (Applause.)

Our hearts are full of thanks for that good news, and our hearts are full of gratitude for those who saved others.  We are grateful to Daniel Hernandez — (applause) — a volunteer in Gabby’s office.  (Applause.)

And, Daniel, I’m sorry, you may deny it, but we’ve decided you are a hero because — (applause) — you ran through the chaos to minister to your boss, and tended to her wounds and helped keep her alive.  (Applause.)

We are grateful to the men who tackled the gunman as he stopped to reload.  (Applause.)  Right over there.  (Applause.)  We are grateful for petite Patricia Maisch, who wrestled away the killer’s ammunition, and undoubtedly saved some lives.  (Applause.)  And we are grateful for the doctors and nurses and first responders who worked wonders to heal those who’d been hurt.  We are grateful to them.  (Applause.)

These men and women remind us that heroism is found not only on the fields of battle.  They remind us that heroism does not require special training or physical strength.  Heroism is here, in the hearts of so many of our fellow citizens, all around us, just waiting to be summoned -– as it was on Saturday morning. Their actions, their selflessness poses a challenge to each of us.  It raises a question of what, beyond prayers and expressions of concern, is required of us going forward.  How can we honor the fallen?  How can we be true to their memory?

You see, when a tragedy like this strikes, it is part of our nature to demand explanations –- to try and pose some order on the chaos and make sense out of that which seems senseless.  Already we’ve seen a national conversation commence, not only about the motivations behind these killings, but about everything from the merits of gun safety laws to the adequacy of our mental health system.  And much of this process, of debating what might be done to prevent such tragedies in the future, is an essential ingredient in our exercise of self-government.

But at a time when our discourse has become so sharply polarized -– at a time when we are far too eager to lay the blame for all that ails the world at the feet of those who happen to think differently than we do -– it’s important for us to pause for a moment and make sure that we’re talking with each other in a way that heals, not in a way that wounds.  (Applause.)

Scripture tells us that there is evil in the world, and that terrible things happen for reasons that defy human understanding. In the words of Job, “When I looked for light, then came darkness.”  Bad things happen, and we have to guard against simple explanations in the aftermath.

For the truth is none of us can know exactly what triggered this vicious attack.  None of us can know with any certainty what might have stopped these shots from being fired, or what thoughts lurked in the inner recesses of a violent man’s mind.  Yes, we have to examine all the facts behind this tragedy.  We cannot and will not be passive in the face of such violence.  We should be willing to challenge old assumptions in order to lessen the prospects of such violence in the future.  (Applause.)  But what we cannot do is use this tragedy as one more occasion to turn on each other.  (Applause.)  That we cannot do.  (Applause.)  That we cannot do.

As we discuss these issues, let each of us do so with a good dose of humility.  Rather than pointing fingers or assigning blame, let’s use this occasion to expand our moral imaginations, to listen to each other more carefully, to sharpen our instincts for empathy and remind ourselves of all the ways that our hopes and dreams are bound together.  (Applause.)

After all, that’s what most of us do when we lose somebody in our family -– especially if the loss is unexpected.  We’re shaken out of our routines.  We’re forced to look inward.  We reflect on the past:  Did we spend enough time with an aging parent, we wonder.  Did we express our gratitude for all the sacrifices that they made for us?  Did we tell a spouse just how desperately we loved them, not just once in a while but every single day?

So sudden loss causes us to look backward -– but it also forces us to look forward; to reflect on the present and the future, on the manner in which we live our lives and nurture our relationships with those who are still with us.  (Applause.)

We may ask ourselves if we’ve shown enough kindness and generosity and compassion to the people in our lives.  Perhaps we question whether we’re doing right by our children, or our community, whether our priorities are in order.

We recognize our own mortality, and we are reminded that in the fleeting time we have on this Earth, what matters is not wealth, or status, or power, or fame -– but rather, how well we have loved — (applause)– and what small part we have played in making the lives of other people better.  (Applause.)

And that process — that process of reflection, of making sure we align our values with our actions –- that, I believe, is what a tragedy like this requires.

For those who were harmed, those who were killed –- they are part of our family, an American family 300 million strong. (Applause.)  We may not have known them personally, but surely we see ourselves in them.  In George and Dot, in Dorwan and Mavy, we sense the abiding love we have for our own husbands, our own wives, our own life partners.  Phyllis –- she’s our mom or our grandma; Gabe our brother or son.  (Applause.)  In Judge Roll, we recognize not only a man who prized his family and doing his job well, but also a man who embodied America’s fidelity to the law. (Applause.)

And in Gabby — in Gabby, we see a reflection of our public-spiritedness; that desire to participate in that sometimes frustrating, sometimes contentious, but always necessary and never-ending process to form a more perfect union.  (Applause.)

And in Christina — in Christina we see all of our children. So curious, so trusting, so energetic, so full of magic.  So deserving of our love.  And so deserving of our good example.

If this tragedy prompts reflection and debate — as it should — let’s make sure it’s worthy of those we have lost.  (Applause.)  Let’s make sure it’s not on the usual plane of politics and point-scoring and pettiness that drifts away in the next news cycle.

The loss of these wonderful people should make every one of us strive to be better.  To be better in our private lives, to be better friends and neighbors and coworkers and parents.  And if, as has been discussed in recent days, their death helps usher in more civility in our public discourse, let us remember it is not because a simple lack of civility caused this tragedy — it did not — but rather because only a more civil and honest public discourse can help us face up to the challenges of our nation in a way that would make them proud.  (Applause.)

We should be civil because we want to live up to the example of public servants like John Roll and Gabby Giffords, who knew first and foremost that we are all Americans, and that we can question each other’s ideas without questioning each other’s love of country and that our task, working together, is to constantly widen the circle of our concern so that we bequeath the American Dream to future generations.  (Applause.)

They believed — they believed, and I believe that we can be better.  Those who died here, those who saved life here –- they help me believe.  We may not be able to stop all evil in the world, but I know that how we treat one another, that’s entirely up to us.  (Applause.)

And I believe that for all our imperfections, we are full of decency and goodness, and that the forces that divide us are not as strong as those that unite us.  (Applause.)

That’s what I believe, in part because that’s what a child like Christina Taylor Green believed.  (Applause.)

Imagine — imagine for a moment, here was a young girl who was just becoming aware of our democracy; just beginning to understand the obligations of citizenship; just starting to glimpse the fact that some day she, too, might play a part in shaping her nation’s future.  She had been elected to her student council.  She saw public service as something exciting and hopeful.  She was off to meet her congresswoman, someone she was sure was good and important and might be a role model.  She saw all this through the eyes of a child, undimmed by the cynicism or vitriol that we adults all too often just take for granted.

I want to live up to her expectations.  (Applause.)  I want our democracy to be as good as Christina imagined it.  I want America to be as good as she imagined it.  (Applause.)  All of us -– we should do everything we can to make sure this country lives up to our children’s expectations.  (Applause.)

As has already been mentioned, Christina was given to us on September 11th, 2001, one of 50 babies born that day to be pictured in a book called “Faces of Hope.”  On either side of her photo in that book were simple wishes for a child’s life.  “I hope you help those in need,” read one.  “I hope you know all the words to the National Anthem and sing it with your hand over your heart.”  (Applause.)  “I hope you jump in rain puddles.”

If there are rain puddles in Heaven, Christina is jumping in them today.  (Applause.)  And here on this Earth — here on this Earth, we place our hands over our hearts, and we commit ourselves as Americans to forging a country that is forever worthy of her gentle, happy spirit.

May God bless and keep those we’ve lost in restful and eternal peace.  May He love and watch over the survivors.  And may He bless the United States of America.  (Applause.)

I hope my new year resolutions will have a happy ending.  But it’ll be ok if they don’t because I believe that some benefit can always be derived from the simple effort of having tried.  Much like the spirit of one of my favourite quotes by Samuel Beckett:  ‘Fail, fail again, fail better’.

There is such a stigma attached to failure that people are put off from even trying, paralysed by the fear that they will never succeed.

So my resolution along with many others is to keep trying and to fear neither success nor failure.

Happy new year!

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It’s 5pm on a Monday evening, I’m about to phone Sophie Hannah and I’m trying to picture the inside of her house.  My mind conjures up a Cluedo board – a library, a kitchen, the maid and other key components of the pretend world of murder mysteries.  How else could she devise the cunning clues and hairpin twists and turns of her plots if she were not living a life of constant intrigue?

Sophie was born in Manchester where she grew up and went to university.  She now lives in Cambridge with her husband and two children.I’m convinced that every question I’m about to ask her has been asked innumerable times before and tell her this when she picks up the phone.

She laughs and tells me not to worry and to plough on. I’m already in awe of her – she’s widely regarded as one of the best crime fiction writers of the moment – but more so now that she has so kindly put me at my ease.

First questions

Let’s start with the obvious, why do you write?

Sophie says ‘I just can’t imagine doing anything else.’ Before success, Sophie experienced what most of us can relate to: picking up a book and wishing we could write half as well.  She confides that the feeling has never left her.

So how do you carry on beyond that point?  Sophie tells me what I want to hear: “You think about all you can achieve if only you try hard enough. If you think that way, you want to carry on.”  She adds, “If you don’t look at what’s possible, you’ll never know what you can achieve.”
This is a message I’m keen to absorb and pass on to other writers. We are all afflicted by the fear that we’re just not good enough, but must nevertheless keep going.

Reading essentials
No surprises that Sophie reads voraciously, getting her inspiration from a range of books -  mostly crime and mystery fiction.  She cites Enid Blyton and the Secret Seven as inspiration in her early years, followed by the likes of Agatha Christie and Ruth Rendell who, along with Nicci French, she counts as her main inspiration.  She says that she has always wanted to write the sorts of books that she loves to read.

Real-life drama
Sophie also gets inspiration from dramas in her own life.  The plot behind her first best-seller Little Face revolves around a baby that has been swapped for another.  It came to her after a spell in hospital after the birth of her first child.  A midwife took Sophie’s baby away for checks without her knowledge. She went to pick up the baby she thought was hers only to be told by a desperately anxious midwife it wasn’t.

Sophie admits that each of her books has an autobiographical element; a bit of her or somebody she knows in each of the characters. But none, she assures me, are completely based on one real person (though people often think they are).  She laughs when telling me how often people get it wrong trying to put names to characters. She says she would never, ever reveal the truth when asked, which is often.

High-concept mysteries
Sophie describes her books as high-concept mysteries, pointing to Little Face andThe Other Half Lives. Each starts with a weird mystery designed to make people think what on earth is going on?  Sophie needs to be mystified by it herself – if it doesn’t work for her, it won’t work for her readers either.  Once she has the kernel of a story, Sophie tends to mull it over, without consciously thinking how the mystery can be solved.  She often arrives at the solution while doing ordinary things.  The entire plot for one book popped into her mind at the checkout in Morrisons.

Inspiration
The 99 per cent perspiration formula might be true for some writers but not for Sophie.  There’s a lot of inspiration involved she admits, but the hard work comes later when translating the perfect idea in your head into a halfway decent book!

“I know where I’m starting from and where I’m going to.  I work it out one chapter at a time.  I know what the first chapter will be.  A lot of it’s instinctive; what feels right for what should come next.  I think about changes of pace and tone, ways of ensuring constantly fresh adrenalin so it doesn’t sag in the middle; a chronological way, sort of like writing in miniature, fast-forwarding through the process.  A brief chapter outline: this character goes here, does this, meets another character, and so on.”

How to write
Sophie has a well-worked out writing routine.  If it’s a first draft, she starts work as soon as she can.  She’s not an early riser, getting out of bed only after her husband and kids have left for the day.  She’ll only start writing once the house has been checked and everything has been declared tidy.  Then she’ll write through to 6.30/7pm.  It’s an intense block, but she does her best writing in these longer periods.

To students of crime writing looking for clues as to how to create and sustain a plot, she has this advice: “Basic things apply.  You need an overarching question or mystery, which is what the reader is reading on to find out.  For example, here’s a dead body, who did it?  Along the way to the revelation, you need to build in minor questions and minor solutions because you can’t sustain energy over the period of a long novel without pay offs along the way.  If you’re waiting to find out who killed so and so, you can’t wait the whole novel. So the police will find out one big thing, and on the way discover the next dramatic point in the mystery, for example, who killed Dan.  In the end you find out that it was Rose, but by the end of the chapter you might find out that Dan was in the mafia and had loads of enemies.  By the end of chapter 9, we discover Dan’s still alive and it was Tony who was killed.  These little dramatic moments make the reader gasp along the way.”

Sophie likens the crime-solving (and writing) process to hospital heart machines, showing peaks and troughs.

“When writing Little Face, after finishing one chapter intuitively knew I had to have some new pace or tone to the next chapter, to introduce depth. So I had the police inspector shouting at his team -  ‘look you’ve been working on this so long and we have nothing to show for it’.  It worked brilliantly, helping to move the focus away from a sad woman to another point of view in a busy police station.   It added a jolt of adrenalin and the pace really picked up.”

Creating characters
I ask Sophie about the continuity of characters in her novels.  She had always wanted to write about women in peril – psychological thrillers of the Nicci French variety – and also liked the genre of a returning detective, like Inspector Morse, so tried to blend the two sub-genres by putting together a first-person narrated woman in peril psychological thriller with a returning detective book.

Her distraught heroine would need help at some point so why not bring in the same police that her readers would get to know?  Sophie thinks it’s the best decision she’s ever made, ‘Because police don’t own the whole of each book and I never get bored with them.’  Each book has a different flavour and tone, depending on the story line, unlike with Inspector Wexford and others, where the police are the main characters.

They are in effect, stand-alone psychology thrillers and Sophie doesn’t know anyone else who does that.  Many writers do police characters, murders, and characters’ points of view well – read Mark Billingham, Val McDermot and Peter Robinson.  The difference with her books, says Sophie, is that they don’t have a series feel.

New work
I ask Sophie about her current novel, The Room Swept White, out in paperback and receiving rave reviews.  It seems to offer the reader the first hint that there is more to Proust than being just a horrid boss.  She says she added this to create Proust’s back-story, “It reminds the reader that as well as being a horrible boss, he has a more complex character.”

“None of my characters is all bad and none is all good.  People who don’t like my books don’t like that the heroines are all white too.  For example, Fliss instead of really caring, is a bit of an air head who reads Heat, which makes her unsympathetic.”  Sophie says that she’s just not interested in idealising anybody.  “I write from inside my characters’  heads. Sometimes they think noble, worthy things and sometimes they think horrible things.”

I ask Sophie about ‘non-judgemental crime fiction’, a term used by The Independent to describe her writing.  She explains that A Room Swept White was based on cases like those of Sally Clarke and Angela Cannings, women convicted of murdering their children.  After carrying out in-depth research on those real-life cases, it seemed to her that everyone involved, lawyers and doctors, were convinced they were the good guys and the others were evil, witch-hunting monsters.  “Everyone was really anti the other side.  The truth is that no doctor gets a kick out of an innocent mother going to prison; they’re just trying to protect children.  Similarly with mothers, if they have done something terrible like smother their child, it’s an act of desperation, misery and despair.  It’s not a callous killing.”

“I wanted to write a novel where no one was an out-and-out baddy.  All the way through the book, the character of Julie Duffy was described as a monster but she was not a monster at all.”

“People often say crime fiction iss a very moral genre, where baddies get punished.  I don’t think it’s a good thing.  You want to find out who the baddy is but don’t necessarily want them to be hung, drawn and quartered.”

“I wanted to take a more enlightened approach  – and challenge the mindset that if someone makes a terrible mistake you go against them.”  A classic example she says is Tony Blair who people now talk about with disgust.  He made bad decisions but we shouldn’t hate him.  “Sometimes people make a bad decision when genuinely thinking that they were doing the right thing.”

Book to film
I ask if she’s pleased about her books being turned into TV dramas.   “I’m pleased that mine’s being converted and delighted it might lead more people to read my books, but I’ll never write a book thinking I hope it gets made into a film.”  She points out that once rights have been signed over, a writer has hardly any control over the script.

This article first appeared on the Professional Writing website www.profwriting.com

How many times have you discussed racism with friends? It’s something that we’re all comfortable talking about until a finger is pointed at us. When that happens, everything changes.

No one willingly accepts that they might be guilty of racism. Equally no one wants to believe that someone they know, whom they might consider a friend, could be racist. That would be guilt by association. So the instinct is to deny and excuse. Far easier to dismiss the charge and in doing so dismiss the feelings of the person concerned than to accept responsibility that our words can racially offend. So a litany of excuses and explanations are deployed: all at a moment’s notice and all designed to focus not on the words or the actions but on the person.

When London Mayor Boris Johnson told UN workers and their black driver that it was time to go and look at some piccaninnies, he was being, you know, Boris. And when he wrote that the Queen loves the Commonwealth in part ‘because it supplies her with regular cheering crowds of flag waving piccaninnies’ he was being funny, amusing, irreverent. Not in a million years was he being intentionally derogatory towards black people. He has black friends for goodness sake and look here, he even appointed a black fellow to a key post in his administration. What more evidence do you need?

You can find the link to the video here.

The message in this video is that when you challenge someone about something they’ve said, focus not on what they are, but on their words. Making that crucial distinction will avoid any speculation about why they said what they did or the intentions behind their words; the things that you can only guess at.

The video points out how adept celebrities and politicians are in shifting the conversation away from ‘what they did’ to ‘what they are’.

“I have known this person for years and I know for a fact that they are not a racist and how dare you claim to know what’s in their soul just because they made one little joke about watermelons, tap dancing and going back to Africa.”

He points out the obvious: you don’t need to see inside their soul; you don’t need to know them or be their best buddy to know that they shouldn’t have said what they said but the moment the conversation shifts to what they are, then ground is lost.

He says: “When somebody picks my pocket I’m not going to chase him down so I can figure out whether he feels like a thief deep down in his heart.  I don’t care what he is but I need to hold him accountable for what he did. And that’s how we need to approach these conversations about race. Treat them like they took your wallet and focus on the part that matters, holding each person accountable for the impact of their words and actions. I don’t care about what you are, I care about what you did.”

Obviously it’s not a panacea for good writing and the idea will always be to avoid passive sentences in the first place, as well as horribly scrambled syntax.  If like me you’re a professional writer then you have no excuse but the truth is we are all susceptible.  In much the same way that it makes sense to ask a colleague to cast an eye over something you’ve written it makes just as much sense to spell-check it and to click the option that allows you to see the readability stats and get a sense of just how well your writing reads. For simple instructions on how to find and turn on the readability stats in Microsoft Word, click here.