I should really be writing this from the cot. My two-year-old niece decided earlier on that I had been naughty and because she is sent to the cot when she's naughty, I should receive the same punishment. There I was, blinking at her in open-mouthed shock as she called for her older sister to 'put Aunty Dorty in cot'. I managed to escape being picked up by twelve-year-old and deposited in the wooden-framed piece of furniture this time - but only just. I still don't remember what I did wrong.
My youngest niece is such a spirited young girl (read: she can run rings around almost every adult she meets) that I started to wonder about her future. Whenever I wonder about the future of all the girls and young women I know, the niggles I have about how women are defined start in my mind.
My worries stem not only from how the world (some might say patriarchal society) views us, but also from how women view themselves. Take for example the term 'chick lit'.
It's a derogatory term used to describe books that are apparently formulaic, vacuous and written by young women that does nothing to enrich the tapestry of our cultural world. (It's an accusation that's been levelled at my books, but as I always say: everyone's entitled to their own wrong opinion.)
On the other hand, there are many people who say they love 'chick lit'. That we readers have nothing to be ashamed of devouring those types of books and that some 'chick lit' handles serious issues (someone once used My Best Friend's Girl as an example of this - it probably didn't occur to them I'd find my books being labelled 'chick lit' even in an allegedly positive way rather insulting). Those who champion the cause of 'chick lit' say they are trying to reclaim the term, to own it, to make sure fiction that's - in the main - written by women for women is taken as seriously as other fiction.
What both the lovers and haters of 'chick lit' seem to have overlooked in all of this dismissing and championing is the term 'chick'. It's not the books that you need to be worrying about but the word that basically insults all women. In my mind, it's like trying to find a suitable place to stub out a cigarette when your house is being engulfed by 50ft flames - you've got bigger things to worry about.
I object - rather strongly - to people calling my books 'chick lit' mainly because I don't call myself or any other woman I know a 'chick'. You see, I'm 99 per cent certain it didn't come from a place or time where women were considered intelligent, worthy, equal human beings and using that term is just repeating the insult.
'Ah, yes, but we're trying to reclaim that term,' declare the lovers of 'chick lit'. 'We're trying to own it and reclassify it and make it something cool and hip and what every right-thinking female should want to be known as.' I applaud such efforts, I really do. But I've never been completely convinced by the wisdom in trying to reclaim insulting terms and phrases.
You're fighting a pretty long and dense history of negativity and you're more than likely to find that although you're using the word in the new, 'right' way, very few other people are.
You're fighting a pretty long and dense history of negativity and you're more than likely to find that although you're using the word in the new, 'right' way, very few other people are.
It's like having the tastiest lolly in the world. You're about to take a bite and you accidentally drop it in a pile of cow dung. You snatch it up, rush to the tap, wash it and wash it and wash it, making sure you get every microbe of manure off it. Yes it's clean now, yes you've reclaimed it, but seriously, it'll be forever known as the s*** lolly?
Just like so called 'chick lit'. You can hold up hundreds of examples of what you think is excellent writing in this genre you've classified as 'chick lit', but you're still calling it s*** lit.
And to those who turn their noses up at so-called 'chick lit' because it's vacuous and demeaning and does nothing to show women in a good light, why would you persist in using a derogatory term for women to say something is bad for women? Just call it what it is, bad lit and be done with it.
I have a novel suggestion for both the lovers and dislikers of what is essentially commercial - i.e. non-literary - storytelling: get together and come up with a new term. I quite like the term commercial fiction but it is a mouthful. I've come up with a new term for my books and any authors out there are more than welcome to realign their work in this new genre - as long as they acknowledge that it was my idea (he-he!!). My new term?
Heart lit.
I love books that can touch your heart. Stories, characters and writing that can break your heart, lift your heart, stop your heart, fill your heart. They can be any type of book as long as they move, involve, impassion. That's what I read for, so heart lit is what I'm going to call any book that touches me so.
My newest mission is to try to get heart lit to replace the C Lit word. Because whilst I'm all for people being honest about the non-literary/highbrow books they do and don't love - the world would be a slightly nicer place if they expressed their opinions without insulting 50 per cent of the population in the process.
I guess I'd better be getting back to the cot before my niece dreams up an even worse punishment for whatever it is I will have done wrong now.
I love many different types of books, these are 5 of the hundreds that have touched my heart.
*Joshilyn Jackson writes Gods In Alabama in a very unique way - part way through you realise that you, the reader, have become part of the story.
*I fell in love with The List of Seven by Mark Frost about 15 years ago because it was about Arthur Conan Doyle and my favourite character from literature - Sherlock Holmes.
*Some of the passages in Adele Parks's The Other Woman's Shoes had me almost in tears - very rare for a book to do that to me.
*Running Wild is written by JG Ballard, my favourite author. I read this in my teens and was blown away by the story.
*Jodi Picoult's My Sister's Keeper is a very brave book that takes you on a very interesting moral journey.
I should really be writing this from the cot. My two-year-old niece decided earlier on that I had been naughty and because she is sent to the cot when she's naughty, I should receive the same punishment. There I was, blinking at her in open-mouthed shock as she called for her older sister to 'put Aunty Dorty in cot'. I managed to escape being picked up by twelve-year-old and deposited in the wooden-framed piece of furniture this time - but only just. I still don't remember what I did wrong.