I’ve received feedback from a big U.K. literary agency that I sent in my book for consideration.

They’ve very kindly come back to me with feedback. They’re not the first people I’ve sent in the book for consideration, but I found their response particularly interesting and I thought I would share it.

I’ve had a look at your submission and I’m afraid that it isn’t one for us. I found it very hard to engage with this piece, with it’s [sic] exotic, portentous sounding setting and names so strange that you felt the need to provide a pronunciation glossary. Readers tend not to want to work so hard, and I habitually question the need for invented names that have more punctuation in them than they ought.

The other main issue here is the fact that your novel is far too expeditionary and this, for me, means you fall at the first hurdle. First principle of writing fiction? Show Don’t Tell. My feeling is that you need to take a cold hard look at this work before you send it out for further consideration.

Sorry not to have better news. Best of luck in your search for representation.

Now, when one receives rejections like this about their work they need to keep two things in mind, I think.

First of all, you can’t get arrogant about it and claim that the editor doesn’t have a point. They view thousands of manuscripts and in this particular case the agency represents some prolific authors in the fantasy genre. So I need to take his comments seriously and not get overly defensive.

On the other hand, one must understand context – theirs and mine.

Firstly, the agency is looking for books that are more commercially viable for their market. This becomes evident in the comment about names above. I don’t really find the names in my book hard to pronounce (one name is actually an African name while some others I did make up). Seeing as the agency is based on the U.K. an African name might be hard to pronounce. But since my book is located in an exotic location (a middle-east kind of fantasy setting) I’ve tried to use more middle-eastern sounding names which could be ‘strange’ to a Western reader but are actually not so strange in the big wide non-western world.

This opens up some interesting conversations in that the agency is obviously limited by its own paradigm. Frodo and Gandalf in The Lord of the Rings etc. are not exactly ‘normal’ names but they are more pronounceable in the English language, I guess. But maybe my names, such as Sephobwe and Tarkanyon and Ah’Metein are not really that difficult for an African like me to comprehend. So is it fair to say the names are a bad thing, objectively? Surely not. It’s about context and audience. They are U.K. based and will market to a U.K. audience.

Should agencies / publishers be so narrow minded about the unfamiliar? Well, they need to make money, of course, and the only way of making money in this market is by volume, not so much by the merit of the artwork. So in general anything that’s too different is too much. They will say they want something different, but they in general won’t take on something that’s too different.

‘Portentous sounding setting’ I do take as a bit of a complement. The book is meant to be momentous and ominous. The fact that my writing projected exactly what I wanted is, for me, great.

I admit the novel is pretty expeditionary but so is The Lord of the Rings. I’m not quite sure why the agency views this as a problem. But he is linking that into the infamous ‘show don’t tell’ advice that is so often given to authors.

Show don’t tell is a difficult one. It means that audiences (according to publishers) prefer to be ‘shown’ an event rather than ‘told’ an event. For instance, if I was saying that Sizwe hung up the phone I could say, “Sizwe hung up” or I could say “Sizwe pushed the red button on the phone and moved it away from his face.” the former is ‘telling’ the latter is ‘showing’.

Now one can see from this example that it makes sense not always to be showing but also telling. Unless, of course, you’re looking to dramatise, but not everything should be dramatised to the nth degree. I find it laborious where, like in Robert Jordan’s later novels (for example) EVERYTHING is shown. A novel that could be exciting and could move quickly is bogged down by endless dribble to show us every grimace, every nuance, every second of every moment. It’s boring and pretentious.

I think there is more telling going on in big authors’ novels that publishers care to admit. A read through Robert Ludlum shows that he does a lot more telling than showing, at least in my opinion. Clive Cussler is sometimes so bad with it and his prejudice so clear (Sahara is so badly prejudiced against Africa it’s laughable) that I have no idea why he is rated as a good writer. By who, I ask? Yet they are selling books by the bucket load while new authors are told to ‘show don’t tell’? That doesn’t really compute.

Personally, I still do like to be told a story, and it’s in the telling of it that I like or don’t like a story. The Lord of the Rings has a heck of a lot of telling in it and this is one of the things I think I enjoy about it. I feel as if I’m listening to a storyteller, not a story shower. I admit that I need to write for a post-modern audience and not a modern one (The Lord of the Rings is a modern, not a post-modern, novel) but at the same time the world is also moving beyond post-modernism.

So I think the way in which ‘show don’t tell’ is drilled into authors, and the way a book is judged by it, is actually not fair on the author or the style they’re trying to go for. I wanted a classic style novel, but obviously the agency doesn’t. That’s OK, I don’t have an issue with that. But if I actually read authors on the shelves there’s a lot more telling than publishers admit, which is a little irritating.

So in the end of the day I’m not really disappointed. Sure, it would have been great for this agency to represent me, but actually I’m looking for someone to work with who will come alongside me and try to better my skills. They were obviously just looking for another author who they can represent, not worth with. That’s fine with me as I also need to find the right people who I trust and believe will get the best out of me and my work.

But in the greater scheme of things I think this review of my work opens up greater questions, such as the questions surrounding the names, Show Don’t Tell, and of course how creative one should get with their work and how much of the norm they should keep. Always a struggle, that.

A recent blog post at the UK Guardian site talks about Thom Yorke, the lead singer for the popular UK band Radiohead, and his statements encouraging new bands not to sign with major record labels.

To be fair to Yorke the quote in question (posted by a commentor on this blog) ought to be posted. The quote and the blog itself raise all sorts of important questions for me, and I’ll outline why in a sec:

What tips can you give young people who want to write lyrics that will make a difference to their world?

That there is nothing more dry and boring in art than politics. It has to be fermented and distilled. It has to be personal. It has to be light of touch. It is much more about how you do stuff, your state of mind and less about the words on the page.

What advice would you give young music makers who want to make a difference with their talent?

This is one for Ed in Radiohead… it is his obsession. When we discuss it he says it’s simply a matter of time – months rather than years – before the music business establishment completely folds. He is involved in trying to build a world where artists would finally get paid. But we are up against the self-protecting interests of that industry. They are currently trying to lobby to take all the cash themselves whilst claiming to protect the interests of its artists. Oh yeah? When the corporate industry dies it will be no great loss to the world. So, I guess I would say don’t tie yourself to the sinking ship because believe me it’s sinking.

So here is why this quote raises all sorts of questions with me.

Firstly, I’ve been in the music industry, an industry that is not too different from the writing industry, in the sense that an artist creates something and a company publishes it, and the artist gets paid certain royalties (usually eight percent to start off with, up to a maximum of 15 percent if you’ve been around and can push for it).

Secondly, Yorke’s statement that “When the corporate industry dies it will be no great loss to the world,” is an interesting one that may have something to add to a recent discussion at my blog around Discovery Health.

I personally have a distaste for corporate in that I feel it more often than not stifles creativity and usually only has one target in mind: profit. There’s nothing wrong with profit but it cannot be the only goal a business sets itself, but most businesses do only have that as the goal. Things such as values come secondary to the Greatest Value of All: Profit.

The music industry has been tainted by this monster for decades now. However, the plus side to corporate is that it can be sustainable. This is something Alan Jones may be hi-lighting in the Discovery conversation at my blog.

But what the heck do struggling artists such as myself do? Contrary to all the hoo-ha, the Internet doesn’t provide a platform for artists who want to also have an income.

The Internet culture is used to having everything for free, something that the news media doesn’t know what to do about at the moment. Newsweek is up for sale as it seems it cannot compete against the Internet, and there’s talk that the New York Times is thinking of a subscription model for its website because, after all, how the heck else can it make money? Advertising doesn’t provide enough income to pay proper journalists to do proper work, and the more visitors to your site the more bandwidth you pay.

I don’t know the answers to these questions. All I know is that corporates stifle creativity and cannot let go of the old, and the new actually looks a lot less promising than it did five years ago. Where do book writers and musicians like me, who are cautious of signing with labels because eight percent royalty is ridiculous, and find the Internet means everything must be free, go?

I’m also a journalist, and increasingly journalists have to produce more content to line up with the growing needs of the Internet, while being paid less to line up with the income news agencies can actually produce.

To market, even with the Internet, costs bucks and most of all it costs time, something an artist like me finds less of as his time is spent making money out of a ‘normal’ job so that he can somehow, at some time, plow some of this money into his creative arts.

And is Yorke right? Will the loss of corporates be no loss to our world?

And who is to blame? It seems corporates don’t care and neither does the public. Once in a conversation with a gamer I asked that if he had the choice of downloading music for free (ilegally) or pay just R1 a song, which would he choose? He chose the former. The mass public seems to want the very best of everything but pay nothing for it. And who can blame them? Corporates, the people who they work for, might have taught them that that’s the way it should be. Because, after all, that could be how the corporate is treating them.

I’ve written a short opinion piece at gaming.do.co.za called Are Video Games Art. For those who are artistically inclined they may find it interesting. I think it raises some interesting questions around this new art medium which is not considered art by a lot of critics.

Check it out.

Nostalgia for geeks like me! I’m so stoked to hear that the video game developer LucasArts is releasing a new up-to-date version of what is probably my most favourite game of ALL time – Monkey Island 2! W00t W00t!

It’s called the “Special Edition” and is an upgrade of the first one, with new graphics and the same voice cast of the originals. Awesome!

Monkey Island is like the definitive adventure game, that I’ll definitely pass easy with help of Division boost lol. The player is put in the shoes of the pirate Guybrush Threepwood as he goes against his arch pirate nemesis, Lechuck. The game(s) have some of the most original characters I’ve seen in storytelling, and hilarious dialogue.

Sure, Space Quest and King’s Quest were cool, but Monkey Island was IT. The comedy in the game is still fresh as ever (they were originally made in the 90’s) and if one pays attention one will see that the Pirates of the Caribbean series copied a lot from Monkey Island. That’s my opinion anyway.

Check out the article I wrote for Do Gaming (I am the deputy editor there).

The Sout Project is the brainchild of Nic Paton, who has been around in the South African music industry a longer time than most actually know. His experience and talent as a composer and producer on the album really shines – with truly brilliant instrumentation that is a pleasure to listen to with a set of headphones on (how one should always listen closely to an album, in my opinion).

The first thing that must be said about Story is that it is by no means a commercial album. From a musical point of view, don’t expect pop, rock, rap, electronica or anything that most of us are used to; from a lyrical point of view, don’t expect the usual either.

Story has been labelled a Christian worship album in various places by Paton, who has made a point of saying that it isn’t your standard run-of-the-mill Christian Contemporary Music (CCM) worship album. I’m grateful for that as I’m a little tired of all the usual stuff we see floating around, usually with cheesy pop tunes and cheesy lyrics to boot. Seriously, a five year old can come up with “I worship you my King, to you I sing” and most of us probably know how little depth a great deal of CCM has. There’s nothing wrong with simple lyrics and music, but we need a bit of simple and depth in the mix.

Personally, I love world music and when Paton first told me about the idea of Story I got very excited. I imagined a mix of Sting and Paul Simon and perhaps a bit of 80’s Peter Gabriel all thrown into the mix. I think a Gabriel influence is definitely evident on this album.

I’ve been wanting to experiment with different musical styles from all over the world in worship for ages myself, but just have never quite had the resources. So I was very stoked when someone else echoed my heart in this respect.

Track one on the album sees the popular author Brian Mclaren narrate and sing over the famous Irish traditional hymn “Be Thou My Vision.” He is joined by a choir, a child, and a number of other singers. It opens up the theme of the album nicely and has some wonderful violins and bongo rhythms, and what sounds like sitar, amidst some great arrangements; but it is not a very strong song in my opinion. We’ll get to the theme of the album when we discuss the lyrical content below.

Track two is great. The song features the Xhosa traditional bow player Madosini. Right from the beginning anyone who loves world music will be hooked from an instrumentation point of view. When listening on headphones there’s a great eclectic African mix on this song that I really enjoyed, with some choir coming in at the end. The song really shines at the end with great arrangements.

Aumen (track three) has a fantastic electronica arrangement at about 2:15 minutes in, with the song having built up to this point. The vocals are great from this point as well with really enjoyable sitar solos coming in a little later. The song builds up nicely and continues to surprise as it goes. I’m not a fan of the narration a little later though.

Track four, “Be Still”, is probably my least favourite track but it mixes nicely into track five. Track five, “Held”, is pretty average in my opinion, until about 2:40 minutes in when a beautiful classic guitar solo reminiscent of something we’d hear from Sting shines through. It could have actually gone on a little longer it’s that enjoyable!

Track six sees a change of pace. The song is best described as a world-music electronica dance piece. The melody on this one is really great and the African vocals are fantastic, alongside the inclusion of a host of different instruments. I’m sure there’s a vuvuzela in there somewhere. Paton was having fun with this song. The song reminds me of Goldfish in some ways.

The pace slows down with track seven, “Instrument”, which sounds like a medieval tune. It’s nice and would do if one is in the mood for it.

“Meditation with Mechtild”, which is track eight, has some wonderful synthesisers and sound effects (even birds in the background) alongside a wonderful mandolin (I’m sure it’s a mandolin) piece that repeats over the track again and again. Here we meet some ethereal planes and the song does well in that respect. It mixes wonderfully into track nine, “In All Things”. One doesn’t pick up that these are two separate tracks on the CD until the last track comes up.

“In All Things” sees a change of pace but continues in a similar vein with surprising arrangements. The song is sung in English, Afrikaans and Xhosa – a nice touch. From about 3:05 minutes in the song surprises with a change of rhythm completely and incorporates some medditeranean vibes. I really enjoy this about it.

“Bigsmall”, the last track of the album, is probably the weakest of the album, with more Brian Mclaren narration at the end. It closes the album nicely from a theme point of view but I wasn’t too stoked about it in many other respects.

I’ve praised the instrumentation on Story and looked at each song separately. I need to obviously say something about the vocals. The fact of the matter is the vocals are not stand-out amazing; but the idea of the album is more to express than impress, in my opinion, and I appreciate that from an artistic and musical point of view very much.

Now, onto the theme and lyrical content. A review needs to be as objective as possible and lyrics are as important to an album as everything else. John Mayer’s new album Battle Studies, for instance, irritates from a lyrical point of view and drags down the album a great deal. Since Story is said to be a Christian album – and a worship one to boot – I need to keep this in mind when reviewing the album.

Story aims to be more ‘earthy’ in its worship than ‘heavenly’ – which means that its trying to get away from the ‘ethereal plain’ of a lot of worship music. I love the idea and musically this comes across.

The album is very syncretistic in its musical content and in its lyrical content this is also the case. The issue is that this is worship, and that involves theology; the problem is that when theology gets syncretistic it gets controversial, and Story is no exception.

Obviously, with having Mclaren open the album, Christians who know anything about him need to be prepared for a little bit of syncretism. Although Mclaren has often claimed he is not syncretistic, Story is, and this makes it difficult for the standard run-of-the-mill Christian to feel comfortable worshipping to certain songs. In particular, “Aumen” and the meditation with Mechtild spring to mind. Although your standard run-of-the-mill Christian (which I admit is a pretty general term and really doesn’t explain much) probably wouldn’t be interested in this album anyway.

When it comes to worship I’ll usually spin some Matt Redman on my Ubuntu Rhythmbox who I know is usually going to belt out some heart-felt tunes with great theology. His new album “We Shall Not Be Shaken” is really good, for interest sake.

I also think David Crowder Band’s “A Collision” is fantastic; pity American audiences didn’t take to it too well.

But I do usually struggle to find anything in worship music that is different. Redman gets my vote due to his heart and theology, and some great tunes; other guys get no votes as there appears to be little heart, cheesy theology (to put it simply) and bubblegum tunes that you’ll be sick of in a week. Hillsongs United can give you goosebumps, sure, but very few songs last longer than a few months. However, we still sing “Better is One Day” (Matt Redman) at my church and that song is really old now.

What do I think of Story with regards to all this? Well, the tunes are certainly not congregational, but that’s OK I think (it doesn’t always have to be). The album sure has heart, but I’m not too keen on the theology.

But even if I was ok with some of the theology presented I still think the lyrics could have been much better. Lyrics are where I struggle the most in music writing, so I don’t think I’m one to talk when looking at my own skill in this; but I know what is good, and The Sout Project can do better.

Overall, could I worship with Story? No. That’s because of my own theological take on things. Do I enjoy it? Yes. It certainly is a great debut, musically, and fits my world-music tastes in a wonderful way. One or two tracks may even work really well on an African/Electronica/Eccentric Putamayo album of some sort, which is a great compliment as far as I’m concerned.

From a purely sound point of view, Story sounds much better on a set of headphones than it does going through most of the sound systems I used, except for a good hi-fi. I think the mix is done nicely but the mastering might be the real problem here. A good mastering would have given the album the boost it needs to stand out a little more. From the credits it looks like the album was mastered using Pro-Tools and, while this gives a fairly OK master, it doesn’t give it the edge a mastering technician would be able to give it. Mastering is expensive, though, and this is an independent undertaking – something that must be kept in mind.

Conclusion? A great debut with wonderful world music, simply beautiful instrumentation and excellent arrangements. However, the vocals and the lyrics need improving and the mastering is something that should be considered for future installments.

As far as the packaging goes, Story looks great and has some great style and artwork. I’m not too much of a fan of the picture montage inside, but everything else about the packaging conveys the theme and is very creative and original. I really liked it. So well done Sout, hoping to see a follow up come out of this.

See www.soutproject.net for more details about the album.