Trust me, I’m a doctor……..

I’ve been thinking a lot about genre and my synopsis, mainly because I have to write a query letter! I’m sure about the genre, it’s fiction (obviously) but the synopsis took a little more time. I had the help of a writing group to craft and assess the first version. Then, when I read it, it had been developed so much that it didn’t really reflect what the book was about. The synopsis I have sent out with my submission is a final revision, one that allows the central premise of the book to shine through.

As well as adventure, mystery and excitement in the plotting, the main character is just an ordinary person. She’s not even that nice, chirpy or in a love triangle and she doesn’t have a female best friend to unload on. So she is quite ‘unsympathetic‘ and flat – at the beginning of the book. But not entirely.

Although she’s a career woman who has conflict with her mother, she is vulnerable. She seeks solace on her own in the tube station where she can listen to her themed thoughts that she shares with no one. She is in love, but wary. Although she is grown, she still relies on her childhood memories. Much of my academic and psychological work is about dialectics, and Jinny’s character in Life: Immaterial is an example of how saturation of the self can in itself oppress. To be transformed one must first be somewhere at the negative end on the desperation/happiness dialectic axis.

So she may not be skipping up the high Street with a branded shopping bag but she is living life. Gradually she uncovers the existence of a woman who lived in parallel, some one she despises and ignores, sure the feeling is mutual. Her mother is her nemesis, in death, but also her eventual saviour.

In tandem with a raft of articles about what the ‘mother’ role should include, including the whole argument around Julia Meyerson’s book ‘Lost Child’, in the national press, my novel outlines expectations and the ‘shoulds‘ that resonate with lots of seasoned mothers everywhere.

Readings of the book so far have had mixed reactions. Most beta readers have enjoyed it and realised that Jinny’s ‘flatness’ is a metaphor for her oppression. A few readers, however, have kicked up a fuss and insisted that Jinny is not like a woman; how could a mother not like her children and a woman despise her own mother? How could she be so emotionless in the face of death? How could anyone by sympathetic to such a character?

Well, as a psychologist in addition to a writer, I wrote this book from the point of view of someone who has an insight into human behaviour and how people construct their identity. Refusing to believe that someone can behave in a certain way is akin to denial and adherence to stereotype, both associated with fear, repression and conformity. I have to warn you that plain old Jinny has a dark secret that isn’t so pretty and at the end of the day she isn’t perhaps as flat as she is multi-faceted. But she still doesn’t go shopping! The main theme from readers has been resonation.

So, off go my manuscripts to carefully selected agents – those who appear to not be so conformist and willing to be open to my professional life merging with my fiction writing – who will hopefully sign me up and read the rest of my work! Trust me, I’m a doctor!