There is a little secret at the heart of British publishing.
Actually, it isn't much of a secret.
Everyone knows it.
The problem is that nobody in London seems particularly interested in admitting it.
If you are a writer from the North, you can write your backside off, produce a manuscript that could knock the socks off a donkey, and still find yourself staring at the literary equivalent of a velvet rope.
On the other side of that rope are the agents. The publishers. The literary tastemakers. The people who apparently know what Britain wants to read because they had coffee in Bloomsbury on Tuesday afternoon.
They have their offices. Their little lunches. Their literary festivals. Their networking events. Their carefully cultivated circles. And, apparently, somewhere along the way, they acquired the extraordinary ability to determine whether somebody else has written a good book.
This is where the Northern writer enters the story. Usually from several hundred miles away. And usually without an invitation.
Welcome to London. Mind the gatekeepers.
There is something wonderfully British about the publishing establishment. It likes to pretend that literature is a meritocracy. Send us your manuscript, it says. Tell us your story. Show us what you've got. And then, apparently, wait patiently while your manuscript disappears into the great London publishing sausage machine.
Nobody will tell you precisely what happens inside. Perhaps there is a large room somewhere containing thousands of manuscripts. Perhaps there are enormous leather chairs. Perhaps a group of people wearing expensive spectacles sit around discussing whether a book possesses sufficient "commercial potential".
Perhaps somebody says: "I really loved the voice, but I'm not sure we know how to position it."
That sentence alone should probably be banned. Because what does it actually mean? It means somebody in London didn't quite understand what you were doing. And rather than admit that, the writer gets told that the book doesn't fit the market.
The market. That mysterious creature which apparently lives somewhere between a spreadsheet and a canapé.
The Northern problem
The Northern writer has another disadvantage. They are Northern.
This shouldn't matter. It shouldn't matter whether you live in Manchester, Leeds, Sheffield, Newcastle, Hull, Liverpool, Bradford, Sunderland or some tiny village that Google Maps struggles to locate. A good book is a good book.
Except that the literary establishment has a remarkable tendency to discover geography when it suits them. Suddenly your novel isn't a novel. It's a Northern novel. Your characters aren't characters. They're Northern characters. Your humour isn't humour. It's Northern humour. Your accent isn't an accent. Apparently it's a marketing consideration.
Imagine doing that to London. Imagine telling a London writer: "We love the manuscript, but we're concerned that readers outside London may find the setting a little niche."
They'd probably laugh you out of the office. Yet a Northern writer can spend their entire life surrounded by millions of people and still be treated as though they have written a book in ancient Sumerian.
The jumped-up literary aristocracy
And then there are the agents. Ah, the agents. The gatekeepers of the gatekeepers. The people who can apparently transform a manuscript into a career — provided, of course, that they decide the manuscript is worthy of being transformed.
Some of them seem to have developed a peculiar belief that writers should be grateful simply to have their attention. There is something almost comical about it. A writer may have spent five years writing a book. Five years. Five years of early mornings, late nights, rejection, rewriting, doubt and bloody-minded persistence. And then an agent spends approximately four minutes reading the submission before deciding that it isn't for them.
Fair enough. That's their job. But somehow the writer is left feeling as though they have just applied for membership of an exclusive London club and been informed that their shoes aren't sufficiently polished.
Perhaps that is because publishing has forgotten something. The writer is not the supplicant.
Without writers, there is no publishing industry. No manuscripts. No books. No advances. No awards. No literary lunches. No festivals. No agents telling everybody how passionate they are about discovering new voices.
Nothing.
The entire bloody industry begins with somebody, somewhere, sitting down and writing. And quite a lot of those people live north of Watford.
What the North has that London can't manufacture
The North doesn't need to manufacture authenticity. It has it. It doesn't need somebody in a glass London office to invent a "gritty Northern voice". We've already got voices.
We've got people who have lived through things. People who understand humour that doesn't need explaining. People who can make a character come alive without giving them a postcode and three pages of metropolitan angst. We've got stories that haven't been polished until every rough edge has disappeared.
We've got working-class stories. Family stories. Industrial stories. Stories about unemployment, ambition, failure, love, ageing, poverty, friendship, resentment, community and bloody-minded survival. And we've got writers who can tell them.
What we don't necessarily have is a seat at the table. And perhaps that's the bit that needs changing. Not the writers. The table.
Stop asking Northern writers to become Londoners
Perhaps the greatest insult is the unspoken suggestion that success requires assimilation. Move south. Go to the right events. Meet the right people. Learn the language. Learn how to network. Learn how to describe your manuscript in the approved terminology. Learn what "commercial" means. Learn what "voice" means. Learn when a manuscript is "high concept".
Learn how to smile when somebody who has never lived anywhere near your world tells you that your story doesn't feel authentic. And whatever you do, don't sound too Northern. God forbid.
Because the moment a Northern writer becomes successful, the establishment suddenly discovers that Northern voices are wonderful. Awards are handed out. Interviews appear. The writer is celebrated as an exciting new voice from the North. Everyone claps. And then the publishing industry goes back to London to find the next exciting new voice.
It would be funny if it weren't so bloody frustrating.
The North isn't waiting for permission
There is a danger, of course, in spending too much time complaining about London. Because the North has something much more useful than resentment. It has writers. It has readers. It has independent publishers. It has literary organisations. It has communities. And, increasingly, it has writers who simply don't give a damn whether some London literary grandee approves of them.
That might ultimately be the answer. Stop asking. Stop begging for permission. Stop believing that a rejection from a London agent is a verdict on your ability to write. It isn't. It's one person's decision.
Perhaps eventually the publishing establishment will work that out. Perhaps it won't.
Either way, the Northern writer will keep writing. Because that is what writers do. They write. They write when somebody tells them the market isn't ready. They write when somebody doesn't understand their voice. They write when an agent sends another polite rejection. They write when the literary establishment looks down its nose. And they write when nobody is looking.
So let the London clique have its lunches. Let it have its networking evenings. Let it congratulate itself on discovering another writer who already sounds exactly like everybody else.
Up here, we've got work to do. We've got stories to tell. And we're not waiting for London to tell us we're allowed to tell them.