Mmmmmmm BOP! - 16th June 2010

I have deliberated long and hard about writing this. I have thought about the high chance of public ridicule. I have remembered the days that generated the photo above, when my friends at Uni discovered the truth about my murky past as…..gulp….yes I’m going to say it…...a Hanson Fan.

It all happened on Saturday night. I was home alone (a football widow), drinking wine, writing (yes, I have actually been writing during the football as promised!) and listening to a soundtrack of ancient mix tapes. And then it came on: Mmm Bop. Those angst ridden days of being thirteen and fancying semi-female looking boy children came flowing back and before I knew it I was bopping! Yes, it’s true. I confess it to you now. I bopped. I sang along loudly to the unintelligible lyrics and worst of all, I enjoyed it. If you leave right now, I understand. Thirteen years has done nothing to dilute the power of Mmm Bop.

And that, my friends, is my point (believe it or not I do have one besides publicly shaming myself). No one of our generation missed Mmm Bop. They can all still sing it (except for the aforementioned unintelligible verses – that is impossible for anyone but Hanson) and it was, and is, unique. That’s a pretty powerful debut. As I’m busy writing my debut novel this gave me (slightly drunken) food for thought. In the sea of unpublished manuscripts surely having that catchy idea for a debut is vitally important. I’ve heard of people not being published with a good book because it isn’t a suitable debut. It’s tough out there for unknowns. The idea has to stick with people long enough that they don’t put your book straight back down on the shelf and pick up another one, by an author they have heard of. And to even get to that stage an agent and publisher have to have found the idea interesting enough to even read the first few lines of your beautiful manuscript. The slush pile is high and that one little idea has to do a lot of climbing to get to the top of it.

This is where I get up and do a little dance because I think I have a really catchy idea. All I need to do now is write it in a powerful, exciting and skilful way. Easy right! Errrrrr….