Literary Fiction Defined

Here's a nice essay by Andrew Nicoll, author of The Good Mayor: A miss, then a hit. The main point of the article is that his agent insisted that he pretend to be a woman while she was trying to sell his book. He did, but she failed. And then he got a deal after she dropped him and the book has done very well.

It was a learning process for him.

I found out that all serious literary fiction MUST be written in the continuous historic present. Throughout the whole story, nothing must happen – in fact there must be no story at all – and the whole thing must be written in a tone of unremitting gloom. My book isn't like that. It's got a beginning, a middle and an end and everything.