End of the year looming. Taking stock. A year packed with interest on many fronts, but what about my writing?
On balance, a good year. My stint on Authonomy ended with a Gold Star in March. Not much recompense for the untold hours, days, weeks, months that were lost, never to be regained, but many good memories of my Autho period. Finding fellow writers, generous, helpful, supportive people, in the main, improving the book I posted on the site and certainly improving myself as a writer.
Post Authonomy, submitting my meagre effort to a regiment of agents and publishers chipped away at my fragile confidence and made me question on a daily basis why I put myself through this torture. Praise aplenty, but the end result was the same, still no Whitbread Prize nomination in sight, not even a request to switch on Christmas lights or open a supermarket.
I’m writing again, three projects under way, my manuscript is with a top agent, I started a blog, it’s all positive. I even ‘tweet’ occasionally, even though Twitter must be the most banal means of communication ever invented. I don’t, won’t, write ‘text-speak’ – if a sentence requires a semi-colon, it gets one, thereby condemning myself to mobile phone misery. So be it.
The latest venture, well advanced, is making my ‘old’ book, Burn, Baby, Burn, an e-book to be read on Kindle and the like. Quite a leap for a Luddite Grand master.
At this time, it’s also time to come clean. Okay, the last year has seen significant progress, but I’ve had a lot of help. Authonomy, the last couple of months in particular, was harrowing. My own stubborn nature didn’t help, determined to do everything the hard way, and there were more than a few ‘meltdowns’ where I was on the verge of giving up. Two people in particular kept me going, for the sake of it let’s call them Jane and Kim.
Bossy? Oh yes.
Nagging? Constantly.
Supportive and helpful? On an hourly basis.
Then there’s the wretched book. Harper Collins read it, liked some of it, didn’t really understand it, left me scratching my head, baffled and disenchanted. Cue another heroine – I’ll call her Poppet, daft name, but there you go! Poppet read the whole book, unlike Harper Collins, understood it, ditto, and gave me the best advice I’ve ever had. Lying through her teeth, she said she loved the book, told me to leave well alone, stop beating myself up – in short, ‘to thine own self be true.’
She’s still around, still a tower of strength along with Jane, Kim and many others I’ve met during the course of the year. Helping, cajoling, instilling belief, advising or just putting up with the nonsense I spout on a daily basis, they’re a fantastic support system.
Writers are a strange breed. Introspective at times, especially when the creative juices are flowing. We all need help and who better to give it than a fellow writer? I adore my fellow writers and have had the opportunity to meet many of them in 2010. Jane is as lovely in real life as I’d imagined her to be, lovely Raven, the mad-haired giggle factory that is Jackie, all enriched my life. In York I met Fred the brain surgeon, clever, witty Sandie and the amazing force of nature that is Bradley Wind. Recently, a red-letter day, meeting Gerry from Canada, one of the most talented writers I’ve ever come across. Daisy, fabulous Daisy, Dan the cleverest man in the world, it’s been a great year. Thank you all for enriching my life, helping me far more than I deserve, keeping me writing when my congenital laziness comes to the fore. You made 2010 a great year for me.
Only another writer understands the bleak landscape we’re constantly in. We paint the pages with vivid hues, but when we look up, the haze we gaze through is saturated with desperation. The road to heaven is paved with rejection notes. Each summit reveals yet another mountain to climb, we get weak, without the rope holding us all together, we’d all fall into obscurity.
Not on my watch!
xx
Why haven’t you been on Authors on Show yet? Would you like to be as I know I’d like you there. let me know if so as I have a space for February if you’d like it. xx
And I have to thank you for jumping on my book when I first came on Autho. If you and Jane hadn’t done that, I don’t know if I would have kept going on this crazy hamster wheel. I will be forever grateful for that support and encouragement.
Such a treat to meet you, too! And Miss Poppet is correct, always to thine ownself be true, and fuck the rest of it.
xxo
That’s the beauty of Authonomy, really: the people we meet. Here’s hoping 2011 (feels like science fiction) brings you that positive response from a publisher. And next time you’re in Oz, we must have beers.
The pleasure of the meet was all mine, Jake. Meeting Jane and yourself was one of the high points of my year in writing. (not much of a fan of the beer, but the company was great.) I must meet this poppet you speak so highly of. She sounds like a fantastic lady. Merry season. Rape the muse for what you can get, then chain her to a pole in your basement — it worked for me.
Get Burn, Baby, Burn out there. I’d love to have a copy sitting on my shelf. (well, it’s not a shelf so much as a mountain of paperbacks in one corner of a room in the basement, but yours will sit at the peak.)
Jake, it seems our paths went in reverse order (except for the great equalizer: the disappointment and disillusionment with editors, publishers and agents). I had already published on Kindle and other ebook platforms when I heard about authonomy, went on it, and out of the blue found a new rabbi who was really encouraging and endlessly supportive. That support came after my lowest moment, and I hope you can imagine what it meant to me. The kindness of strangers is one thing. The professional support of a fellow writer is perhaps even more precious to us writers. The process seems endless, the rewards very few, and yet we persevere. Thanks for taking me into your professional circle; too bad we have no little instruction book for all this, because the arbitrariness of it all can be devasting. But we soldier on. Thanks, Jake.
Lisa, I really appreciate your comments, thank you. I have benefited hugely from the support and encouragement of fellow writers; my ‘professional circle’ of trusted friends are a constant source of joy, so glad to see their influence is spreading ever wider.