Browsing Tag

Noted Festival

Take four

15 May 2017

‘I have come to believe over and over again that what is most important to me must be spoken, made verbal and shared, even at the risk of having it bruised or misunderstood.’ Audre Lorde

This is what we writers do, in our private corners of solitude. We put words on the page that go out into the world and speak to readers. But a writer’s job also involves getting on a stage and speaking directly to those readers, trying to articulate the thinking behind the messy and elusive process of creating a work of fiction. It can be nerve-racking and exciting and stimulating. In the lead-up to an event I always feel anticipatory nerves, but once I’m on the stage I enjoy myself, and often come away feeling buoyant.

I’ve been part of four very varied events on writing and/or editing in recent weeks and I thought I’d share a little about the experience of each of them.

‘Animal Rights Writing’: Nigel Featherstone, Sam Vincent, Karen Viggers and Irma Gold

Most recently I was on an ‘Animal Rights Writing’ panel with Karen Viggers and Sam Vincent. I’ve never seen a panel programmed on this subject before. (Hit me up in the comments if you have, because it’s a topic I’d love to see discussed more.) This session was chaired by Nigel Featherstone who managed to expertly guide the discussion through our respective areas of interest. Our books deal with kangaroo culling (Karen, The Grass Castle), international whaling (Sam, Blood and Guts) and the exploitation of elephants for tourism (me, a children’s book, Seree’s Story, due out with Walker Books, and a work-in-progress novel, Rescuing Chang). Our conversation covered much ground, but, for me at least, the key idea that emerged was that conservation issues tend to be distilled into polarised positions which don’t necessarily reflect the complexities involved. Life is full of grey, and solutions are rarely of the black-and-white kind. Fortunately, writing can explore the grey. While this event delved into the darker side of humans’ impact on the world, it was a thoroughly stimulating and thought-provoking discussion. And as the icing on the cake, I returned home to an email from an audience member who felt moved to get in touch after hearing me speak about the devastating situation facing Asian elephants. With both my books yet to be released, I’m looking forward to many more conversations like this one.

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Noted: Ashley Thomson, Irma Gold, Alan Vaarwerk, Sian Campbell

As part of Noted Festival, I was on a panel with Alan Vaarwerk (Kill Your Darlings) and Sian Campbell (Scum Magazine), ‘Literally the Worst: Bad Writing and Badder Editing’, with Homer Editor Ashley Thomson chairing. I wasn’t keen on the title’s negative angle, but I guess a feisty premise draws the crowds, and the event was certainly packed. Fortunately the focus of discussion was productive, emphasising ways for writers to improve their craft. We also spoke about the hallmarks of good editing and when to identify ‘bad’ editing. In particular, I spoke about the need for editors to work with the author’s voice, not impose their own. Our own idiom is always what sounds ‘right’, so good editors learn to recognise their own preferences and then set them aside. They essentially become chameleons, taking on the colours of the manuscript in order to help the author make their work the very best it can be. (As you can see, Shauna O’Meara choose to illustrate this part of our conversation; my first time immortalised as a cartoon!) We spoke about a whole lot else besides and the event was podcasted here if you’d like to have a listen.

For the next two events I was the one in the interviewer’s hot seat. It’s such a responsibility being the interviewer. Over the years I’ve seen the way poor interviewers give authors no place to go and leave everyone feeling flat, and conversely the way brilliant interviewers draw the very best out of their subjects, gleaning new insights. Part of the skill is developing a rapport with the interviewees before hitting the stage, which is of course easier if you already know them. It’s also important to be super prepared but then be able to go with the flow on the day, so that the conversation evolves, rather than rigidly following a pre-existing set of questions.

It’s such a privilege chatting with other writers, and the in-conversation event with Marion Halligan and John Stokes about their lives together was one of the loveliest events I’ve been a part of. Marion and John are perhaps best described as Canberra literary royalty. They are a warm, generous and supportive presence in the local community, and our discussion reflected that. There was much laughter, but also tears. Both have written so movingly about grief and loss, and John’s reading of his prose poem about the death of Marion’s daughter, ‘Funeral Address for a Stepdaughter’, had the audience reaching for the tissues. Marion once wrote, ‘Grief does not dissipate, it is something that exists, and must be valued, even treasured.’ Wise words indeed. It was a rich and wonderful hour spent with two marvellous writers.

And finally, I interviewed Robyn Cadwallader about her stunning debut novel, The Anchoress, as part of Festival Muse. I wrote about some of our discussion here, so I won’t rehash it, but Robyn was a delight to interview—thoughtful, insightful and intelligent. Our discussion lingered in my mind long after the event was over.

Next up, I’m heading to Holy Trinity Primary School in my role as Ambassador for the ACT Chief Minister’s Reading Challenge. School visits are always heaps of fun, so I can’t wait to meet all those new little readers.

Whatevs: on writing rejection

7 May 2017

A ‘failed’ novelist went viral recently when she wrote about giving up writing after her two literary fiction manuscripts were rejected one after the other. The comments make for interesting reading and broadly fall into two camps. The first is advice to self-publish, which I disagree with. (Hold the hate mail and let me explain.) While certain genres can potentially do well (emphasis on potentially), self-published literary fiction sells poorly. So unless you’re happy being read only by family and friends, it’s not a great option. The second is empathy, based on recognition of the current publishing climate (more on that in a moment), and encouragement to continue regardless of her lack of success to date.

Eliza Henry-Jones

The fact is, behind any successful novelist you’ll find a bunch of rejected works. Before Eliza Henry-Jones published her debut novel, In the Quiet, she wrote ten manuscripts which were all rejected. But she persevered, and now her second book, Ache, is due out next month. ‘It took me ten years to get a publishing deal; ten manuscripts; rejections from nearly every publisher in Australia,’ Henry-Jones says. ‘Rejection can feel like a physical wound, it can stall you and hurt you and stop you in your tracks—but if you are able to frame it properly, it has the capacity to both steady you and focus you.’

So how to survive knock back after knock back? Common advice is to remember that it’s the work being rejected, not the individual, but that’s a fairly arbitrary distinction. Novels take years to complete, and require absolute investment, so rejection is never going to be easy to navigate. What’s more studies have shown that rejection activates the same areas of the brain as physical pain. As Isaac Asimov said, ‘Rejections slips, or form letters, however tactfully phrased, are lacerations of the soul, if not quite inventions of the devil.’ Yet every published author has been lacerated and pushed on. Henry-Jones says, ‘Rejection reminded me over and over that I loved writing. That there were reasons bigger than a career or money or recognition to keep hunching over my keyboard to write stories, one after the other.’

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Sylvia Plath is rejected by The New Yorker

The truth is, writing a book is hard. The process is messy and complicated and reaching the finish line is an achievement in itself. Sometimes a book is rejected because the work isn’t ready yet and needs further refining. Then it’s possible to reframe rejection as an opportunity. But sometimes it’s rejected because the work just hasn’t found the right publisher, or the industry has decided that this particular kind of book won’t sell enough copies, or any number of other seemingly random reasons. Dr Seuss was told that his work was ‘too different from other juveniles on the market to warrant its selling’. Stephen King’s Carrie was rejected by 30 publishers, with one telling him, ‘We are not interested in science fiction which deals with negative utopias. They do not sell.’ (It sold in the millions.) And Sylvia Plath received the following rejection: ‘There certainly isn’t enough genuine talent for us to take notice.’

Indeed history is littered with the rejection slips of now celebrated books. In other words, publishers get it wrong. All the time. There is nothing about publishing that even vaguely approaches an exact science. Despite the fact that sales and marketing now hold great sway in determining whether or not a book will make it past acquisitions, predicting what will and won’t sell is all just an educated guessing game.

Rebecca James recalls how her bestselling debut, Beautiful Malice, was ‘rejected so many times I lost count. It was rejected by literary agents and publishers. It was rejected because the characters were too young, because they were too old, because they were neither one nor the other.’ Eventually it netted a $1 million book deal and sold in 52 countries. ‘Amazing and wonderful things do happen,’ she concludes.

In short, rejection is part of the business of writing. Writers have to be simultaneously thin-skinned (to write) and thick-skinned (to publish). In a Writers on Writing podcast, author Lisa Cron (who has also worked in publishing) quotes the statistic that 96% of novels are rejected. She goes on to say: ‘[But] I was talking to my agent about it and we were going, that’s way too low a number, it’s actually more like 98% or 99% of novels are rejected.’

Depressing, right? All writers can do is continue to forge ahead in spite of it all. To write about the things that won’t let them go, and make the words the very best they can before sending them out. Saul Bellow says, rejections ‘teach a writer to rely on his own judgment and to say in his heart of hearts, To hell with you’. Or as the kids say these days, whatevs.

I hope that ‘failed’ novelist can get to the whatevs stage. It might just be her third book that makes it.

This post first appear on Noted Festival’s blog, NotedBook, here.