Is there such a thing as 'too much' writing? (LINK)
December 24th 2007 22:45
I’m starting this blog and the new year with a new book deal on the table. Hallelujah. If I could get my aching body, with my prolapsed L5 S1 disc to manifest them, I’d be doing cartwheels. Clicking my heels. High-fiving. Wolf-whistling. This is what author’s live for. It’s what we sweat out blood and tears for. This is book number eight, and let me say this – I won’t ever get blasé about an actual offer (which means a modest advance), even though one cannot pay rent in Sydney nor live with any kind of comfort above the poverty line if one is relying on the kind of book advance you get when you are not JK Rowling nor Jonathan Safran Foer but just some hardly-known author who’s hoping to earn out her advance so that her publisher doesn’t put her in the ‘loser’ basket next time round.
My novel, Things Without A Name is due out in May 2008. I knew I was taking a punt in moving from non-fiction (which is a much better seller than fiction) to fiction, but the narrator’s voice just popped into my head one day and I sat down and wrote six chapters without stopping for a toilet break.
But see, I finished writing that book several months ago. While my publisher is doing page layouts, covers, proof-reading and readers copies, my role, together with all the thrill that accompanied that book’s creation – bar a bit of marketing when the book is released - is over.
So I began on a new book. I had a proposal and eight chapters ready three months later which I sent to my agent who sent it to my publisher. Hence the new offer, which has come with a slight sting in its tail - my publisher wants to talk about the ‘pace’ of my writing. It seems I have produced this new material with indecent haste. While publishers want their authors to continue to produce, they don’t want a book a year. In this industry, you have to allow the body of your last book to get cold in the grave before you start procreating the next one. Unless you’re Jodi Picoult. Unless you write under a pseudonym. It’s called over-exposure. Publishers want readers to salivate for an author’s new book. To champ at the bit. Anticipation is a state of arousal that works just as well in book-selling as it does in the bedroom. But here’s the thing – given that I am not qualified to replace faulty geysers, nor remove tumours what am I supposed to do once I’ve finished writing a book? I mean, isn’t writing what writers do?
The problem with finishing a book (this one sucked eighteen months of my soul from waking to sleep) is that the high of completion is swiftly followed by what I guess would be the bi-polar equivalent of a devastating depression after a gloriously manic episode. Zed, my hubby, who is the fiercest supporter of what he believes will be my inevitable rise to fame and accompanying fortune, anticipates these valleys of self-pity the way he does visits to the dentist. He treads around me with a mixture of trepidation and barely disguised annoyance. After all, I am the one ‘living the dream.’ He’s stuck in a nine-to-five job. Surely just knowing that I am living this life should be enough to put a smile on my face?
The truth is, that for me, there is nothing more delirious than being captivated by a book, being consumed by finessing characters, planning the story-telling process, structuring the revelations to create the most abundant reading experience for your audience. But having lived between the covers of a book-in-the-making for all that time and suddenly having it whipped away for ‘production’ leaves one bereft. I have to fill that space as quickly as I can with a new project lest I feel empty-nested and goddamned lonely which tends to manifest in my transformation into, in Zed’s adoring terms, ‘a bitch from hell.’
Partly to contain my enthusiasm and slow down the pace of production, I’m taking up blogging. On this site, I’ll share with you the highs and lows of yet another year of a writing life, despite the lure of a ‘real job’ that pays a real salary.
When I’m down to baked beans on toast, I hope you’ll remind me that I am ‘living the dream,’ even if that dream, while feeding the soul, is oblivious to the exigencies of feeding the kids. And this time next year, when my new book is all written and I’m down to collecting 20 cent pieces to get my daily coffee, I’ll re-evaluate whether the uncertainties of this craft are integral to what makes me feel alive or just a design defect, a peculiar form of creative insanity.
Please feel free to suggest any specific topics about the writing process you’d like me to cover in this blog, and I’ll offer you what I know, thinly disguised as my opinion. Otherwise I hope to keep you amused and maybe even inspired to keep writing.
See you all in 2008.
My novel, Things Without A Name is due out in May 2008. I knew I was taking a punt in moving from non-fiction (which is a much better seller than fiction) to fiction, but the narrator’s voice just popped into my head one day and I sat down and wrote six chapters without stopping for a toilet break.
But see, I finished writing that book several months ago. While my publisher is doing page layouts, covers, proof-reading and readers copies, my role, together with all the thrill that accompanied that book’s creation – bar a bit of marketing when the book is released - is over.
So I began on a new book. I had a proposal and eight chapters ready three months later which I sent to my agent who sent it to my publisher. Hence the new offer, which has come with a slight sting in its tail - my publisher wants to talk about the ‘pace’ of my writing. It seems I have produced this new material with indecent haste. While publishers want their authors to continue to produce, they don’t want a book a year. In this industry, you have to allow the body of your last book to get cold in the grave before you start procreating the next one. Unless you’re Jodi Picoult. Unless you write under a pseudonym. It’s called over-exposure. Publishers want readers to salivate for an author’s new book. To champ at the bit. Anticipation is a state of arousal that works just as well in book-selling as it does in the bedroom. But here’s the thing – given that I am not qualified to replace faulty geysers, nor remove tumours what am I supposed to do once I’ve finished writing a book? I mean, isn’t writing what writers do?
The problem with finishing a book (this one sucked eighteen months of my soul from waking to sleep) is that the high of completion is swiftly followed by what I guess would be the bi-polar equivalent of a devastating depression after a gloriously manic episode. Zed, my hubby, who is the fiercest supporter of what he believes will be my inevitable rise to fame and accompanying fortune, anticipates these valleys of self-pity the way he does visits to the dentist. He treads around me with a mixture of trepidation and barely disguised annoyance. After all, I am the one ‘living the dream.’ He’s stuck in a nine-to-five job. Surely just knowing that I am living this life should be enough to put a smile on my face?
The truth is, that for me, there is nothing more delirious than being captivated by a book, being consumed by finessing characters, planning the story-telling process, structuring the revelations to create the most abundant reading experience for your audience. But having lived between the covers of a book-in-the-making for all that time and suddenly having it whipped away for ‘production’ leaves one bereft. I have to fill that space as quickly as I can with a new project lest I feel empty-nested and goddamned lonely which tends to manifest in my transformation into, in Zed’s adoring terms, ‘a bitch from hell.’
Partly to contain my enthusiasm and slow down the pace of production, I’m taking up blogging. On this site, I’ll share with you the highs and lows of yet another year of a writing life, despite the lure of a ‘real job’ that pays a real salary.
When I’m down to baked beans on toast, I hope you’ll remind me that I am ‘living the dream,’ even if that dream, while feeding the soul, is oblivious to the exigencies of feeding the kids. And this time next year, when my new book is all written and I’m down to collecting 20 cent pieces to get my daily coffee, I’ll re-evaluate whether the uncertainties of this craft are integral to what makes me feel alive or just a design defect, a peculiar form of creative insanity.
Please feel free to suggest any specific topics about the writing process you’d like me to cover in this blog, and I’ll offer you what I know, thinly disguised as my opinion. Otherwise I hope to keep you amused and maybe even inspired to keep writing.
See you all in 2008.
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Comment by Mrs M
Mum's Word
Am I right in assuming you are the author of Secret Mother's Business?
I was at the taping of Shelly Horton's pilot episode last year where you were one of her guests. I really enjoyed that interview.
Admittedly I haven't read the book yet....I have 18 on my bookshelf that I have to read before I'm allowed to buy anymore....but my friend has a copy and she thought it was great. I've read a few excerpts while I've been babysitting her kids.
She's a woman who didn't quite know what hit her when she became a mum.
Oh and I also read your article in Sydney's Child. The future conversation you will have with your daughter about South Africa. It was heartbreaking to read.
I look forward to reading your blog. The trials and tribulations of real life published author.
Love & stuff
Mrs M