Sunday, June 7, 2015

The princess diaries

I finished writing the novel about the seal hunters on Australia Day. Bashing away at the laptop to strains of the national anthem and the hottest 100. (I never noticed I was a basher, a two finger basher at that, until someone mentioned it recently.) I didn't even know how it was going to end until about the last half an hour of writing. After five years I still couldn't work out how to resolve a story that never ended well in real life, into a balletic, pleasing finale. I am happy with the ending. It thrills me stupid and it bothers me a bit. These are both good things.

Anyway, despite the years and angst involved in writing this book, the text itself still wasn't very clean. There were narratorial glitches, the odd typo and point-of-view problems but I sent it off to my publisher anyway, because she wanted it and because I remembered her words from Salt Story days: 'Just get it off the desk and send it to me, Sarah.'

A month or so later, she said yes. And then she pitched it to the board of Fremantle Press and they said yes too.
Yessss!

The yesss feeling lasted all of about twenty four hours before I observed myself fall prey to the snark again. I've long known my susceptibility to anxiety and anticipation of non existing disaster scenarios. Normally I get through them with a kind of home bake CBT or writing cringe-worthy journal entries to get the shit off my liver. But the suicide of my friend in December and the consequent fallout seems to have dismantled my coping strategies and left them as a pile of bricks in the back yard. Despite my anxieties during the previous chaotic week, that disaster scenario bloody happened anyway.

 

So in April - it was April Fools Day actually - a euphoric twenty four hours of yesss via Fremantle Press was followed up immediately with all sorts of unmediated angsting. *The novel is not as good as Salt Story * It's a difficult bitch * People will compare it unfavourably to Salt because it's the only other comparison they have * It will get terrible reviews*
And the whole time I was looking at myself and thinking 'What's with this Sarah? This is what you've always wanted. C'mon. It's like getting signed up by a record company, for a second time.'

Sometimes, putting art into the public gaze feels like an act of baring your throat, giving everyone a meat cleaver and trying to look like you don't give a fuck. Most of the time I forget that people actually read my stuff - and that's quite a nice place to write, to communicate, to tell ripping yarns. Then I meet someone in the supermarket who's been reading A WineDark Sea (Shiiit!), or the book reviews come out (Shiiit!). For a first book, Salt Story was a huge success. The first print run sold out in eight weeks and it received great reviews in national newspapers and on the street ...

... so what am I whingeing about.
It's just bloody terrifying. Sometimes. It's about ego of course and of course it's about more than ego. It's thrilling as well. It was thrilling to finish the novel, sit back and think, 'I reckon this one is alright,' PoV problems and all. And now the editor and I  have nine months to turn something that is 'alright' into something that is beautiful.
Exiles (working title), my novel about the sealers and Aboriginal women who came to Albany in 1825, will be published in September 2016.



19 comments:

  1. From what I have heard, the second book is always a terrifying prospect for the author - how will it be compared to the first, etc. It would be strange if you did not have these worries. It's like when I help Green-Eyes calm down about writing a paper for her degree. She always thinks it is going to be a pile of shit, but it always turns out very well. She - as you will be pleased to hear - completely re-wrote all the stuff I spent two days writing for her, after she finally understood that she had to do it for herself.

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  2. Phrew, on several fronts: the first that I am not alone in these little terrors and secondly that Green Eyes got her paper done on her own!
    I always thought the 'difficult second book syndrome' was about the writing of it - that putting a lifetime of energy and inspiration into your first book could make writing the second one a more contrived process. Although that was true of these two, it's been a bit of a shock that DSBS extends beyond that to its publication and reception. Dammit.

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    1. I made it sound as if I knew what I was talking about - also on several fronts.

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    2. Once I write that difficult third book, all those worries will be over.

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  3. As a visual artist and the writer of 1 thesis I know this feeling. I remember walking around my PhD exhibition at Curtin in 2013 thinking: 'this is it, the pinnacle of my life. I will never do better than this'. That thought had a lot to do with the incredible venue, but also the fact that I was unlikely to ever put in 8 years of work for 1 outcome. The struggle showed in the work, it was warts and all, so even in that place it wasn't perfect. Which meant anything I did after it would probably be the same, but now I could relax a bit, have fun and play more. Which is what I have been doing. I no longer feel I have to prove myself - because I have done that. I do wonder what other people will think of my current work, but I have moved on. If they can't that's their problem.

    I know none of what I am saying will help your anxiety - you just need to work through it. It goes with the creative territory.

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  4. Oh yes, I know that, re your last sentence.
    I wasn't looking for soothing noises - and it is SO good to hear that others have the same process when it comes to putting their creative works out there. Thanks x

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  5. Hmmm. All this talk of performance anxiety is hitting uncomfortably close to home, for me, I'm afraid.

    Is the Exiles book related to the (defunct?) Exiles serial?

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  6. Do you have a creation ready for the world Alex?
    And no, it's not the same story, although they were combined once as an historical and contemporary narrative, until I threw the serial out and started publishing it here. I know it's confusing. Have to sort that one out.

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    1. Does that mean the serial may continue, or are you permanently finished with that? (Don't want to get my hopes up for nothing.)

      I've been trying to start an art blog for 18 months; and choked so badly that I've stopped drawing altogether.

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  7. Ahh bugger! Can't you just blog as Aunty Bulgaria from Wimbleton?

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    1. That was supposed to be the point of being Alex with no last name.

      No, I'm just going to have to grow a pair. … um, figuratively speaking.

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    2. It is terrifying - and like I wrote, it's not just the brittle ego thing. If it was just that, then plumbers and cashiers would suffer the same everyday. (Maybe they do, not sure but I do know that with most jobs, doing the best I can means I can walk away with a clear mind.) You have to bare your throat to create art but then putting it out there is something else entirely.

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  8. Huge news Sarah. Be happy with the congratulations, for now anyway.

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  9. Yes, it's pretty cool Ciaran. Thanks :~)

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  10. Re performance anxiety: As a younger person I was introverted (still am) and terrified of the public gaze. But I deliberately put myself out there time and time again so that I could overcome my fear. I still shake and sweat when I have to speak publicly but I seem to pull it off OK - even though at first my guts is churning.

    I think the biggest part of this is accepting we are all imperfect AND perfect at the same time - we all have the same fears - we are all human. I have had to work hard to forgive myself for not being perfect, but also realised that just because I am imperfect, I shouldn't stop sharing with the world. If people are mean it's their problem - people who dish out nasty criticism and comments are saying more about themselves than they are about you and what you have done. Maybe that's arrogant, but that knowledge empowers me.

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    1. I think there's two issues at play there Michelle, although they probably feed into each other most of the time. There's the fear of other people's expectations, which I'm guessing is the biggest problem for most people; and then there's the issue of meeting your own expectations, which is where I personally tend to fall down.

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    2. How I got over public stuff (actually I haven't. I still need an awful lot of deodorant to get through it) is to try and remember that people are not interested in me per se. What they want is the information I'm about to impart. This helps me separate my self from my product, so to speak.

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  11. Congrats, that is so awesome! Can't wait to read it - I still need to get my Salt Story copy signed too :-)

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