Loneliness of Failure

I’ve said in the past, I might even have written it, that writing is a lonely business. I was wrong.

Writing is solitary, not lonely. When I sit at my computer, or even pick up a pen, I am transported somewhere, whether in time or place. Sometimes I cry as I type, sometimes I laugh, always I am engaged. The characters become real – their loves, their lives, their dreams, their idiosyncrasies. The hours fly by and, if I am in the house on my own, I might miss coffee, lunch and tea though, it must be said, rarely do I miss a glass of wine. But by that time the sun has set and I am nudged to rejoin the real world by the arrival of darkness and sometimes Bonnie, our deaf cat, yowling to be fed.

My solitariness is a privilege. Granted with grace by my husband as I spend day after day in my imagination and on my computer. And when the first draft is complete, I go back and attempt to fill the pages with SPICE. An acronym coined by my first publisher, Jo Parfitt of Summertime Publishing http://www.summertimepublishing.com. SPICE is what fills the writing with Specifics, Place, Incident, Characters and that most important of condiments, Emotion. SPICE is what makes the reader want, need, to turn the page – to read until dawn.

Initial edits are then made and, as the wait for comments from Beta readers stretches into weeks, I begin another story. I put that new world down to return to the novel that has filled my life for months and months. A rewrite follows, which is never a chore because I am once again embroiled in the lives of my characters. I delete. I add. I edit. I tweak until even I recognize it is time to let go. For now.

Filled with hope, I think of the words of Iranian-American young adult author, Tahereh Mafi, “Hope. It’s a fresh rain, a whispered promise, a cloudless sky, the perfect punctuation mark at the end of a sentence,” then I send the manuscript out in its search for a literary agent. That in itself is a job. 

Each agent requires systematic analysis into their likes and dislikes, their ‘wants’ and not ‘interested ins’. As I troll through pages of names I recognize my many flaws. No, I am not drawing on a tragic background as I weave my tales. No, I’m not part of the LGBTQ community. No, I’m not black, though a large part of my life has been spent in Africa. No, I’m not brown, though another chunk of years was spent in Singapore, Malaysia and Thailand. No, technically I don’t live in England, though it is my birth country and my father was British and part of my heart is embedded in the rolling Dorset hills, and in pre-COVID days I travelled there regularly. No, I don’t live in Australia but I spent seven years at boarding school in Armidale, New South Wales, and my mother was Australian …. and a large part of my heart is there too – but I’ve left slivers of heart in all the places I have lived. No, technically I’m not American though I am a citizen. No, I’m not from the Caribbean but I currently live there. Yes, I write English English but hey, I can adapt.

The pundits say write what you know. 

So what am I? What do I know?

I am a global nomad. I know the joys and challenges of relocating around the world. Of the isolation, tinged with excitement, of being the new arrival, again. Of living a sometimes disconnected life. And of feeling the agonies of guilt when we aren’t present for final moments, or weddings or births and birthdays. Of knowing the importance of saying good goodbyes in order to welcome the hello, the ‘mahnin, the sawadee-ka, the selemat pagi of a new country. Those are the emotions I draw on, those elements of spice that come from living and working in different countries and cultures, of learning new histories. That combined with a wondering, and wandering, imagination is what goes into my writing.

Novelist W. Somerset Maugham said, “There are three rules for writing the novel. Unfortunately, no one knows what they are.” I suppose the closest thing to a rule is the axiom most writers live by – ‘show, don’t tell’. But aren’t rules made to be broken? There really are times when ‘tell’ is the only option, and please excuse the following example, but sometimes an apple is just an apple. Sure, there are variations in colour, size and texture but there seems little need to describe the orb that falls from trees.

Christian Nestell Bovee, C N, to his pals, was an epigrammatic New York City writer who said, “There is probably no hell for authors in the next world – they suffer so much from critics and publishers in this one.” 

Whilst I don’t suffer from writing, and nor do I consider it a lonely occupation, I can state that waiting for agent responses is harrowing. And believe me when I say, once received, rejection is the loneliest business. Sympathy, and sometimes empathy, from friends and fellow writers eases the sting of rejection and, despite agent’s letters assuring hope may be found elsewhere but ‘this book is not for me,’ the failure is a most lonely affair. 

It is a jolt to the heart, a dart speared into the imagination, and all we can do is wallow for a sentence, maybe a paragraph then write on and think of Sylvia Plath’s admonition, “The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt.”

Hope once again accompanies our solitary days.

Seduction Comes in Many Forms

Writing is a lonely business.

A thick outer skin must be ordered – I believe they are available online – and worn so the writer doesn’t disappear into a tightly wrapped ball of fibres, which can later unravel into the distance hauling away what little snippets of self-confidence have been painstakingly garnered through the occasional success.

Pitching brilliant ideas to magazines is a thankless task often shot down by breathtaking silence from editors. We shake our phone, switch our computer on and off, in the vain hope the longed for acceptance and promise of small monetary gain has merely disappeared into that great universe called the ether. But no, the phone is working, so too the computer – every email from that online site from which you so rashly bought two years ago is managing to escape the junk box.

For those of us trying our hands at longer pieces – a book for instance – rejection from literary agents becomes a way of life and we really do grow an extra epidermis. We nod and smile wanly when our well-meaning friends trot out J K Rowling, again.

In need of moral support recently, I wasted hours but eventually came across a wonderful piece which cheered me no end. Did you know, for instance, that Agatha Christie had five years of rejection? The Da Vinci Code, two years. Fireburn, my manuscript is not a thriller, but I found the following critique of John le Carré’s The Spy Who Came in From the Cold of utmost comfort, “He hasn’t got any future.” Mary Higgins Clark, J G Ballard, Stephen King and many other now respected authors have received numerous dismissals. And whilst I don’t put myself in their elevated ranks, their perseverance and self-belief does provide an inkling of hope.

Why do I need hope? Well, I almost blew it. Only time will tell. An email arrived from a relatively new, small press chosen because it was young and, I hoped, hungry. Keen to make a name. Eager to do the best for both me and themselves. I read those magic words – we want more. And then seven – count them – seven days later another email appeared saying they were interested. A flurry of further communication, culminating in a phone call, and then, and then, the moment when the contract lands with a ping.

The cork is popped. Texts to loyal readers of both early and later versions of my book, three years in the making, are sent with exultant responses of the ‘told you so’ type. And then, and then, you actually open the contractual attachment and the fizz goes flat.

Having been verbally assured of the stringency of editing – both content and copy – you find the contract is full of typos and inconsistencies. A cobbled together document, which would ensure any lawyer worth his fee slit his throat rather than let out it the door.

The bubbles have truly fizzled. And those little inconsistencies tamped down during the phone call merge to create a cacophonous roar. You have been seduced.

No, let’s be honest! I was seduced. Seduced by the thought of a publisher who promised marketing to all and sundry – here and abroad. Foreign rights – no problem. Film rights – of course. I was already sashaying along the red carpet – a yellow dress, I thought – as actors clamored to praise the role I had written for them.

The harsh hand of reality grabbed my throat on the seventh or eighth reading of the contract. How could I sign with a company who didn’t care about their own words, let alone mine? So yesterday I wrote thanking them for their interest and time, and closed that portal.

Now, I shall pull on my newly-bought skin and head back to the computer screen to scroll through pages of literary agents and publishers.

There must be one out there who might be interested in a book called Fireburn!