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A Writer's Life
Inklings Interview by Joe Holler.
Q: With all the better paying, less competitive professions in the world, why write?
Couldn't you have started with an easier question? I ask myself this one often at the nadir of the night - usually when I hear of another
publishing merger or I get a rejection for a book I thought was a real winner! Why write when everyone in publishing - the publisher, the editor, the printer and even the cleaner - gets paid before you and
better than you?
I've always written. I wrote my first sickly sweet poem when I was about six and I just kept on going (and luckily improving) from
there. The more you write the more you want to write. It's an addiction really. I haven't watched more than 20 hours television a year for nearly a decade now. I'd rather
write. While my husband curls up by the fire to read a book, I'm pounding away at the computer keys, writing one. Other mothers play tennis, do lunch, and actually have time to get on top of the
housework. I drop the kids off at school and have the computer turned on, even before the front door is properly closed.
I've tried to give up. Really I have. Three times in the last decade I've looked at the struggling publishing industry and my
struggling bank account, and I've made a rational, solemn promise to stop writing and get a real job that pays properly and regularly. And then, an idea comes and I quickly scribble it down just in case,
and the next day I take it out and just play with it a bit, flesh it out, create a little quirk in that character, tighten up the weak bit of the plot... And suddenly the first draft is all there in your head
and it would be a shame not to write it down, and the second draft is really not that much more work and it's nearly finished, just a bit more polishing.....
Did I mention the word addiction?????
So here I am, still at the computer just me and my imagination and the daily doubts and fears and hopes and dreams.... Writing, always writing.
Q: How did you build your writing career? What should aspiring young writers do now to fulfill their dreams later?
I started my career as a teacher. (Actually, my first career was as a ski bum shuttling back and forth between the ski fields in Austria and
Australia, but that's a different story.) With the backstop of a regular teaching paycheck, I wrote freelance for national magazines and newspapers for the next eight years, building up a list of credits
and learning all about writing to very specific word lengths, cold calling editors and dealing with rejection slips. A great apprenticeship. In the school holidays when I had a big stretch of time, I
wrote a novel or two, a text book, and finally got one of those accepted. I stopped teaching when I fell pregnant with our first child and had visions of me writing the great Australian novel with the babe in
one arm and me hammering away on the computer with the other. That didn't happen. (Not enough sleep.) But as the kids got older, I got more time to write. I pitched my first books at
educational publishers who were hungry for material and got about 12 books in print that way. Later, with those credits behind me, I broke into the trade market, which of course is much higher profile and much
better paid - and nicer too!
Q. If you were to give a young writer aspiring to get published one piece of advice, what would you tell them?
The ONE piece of advice I would give someone starting out is to join a writing course - and it doesn't have to be a three year degree, some of the
best are short courses done at night after work. I did it the hard way, I taught myself my writing skills through trial and error - a very slow and painful process. Taking writing classes is a sure way to fast
track and they can save you huge time and heartbreak. A good course should be run by a published writer and should include marketing as 20% or more as part of their agenda. We have some great writers out there who
give up, not because they don't write well, but because they don't know how to market their work.
If I had time, I'd slip in a second suggestion and tell beginning writers to look first at educational publishers and pitch at them. It's
easier to break in that way - educational publishers publish a lot more books than trade publishers and it's a good way to start selling your work and your name.
Finally, I hate to sound pessimistic, but the reality is that very few writers can make a full time living at this job, so I feel obliged to slip in a
small warning that it usually isn't possible to give up your day job for the first ten years - and that means working double shift for a decade.
Of course, if you're the next Bryce Courtney, Paula Danziger or Judy Blume forget this advice and just go for it!
Q. What misconceptions, if any, did you have about the writing and publishing field did you have as an aspiring writer that
you've now learned through experience?
I certainly would never have become a writer if I'd known about the boring, endless administrivia which takes up at last 50% of every writer's
time. This includes negotiating contracts (three letters and five phone calls each time), checking royalty statements (often wrong, always indecipherable), proof reading pages, (mind boggling boring),
answering the phone, the fax, the email. 'Can you write the back of the book blurb, post me an author's photo, check these pages, write a media release, drive to the city for a radio
interview? Can you do it this week, today, yesterday?'
As a kid, I pictured writing as a career with me tucked away in a cosy room, creating wonderful books and publishers knocking on the door begging to
sell them. I still believed in the tooth fairy then too.
It was a shock to discover that marketing is a huge component of writing. You have to stay on top of who is publishing what, why and when in the book
world and be prepared to pick up the phone and cold sell your work to the editor at the other end of the line. I found that difficult at first, although I usually enjoy it now. I often wish I had enrolled in a
business course rather than a literature course at university, it would have prepared me much better for the cut and thrust of writing as a business.
Q. Dreamcatcher (On Different Shores in the USA) is a wonderful novel and I know it has won the Family award and was for short listed for the Environment Award. Did you have any trouble getting a publisher for the book?
I loved writing Dreamcatcher, it was certainly a book for the soul. The only real stumbling block for this novel was when I was trying to
sell it. I sent it to one of the big publishers here in Australia. They liked the book, but gave me the usual 'we're not ready to make a final decision' line for ages. Six months of
yes, no, maybe followed. I couldn't get a straight answer out of this editor. Finally, I got so annoyed with him I sent extracts of the novel to several publishing houses in New York. Three
weeks later I started getting faxes through from some of the top USA publishers all offering for the novel. In the end three of the biggest houses all bid for the book. I was amazed, totally hyped and
also opening bottles of champagne at 3.00 in the morning when all the faxes were coming through.
I wish all of my rejection/frustration writing stories had such a happy ending!
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