Recognition or privacy - a choice? Calling all published authors.
I was awake during the wee smalls of this morning pondering;
night-dreaming if you will. What happens when? What happens on and
after that glorious day when you actually see your first project
come to fruition; have a book published, have a screenplay
produced. What are the consequences to your daily life; your
privacy? Oh I’m not talking tabloid fame or paparazzi intervention
here but what if one is shy by nature? Is it possible to still lead
a private, quiet life or should you expect to be forced or
encouraged into public speaking, public appearances, interviews
etc.? Are they part and parcel of being a successful writer or can
you opt out and still be successful? (I have a feeling that I know
the answer but wanted to ask the question anyway.) It is sometimes
easy to tell a published author from a ‘working-towards-it’ author
on TheCloud; they emit a certain confidence, certainty, stature,
not to say that others don’t on occasions of course. Please don’t
get me wrong, I’m not suggesting for one minute that 'the
published’ are cocky in any way, merely wonderfully self-assured.
It’s an enviable quality; I’m in awe. Does this air come from the
validation of publication or did you always possess a good degree
of confidence? Is it possible to juxtapose confidence in your
writing with timidity in oneself or is that only for us
split-personality, introvert/extrovert Geminis? In short, what can
we unassuming-type, waiting-in-the-wings writers expect? Was it
wonderful, unsettling or both when opportunity knocked?
(Personally, I feel both extraordinarily excited at the prospect
and scared s**tless. Time to get a grip perhaps?) Any insights
would be most welcome. Thanks.
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BUT, unless your first book takes off in the most extraordinary way, the amount that most new authors are asked to do is actually a tiny part of a writing life overall: I have plenty of friends who've done a couple of interviews with the local papesr, a couple of readings, a blog tour perhaps, and that's about it. The chief difficult I've experienced is that all those sorts of things need your energy to go outwards, whereas to write, your energy needs to go inwards, and every time I find reversing the polarity is much weirder and harder than I remember: it takes ages to come down after a gig, in other words. But the switch between teaching and writing is just as bad...
On the one hand, writers do tend to be people who have an introverted streak, and lots of us are different people on paper from how we appear in real life. But we are all in the business of communicating, and we do have the vast advantage over other people taking their firsts steps into a little bit of limelight, of being good with words. And one important thing to remember is that, on the whole, anyone interviewing you, or coming to a reading or whatever, is basically well-disposed to you. They're not trying to find the cracks in your armour or do you down; the basic deal is that you provide them with some copy to fill their programme/paper/festival, and they provide you with some positive exposure. A festival audience, for example, isn't like a theatre performance where the audience in some sense sits back and waits to be convinced: here, they want you to do well, they want to like you, they want the event that you're creating between you to be enjoyable...
I'd also say that it's probably much easier for anyone who's hung around on a writing forum and got used to talking writing, because most of what you'll be talking about are potted, straightened-out versions of 'What my book's about' which is the one essential sentence to work out and practice before hand, and variations on a theme of 'how I wrote my book'. You may not be a professional interviewee, but journalists/radio hosts etc. are professional interviewers, and entirely used to getting us amateurs to say things worth saying. And if a festival book you, then say that you'd like to have a chair, not do it on your own, and you're home and dry.
And the Society of Authors run half-day 'doing a reading' workshops, which are excellent confidence-boosters, and great if reading your work makes you want to die...
The truth is that features about the author tend to sell more books than reviews of the book itself and they're all looking for an interesting 'hook'. Mine were 'she wrote the whole thing in her pokey little council flat' (excuse me? that's my home you're talking about) and also focused on the time I lived in Grenada during the US invasion (but that was in the early 80s and completely unconnected to my books).
I realised I had no choice and had to bite the bullet if I wanted to give my books their best possible chance of being recognised. So I revealed far more than I was really comfortable with on my website on the grounds that at least that way I controlled the info.
Emma's so right. The skills it takes to write are very different from those required for self promotion. Before my first gigs, I was literally retching. It's a steep learning curve but I now do feel far more confident than I ever did prior to being published.
So, yes, getting my deal was both wonderful (better than that in truth) and unsettling (worse than that to be honest) but I wouldn't change it for the world.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture//3663891/The-Insider.html
That piece was hard to write, but the spike in the Amazon stats and website hits (not to mention a squabble about it in the Torygraph Letters page - result!) was my reward... It does get better as you have more books to talk about. And it's well worth thinking out a "non-fiction hook" for yourself, along with the fiction hook of 'what's your novel about', and working out a way in which which you can bear to talk about it, because every time you offer a journalist a good and easy story, they're unlikely to dig further or ask questions you don't have a neat, bearable answer to. Another reason for having a website with some good, easy stories ready to hand on it...
But I would say again, that as a proportion of your writing life it's tiny in terms of time, though not always energy. It was deeply odd, though, when I realised that for the first time ever, there were people who could have opinions about me - my writing, my self, my photo - who I didn't know. You do feel as if you're public fodder in that sense, even though there's nothing more unlikely than you ever finding papparazzi at your door. The first few times I came across a comment on a blog, however obscure, saying things like "I don't like the way Emma Darwin writes X: she's obviously trying to copy [book I haven't heard of]" I found it hard to feel myself judged by someone out there in the ether when it wasn't a reciprocal relationship. But you get used to it; nowadays I look on my one-star amazon reviews as a good laugh.
Emma and Debi, I also agree with what you both say. Publicity is now part of the package, whether we like it or not, and there are clauses in publishers' contracts to that effect. As Emma says, it would be hard to get a book deal without agreeing to do some publicity. But Kim, it's amazing what we can get used to, and you might even find (being a Gemini) that you enjoy it tremendously once you've got over your initial nerves. (That's what happened to this Gemini, at any rate.) It's all a question of practice, I think, and it's also a question of never letting yourself think 'Oh God, I'm talking to a room full of people who are hanging on my every word and I just know I'm going to make a fool of myself or run out of things to say.' So if you do a radio interview, you don't imagine all those listeners assessing you. Well, I don't, anyway. I just talk to the interviewer and do my best to make the conversation interesting and amusing.
And of course, the brutal fact is that so many books are being published each week that any publicity you are called on to do is often soon over because the sausage machine has rolled on and your book isn't new any longer.
One thing that is good to do, if you can nerve yourself to do it, is to talk to the staff in bookshops. If they have one of your books on the shelves, introduce yourself and offer to sign it. Smile. Be friendly. If they don't have your book on the shelves, introduce yourself. Smile. Be friendly. Maybe buy something. (But don't assume this is an automatic quid pro quo. It's not.) Accept that they may not want to stock your book for all sorts of valid reasons, but on the other hand… When I was promoting my latest book, I made up a little press pack to show my local bookshops - a bit of info about me, a list of my books and a jacket of my latest book. I was quaking in my boots outside the independent shop and persuading myself I could always do it another day, and then I took a deep breath and went inside. They have stocked my book ever since and have done well with it. The same is true of my local Waterstone's.
Thank you all so very much for your many inspirational comments; most informative and reassuring.
It never really occurred that you might be expected to dish the dirt; silly of me really. Plenty of material there perhaps? In optimistic readiness I shall put pen to paper and list my closeted skeletons in order of shockitude. (Yes I know, but it ought to be a word don’t you think?) It also hadn’t occurred that old job interview blagging techniques may come in handy again – I’ll dust them off if they are ever required.
Having returned from London on Tuesday after submitting my screenplay in a writers’ competition, (over ten years work for less than two hours screen time), the whole process hit home, hard. I was reminded of a line spoken by Harold Abrahams in Chariots of Fire; something along the lines of:
“I've known the fear of losing but now I am almost too frightened to win....”
It’s one of those innermost sentiments which has always stayed with me but has never seemed quite so poignant.
Another is: “If I can’t win, I won’t run” to which the reply came:
“If you don’t run, you can’t win.”
What judicious words from Colin Welland; pure genius. (Please forgive me if the quotations have any inaccuracies.)
To all those who have come out the other side and survived – kudos. I pray that those of us who remain hopefuls may one day join your happy throng.
Please excuse the self-encouragement part of this response - but, as we all know, it is a tough game and we need strong belief in ourselves and our work, in order to carry on.
This has been a fabulous theme. Very informative and clear. As usual, Spangles and Emma are precise, clear and helpful.
After being given the opportunity to speak to published authors from various genres at The Winchester Writers' Conference, I asked many questions about this very subject (including Sir Terry Pratchett who was fabulous, open and very very honest!). They were more than willing to talk about their own personal experiences, which all differed considerably though the theme running through remained the same.
Due to competition, you are pretty much expected to be a marketing machine (I was told), some publishers even asking authors to come up with marketing ideas / contacts / supporting groups or charities etc. In America it is even more prominent. I was told to blog / Twitter and network, network, network. If you want success, now more than ever, you have to work for it (unless you are Stephenie Meyer or J K Rowling though Jo did work hard to get where she is).
Obviously, I do not have an agent as yet, but i'm working on it, or a publishing deal, so I am going on advice and information from others only.
When I am a published author (as with many others out there, hence all of the blogs), I will go out of my way to help and advise other writers as I have been helped. If you are shy, im sure there would be plenty of people out there willing to help you, I know I would.
My problem is not that i'm shy (obviously) or afraid to talk to a crowded room etc (I worked in Sales and Marketing for six years and now have to stand up in front of heads / Governors etc and tell them what they can and cant spend etc) its that i say too much! I'm very honest about myself and have strong views on certain subjects. So, my long and boring "around the Wrekin" point I wish to make is, even those of us who are not shy or short of confidence still need to be wary about what we say and do.
This is a very happy scenario / situtation to find yourself in I think and this blog has made me feel really excited for the future, thank you x :)
I'm also a great believer that you CAN'T do everything that some author somewhere is doing really well with, so you might as well play to your strengths. I blogged about all this stuff a while back here:
http://emmadarwin.typepad.com/thisitchofwriting/2010/05/several-rabbits-at-once.html
The point I'm trying to make is that none of these things are my core activity, but all of these are things I'm capable of enjoying, and none of them take longer than the sum of the enjoyment and their usefulness deserves. When there's yet another guilt-inducing mention of what we all 'ought' to be doing, I now ask myself, 'But do I want to do that?' as well as, 'How likely is it to be useful?' Yes, the writing must come first and yes, sometimes it's very hard to change direction between the inwardness of writing and the outwardness of promotion. But, let's face it, being in touch with interesting people who do what you do, and others who are thrilled that you're a writer and you're talking to them, is pretty good too.
Thanks & Good luck Kim :)
Kiki, thank you for your good wishes and thank you Jill, Gerry, Emma, Tony, Spangles, Whisks, Debi and Cas for all of your splendid contributions.
We are not alone, people. Hopefuls unite!
When my brother was studying heraldry at school, there was a wicked rumour going around that suggested our line may be capable of being traced back to Sir Guy of Gisbourne, if he ever in fact existed. I think, though, that we may keep that little gem amongst ourselves?
Kim was originally a bloke's name, of course: relatively recent as a female one. See Kipling, et al.
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