Moving On

'Sometimes letting things go is an act of far greater power than defending or hanging on.'

Eckhart Tolle

My new novel has been launched, school holidays are almost over and now it's time to move on, to once again seek a sense of steadiness, and to find a way of settling back into routine and fill the sudden empty space that has appeared in my life. But there's a winding down that needs to happen first, a letting go and a reconnecting with life. Launching a book into the world is not as straight forward as most people might imagine. Yes, there's the pure joy of completion, the celebration of all that has made this moment possible, but underlying that is the lingering fear of how the book will be received and a strange grief associated with its release. Publishing a book is akin to sending a grown child out into the world. There are many mixed emotions: reluctance, pride, sadness, fear, relief and joy. So inevitably the period of time around publication is an emotional roller coaster.

It's also difficult to mark the exact moment of publication. Is it the letter of acceptance from a publisher, the signing of a contract, the receipt of an advance? Is it the completion of a final edit and the knowledge that it's no longer possible to change a single word? Is it the first sight of the book cover design, or the moment we first hold the book in our hands, feeling the strange sensation that it is no longer ours? Or then again, is it the special moment we see the book in the shops, actually there, stocked and visible to the rest of the world? Does it lie in that terrible waiting time when we wonder how our book is being received and if there will be any reviews or interviews? Or is it when we invite our friends to celebrate and help us to launch our book into the world? I think it's all of these moments, each of which carries significant and often complicated emotions.

For me the letter of acceptance represents the purest, least complicated of these stages. It is pure joy. This is the moment that a great burden lifts from my shoulders and it's also the moment that holds the greatest potential, because for the briefest of times the book can and might be anything; doubt, worry and disappointment have not found their way in to sully the purity of possibility. The book launch is more complicated because unless you are one of those very few authors whose books are published with great hype and publicity, there is already the fear that your book might be overlooked, that it might fall between the cracks and miss its narrow window of opportunity. Despite this, or perhaps because of this, the book launch is an important ritual. It is symbolic. A chance to give a blessing and a parting kiss to a book, and of course it's an opportunity to celebrate, before re-immersing oneself into the solitary world of the next book. But most importantly of all it is a chance to gather friends and well wishers, to fill a space with good will and to launch a book that carries that same good will with it out into the world.

In Bird by Bird, Anne Lamott writes about being published and the upheaval, confusion and disappointments it inevitably brings for most of us. The anxious waiting for something to happen, for reviews, interviews, invitations and royalties. The hope that this time it will be different, that this time the publisher will invest their money and time in creating hype around the book. But the most interesting story Lamott tells is what she learned when one of her books did do well and she found herself caught up in all the attention. Seeking peace but unable to come back down from the excitement, she asked advice from a priest, who told her. 'The world can't give us peace. We can only find it in our hearts. . . but the good news is that by the same token, the world can't take it away.'

Flight has not been published with hype but it has been launched with an enormous amount of good will and that means more than bells and ribbons. No doubt there will be reviews and so far there have been a couple of interviews. I don't know what the reviews will be like. Gathering Storm received many, mostly glowing reviews but Flight is different. It isn't a safe book, or one that can be easily categorised. One of the reasons why I have found it so difficult to find publishers is because my writing has always bridged the commercial and the literary, so is not easy to market. I can only trust that Flight will build its readership and I hope it will do so by finding its way into the hearts and minds of its readers. I can offer support, speak for it when I am invited, but essentially, like a grown child, it is on its own now. For as Kahlil Gibran wrote in his poem, On Children

'You children are not your children,

they are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself.

They come through you but not from you,

And though they are with you yet they belong not to you. . .

. . . You are the bows from which your children

as living arrows are sent forth.'

All I can do now is give Flight my blessings and let it go. And the secret of doing this successfully is to immerse myself deeply into another project. The sequel! Already I can feel it seeking my attention, tantalising me once more with the prospect of the unknown. . .

Copyright (c) 2012 by Rosie Dub. All rights reserved. You may translate, link to or quote this article, in its entirety, as long as you include the author name and a working link back to this website:http://writeonthefringes.blogspot.co.uk/

Looking Back

'Accept whatever comes to you woven in the pattern of your destiny, for what could more aptly fit your needs.'

Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

It strikes me as strange that in the week that my second novel is published I'm musing on the long and decidedly bumpy road to this point, so bumpy in fact that my husband suggested I must have done something awful in a past life to gather so much bad karma. To be fair, there were many pieces of good fortune along the way to lure me on: grants, residencies, the publication of short stories and non fiction pieces. But always the novel eluded me. It took me twelve years to find a publisher for my first novel (actually my second) and in that time and even since then, I have come to know the tone and tenor of every form of rejection, from the blank silence that is never filled so you wait each day for a response, not even knowing if your manuscript has been received, to the glowing personal phone call - 'This is an extraordinary novel, perfect in every sense, but I'm afraid I can't publish it. . .' In between these extremes are a vast array of styles: the blank 'with compliments' slip; the pre-written standard note; and the hand written personalised note, its words scrutinised over and over for any subtext. Aside from the waiting and the silences, the worst for me was the one that began – 'Do not despair. . .'

My first novel, Nowhere Man (still unpublished) found me an agent and a ream of rejections. Most publishers loved it or admired it (or so they said) but no one would publish it on the grounds that it was terribly bleak and would only work as a second novel. I set to work on a new novel and Gathering Storm was finally completed at a time when memoir was at the height of fashion and fiction was at its lowest point in history. Consequently, although it was appropriate for a first novel, all it received were flattering and often elaborate rejection letters. In the end, despite their tone or their word count, rejection letters are still rejections.

Some time before Gathering Storm found a publisher, my eldest daughter gave me a magnet that says in big bold letters, NEVER NEVER NEVER GIVE UP. It still sits on my filing cabinet in my study and over the years has proved to be a most useful piece of advice. Ironically though, despite the fridge magnet admonishing me to 'never give up', it was only when I made the decision to 'give up', that my novel was published. For some time I had felt a growing tension between my need to find more work, my family and my own writing. Perhaps I was simply discovering the truth behind the old adage, 'two's company, three's a crowd'. Something had to give. Rejections are not easy to stomach at the best of times and despite the fact that I felt writing was my path in life, I also felt that I simply couldn't take any more rejections. I felt beaten down by them and bitter that the beauty of the creative process was being overwhelmed by the ugly realities of a market driven world. It was also hard for my husband and children to watch my frustration and frequent despair. All this was compounded by the fact that my agent ran out of publishers to send my novel to and set it aside.

Much to their astonishment, I announced to my family that I was giving up writing. With that decision came a sense of letting go as I took my attention away from rejections and simply accepted where I found myself. Not long after that the little miracles began. First, a creative writing student of mine who was gifted with a strong intuitive ability, unexpectedly announced that my novel (called at that time Lucky Road) had not found a publisher because I needed to change its title. I took little notice of this, but that evening mentioned it to my husband, who immediately suggested, Gathering Storm. I will never forget the feeling of rightness that came over me when I heard that title. The next day a friend mentioned to me that a new publisher had joined Penguin. I emailed my agent to suggest that we try one more time, and within weeks I had an enthusiastic offer of publication and importantly, a passport to keep writing.

Gathering Storm was reasonably successful; it sold well, gained critical acclaim and was published in translation in the Netherlands. On that basis, I simply assumed that publishing the next novel would be straight forward. I was wrong. Flight was too different from my previous novel and didn't fit with the direction in which my publisher wanted me to go. It was rejected and I found myself floundering once again. It's always harder to go through something a second time, particularly when it is unexpected. I battled with myself. Should I write what was expected of me or should I follow my heart? This was a particularly difficult decision at the time, with a building global economic crisis and a publishing industry in flux. In the end I had no choice, my heart won but it meant another bombardment of rejection slips and the onset of a deep-rooted weariness that came close to stopping me from writing again. It was a publisher at HarperCollins who finally rescued me and for that I will be eternally grateful. There is nothing more special than when someone really 'gets' your novel, and she 'got' Flight. She was patient too, waiting as I honed the novel to its final form and trusting that I would do it well. The journey since then has been smooth but I won't make the mistake again of assuming that it will always be this way. The wheel of fortune turns and there is nothing we can do to stop it.

So what have I learned from this? Paradoxically, I have learned not to give up but also to let go. And I have learned that above and beyond outcomes, the importance of writing lies in the process itself, something that is difficult to remember when writing and the need for an income become entwined as mine has for some time. During those years of rejections I edited and assessed other people's manuscripts, mentored a good number of people and taught many creative writing workshops and courses. I still do. It has been a great privilege to teach and to work with aspiring writers. In that time I have been constantly touched by people's faith in me. I have learned a lot about myself and about the creative process, which no doubt has informed my own work and made me a better and more courageous writer. I have learned patience, how to savor the journey of writing and not reach out impatiently for the destination. And hopefully I have helped some writers to find their voices. Looking back over these years I see that though I often felt in limbo, actually there was good reason for fate to unfold in this way. Now, given the opportunity, I wouldn't change anything. Perhaps that's the greatest lesson of all.

Copyright (c) 2012 by Rosie Dub. All rights reserved. You may translate, link to or quote this article, in its entirety, as long as you include the author name and a working link back to this website:http://writeonthefringes.blogspot.co.uk/