I’ve
just read On Gender and Writing, a selection of essays edited by
Michelene Wandor published in 1983. It
was a fascinating look back at the 1980s, the era of Spare Rib, of the
Gay Liberation Front, of earnest fiddling with language to incorporate male and
female – the awkward “he or she” and “s/he”. The book (discovered in an Amnesty
International bookshop) even smells of the 80s with its aroma of yellowing
pages and bleached cover.
One
essay in particular struck me: An Excerpt From My Unpublished Writing by
Nora Bartlett. In this essay, Bartlett describes how when she started writing
she had no idea that she would remain unpublished: “I didn’t set out to become
an unpublished writer, it just happened”. Writing her first novel, she never even
thought about being published – because it didn’t occur to her that she would
not be. This was not because she had a huge ego or a sense of entitlement: you
only have to read her essay to be certain of that. She genuinely believed that
the writing was the hardest part.
The
rejections came as a tremendous shock. And they hurt. They robbed her of her
confidence. She protected herself by developing a “comic public persona about
being an unpublished writer”. But it wasn’t long before this false self caused her
terrible harm. She began to think the work itself was comic. Then it wasn’t
comic any more. It was pathetic and contemptible, and so was she. Writing became
mixed up with shame, misery and self-doubt. How could any artist survive this?
The
essay chimed with so many of my own experiences. I remember how I started on my
first novel with the same idea that it was really all about the writing. I too
had a shock when the rejections started coming. It was compounded by the fact
that agents and publishers often told me they liked the work, pointed out its good
points, suggested improvements. Reading Bartlett’s essay, I recalled the telephone
conversations and meetings with agents who seemed on the brink of taking me on,
but who, at what seemed the last minute, declined – regretfully, encouragingly.
Send us your next book. I was grateful they took the trouble, truly I
was, but at the same time their comments puzzled me. If the work was good, why
didn’t they represent or publish it?
Swanning around with a glass of wine in one hand while signing books with the other seemed very attractive
Like
Bartlett, I suffered from what she called a “weird innocence”. This was partly
due to my inexperience – not only of the publishing industry, but of the world
in general. It seems incredible now, but in those days it wasn’t so easy to
find out how publishing works. There was no internet with gazillions of
websites and blogs on every aspect of the business from how to write a novel, approach agents and
assess a publishing contract to marketing your book. Indeed, authors then didn’t
seem to be called on to do much more than turn up for a few bookshop events
organised and paid for by someone else – swanning around with a glass of wine
in one hand while signing books with the other seemed very attractive. So there
was that practical difference, that more limited access to the knowledge and
tools you need to be an author.
But
tied up with that “weird innocence” was the sense that publishing was a small,
tightly-knit world, and that places in it were limited. There were, after all, only
so many publishing companies, so many literary agencies, so many printing presses,
so many distributors. How often did an agent say (and still say) “my list is
full” or “I’ve got enough stories about seventeenth-century detectives”. It’s
simply a matter of practicalities. In the same way, it follows that the number
of books that the market could realistically stand was limited too. They had to
be drip fed throughout what was called the “publishing year”. What’s more, it
took a long time to get a book out. It could be a year or more after signing a
contract before a book appeared in the bookshops.
So
reading Bartlett’s essay brought back that overwhelming sense of restriction,
of lack, of closure. Only so many people got to be writers, only so many books
got to be written. Of course, anyone could write in the sense that anyone could
sit down at a typewriter. But writing in the knowledge you will not have
readers beyond a few (hopefully) adoring friends and family feels, as Bartlett
suggests, like “the most incisive sort of literary criticism”. And it’s not
long before the pointlessness of it begins to eat away at your creativity, to
“cut off [your] connection with the story” with that jeering who’s going to
read it anyway voice in your head.
And
before you know it, you’re under that duvet with Bartlett, “mourning
confusedly” over the latest rejections and disappointments. How well I remember
how I felt when one of my novels was accepted by an independent publisher! It
was as if life was about to begin…and then disaster struck. There was a crash
in the book market which made it impossible for a small publishing business to
sustain its publishing programme. From a dozen or so titles a year, they went
down to four. My book would have to wait. And so it did, and so did I, for
three whole years, until I finally withdrew it. Nobody’s fault, and they said
they still wanted to publish the book. But I couldn’t live any longer with that
sense of constriction, of confinement, of block and bar. And although it was my
decision, I cried every day for a month.
But
by then everything had changed. In the 1980s Bartlett, me and writers like us
had to accept our status as unpublished authors. Now no one has to accept that
status. Self-publishing has opened up the world of publishing for just about
everyone. Gone are the days when writing was only for a lucky and all too often
privileged few, and gone too are the days when readers’ choices were limited to
those books promoted by the publishing industry in a market they controlled.
I’m
not thinking about the market here. I’m not so concerned about how we can all
make millions banging out our latest Kindle offering, manipulating the algorithms,
and maximising our SEOs. I’m thinking about what these changes mean for us as
writers, as creators, as artists. I’m thinking of the potential for artistic
growth.
Self-publishing
has empowered us to take control of our own careers, to identify and focus on our
niche markets, to focus if we choose on our art rather than what the market
dictates, to write in multiple genres if we like, to experiment, do something
unexpected, do something new. It’s empowered us to write. And it’s
offered readers a greater choice of books, and options about how to read those
books too.
Once
only so many people got to be writers, only so many books got to be written,
and we lived with restriction, lack, closure. Now all that’s been replaced by a
sense of freedom, abundance, openness, possibility. Yes, it’s also brought its
own challenges. Yes, some people still believe the myth that if you’re good enough,
you’ll get a publishing contract, so it follows that self-publishing is for
rubbish writers. And yes, readerships can be small and hard to find, breaking
even an impossible dream, and self-doubt never goes away. And in that, at
least, things may not have changed all that much for some of us since Nora
Bartlett wrote her essay. Creativity is still all too often mingled with shame,
misery and the constant battle against the destructive voices of both inner and
external critics. But Bartlett carried on in spite of it all “as though they didn’t
exist”. And so do I.
As
far as I can tell, though, Nora Bartlett never did get published. In 2007 novelist
Louise Doughty described An Excerpt From My Unpublished Writing as “the
best essay I have ever read on what it is like to be a new unpublished writer”
(The Daily Telegraph, 15 June 2007). So impressed was she, she often recommended
it to her creative writing students. I too recommend it to anyone interested in
being a writer.
And
I mourn the fact that all I’ve got to read of Nora Bartlett’s work is this
short piece. I feel sure she had something interesting to say, and that I’ve
been deprived of hearing it. If self-publishing had been available to her, hers
is a voice that would not have been silenced.
On Gender and Writing, Ed. Michelene Wandor
(London: Pandora Press, 1983)
The Dan Foster Mysteries
Available in paperback and ebook (The Fatal Coin ebook only)
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