story arc – Mick Canning

Yeah, the book’s out. I’ve gone through the motions, but at the moment I feel I don’t really care what happens to the thing. I feel flat. Is this normal? I can’t remember if I’ve felt this way after publishing previous books. Perhaps it’s because it took so long this time around. I love the process of writing but the marketing sucks. I hate the feeling I’m pressurising people into buying something. Partly, I think, it’s a typically English sort of thing – I feel really embarrassed about self-promotion, about blowing my own trumpet. It’s ‘not what we do’.

Except, of course, we do. That’s just a caricature, really, although inevitably some of us do fit into that description. Some of this feeling I think is wanting to get on with a new project. A need to move on and explore something different. I’ve lived with the damned thing for so long, thought about it, talked about it, agonised over it, I just want to get stuck into something different! With no distractions.

Don’t get me wrong; I’m proud of the book. I’m pleased with how it turned out. The characters, the story arc…but I do hate the promotion. I suppose it’s a particularly personal thing; I was asked if I would do a book launch, to which I replied no, I wouldn’t. I don’t like reading in public, I wouldn’t really want to do a question and answer interview. That’s the introvert in me. But if a few people get to read it, and if they get something from it, then I guess I’ll be pleased. I know that doesn’t seem like much of a return for ten years’ work, but there you go.

But I find I’m writing notes frantically, and I’ve begun a small project, a poem, or perhaps short poem cycle, that I’ve had in mind for a while. And the notes will either end up as ‘zine articles, or even another novel.

Maybe both. Who can say?

One of the things about growing…older, let’s say…and I’m not saying it’s a good thing or a bad thing, is the growing realisation that we’re never going to live in that place that we are convinced is perfect for us, or have the day to day lifestyle that is everything we want.

One consolation for the writer, even if it’s rather a shallow consolation, is the opportunity to write these places and lifestyles for ourselves. For the last year or so, nearly all my creative writing has been rather experimental, which is one reason I’ve not put much up on here. Rather than focusing on writing the complexities of a story arc, I have been very much concerned with the character of the characters I have written, and possibly even more concerned with the environment they occupy.

In a way, then, I’m exploring different versions of myself – although that, surely, is what all writers do anyway? – and it is instructive how much all of these versions have in common. For anyone who knows me, the information that these scenes involve almost nothing of town or city should come as little surprise. But it’s a learning process, a personal learning process. And even the photos I’ve chosen to accompany this post serve to reinforce what I already know about myself.

And the other strand that occurred to me as I thought about all this, is how it has brought home to me that the priority in my writing – my absolute, number one priority – is that first and foremost I am writing for myself. Whatever I write has to please a rather demanding reader; myself. And if that means my writing is even less ‘commercial’ than it was before, then so be it.

Strangely, this seems to have removed the pressure of time. I’ve always ended a writing day either pleased with the amount I’ve written or berating myself for not having written more. As if that was the sole measure of how successful or productive my day had been! Now, though, writing just for myself, success can be equated with how good I feel the output is; and by ‘good’ I mean quality (as defined by me, for me). So even a few lines that work well may be a good day’s work. I think this time pressure, this fixation with writing a certain amount each day, is a purely commercial pressure; an I-need-to-finish-another-book thing.

So goodbye to that. It’s not for me.