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First Timers

Chris Flynn October 13

The idea of lumping four random writers together on a festival panel, each of whom have written very different books, might seem like a recipe for disaster and confusion. And yet it happens at almost every festival in the country, year in, year out, when those books also happen to have been the first novels to be squeezed out of the writers’ laptops, wrung from the sweat of their brows and so on.

Thus I was participating chair for a motley collection of debut novelists at this year’s Melbourne Writer’s Festival on the event ‘Feels Like the First Time’. Alongside me were Ruby J. Murray, author of Running Dogs; Paul D. Carter, author of Vogel winner Eleven Seasons; and Alaska’s Eowyn Ivey, of international bestselling The Snow Child fame. The venue was packed, indicating a healthy level of interest in debut novels, and as is always the case with such events, many of those present would have a manuscript or two in progress themselves, and were there to pick up a few handy hints.

The somewhat odd mix of writers proved to be a boon, as it quickly became apparent that there is no clearly defined path to guaranteed publication for the budding first timer. Murray and Ivey both have agents, Carter and myself do not. Ivey’s incomplete manuscript was signed by an agent after her mother practically forced her to introduce herself to him at a writer’s conference in the United States. She was working in a bookstore at the time and was all too aware of how difficult it was to be published. Ivey had spent five years working on a manuscript that turned out to be hopeless, and ended up writing The Snow Child in a fast, one-year blur. The agent loved it and it has now been published in thirty-five different countries. Ivey did not rue the five years ‘lost’ on the previous story, as it became the perfect means to practice her narrative craft and work out what not to do.

‘Practice’ novels are commonly cited by first time authors, although Ruby Murray jumped straight in after writing journalism and short stories for most of her twenties. Murray worked for a development agency in Indonesia and was surprised how few Australian stories include our neighbour as a backdrop. There was so much going on in Jakarta when she was there, she could have filled several novels but getting a run on the board prior to her 30th birthday is an impressive feat. The average age of a first time author is allegedly forty-two, so Murray is well ahead of the curve.

She is the daughter of longtime YA author Kirsty Murray, who provided the choicest piece of advice of the day—‘there are no magic underpants’. Novels cannot write themselves and there is simply no avoiding the hard work and long hours (sometimes long years) required to put one together. Paul Carter’s manuscript was ten years in the making, and was inspired by the opening section of Don DeLillo’s Underworld. Carter wanted to write a sweeping, nebulous epic set in the world of AFL and frankly outlined the difficulties of what happens when you have a great idea but neither the experience nor the talent to bring it to life.

Eleven Seasons is a down to earth, eminently readable story of striving and failing to succeed in sport, so it was interesting to hear Carter speak so honestly of writing in the same vein. He vividly described the early years of the story’s progress, when he could picture it as perfectly formed in his mind, so tantalizingly close he could almost read the words, which is exactly what he was trying to do. When he transposed them to the page, the magic was often gone and he faced the age-old writer’s quandary of coming to terms with the fact he was working at the very limit of his ability, and that even then it might not be enough.

Fortunately for Carter (and readers) he kept pushing, and once Allen & Unwin got their hands on it, they pushed him much further than he thought was possible. In responding to their detailed editorial reports, Carter could feel the story that had eluded him for so long finally coming within his reach.


 

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