Marcus Zusak is the author of the best-selling novel, The Book Thief. To his amazement, it became a best-seller. Next it was turned into a film and the world seemed to be at his feet. So, feeling buoyed by success, he started on his next book. It didn’t work. He started again. And again.
For thirteen years, no matter how hard he tried, it didn’t work. Eventually, it did work. His new book Bridge of Clay has just been published. The other day I watched a TV interview with him, a modest guy who spoke about learning to live with failure, with hearing his publisher tell him maybe he should just accept that The Book Thief was his One Big Thing and there wouldn’t be anything more.
It’s good to think that you can come through that sense of overwhelming failure, of having hit the heights and come right down, and then to find a fresh version of your voice. I had a similar experience with my first book, though it certainly didn’t hit the giddy heights of The Book Thief. I went through many years trying to write another halfway decent book. I experienced plenty of failure.
But eventually I did manage to finish a book, and then another, and then another, and now I’m learning to publish them. I’m doing it myself—indie (independent) authors is what writers like me are called—because I don’t have the time or the patience any more to submit my work to publishing houses and wait … and wait … and wait. Indie publishing is something I never thought I’d do but now I’m doing it.
I have two goals in mind. One is just to have an audience for my work. It might turn out to be a handful of people or it might be more. I don’t know. My second goal is to sell enough copies to pay for what it costs me to publish them. Again, I have no idea if I’m going to achieve it.
Like many writers, I’m highly critical of my own work. I see faults in it that others might never see, and I anticipate others finding faults in it that I haven’t yet seen myself. A significant part of me would happily (or compulsively) keep on writing, and keep on fantasising about making a few dollars from my work, while never ever getting around to putting it out for people to read.
It’s pretty self-contradictory, isn’t it?
Or maybe not.
The traditional idea of the artist, or the writer, is someone labouring away in secret with the work under wraps until—presto—the magnificent final product is revealed to the gasping audience.
In his natty little book Show Your Work, Austin Kleon argues that the digital age has made this model outmoded. Instead, says Kleon, the artist can use the tools of social media to share her creative process.
By sharing her day-to-day process, the thing she really cares about—she can perform a unique bond with her audience.
According to Kleon, the problem for artists who grew up in the pre-digital era (people like me) is that
… this kind of openness and the potential vulnerability that goes along with sharing one’s process is a terrifying idea.
He’s not wrong.
And also, I don’t know exactly how to do it. There’s no road map other than an exhortation to share my process, how I go about it, and hopefully build connections by doing that. It’s an odd path for someone like me, who has a perfectionist streak, but I think I need to try it.
This post should probably have a cleverer ending than that but right now I can’t think of one and this is not supposed to be about perfection. So let’s see (me included) what I will come up with!
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