Blood, sweat and words

I’ve wanted to be a writer my whole life. For most of that time, the title ‘writer’ was like a precious, sparkling trinket placed high upon the shelf, always out of reach of my grubby and clumsy hands and protected from my inquisitiveness. I wasn’t tall enough to reach the shelf and somehow felt that even if I could reach it, I wasn’t really supposed to touch. It was reserved for special people. Being a writer was a grown-up person’s business, a serious business for the cultured and sophisticated. I’ve since learned that being a writer is not necessarily that at all. It is sparkly and shiny and precious, but it’s also unbreakable and accessible by anyone with passion, sophisticated or not. But there is something else I have discovered about being a writer that, I have to be honest, surprised me more than a little. It’s plain hard work.

After only a few years of writing seriously, I have the utmost respect for career writers such as Wendy Orr, Sally Odgers, Sally Murphy and Gabrielle Wang who make their living from their love of words. And I am beginning to understand just how much energy, effort, determination and at times, despair is involved in this writing business.

I find the beginning of the writing process, that of generating ideas, relatively easy. Not once have I not had an idea just waiting for attention. In fact, one of my problems is sorting out the wheat from the chaff, the good ideas from the lame ones. Next comes a certain amount of work as, inevitably, to be a writer one must actually write. I used to be terrified by this stage, certain that every word I wrote was the wrong one and consequently never managed to get to the end of a first draft of anything longer than a picture book. I’m delighted to say that I have now overcome my first draft phobia. I have the commitment and determination and willingness to put in the hard yards and write my way to the end. But then I was hit with a rather big shock. Just when you think you’ve ‘finished’, that’s when the real hard work starts.

Taking a first draft and turning it into a publishable manuscript is sadly, not the realm of a magic wand but rather the arena of blood, sweat and words otherwise known as editing. Editing is still something I’m getting my head around and yet I firmly believe that this is the stage that is the defining moment for many writers: Do you have the stubbornness, the grit and the sheer will power to rewrite and rewrite and rewrite again, an infinite number of times, and honestly make your manuscript the best it can be? I’d like to think my answer was a resounding ‘Yes!’ but to be honest, I’m still finding out. I want to be like Wendy and Gabrielle and countless other Australian children’s authors whom I admire, but it’s not going to happen overnight or fall magically into my lap. I want an agent. I want a publishing home. But the only way that will happen is if I make the commitment to improve my skills, practise my craft and work hard. Really, really hard.

I never knew writing could be so gruelling but I also never knew it would make my heart sing. I’d best go and put my overalls on and get to it.

(But just so you know, I have put a Literary Agent on my Santa list, just in case there is a bit of magic involved afterall.)