PERSEVERANCE FURTHERS

Next month sees the release of my latest novel Bestial Burdens (Cephalopress). For many reasons, I’m incredibly excited about having a new book coming out. First and foremost, because I think it’s a great piece work. Then again, I would say that, I’m the author and naturally biased in such matters. But what perhaps gives me the greatest satisfaction in seeing Bestial Burdens finally hit the bookshelves – physical, virtual or otherwise – is that I actually wrote the book nine years ago.

     That’s right – nine long years between typing The End and seeing the book in print.

     By any standards, that’s a long time. In context, it took two years to build the Eiffel Tower, three years the Titanic (not that she lasted very long), ten years your average Pyramid (if that was heavily labour-intensive work) and twenty years, the Great Wall of China, all 13,000 miles of it.

      Very vividly (and not without a true sense of fondness), I remember working on the late drafts of the novel, in a quiet little cottage on the coast, refining the story, getting it down to the bare bones – or as Columbo used to say: “Just the facts, ma’am” – and thinking, with more and more conviction each day, that I’d written something quite unique, something, with a mix of sex and therapy, that would be a complete piece of piss, easy sell, to any agent or publisher I might happen to approach. In itself, the opening line should rightly have won any number of prestigious literary awards (who knows, it might still?):

When Lucas McGoldrick walked into my office, I had no idea he’d starred in infamous seventies porn film Animal Farm.

      Put simply, I thought, after much trial and a huge amount of rudimentary error, I’d finally found my voice, that I’d finally written my BREAKTHROUGH NOVEL.

    With great care, I crafted an eye-catching approach letter to literary agents. In all, I selected around 25, some of whom had requested full manuscripts before, some of whom I’d actually met face to face to discuss the possibility of taking me on as a client. I didn’t see that there could be any way that I wouldn’t be fighting off the great and the good amongst them with the literary equivalent of a shitty stick.

      Imagine my disappointment, my despair, when I received not one single full manuscript request, when each approach letter/email I sent out was summarily rejected – or ignored.

    Months passed, twelve of them, a year, two years, three…you get the picture. From time to time, I’d take the manuscript out again, read it, tweak a few things here and there, and send it off to an independent publisher, more in hope than any real conviction. And I guess there comes a time when you admit defeat to yourself, when you feel that this or that book or short story or poem just isn’t ever going to see the light of day, that – and this is of course the most soul-crushingly unwanted admission of all –it simply isn’t good enough to be published, full-stop.

    Around that time, I became interested (almost obsessively so) in the I Ching, the ancient book of changes. In terms of the publishing industry, with some pretty stunning failures already under my belt, I’d reached a point which is probably best described by that great Einstein quote (and forgive the paraphrase) – “Insanity is best defined by doing the same things over and over again, and expecting the same results”. And that’s what it felt like, holing myself up in a room for months on end, writing a book, sending it out to agents and publishers, and receiving blanket rejection slips.

    Hamsters on wheels make more real, tangible progress.

    Long story short. I changed tack. I started to consult the I Ching about every single facet of my life, not just my writing. If I had to make a choice, if something was bugging, me, I’d write it down, like a little piece of flash fiction in its own right, I’d toss the coins and build my hexagrams, I’d read the text and commentaries and, where possible (and often this went against my better judgement, against basic common garden common sense), I followed the advice.

     During this period, one phrase kept cropping up again and again and again – in truth, for someone like me, someone about as spiritual as a tin of economy dog food, it started to get on my tits – perseverance furthers.

      But, ultimately, it did, and I did – in terms of my writing – I persevered. Only I did so in a far more considered manner. In consulting the oracle, in getting things down on paper before rushing in like an idiot, I attained a new perspective, a new calm. I started to believe more and more in the act of writing itself and how much I was fascinated by it, how much I enjoyed sitting down each day and crafting sentence upon sentence, the sum parts of a story, something that hadn’t in that particular, specific form, unique to my eyes, , the filter that was and is and will always be my mind, existed before. And I found more truth in that than anything I’d ever put my faith into before.

      Perhaps there’s nothing particularly profound or inspiring about anything I did back then. If you love doing something – manually disconnecting nasal hairs, playing pick-up sticks with your arse-cheeks, writing a novel – you’ll carry on doing it no matter what. No matter how many houses you could redecorate with rejection slips. No matter how many people tell you that you’ll never produce anything of any worth or merit.

    And nine years later, on April 1^st of the 2020, Bestial Burdens will officially be released.  

Click on the link below to order your copy of the book:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/1650323808/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_bibl_vppi_i0