I Gave Up My Writing Career: What Am I Doing Here??

(I thought was DONE)

(A note to my subscribers: I am posting every Saturday, which is more than the every two weeks I used to do in my previous newsletter. Also, I’m turning on the Chat option, which you can access via the app or the browser. More about the whys and wherefores can be found here. You’ll get an automated email from Substack about it as well, inviting you to join the chat, but I thought I should also explain without bombarding your inboxes twice in one week when you are not used to receiving so much email from me.)

Yes, it’s true. I threw in the towel and gave up writing for publication about 15 years ago.

This did not come easy to me. I had considered myself a writer for my entire literate life. The first story I wrote was about a schoolyard bully being eaten by a monster. I was eight.

By 2004, I had achieved the dream: a two book contract with a New York publisher (Kensington) for Regency romances. That first book, “Dangerous to Know”, had its first draft one summer when I was 18. I have long lost count of how many times I completed full or partial drafts of that book, but that’s how I learned to write.

I reinvented myself with a pseudonym to gain another three book contract and a novella—

Sorry, we can we unpack that sentence for a second?

Reinvented myself? That’s how closely I identified with being a writer. It was my entire being (that wasn’t being an admin assistant or a spouse.) It was LIFE.

My author persona needed to be reinvented because the new line was quite different and I took the pseudonym route for, well, reasons. (Ok, it was erotic romance, a few steps above bodice-ripping. Sidebar: we’re not going that route here.)

The second part of that sentence: “… to gain another … contract”. The line I wrote for had ended (the reboot I was a part of didn’t thrive) and I wanted to keep writing for publication. I was willing to write anything.

Ok, back to the story.

My editor left the publisher (after not liking any of my proposals for the next contract round), the other editor I knew there died, and I no longer had a champion (except for a gal in Legal). Plus, I had run out of enthusiasm (and ideas) for the genre and didn’t want to write it any more. I could write it, but I no longer wanted to.

I went back to what I loved, historical romance with a fantasy element, but nobody was interested. I was tired. I really didn’t want to start all over again. I didn’t want to come up with another story and twist it to fit the publisher guidelines.

Or twist myself to fit the publisher guidelines.

I recalled that my goal had always been to become published. I had achieved that milestone. Did I want to keep reinventing myself, sorry, my author persona, in order to keep repeating that metric? Who doesn’t dream of being on the NYT Bestseller list, but at what cost? When it wasn’t the stories I wanted to write?

(And yes, since 18, I’ve wanted to write Regency romances, but other historical periods are of interest also. See, also Arthurian.)

Why didn’t I realise this sooner? Well, I am a little slow on the uptake when it comes to realignment nudges. I am trying to be better about that but progress has been slow.

It was hard to give up being a writer, who I was … never mind the endless questions from people asking me what I was writing, because that’s how they knew me too, and it was supposed to be a safe conversation starter.

Until it wasn’t.

I soon discovered I needed some sort of creative outlet. I turned to art journaling and then eventually, acrylic abstracts on large canvases.

I poured myself as well as paint onto the canvas, not stopping until a painting felt resolved. Story ideas still came, but I buried them in first layers of paintings and focused on art that was my response to the world around me, not made up worlds.

I would tell people (and myself), “I am not going to go back to writing novels ever again. I am done with that.”

Please ignore that giant purple tub filled with writing notes, character sheets and research. Yes, that one over there in the back corner of the garage, that I shipped across an ocean.

I tossed out so much stuff in preparing to move back to Australia, but those? Those I couldn’t give up for some reason.

I am an artist now. There are so many art supplies I want to play with, things I want to paint — and it is also like therapy for me too. I feel better, happier, when I paint.

And yet, here I am, on Substack, touting a serialized novel. The heck?

What am I doing back here?

No surprises, Project Starfish brought me back to writing, after I swore I was absolutely done with it.

And all because I wanted to justify buying a particular set of stationery supplies.

Yup.

The idea began as a mixed media journal (which I’m still doing) but soon ballooned into a full fledged plot. With sea dragons.

But I wasn’t a writer any more. I didn’t want to publish again.

In the meantime, writing sessions (a bit like coworking) had began in this contemplative community I belong to, called The Light House. It was a permission slip to write to play with words and ideas, no end goal in mind.

I decided I would join in “just to play” and followed the writing prompts. The prompt would be displayed and away we’d go for 20 minutes. They were led by Melanie Leavey (who is also here on Substack) and she created a wonderful space in which to play in.

Just for play, just for kicks.

For several months, I wrote for an hour on Sunday afternoons. Scenes from Project Starfish bubbled forth, alongside some very short fiction.

And it was fun. I fell into these worlds that fell out of my pen and I loved every minute of it.

I am playing, I would tell people. I’m not going back to a writing career. I am not going to make it work. Oh, no.

It grew and grew. It couldn’t really be a novel if the pages were hidden in between pages of a mixed media journal? Right? (It still will be.I am still tricking myself this way). “But how am I going to read it?” a German friend complained. If there’s only one copy, and it’s handwritten and in Australia. How will she read it?

Ah.

Well.

I’d already been reluctantly thinking about typing it up and “putting it out there”. Substack had been intriguing me as a possible new location for my artist email newsletter, so I’d been poking around in it, and well, here I am.

I’m a writer again and an artist (all the things!) and I am having a great time. (cue theme music for this missive¹) I haven’t stopped painting because of this new shift back to writing. There is a self portrait which fits how I see myself: a Renaissance woman, not being tied down to one niche.

In the works, by the way, is the opening snippet to the book, just to whet your appetite.

Are we having a good time?

PS. Here’s the theme song for this post:

1. theme songs for posts, why not? The video is directly above this footnote.