The perils of success
There’s little preparation offered to the average writer in terms of what happens when things go right. Nobody much talks about how to deal with the offer to publish your book, how you’re going to feel if you win a big prize, and what it means to be heralded as a local, or even national success.
On the other hand, there’s a massive amount of information out there on how to deal with failure. There are blogs devoted to literary failure, Literary Rejections on Display being perhaps the best and most balanced, there are books about how to cope with the constant pain and peril of being a writer who is rejected, refused and reviled at every turn, and yet whose unpublished (dare I suggest, unpublishable?) prose must continue to flow.
What you are almost never told about is the pain of succeeding.
What happens when you win, and realise that your success is the failure of people you like and admire, often, in fact, people very close to you, because writers tend to congregate around competitions like animals around a waterhole. Even worse, when you are shortlisted and have to wait to hear, and endure a month of wondering if you are the ‘winner’ who will walk away with the big prize – the one that would clear your overdraft and have agents beating a path to your door, or a ‘runner up’ who will get nothing but the pleasure of applauding the winner as they walk to the stage to pick up their prize. Worse still, when you are shortlisted and wait to hear and then finally, you’re told that this year they aren’t awarding a prize to any of you – because actually, none of you are good enough.
Virginia Woolf walked into a river with stones in her pockets. I suspect this last scenario is the one that could send many of us to our gardens to find the right rocks …
Que sera, se-bloody-ra.
I’m about to throw my rocks, rather than myself, into the sea off Brighton and buy a great big double hot chocolate with cream instead. Sometimes, you have to celebrate your failures and mourn your successes, and today is one of those days.
6 Comments
TitaniaWrites
5th February 2008I’m so sorry, Kay, I know what you are referring to and know I would be feeling exactly how you are feeling. Please take some joy from the fact that you were shortlisted, which is a wonderful achievement… I personally think this was handled very very badly, and won’t be submitting again. Who would submit to a comp that pulls this kind of stunt?
Zen of Writing
5th February 2008It seems to me that a shortlist is a list of the stories that *are* good enough to win the prize, and the only task remaining is to decide which is the best. Why choose a “shortlist” at all, otherwise?
I’m with you as far the rocks, but for throwing, not for weighing ourselves down.
Ann
Vanessa G
5th February 2008I believe all those shortlisted are now to have the prize divided equally. King Solomon is at work.
Many congrats.
Anonymous
6th February 2008Damn shame; sorry about this Kay [I’ve picked the meaning up from the comments]. Speaking with my business hat on, professionalism seems to often be missing from the publishing world, which can thus be its own worse enemy.
Mark Hubbard
Jim Murdoch
6th February 2008I have to say I have mixed feelings about this. IF what they’re saying is true then fair enough I suppose – it’s their money – and I wish the judges on the Turner Prize would take heed, BUT when you know one of the struggling authors who could buy a heckuvalotta great big double hot chocolates with cream with the money it’s a different thing. I’ve been the best of a bad lot before (top of the year for Applied Mechanics in 1974) and to this day I find little joy in the fact. I don’t even have the copy of 24 Carat Purple I bought with the prize money. But it still doesn’t change the fact that I did the best.
Nik's Blog
6th February 2008Gah! What an arse of a situation. I’ve not much to say other than that hot choc better be a really nice one.
Nik