Rejection and musical inspiration

I’d sent a synopsis and first three chapters of my novel “A Prawn’s Heart is in in Head” to a small women’s publishing house in the US. They sent me an email saying they didn’t want to publish me and that I hadn’t sent enough postage, when I’d sent them NZ$50 in coupons, which is about three times the amount they quoted me in US$. I then had to go through the whole post office drama again to get $20 worth of more stamps. International reply coupons are a complete rip-off: somebody please invent a better system! No one in NZ seems to understand how they work; or rather, we do understand, but how are we supposed to know how much it costs to post something from another country?

I was waiting in the queue, praying not to get the horrible lady I had before. Luckily I didn’t, I got a nice young American man at the next counter instead, who was very helpful but also couldn’t work out how the vouchers correspond to stamps. I got the stamps and sent them off, and a few weeks later received that dreaded thing, a big padded envelope addresed to me in my own writing. Oh no, I know what THAT is… smells like rejection! If it costs me $70 per rejection, I hope I don’t get too many! Oh well, time to be brave, submit the novel somewhere else and venture into that tardis, the post office again…sigh…

It occured to me the other day that as well as humming the theme tune to “Henry and June” constantly to myself and wishing there was a soundtrack for the film, I could actually search the internet to try and find it. Honestly, what am I like! I can’t believe I didn’t think of it before, but then all this new-fangled technology is a bit alien to my real self which feels as though it belongs in the 1900s-1930s. So I searched that behemoth Medusa.com (as Alison Bechdel calls it) and lo and behold, there it was: Henry and June soundtrack CD: fantastic, amazing, incredible!

Of course, this means that I will have NO excuse not to continue my Anaïs chapter once I have that wonderful music. I did send a version of it to an anthology, but they haven’t told me yet if they want it or not. The thing is you can only submit the same story to one place at a time (at least, that’s my understanding), so it can take a long time for a story to be accepted. I actually have two short story versions of the Anaïs chapter, featuring different erm… different body parts, if that isn’t too polite to be understood… but it is essentially the same story, so I can’t send them both out. Which version should I send? And would it be better for me to enter it into a competition, or for an anthology? There is so much to decide! Deep breaths, calm thoughts, now what was that lovely tune again?

My novel flies to LA

I recently sent off a synopsis, letter and first three chapters of my novel, A Prawn’s Heart is in its Head, to a small publisher in LA. The letter to the publisher was the hardest: it took me days to write, edit, rewrite and re-edit. But on the big day (of postage), it was all worthwhile, as it was very exciting writing “Los Angeles, USA” on the envelope.

The post office lady wasn’t impressed, though. When I asked her, very politely, “How many international reply coupons do I need?” she shrugged her shoulders and said, “I don’t know.” “Approximately?” She rolled her eyes. “I don’t know how much it costs to send things from the States, do I?” So I bought the same number of coupons to match the postage from here, but somehow $20 in stamps equals $30 in coupons. $50! Gosh, that was a very expensive envelope. Oh well, I’ll have to think of it as an investment: let’s hope it yields results!

I’ve just finished reading Anaïs’s memoir “Henry and June”: fascinating and beautifully written, and very inspiring. I really like what I’ve written so far; I hope Anaïs would like it too.

Multiple submissions, and beginning a new novel

I saw the wonderful Elise at a party on Saturday, who made me promise, in front of witnesses, that I would send my novel, A Prawn’s Heart is in its Head, to five publishers by Wednesday. Five? But I was only sending it to one publisher at a time! (At the pathetic rate of about one a year.) But yes, I concede, it does make more sense to send multiple submissions. I also got told off for sending the novel to only one publisher at a time by my friend Jessica. You are both right! I will do it, I promise!

“Henry and June” is the most fabulous film. I watched it recently as part of my research for the new story about Anaïs Nin I’m writing, which will be part of a new novel called “Nights in Paris”. So far, I have a first draft of a Patricia Highsmith story, the Anaïs story I’m writing now, and next will be a story about Colette.

I bought a postcard of Colette in drag about 13 years ago, when I spent a week in Paris with a lover (what a romantic and exciting time of life, when love was still so new and thrilling!) and I have always kept it near where I’m writing, for inspiration. Colette had such a fascinating life, and her books are marvellous: erotic, but in a clever, subtle way. I hope she would like what I’m writing.

Nicola the web goddess has fixed the site! The links on the top are now working, there will be extracts under ‘the novel’, and you can click on ‘contact me’ to send a comment. Fabulous! Thank you so much, Nicola beyond compare!

Idea for a new Parisian novel

After sending my first novel, A Prawn’s Heart is in its Head, to a few publishers, I received the first (no doubt of many) rejection letters a few days ago. As a friend of mine says, “Oh, poos.” My thoughts exactly, only her expression is much more polite.

Strangely, I don’t feel too upset, because on the same day I had a fantastic idea for a new book. I’ve had it in my head for the last couple of years (even before I finished my novel) that my next novel was going to be about medieval torture. I adore all that lovely, bloody, gory stuff, and I wanted to explore the people behind the instruments — how does someone just wake up one day and invent a new form of torture? But when I went into the library recently to start my research, I couldn’t find any books to inspire me. I don’t know if the library just didn’t have the right books, or if maybe, without noticing it, I’ve gone off the whole medieval thing. So I decided to leave the ideas to ferment for a while and see what happened.

Yesterday I sat down before breakfast to note down a couple of ideas — and couldn’t stop writing! It was such a wonderful feeling; one I haven’t had very recently. I’ve already got one and a half first drafts of linked stories based on the imaginary erotic lives of famous women from 1900-1950 who lived in Paris. I’m thinking of the title “Nights in Paris”, or “My nights in Paris”; something like that. Feel free to send me any other suggestions!

I’m convinced that the sudden inspiration was partly due to my beautiful new writing book. I’ve been searching for one for ages, but I’m fussy when it comes to writing books: it has to be big enough, of course, not post-it sized. The pages must be blank, without lines, as lines make me feel constricted. And the ideal book has silver or gold coloured paint on the edges of the pages, just because I love books like that. Amazingly, I found just the thing a few months ago; it’s black velvet with silver beads. I found it in one of those swanky shops that sell lots of (mostly useless but) gorgeous things, and then a few weeks ago they had a sale, so I quickly nabbed two! What a fabulous bargain.

Waiting to hear from publishers

Wow, I haven’t written for ages, I am so sorry. Over the past couple of months we’ve had four sets of friends come over from England to visit, so it was hectic for a while, but it was lovely to see people we hadn’t seen for nearly two years, since we moved to NZ. We all went to the South Island to some beaches near Nelson, it was wonderfully sunny, it poured, and then it was sunny again.

JD and I did some sea-kayaking in a double kayak, where it is fairly necessary to co-ordinate steering and paddling. We didn’t get very far during the first hour: “What are you doing? I said left!” “What are you talking about, this IS left!” “You know I mean the other left!” We were panicking because we were trying to get to where the guide was talking to the rest of the group and giving advice, but we couldn’t get there because we kept going round in circles and couldn’t hear what the guide was saying.

We were alternately laughing hysterically and arguing, and even both at the same time, it was the most intense experience I’ve had for a long time. We found out later that these boats are commonly known as “divorce boats”. Kayaking is definitely worth doing again, but I’m going to stay away from the doubles!

Well, I’m still waiting to hear back from Penguin after sending them A Prawn’s Heart is in its Head, and I’m beginning to think that if I wait politely for each publisher to reject me before sending my novel to the next one, this is going to take years. So I’m going to send it to the next publisher on the list, as soon as we finish cleaning the house and doing a mountain of washing!

I would love some more comments, please please please!

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