No win, just shortlist
Well, there you go. None Of The Other Flies Follow My Crooked Lines, despite its cool title, failed in the final hurdle of the Queensland Premier’s Awards. I’m bummed, but in a detached way. The American writer James Lee Burke once described the strange twilight writers must inhabit to quarantine themselves from the highs and lows of submission. Because we are rejected so frequently and consistently, we willingly cut ourselves off from reactions to our work as a matter of necessity. It reminds me, as many things do, of a bit of dialogue from the Simpsons:
‘We’re the MTV generation. We feel neither highs nor lows.’
‘Really? What’s it like?’
[Shrugs] ‘Myeh.’
So we play down achievements as an insurance policy against the crushing failure we know is just around the corner. It may not be ideal, but it works. And when, as usual, you get shortlisted for something and don’t win, you turn it around to realise that your manuscript was one of four selected from 900. Jesus! 900? And your name sat in close proximity to both JM Coetzee and David Malouf.
You take whatever victory you can and move on.
The third novel is coming along nicely, by the way.
Read MoreShortlisted for the Queensland Premiers Awards
Some time ago I started a blog to chart the creation of a new novel. The idea was to follow the ups and downs in writing—the long drawn out pauses between frantic flurries of activity that make up the writing of a larger work into something that might be something of a success.
That same novel, now titled None of the Other Flies Follow My Crooked Lines, has been shortlisted in the Queensland Premier’s Literary Awards in the unpublished manuscript category.
Wahoo! They even plonked my name on the front page of the site after JM Coetzee and David Malouf. How’s that for strange?
Read MoreThe Books
