The Art Of Being An Author - Lynn Bushell

Asked 'What does it take to be a writer?' I would say, unhesitatingly, 'tenacity.' When my first book was published, I assumed that my career was on track. When the next book failed to find a publisher, I told myself it was a blip. After a decade I had to accept that it was quite a big one. It would be another quarter of a century before I saw a book of mine in print again.

You need tenacity not just to weather the rejection which most writers suffer, but to summon up the stamina to endlessly revise a ms, destroying what you've spent months working on, in order to end up with something better.

What hurt most when I did find an agent, was that their first question was ‘Can you confirm this is a debut novel?’ When I pointed out that I’d been writing for thirty years and had published my first novel before they were even born, there was an ominous silence at the other end.

In most jobs you’re expected to improve with time. You’d think this would apply particularly to the Arts. ‘You’ve been writing books for thirty years!’ I might have expected them to say. ‘You must be reasonably good at it by now.’ But no, that isn’t how it works. Like prison, it’s assumed that if you’ve been there long enough you’ll never readapt to life outside. It isn’t just the years that count against you. Debut novelists, the female ones at least, are the equivalent of virgins as they were in those days when there were still virgins: highly prized and easily ruined. Fledgling writers spend so much time being marketed it’s doubtful some of them will ever have the time to write another book.

There must be some perks to being a writer, I hear you say, and if you are one, you probably already know what they are. The painter Cézanne described the 'petite sensation' he got when he was painting. There is a more vulgar term for it but his is closer. It's the quiet ripple of satisfaction that you get when you've written a sentence that says exactly what you want it to say. Words are odd things. Everybody uses them. Like a cake, the basic ingredients are the same, but as anyone who watches 'Bake-Off' knows, the results are infinitely varied. You want your cake to be the best and every now and then you get a hint of what that feels like. Given all the hours you've put in, it might not sound like much of a reward, but once you've felt it, you're addicted. In the end, if you're a writer you have no choice but to write. That's when you know you are one.