The Search for the Disembodied Genii...

Tomorrow I get on a plane and I go to Mandalay, from which I take a motorcycle (a little one) and head out into the countryside, hopefully to find some real villages and meet some real people. Bangkok is whirlwind of modernity, where maserati showrooms and prostitution commingle within easy distance, where you find malls filled with characterless human sandwich boards advertising Gucci and Zara and all the other rubbish brush up against legless beggars in the street, a place of great progress and development if ever there was one. Back to the villages where legless beggars are helped onto benches and brought tea. 

So I go for just one week. I imagine I may extend, but this is supposed to be a short break in my writing. The Atlanta has been wonderful. I came here with an ambition to get the unwieldy monster that is 'Jacks' finished, a book I've been working on for a good number of years - 12 if you count the short story that I had published in Australia many years back, the kernal from which it all sprouted. Unfortunately, the publication of my first book - Music of Maninjau - left such a sour taste in my mouth that the idea of finishing another book just didn't appeal. The publisher was called Bluechrome. Th other authors call it Bluechrime. They disappeared off the face of the Earth sometime around 2009. Abducted by aliens perhaps. Or bankrupt and on the run. The trail goes dead very easily, even when we follow the timeless imperative to 'follow the money'. But enough fleeing from the unpalatable. It's time to finish one.

The Atlanta is a haven for writers and I'm lucky enough to have been able to arrange a sort of patronage for my time here. It has an energy that is conducive to both creativity and concentration, perhaps due to the amount of words that have been scribbled in its lobbies and writing rooms. The walls are filled with signed copies of authors that have worked here or used it as a place to cogitate and find inspiration. One such author is Elizabeth Gilbert, writer of Eat Pray Love, a book I haven't read, but I have watched her fascinating TED lecture about what happened when her book went bonkers. She found herself anxious at her writing desk for the first time in a long time. Why? Because she knew her 'best work' was probably behind her, or at least her most successful one. The follow up would be expected to be a disappointment. The critics would be waiting. She thought this was ludicrous, so she got interested in the process a bit more. Where do ideas come from? What fires creative flow?

Her research took her back to the Greeks and Romans, as research often does. Back in days of yore, the word genius meant something external to the person to which it was applied. We say Newton and Einstein were geniuses. In ancient times, an artist would be said to have a genius, a disembodied 'other' that dripped ideas into the host. The artist as channeller, interpreter, muse, voice-piece. But it was more of a collusion - the artist works with the genius. She liked this idea. As long as she turned up for work every day, people couldn't be too harsh if her next book was a bit rubbish - I did my bit, but the genius... well he wasn't on form. Well, I guess the Atlanta is a good place for these little disembodied spirits of creation because I've been writing at a pace I've never before managed. When things seize up, I go take a swim, drink a coffee, have a massage... whatever. Next tie I sit down, there's fresh produce in my mind to munch on. I hope to finish a full draft of Jacks before I fly tomorrow. I hope to  complete final tweaks when I return. I hope to finish in three weeks.

This is good news, but it means I inevitably have to swim in publishing waters again. I swam with a shark and brushed up close to a jelly fish on Koh Tao. That was fine. This is different. So I either try to get an agent, one who can convince me that Jacks is good enough to cut above the water and make some kind of splash, or I publish it myself through Amazon, both e-book and conventional paperback. In the former case, royalties will be about 10%. Unless it goes bonkers and sells like hot da vinci codes, you never really see a return, but you do have chances at prizes, you get reviews easier, and you don't have take the full burden of being a salesperson. In the mainstream, you really have to be near the top or you're nowhere and your book disappears. In the latter case, I get 70% and I keep hold of my work but I miss out on the possibility of distribution and marketing, the elusive 3 for 2 Waterstones deal that shifts books en masse etc. I'm tending towards going my own way. Anyone who writes fiction for  money is clearly bonkers, and I'm a teacher. I only try to write books that I haven't read or seen before, which makes publishers nervous. This nervousness is a telling symptom. 

Anyway, if anyone out there has any opinion on this, or thinks they might be able to help with finding a really good agent, I'd be interested to hear from you. It's a big decision. In the meantime - for the next week - I plan to wash it all from my mind and let the wind in my hair (beard) whisk me away. TO BURMA! And don't spare the horses.      

Elizabeth Glbert's Fascinating Lecture: CLICK HERE