How A Moment of New Year’s Rage Made Me Set Goals Every Year

This time last year, I blogged about 2020 being a shitshow, but that it seemed like ‘the tide was turning’ for 2021.

Fucken woops.

For many, 2021 was as bad as, or worse than, 2020. And it looks like 2022 is heading for a rocky start, too.

It might seem weird to do things like goal-setting, or writing, when the world is a tyre fire.

But doom scrolling on Twitter isn’t useful: it’s a huge sapper of creative energy and is best avoided. The world’s fortunes are beyond my control.

What is within my control is what I’m going to spend my energy on this year.

I find solace in escaping into writing, and setting goals at the start of a new year always motivates me to work hard.

Before I evaluate my 2021 goals and set my 2022 goals, though, I want to touch on a couple of things around goals.

Earlier this week, an emerging writer contacted me for advice. He felt plagued by self-doubt (as we all do) and said that since I seem big on setting and reaching goals, he wanted to know how I keep focused.

We chatted about it, but his observation validated why I do these blogs each year, because there was a time when people in my life had no concept that I actually worked hard.

Years ago, I remember sharing some good career news with a family member, and he replied dismissively, ‘Oh yeah, you’re always just so lucky. Shit just falls in your lap.’

I wanted to shout at him, because this was such a skewed perspective. That opportunity did not just fall in my lap: I had to get a degree, then an Honours year, then achieve a bunch of stuff, then spend years networking, proving my worth and actually asking for it.

I outlined this to him, but he just shrugged like ‘sure, whatever man’.

His mind was made up: to him, I led an unfairly charmed life, and my success was due to me being more cosmically fortunate than him. Dumb luck.

I think this is really misunderstood about artists. Our successes seem to happen miraculously, but there is so much unseen, unpaid work behind all of it. For every publication, years of toiling at a desk, full of self-doubt, with zero promise of any payoff.

Creative success is an iceberg: people see the single achievement, but not the years of ruthless determination and work that made it happen.

So, when emerging writers ask for my advice, I always say you need to first set clear goals: what are you trying to achieve, and by when.

Next, you need to actively block out the time into your calendar, every week of the coming year, to allocate towards working at each goal.

Your goals need to dictate what your daily life looks like.

I don’t think this can be taught. There just needs to be a moment where the desire to achieve your goals overwhelms your fear and inertia to act on them.

For me, that moment was New Year’s Day 2014.

That day, the dawning of yet another year as an unsuccessful wannabe writer finally broke me.

I felt like a supreme failure; all talk. Since the age of seven I’d been saying I wanted to be an author, and yet here I was at twenty-five with nothing to show for it. Where’s your book, loser?

I had a moment where I got so angry, I just lost my shit. I grabbed an empty notebook and cut sick, ranting and raging in a stream-of-consciousness style, page after page.

Me, drunk, in the early hours of New Year’s Day 2014.

What emerged in those pages was that I was fed up investing all my time, money and energy into stuff that only took me further away from where I actually wanted to be in life.

So, New Year’s Day 2014 was the moment I furiously decided to burn all of that stuff down.

I renounced trying to have a good full-time job and career.

I renounced trying to earn lots of money.

I renounced academic validation.

Just now, I dug that particular notebook out of my filing cabinet. It’s a Game of Thrones notebook with an image of the Iron Throne on its cover. Among the many hectic, rage-fuelled, ink-scrawled pages that day in January 2014, I wrote:

I ain’t no good little straight A’s boy getting an office job to make everyone proud and happy.

I am a fucking artist and I am gonna sing for my supper forevermore.

I will make my life happen.

That moment was when my whole life changed, and I became a dedicated artist.

I started calling myself a writer, got working on my first manuscript, and set a goal to complete it by the end of that year.

Since I had a full-time job at the time, my only chance to achieve that goal was to use my nights and weekends. I had to sacrifice all my spare time. I used to fill my down-time with studying various qualifications and drinking and socialising with work mates, uni mates, school mates.

I sacrificed that. No more studying. No more socialising.

I only had so many hours to use per week. If I wanted to avoid being in the exact same place come January 2015, I had to actively make changes in my life.

I dedicated myself to the hustle: evenings and weekends became writing time.

Some shit I wrote on my arm in early 2014 to remind myself what I was giving up and what I really wanted. May have been drunk at the time. 😐

I didn’t miss my old pursuits. Working hard at my dream was a joyous end in and of itself. Even if I never got a book published, I felt alive and happy.

I’m sharing this because whenever someone asks me about goals and discipline as a writer, I feel I can only do so much in the way of advice.

I reckon it’s up to each individual artist to have their ‘fuck everything’ moment, where they get so mad they decide to actually do something about it.

If you’re struggling with this, I encourage you to lean into that moment and embrace it.

Not everyone is the same, of course, but it worked for me.

I spent 2014 working on my first draft, and completed that manuscript in January 2015. Finally, a new year rolled around where I felt satisfied. I wasn’t published, I had no accolades and still felt like a failure – but I was working my arse off to change it.

I was unsuccessful but trying, and that made all the difference.

I have kept this approach ever since, which has helped propel me year after year to keep chasing what I want.

I did the same in 2021, setting ten goals for the year: four writing goals and six personal life goals.

Here’s how I went:

2021 GOALS IN REVIEW

WRITING

1. Sign a publishing contract for Book 2 and do further edits on it.

This finally panned out in 2021. I signed a two-book deal with Text Publishing for my second novel, THE BRINK (out August 2022) and my third novel (out late 2023, probably). Big thanks to my agent, Gaby Naher of Left Bank Literary, for securing me an incredible advance that meant I could be a full-time writer – a lifelong dream come true.

On the editing front, I spent the year doing edits and the next draft is due back to my publisher at the end of January.

RESULT: SUCCESS.

2. Complete the second draft of Book 3.

This didn’t happen. I scheduled September and October to smash a second draft, but some crap personal life stuff happened and blew this to pieces. I had a shit few months and couldn’t write anything real. I wrote a Pokémon fanfiction novella to distract myself instead.

My third novel is due to my publisher this April, so I’ll work on it in the first half of this year.

RESULT: FAIL.

3. Progress the TV Series adaptation of Invisible Boys.

This project moved forward at speed in 2021. We got funding from Screen Australia, held a couple of writers’ rooms, got the first episode script written (holy shit, it’s awesome!), and in November 2021, we won a grant from streaming service Stan and Screenwest to develop the show into a ten-episode TV series.

TV development is a long process, but the next steps during 2022 will be to seek more funding to make this actually happen. Stay tuned.

RESULT: SUCCESS.

The Invisible Boys TV series has received development funding from streaming service Stan Australia, as well as Screenwest and Screen Australia. L-R: Producer Tania Chambers OAM, Invisible Boys book cover, director Nicholas Verso.

4. Get 1 piece of short fiction OR journalism commissioned, contracted or published.

This one worked out. My short story, Rappaccini’s Son, was published in the book HOMETOWN HAUNTS (Wakefield Press, 2021). A second piece, a short memoir titled Territory, was accepted for publication in the forthcoming book GROWING UP IN COUNTRY AUSTRALIA (Black Inc, March 2022).

I was also commissioned by WAToday to write a media article about gay conversion therapy, which was widely shared on social media and led to me fronting other press and radio opportunities to speak on the issue.

RESULT: SUCCESS.

LIFE

5. Maintain an average of 5 workouts per week (between weightlifting, footy and cardio).

I managed to maintain this all year and actually exceeded it. On average per week, I did four weights sessions and two cardio sessions (footy training and footy game) – six workouts total. I pushed myself to stick to this even when my nutrition was bad or my energy levels were low, and I’m glad of that.

RESULT: SUCCESS.

6. Get nutrition sorted to shred up and reach goal weight of 75 kg by 30 June 2021.

I’m not sure whether to laugh or cry. I failed this badly. I had a highly-disciplined first three months: by early April, I was down from 87 kg to 77.7kg, and it seemed I would achieve this. But my mental health nosedived in April, and I ate and drank heavily for months. By June, I was back at 86kg again, and by the end of December, I was still 84kg.

RESULT: FAIL.

7.Get first tattoos in 2021.

This didn’t happen either, and I’m getting mad about it. I wanna get my ink when I’m feeling good about my physique, so this goal is tied to me sorting out my nutrition. I also need money to spare for tattoos, which I currently don’t have as I’m living off advance and royalty income and need to conserve funds. Urgh.

RESULT: FAIL.

8. Train harder at footy and grow more confident and useful to the team in games.

I worked hard at this. For the first three months, I trained with an amateur AFL team, ECU Jets, in addition to the Perth Hornets AFL 9s team. I’ve always wanted to give full-contact AFL a crack. I enjoyed the training, but I felt badly out of my depth in terms of skills – sometimes, embarrassingly so – and I wasn’t able to make it work. The coaches and players welcomed me even knowing I’m a gay bloke, though, and I liked that. But combined with my mental health nosedive and years of crap self-esteem around sports, it became too much. I pulled out to focus on just AFL 9s.

I did become more useful to the team, and I was really proud when the Hornets coach awarded me the trophy for Most Improved Player last month. It’s the first time in my life I’ve won a trophy for anything sports-related. I’ll never be a natural athlete, but I was chuffed to be recognised for putting in the hard work. It’s hard to suck at something, in front of other people, week after week, but still show up and keep trying. I am proud of that.

RESULT: SUCCESS.

Receiving the Perth Hornets trophy for Most Improved Player in the Spring 2021 season was a huge highlight.

9. Do at least one guitar lesson.

After I failed my 2020 goal of doing a whole term of ten guitar lessons, I thought this was a nice, low-ball goal. Lol, nup. I didn’t fit in a single guitar lesson in 2021.

RESULT: FAIL.

10. Do some fun shit for pure enjoyment.

This was an odd goal, but I wanted to ensure I did stuff for fun. I went quad biking with mates, jumped on massive trampolines, went to concerts and went on a footy trip to Lancelin.

RESULT: SUCCESS.

Overall, I hit six out of ten goals in 2021. Not bad, not bad. I don’t stress about failed goals; they just kept me refocus on what I do and don’t want to keep trying at the following year.

My goals for 2021 look similar, but I’m simplifying down to just eight goals instead of ten. Four writing goals, four life goals:

2022 GOALS

1. Complete the final edits for The Brink and promote its release.
2. Complete the second draft of Book 3.
3. Work on the TV Series adaptation of Invisible Boys.
4. Get one piece of short fiction OR journalism commissioned, contracted or published.
5. Maintain an average of 5 workouts per week (between weights, footy and cardio).
6. Get nutrition sorted to shred up and reach goal weight of 75 kg by 30 April 2022.
7. Get first tattoos in first half of 2022.
8. Train harder at footy and grow more confident.

The first goal is massive, because the front end of the year will be preparing The Brink for release, and August onwards will be promoting it heavily with media and events. It will be hard to fit anything extra into 2022.

Because of this, stuff like guitar and fun shit will go on the backburner for a less hectic year. This year I’d love to go quad biking, go-karting or get out on a dirt bike, but I won’t set it as a goal. I’ve also left off full-contact AFL: I’m still interested, but it’s on the backburner.

I have a couple of more personal goals, too. I’m not sure if I’ll share them later or not, but I’ll be working on these quietly in my own time this year.

I’m keen to get started on smashing my goals now. The main joy for me is not necessarily being able to write ‘success’ or ‘fail’ at the end of each year, but just enjoying the dogged gut-fire I get that makes me work at each goal, week in, week out. It’s the most fun and rewarding way I know how to live.

In that notebook from 2014, I found a quote I wrote down from Paulo Coelho that I want to share here, to finish up. Coelho says, ‘Do something instead of killing time. Because time is killing you.’ I’ve always found that quote brutally motivational. I hope you might, too.

However you plan to spend your 2022, and whatever your own goals are, here’s to a year that, hopefully, has some good surprises in store for us all.

Holden

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I Am Scared of Writing My Third Book

When I was a kid, I used to wonder what took authors so long between books.

I couldn’t fathom why Emily Rodda or Geoffrey McSkimming or JK Rowling would take years to produce the next instalment of Rowan of Rin or Cairo Jim or Harry Potter. What were they doing – swanning around their writery mansions, swimming in backlit infinity pools, drinking cocktails? I didn’t understand how, if you had a publisher, and money, and time, it could take more than a few months to churn out a new book.

Man, am I eating my words now I’m working on my third book. This shit is nowhere near as easy as it looked.

The conditions I’m working in are bloody awesome though, and I actually haven’t blogged about them since they all transpired.

In summary, early this year I signed a two-book deal with the legends at Text Publishing. I was so stoked. My agent, Gaby Naher at Left Bank Literary, pitched The Brink and there was a bidding war between two publishers, which had me practically pissing my pants with excitement. Both publishers were amazing and I could’ve happily signed with either (a good problem to have), but the incredible team at Text were the right fit at this stage in my career and I was so heartened that they really understood my voice and who I am as an author, and wanted to nurture it.

More pragmatically, they gave me a bunch of CASH. Yeahhhh boi! The advance was very nice, and meant I could make a go at being a full-time author, which has been my dream since I was seven. It was an epic moment of arrival.

I got to work fast: I had to deliver the structural edits of my second novel, The Brink, by the end of August this year (the book will be published August 2022). With no day job to distract me, I worked quicker than expected, submitting the edited manuscript to my publisher by mid-July – six weeks ahead of deadline.

At the time, I think I knew there was a rumbling unease in me, because I made sure to labour the point to my publisher: please don’t get used to me being early with deadlines.

On one hand, it’s just solid business sense to under-promise and over-deliver. Plus, deadlines in the publishing world are (tacitly) made to be broken, and most of us realise that as we get a little further into our career. As Douglas Adams famously said, ‘I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by.’

That said, I had no intention of not sticking to my next deadline – but I had the vibe it wasn’t going to be easy.

After finishing The Brink, I was meant to go straight to work on Book Three, a contemporary novel for adults. I’d already completed the first draft in May 2020, so it was a case of reworking the story into a stronger second draft, to be delivered to my publisher by the end of November this year.

But once I was done with The Brink, I felt immediate resistance to my third book.

At the time, I rationalised it as me needing to take a bit of breather. After all, The Brink is really fucken intense.

So, since I was well ahead of schedule, I decided to take a short break.

I sat with my master list of planned creative projects and thought about which project I could tinker with as a light distraction. I could play with ideas for my fourth book – the intended sequel to Invisible Boys. I could return to a fantasy novel. I could add to my nearly-complete short fiction collection.

But none of those ideas appealed, because they all required emotional investment: writing them meant dredging up feelings.

Ah, there was the rub: I did not want to deal with real shit.

Once I understood that, my path forward was clearer. I started a new, fun project I have no intention of finding a traditional publishing home for: an eight-part novella. I am writing it purely for the love of writing and the world it’s set in.

That worked. For a few weeks, I wrote fast and had fun. I laughed. My main character is a smart arse. I like his voice and how he’s a brat.

But once I reached chapter six, I slowed down, then ground to a halt. I didn’t want to finish the novella, cos once it was complete, I’d have no excuse to not work on Book Three.

This is the nebulous shadow that’s been lurking in the corner of my eye, a truth I’ve been avoiding: I am very scared of writing my third book.

And it’s not for the reasons I might’ve expected.

It’s not the weight of expectation of writing a follow-up to a successful debut (I already went through that shit with The Brink – and that pressure was not fun).

It’s not about the shift to writing for an adult audience (most of my readers are adults anyway, and those who are older teens will be adults by the time this third book is published).

It’s not even about the premise of the story itself (I reckon it’s killer and people will love it – I hope so, anyway!).

No, the fear is the real shit I am going to have to deal with in order to write it.

The only way writing a novel works for me is if it is a vehicle to tell my own truths. The end product is made-up characters and an invented plot for others to connect with, but the seed from which a book germinates is always my own lived experience.

Invisible Boys was an exorcism of the teenage shame that left me psychically pockmarked; The Brink is a coming-of-age novel about being a misfit and what it means to want to burn yourself down.

The difference with these first two books was how much distance I had from them. The Invisible Boys are sixteen; the protagonists in The Brink are eighteen. I’m thirty-three now and although I am intimately present in both books, and writing them changed me massively, they are tackling older wounds from my younger years.

My third book is different. It’s about where I am now. I’m reflecting on what has happened since the Saturn Return of my twenty-ninth birthday. This book is about identity and relationships, conformity and individuality, acceptance and abandonment, abuse and escape, liberation and fallout. It is about what happens after the dust has settled.

During these past four years, there have been so many public highs, career-wise, that I know many people’s perception of my life is that it is charmed and that I am lucky. Professionally, they are probably correct.

But there have been many enormous unseen lows in my personal life which has made for such a schizophrenic four years in that regard. Almost every time I was being applauded or congratulated for something going well in my career, I was privately devastated by stuff going on in my personal life.

The truth of the last four years is that they have simultaneously been the best and worst four years of my life.

To write this third book, I have to take my blinders off and look at this time, and where I have landed now, with no illusions. I am going to have to write in real time about my present condition and ask myself: Where the fuck am I now? Who the fuck am I now? What the fuck am I even doing here? When I’m not telling my social media followers that I’m stoked and pumped about this achievement or that – how do I really feel?

Despite everything I’ve learned about making space for all emotions, this year I’ve still fallen into the trap of trying to keep a lid on how shit I’m feeling. Out of some sense of being grateful for what I have, or not wanting to seem negative, or not being an artist having an existential meltdown while the world is a fucken tyre fire.

Anyway, that’s bollocks and I should’ve known better. The world remains a tyre fire whether or not I add my kerosene to the blaze.

And I know the only path to feeling happy personally is the same path to feeling fulfilled professionally: I need to be expressed in writing in an honest and unfettered way. No pretending I’m fine when I’m not. No bullshit.

That’s all it takes.

My resistance to Book Three was not without merit, though. One thing I’ve learned, repeatedly, is you can’t write about something if you’re still going through it.

I’ve been grieving a lot of stuff for four years – broken relationships, rejection from tribes I thought I belonged to – but I’ve been treading water, impotently pinballing between denial and anger. After finishing the first draft of this book, I segued into the bargaining stage of this colossal relational grief. I was scrabbling around a dark cave, blindly looking for an exit that did not exist. Maybe if I always do x, and I never do y, then I won’t need to lose this person or that person from my life.

The bleedingly obvious truth is that no healthy relationship requires you to contort and suppress yourself in order to be tolerated. There was never a way out of that cave. Separation and departure were inevitable if I was to survive intact.

My task now is not to escape the cave, but to accept that it is where I live, and learn to allow my eyes to adjust to the gloom.

Although painful, I’ve recently been able to end that onanistic bargaining stage, which means I’ve now landed squarely in depression.

At the moment, most days, I feel lonely, isolated, burnt-out and bleak. I am often empty; sometimes I feel like a husk. I remind myself this is temporary and a part of the process, and although it sucks big hairy donkey balls, I can cope with it and it won’t finish me off.

But it’s still not the place to write a friggin novel from.

So, I’ve decided to pause this book until I’m in the right headspace for it. I’ve negotiated with my (very understanding) publisher to deliver Book Three at the end of March 2022 instead.

I feel like I’ve become one of those authors taking a while between new projects, though rest assured I am not swanning around in my author mansion (mostly because I do not have a mansion; I live in the hood yo). I’ll still be hectic with workload – finishing my novella, copy edits for The Brink, all the other busy paid work of being an author, plus several unannounced projects underway.

But when I’m not working, instead of mining my deepest darkest for nuggets of literary gold, I’m gonna chill the fuck out, man. I’m gonna stop putting my brain and my heart under the artistic microscope for a couple of months. I’m gonna spend the rest of this year living, chilling, processing, doing normal humanoid stuff and letting myself naturally shuffle from depression to the final stage: acceptance.

I think this rest is an essential part of the creative cycle.

Next year, I’ll return to Book Three, and enjoy writing for what it is: an alchemical confession box, a lightning rod of catharsis and expression, and the best medicine I know.

Holden

LONDON (2006)

LONDON (2006)

London, baby: the time has come. Time to unplug and taste the mud. Time to decant my father’s blood. Ghosted concrete columns hold up the Hyde Park hostel. My Globe skate shoes stick to the Fosters-stained carpet, everything smells like Ramen, the chipped toilet door doesn’t lock. It’s perfect. My back is beaded in English summer sweat and unwashed Europeans consume me in the corridor. Come, they say. They know why I’m here. Their eyes are as hungry and wild as mine: one shared look and we all understand each other. We are here to live, not survive. We are here to party and die. Come along, come with us.

Of course I’ll come; why else am I in London?

The portal into our new world is the Queensway tube stop, bright posters for Lily Allen’s new single “Smile” beaming down on drab-faced office flops. We swagger into a street of three equidistant Tescos, the footpath an aroma of overcooked curries and compact car exhaust. We creep to Tony’s illegal late-night grog shop, lights off in case of a visit from the cops. We walk back singing and air-guitaring to The Darkness, yelling at gargoyles. We vodka and we beer in a giant concrete pipe; we soccer empty cans in the alley behind. We coronate each other’s heads with crumpled tins; on the lip of a dumpster we confess our sins. I am a teacher of deviance when I reveal the word ‘cunt’ to the Basque separatist kids, but a student when they teach me to make noise that riles the cops at 4am. Do you want to spend the night in jail? they say.

Of course I want to go to jail; why else am I in London?

Breathing in the hostel nightclub basement: shisha, hookah, weed. Agony leaks from my mouth in illicit plumes. The girls laugh and thrust their nipples in my face but I’m too busy trying to give his meat a taste. None of them know I spent the day in Covent Garden trawling for seed or that it was the first thing I ever did that made me feel free. How in that moment I was finally alive; and how in that moment I’ll remain until I die. I will forever be that boy trying to outrun himself on Tottenham Court Road. But that night, under flickering neon torus and throbbing DJ beats, I am weak. He’s Irish and Catholic and pale beef. He leaves the DF for the urinal and I bear-hug him while he pees. Do you want people to think you’re a homo? he says. Do you want people to think you’re a freak?

It’s all I fucking want, man; why else am I in London?

– Holden Sheppard

How Failure Made Me Who I Am

Like most writers, I have been sculpted by failure far more than success.

One failure in particular has always hurt me, because it was the first.

It was only tonight, here in 2020, when I was in the middle of judging a writing competition myself, that I reflected on this failure and realised it may not have been what I thought it was.

I’ll set the scene, Sophia Petrillo style. Picture it: Sicily, 1912.

Or, more accurately, picture it: Geraldton, 2000. An eleven-year-old Holden Sheppard submits a short story to a writing competition for the first time in his life. It was an original mystery/detective story in the style of Donald J. Sobol’s Encyclopedia Brown books I was devouring from the primary school library at the time.

I had, at this point, been actively writing in my spare time for three years. There was almost nothing emotional or powerful about any of my writing, but the mechanics were pretty solid for a boy of my age. I knew I was a capable writer and that it was one of my strengths.

I wrote my piece, and even drew a small illustration of the story’s crime scene on the bottom of one of the pages. This was twenty years ago, so nothing was digital – hard copy was the only option – and this wasn’t the adult world of publishing, this was primary school, so everything was also handwritten.

I can’t remember what the competition was, but I know it was only for young writers, and I think it was across the whole of Western Australia.

A while later, the competition results were being announced with the stories entered being put on display at the Geraldton Regional Library. I went to the library and hunted excitedly for my story on the display. Had I won? Had I been placed second or third, or highly commended?

I had not.

My story not get any kind of placing or recognition whatsoever.

Worse, what I remember is seeing my story with a number written on it in pencil. From memory, it was #125.

I remember, vividly, feeling sick with disappointment. I have a vague recollection of one of the library staff telling me and my mother that there were something like six hundred entries. I have a much sharper recollection of all the adults present looking at me with what felt very much like schadenfreude. I felt it like a wave of psychic energy. Kid thinks he’s some kind of writing genius, huh? That’ll take him down a peg or two.

I felt deeply embarrassed. I called myself a writer and had been working towards that for three years, only to have my first public attempt at writing deemed, effectively, a piece of shit, in front of my family, and the teachers and parents at the school, and my peers, who could all publicly see where my story had ended up. A hundred-and-twenty-fifth? What humiliation.

And amid that sense of shame was a sense of anger and injustice. Okay, maybe my story wasn’t good enough to win, I thought, but it was not a-hundred-and-twenty-fifth level bad. Was it?

Like any writer who cops a rejection, I wondered what I had done wrong. Was it the illustration that made the judges think I was just a dumb kid? Maybe it was supposed to be typed and printed instead of handwritten? Was my story just too derivative of Donald J. Sobol’s style? I hadn’t plundered his characters or stories: I had written an original piece, just following the same structure and stylings of those (dated) detective stories. Was it because I had set the story in America? Did the judges only want Aussie stories?

There was another fear that plagued me. I wondered if the judges thought I had plagiarised the piece, either by copying an existing story or having an adult write it for me.

The reason this was a fear of mine is that I was accused of it around the same time.

At the start of Year 7, our entire class was given a spelling test called the South Australian Spelling Test. We had to spell seventy words. They started out very simple and grew increasingly difficult.

A few days or weeks later, we were given our results. The mark out of seventy came with a corresponding score of what spelling age you were at. We were almost all eleven years old, so the idea was if you got a score that said your spelling age was 9 or 10, you were below average. 11 would be normal. 12 or over meant above average.

Our teacher – who was new to the school – handed back the tests in reverse order of success; that is, the lowest scoring student got their test results back first. I can’t remember if the teacher announced the scores aloud as he did this, but it’s quite possible, and likely, given what came next.

My test came back last: I had achieved the highest score. 69/70. I only spelled one word wrong. My spelling age was the maximum possible, which was listed as “greater than 15 years 6 months”.

I felt pretty good about this, until the teacher rounded on me in front of the entire class.

“You cheated,” he snarled. And it was a snarl.

“No, I didn’t,” I replied, absolutely horrified to have a teacher mad at me. I was a painfully obedient child in primary school, oppressively perfectionistic.

“You did. You cheated on this test.”

I denied it again. In fact, I had to deny it several times. I felt sick. This forty-year-old man was furious, almost seething, and hell bent on attacking a scrawny eleven-year-old nerd. I had never experienced anything like this from any adult before. Teachers usually liked me because I was both smart and well-behaved.

“I didn’t cheat. I would never cheat,” I told him meekly.

The other students – surprisingly, some of the worst-behaved students who would, on any normal day, give me shit for being a square – stood up for me.

“He didn’t cheat. He’s just really good at spelling. He’s smart.”

Our teacher wasn’t having a bar of it. “You’ve obviously done this test before and that’s how you knew how to spell the words,” he sneered. “But you got one wrong, didn’t you? Embarrassing.” He grinned down at me savagely. “How embarrassing for you.”

He threw this particular insult at me because the one word I misspelled was “embarrassing”. I spelled it with only one ‘r’. I have never spelled it wrong again in my life.

I offered one more denial of having cheated, and he concluded by threatening me that he was going to tell my parents at the upcoming parent-teacher interviews. And when those interviews rolled around, he did, too. My mother countered by letting him know that I was a bookish, intelligent kid. He still refused to believe me or her.

I learned a lot that day. I learned that teachers don’t always care about their students. I learned that adults can be petty and jealous. I learned that even when you are telling the truth, some people will refuse to believe you.

And I learned that sometimes, people in positions of power will be downright cunts to you, as that teacher was to me, and they will get away with it scot-free, because life is sometimes unfair.

I bring this story up in the context of that short story rejection for two reasons.

Firstly, because it illustrates why I was paranoid enough to wonder if the competition judges, like my teacher, had assumed I’d cheated, or plagiarised my story. Did they seethe at this well-crafted story? “How dare he! He obviously cheated! A-hundred-and-twenty-fifth place for him!”

Secondly, I guess it illustrates why I expected to have ranked a little higher than a-hundred-and-twenty-fifth. I was an intelligent kid and an exceptional writer for my age range. I had already written a whole “book” (it was sixty pages) in 1999, so I knew I had some level of ability. I could accept not being first, or in the top ten, but to score so crushingly low amid a field of peers my own age just hurt.

But that lesson from that cunt teacher – that adults can be cruel to children, and life can be unfair – actually helped me.

All writers think we have talent. It is how we get up in the morning and write, because we believe in our hearts that we have the ability to tell stories, and tell them well. From our very beginnings, it is fundamental to our craft that we have a tiny kernel of belief that we are actually good at this. If we didn’t, we would never pick up a pen in the first place.

At eleven, I thought I was talented, and perhaps even I knew I was, but it was not recognised in that competition. Maybe that particular story just wasn’t as shit-hot as I thought. Maybe it was just shit. Maybe there were a hundred and twenty four more talented child writers in my age bracket in WA that year(?!).

Or maybe there weren’t. It was tonight, as I was judging a young writers competition myself, that I not only smiled at the full-circle moment, but also realised how strange it was for judges to rank as far down as one-hundred-and-twenty-fifth. Most competitions I’ve judged, we judges decide on a longlist or shortlist, but that’s never more than say twelve or fifteen entries. It would take forever to do a detailed ranking beyond that. In light of this, I find it hard to imagine that all six hundred of those entries back in 2000 were individually ranked. Tonight, it occurred to me that the number scrawled in pencil on my entry was simply its number: entry number 125. I had a laugh about this with my husband, but then immediately went back to being quite sure it was indeed a ranking, because writer egos are like this: the self-doubt usually wins out.

In any case, it’s ancient history, and I’ll never know why I ranked so badly in that competition, and I still, to this day, feel sore and cheated by it – unduly screwed over.

But what I am proud of is how this failure shaped me. I did feel hurt, and yes, it was embarrassing.

But I didn’t stop writing.

That first rejection, the sinking-through-the-floor moment of standing in that library and trying to politely smile as I discovered, in front of others, that I sucked, only made me work harder towards becoming a better writer. I trained so hard. I read voraciously to get a sense of how published books sounded. I wrote more stories in my exercise books, and then began to post them online to an audience, who gave me invaluable feedback on how I could improve. I routinely studied the dictionary and thesaurus to expand my vocabulary and challenged myself to use those new words in my stories. I decided I would not stop until I had the recognition I craved.

It would be a long road ahead. Five years of hard work until I scored second place in the Randolph Stow Young Writers Award. Nine years until my first short story was published in a literary journal. Seventeen years until I won my first writing-related award. And nineteen years until my first book was finally published.

There have been many more rejections since that first one, and as a ratio, many more rejections than successes, even now. But that first rejection – and that first cruelty – hardened me in a way that helped me, and shaped me into the man I am today.

I’m thinking about the young people who entered this competition I’ve just finished judging. I wonder if the winners will go on to be writers. I would certainly encourage them to do so, heartily, if it’s something they want. But did the winners in the year 2000 go on to become published writers? I don’t know who they were or what they ended up doing. But I do know that the boy who landed at a dismal #125 was the one who was driven enough to make it in the long run.

I wonder if there is a teenage writer in this competition I’ve just judged who didn’t make the shortlist. One who wants to be a writer more than anything, one who will be devastated to have missed out, who will spend years wondering why they weren’t good enough, or thinking me cruel for having overlooked their talent.

If there is, I hope this rejection lights a fire in them like it did me. I know now that we learn more from being burnt than we do from being congratulated.

And while the flower that blooms in a fertilised garden is beautiful, the one that grows out of ashes is unstoppable.

Holden

PS. Although I did entertain the notion of naming my Year 7 teacher in this blog post, I won’t. I’m not really interested in revenge and besides that, I don’t need revenge because I feel like I won the first time. I was the calm, rational kid who didn’t do anything wrong, and he was the bullying adult who was not only deeply in the wrong but, objectively, a cunt of a human being. I will leave it to the universe to give him some solid karma.

Plus, to be frank, I’m pretty sure the only reason he lost his shit at me was because he got a lower score on that spelling test than an eleven-year-old boy. How embarrassing for him! 😛

Writing When the World’s a Tyre Fire

I’ve worked out why it’s been so hard to write lately. 🧐🧐

I’m not alone. I’ve spoken to or heard from so many other authors who are finding themselves stymied and creatively paralysed in the face of the global catastrophe we are all witnessing playing out around us in real time.

These past few weeks, I’ve been intensely tuned into what’s going on in the world, scouring and refreshing news feeds to find out the latest on this crisis.

But when I focus on facing outwards, it makes it impossible to look inwards. And that’s what I need to do to write. Although I believe good writing comes from scars, this doesn’t mean I need to suffer while I write. In fact, it’s the opposite: I write best when I am peaceful and can comfortably reflect on what’s going on inside, or what happened in the past.

This is why, many years ago, I made the decision not to express political opinions or become a writer-slash-activist. It is not good for me; it inhibits my ability to effect good things in the world through my words and my art. 🤘🤘

I see what’s happening in the world and I have spoken out on the things that matter to me. I will keep doing this when and if I choose. But I cannot make this my default setting. I will be of no use if my headspace is solely one of panic, rage and hypervigilance. I’ll never get any writing done.

So, I’m turning my energy and focus within. 🙏🙏

I’m safe at home for the foreseeable future, so I’ve decided to start my third novel as part of Camp NaNoWriMo in April. I’m aiming to have written 30,000 words by the end of the month.

I’m excited to lose myself in a made-up world again – I doubt there will ever be a better time for that than these coming months. I hope writing this new book is a comfort and panacea for me; and I hope you like it when I can finally share it!

The only way out is through. Take care everyone. ✌️✌️

Holden

The Post-Book Comedown – and the Comeback

So, the comedown finally hit me.

When I last blogged two months ago, I was able to reflect, with some distance, on the experience of releasing my book. Getting my novel published was wild, joyous, and overwhelming. But most of all, it was big: to see a dream realised after years of longing was monumental.

But then the wheels fell off. Just as I was feeling well-rested and grinning like a boofhead, the comedown pimp-slapped me in the face.

The analogy of a comedown is apt: the thrill of publication truly is ecstatic, drug-like, a rush of dopamine. I could get my fix of validation and attention with new reviews, events, interviews, messages from readers, even social media posts. I spent a few months hitting the good stuff every chance I got – and like any drug, the applause/attention begins to wear off after time. My tolerance threshold increased. It was harder to get that dopamine spurt each time.

And then, of course, once everything quietened down over the summer, I needed my usual fix, but there was no fix to be had.

I’ve spoken to a few authors about this, since I’ve been feeling it, and it turns out that a post-book comedown is as commonplace to the writer experience as caffeine addiction, towering TBR piles and being terrified of the blank page.

And it’s not just about the push and pull of public attention, either. The thrill of publication is more than extrinsic validation. As artists we have our own intrinsic expectations and dreams, independent of other people’s valuations of our artistic output, and just being out there, having a book in the world, is its own reward and excitement. And when that hectic promo tornado breathes its last breath and spins itself into the ether, it can feel like it took all the oxygen with it.

So how did the comedown hit me? My mental and physical health both plummeted. This was compounded by other personal life stuff: a lot of things went wrong at once. For most of January and February, I plunged first into a depressive mood, and then into an elevated state of anxiety that saw me having bloody panic attacks again (I hadn’t had any in ages). Crappy mental health is not new to me, though in the past five years I’ve learned to manage it way better than in my self-medicating twenties. These days, I have better strategies in place and stronger connections to the world that keep me generally well.

But, for various reasons, some of these connections weren’t available to me during this comedown. A shoulder dislocation and other illnesses put me out of action at both the gym and at footy – which are both really important to my physical and mental wellbeing – and I wasn’t able to access my usual therapist during this time.

Long story short: I had a really shit couple of months to start the year.

Thankfully, after hitting bottom comes recovery. I’m back at the gym rehabilitating my shoulder, back to doing some light footy training, and back to seeing my counsellor. Being able to still go to footy training with the boys really helps my mood, and finally lifting some tiny dumbbells with my right arm last week made me ridiculously happy. I’m still many weeks away from being back to normal strength, but it has done me the world of good to know that I am on the upswing again.

Today, I woke up keen to write, which is a great sign that I’m past the worst of this comedown. I really missed the experience of writing in isolation. So much of the past year has been lived in front of other people, which is fun but also requires a different set of skills than writing a novel. I miss being able to lock myself away in my man cave and write a made-up story about made-up people. And that’s what I am now craving.

I handed the second draft of my second novel to my agent in January. This book has taken me much longer than Invisible Boys to write. The actual drafting process each time has been pretty quick – two or three months each time – but there have been many false starts on this project. I first started writing it in early 2014; then again in late 2016; then finally started a recognisable version in early 2018 while at Varuna; and finally finished it last year. It’s been developing on-and-off for six years, which feels like an eon.

My agent and I chatted on the phone the other day. There are some further edits to make, and they are good ones that will make this manuscript what it needs to be. I’ll do them soon, but I’ve also reached the point where I need a few months’ break from book two, or I think I’ll print it out just to set it on fire in a wild artistic rage.

Plus, something more exciting has my attention at the moment.

As I’ve emerged from my comedown, I’ve found my mind percolating with ideas for my third book instead. I wrote the first line for this book a couple of months ago, only because it came to me fully-formed, but I didn’t push it any further. Over the years I’ve learned to feel into the rhythms of my creative bloodflow, and I knew it was too soon to try to push for more words. But these past few weeks, more and more ideas have been coming to me. I’m jotting them down on my phone and emailing them to myself to keep track of them, but the percolating is happening faster and faster and I can feel it reaching a pinnacle, like a kettle coming to the boil. This happens for every book I’ve written. Eventually it builds up enough that I feel compelled to start writing, and I’m getting close to that point.

Today, I opened a word document to jot down a rough timeline of when I want to write this book, and before I knew it, I had working names for my two main characters, and about 500 words of ideas too. I’m getting so pumped about this new book and I can’t wait to write it down in full.

In Marie Kondo terms, this third book is sparking the most joy right now – so I’m gonna  follow this bubbling excitement and see where it leads. My priority is going to be writing the first draft of this third novel. Once that’s done, I’ll circle back to edit the second book.

I’d love to share more about both books two and three, but at this stage I reckon I’m better served by shutting up and getting them finished.

The best thing about actively writing new material is that it is some of the best medicine I have ever known when it comes to my wellbeing: writing makes me feel good. This bodes well, because there will be lots of writing in the months ahead.

I can’t wait to share these new stories with you each.

Holden

My dreams came true. Now what?

So, I finally got what I’ve spent my whole life wanting.

I’ve mentioned before that I first wanted to be a writer when I was seven years old. It was only about three months ago, at thirty-one, that my debut novel was published.

Such a decades-long journey was a saga in itself, and most of the time it felt as painful, despairing and treacherous as a barefoot trek from The Shire to Mordor.

I had always imagined that final moment of triumph – of being a Published Novelist (TM) – would be a uniquely exhilarated instant. Arms raised to the heavens, chin up, crossing the finish line like a less athletic, more creative, just-as-sweaty Usain Bolt.

My imagination didn’t lie to me: that’s how it felt. It was fucken rad.

Releasing Invisible Boys into the world was a thrill-ride, from the moment I was shortlisted for the Hungerford Award in September 2018 until the end of my sixty-day book tour in October and November last year.

The whole thing was a really heady experience. It felt incredible to have finally achieved the thing I set out to do as a young boy. The validation, the sense of completion and the trophy-raising sense of triumph are all so intoxicating I am sometimes scared to dwell on them for too long in case they lose their potency.

There were loads of other joyous moments. Sharing my writing and myself in an honest, open, unfettered way has made me feel more seen and more understood than I’ve ever felt. And since I spent bulk pockets of my life feeling unseen and misunderstood, this has been great for my wellbeing and personal development.

Sharing my story also felt purposeful, because I got to meet and speak with so many people (so many!) who shared their own experiences. Writing this book helped me process trauma, and reading it has helped readers to process theirs. It helped both me and them simultaneously to feel less alone. Altruistically, this is super rewarding.

Tour highlight: speaking to a sold-out crowd in Geraldton.

If the thing humans crave most is connection, and if my soul had only really known societal disconnection since I was a child, then these moments of true connection were a Roman feast for my heart.

But I mean that in the way ancient Romans used to feast: you know, you eat, and eat, and eat, until you are too full, bloated and bursting, and you have to throw up, so you chunder and then you wipe your mouth, stretch out on your lounge and return to your gluttonous feast to keep eating.

It was strange, but so much connection eventually left me feeling like I needed a break. So much visibility made me want to go and hide in a cave until people forgot what my face looked like. I haven’t had any public appearances in over a month now and it’s been the best remedy I could have asked for.

I’m not ungrateful for the success this book has had. I know I am very, very lucky. The sales, critical acclaim and reader responses are all amazing. I’m so grateful to everyone who’s read and supported the book. And the book tour was a mammoth undertaking, and though it was intense, I will never regret doing it.

But that super intense promo period is done.

One of my most exciting moment just after release, when the 25 copies of my book at Dymocks Joondalup had almost all been sold within just a couple of days.

And now the dust has settled, I’m looking around to find I don’t know where I am. I’ve arrived somewhere I’ve never been. This is foreign terrain; a new land with no map.

Despite knowing better, on some level I thought being a published novelist would revolutionise my life.

It didn’t.

I’d heard successful artists talk about this, how achieving your dreams can be amazing but also disillusioning, but I quietly hoped my experience would be different.

Nup.

For most of my childhood, adolescence and adulthood, I’ve identified with the struggling artist mindset, and it’s made me who I am. I can work hard, achieve, pull all-nighters. I can burn out and recover. I can flail in desperation and pace myself. I can lose faith and think I’m a shit writer and two seconds later think I’m God’s gift to literature. I can withstand people mocking my dreams, telling me I should be an engineer instead, get a big boy job. I can survive people mocking my ambition. I can be dogged and bloody-minded. I can strive for a goal even if it seems impossible and takes twenty-three years. 

All of this prepared me for one thing – how to reach my goal – but it didn’t prepare me for what happens after the goal has been reached.

That’s the foreign, mapless terrain I find myself in now.

Achieving a dream does what it says on the box, but no more. I dreamt of being a published novelist; I am now a published novelist, and holy fuck it feels awesome. My whole life, I’ve saddled this desperate thirst for validation, and getting my novel published did quench that. I feel validated in a way I always craved, and I no longer feel that craving, though it’s etched into my skin so deeply I’ll never forget it.

But that’s it. That sense of validation and victory does not inherently resolve any other deficiency or problem in my life. The same interpersonal conflicts, the same tensions, the same lack of money, the same angst, the same cruelty and neglect, the same self-abnegation, the same neurotic shit that belies my hubris … all of it’s still there.

Achieving your goals doesn’t fix you as a person. That is its own beast.

So, what now? Where am I? Where do I go from here? What happens next?

Me at around 14 or 15, dreaming of being an author.

I’ve set some new goals for the year ahead. Firstly, I’ll keep promoting Invisible Boys: there are author talks, interviews and festival appearances lined up all year, thankfully more spaced out than my tour. I’ll also be polishing my second book, which is with my agent currently for her thoughts (and I’m freaking out about it). And this July, I’m planning to do Camp NaNoWriMo again to start my third novel.

Writing this, just now, gives me perspective. I’m no longer striving for these goals because I crave validation. Some of the self-imposed pressure has come off. I’m now writing because (a) these are stories I really want to tell and (b) writing is the funnest thing in the world to me. Upon reflection, this actually seems like a healthier mindset with which to tackle a writing project.

I’m also writing these books because my real dream, which I wrote about in this post about success, is not just to have one novel published. My dream is to be a full-time writer, earning a living off my books. I’m nowhere near that yet; this is the next goal. It may take another twenty-three years. I hope not, but it might, and if does take that long, I’ll survive. This journey has taught me patience, even though the lessons sometimes made me bleed.

And this moment of reflection makes me think back to my teenage self. How I used to lay on the trampoline on our half-acre block in Geraldton, staring up at the sky, thinking how it would feel to finally make it one day. Charlie in my book has this same energy, same desire. Back then, I’d watch clouds cross blue while my dog Ebony, a staffy cross, trotted around nearby. I used to look at the sky a lot, day and night. The full moon  transfixes me; my biggest inspiration; the little beacon by which I promised myself, each month, one day I will make it.

The sky is possibility, potential, everything that could be but isn’t yet.

And the sky is my direction; I am climbing a mountain towards it while knowing I will never touch it.

Reflecting and recalibrating, in this moment now, makes me feel good. My first novel being published was the first peak on the way to a much higher summit. And though this terrain is new and uncharted, the ascent so far has given me all the tools I need.

I have the work ethic of a manual labourer who dug trenches in forty degree heat.

I have the doggedness of a struggling writer who took twenty-three years to break through.

And I have the imagination of a fourteen-year-old boy who stared up at the sky every Midwestern summer, dreaming of his mountain.

Time to climb.

Holden

medicine

I feel like I won’t know how I feel right now until I look back a decade from now when I’m 41 years old (or maybe still 29 ;)) and I have some distance from this whirlwind and I can appreciate that really in the scheme of the industry I was only ever a small fish with a book that was an indie hit for a few months and then maybe it will stall maybe it or I will flail or sink and in a decade none of this or me will even matter to anyone at all or maybe it will get even bigger than that even bigger than it is now and maybe it will launch rockets from here hurl me up into the stars like that ambitious fucker Orion

I kinda hope it does no who am I fucken kidding of course I want it to get bigger its like when they interviewed me on that podcast after I won the Hungerford and the bloke asked me “what’s your goal in life, Holden?” and I said “world domination” and he laughed and I looked him square in the eye and said “but I’m really not joking”

yes I want bigger I want enough money to live off I want to be able to focus just on writing I want to not be transferring money between my accounts so I can afford red rooter for tea or fuel for my shitbox Commodore I want to be not stressing about paying the rent or fixing my car or can I really afford this massage of course I can’t afford any massage it’s all beyond my station in life but sometimes it feels good to say fuck it all what’s the point of any of this if I can’t feel good every now and then

and I don’t know how to put up more boundaries than I already have I feel intruded upon constantly but that’s what you get for putting yourself out there so vulnerable it’s like you can’t stop yourself it’s vulnerability porn really and eventually I know someone is gonna get sick of it and me and say I’m old news and I’m beating a dead horse flogging flogging and what else do I really have to offer other than baring my flayed skin for everyone?

fuck I live for the attention my ego loves it and I try to tell people I am Hammer I am a cocky arrogant dickhead and nobody seems to properly believe it but I am (but you seem so down to earth! But you’re helping people to process their arcane trauma they shoved down for three decades!) well I’ve been deep in the earth my whole life I’ve rolled in the dirt I’ve tried to hide myself in the soil I’ve soiled myself to survive the scrutiny of being so different so fucken different and so yes I know how to be down to earth and yes I’m self-deprecating to the point where it’s not funny anymore and I do have the pain I have all the pain in the world I have my own and I have yours and anything you have felt in your deepest darkest most alone most depressed most suicidal most dissociated I have felt too I understand you (even if we haven’t met, haven’t spoken, and we don’t need to) I have kept my pain and siphoned it out of my body I decanted the poison out of my blood and it’s outside of me now and you read it and now we see each other

and everyone sees me now and it is like glare like stepping out of a thirty-year dungeon into the brightest sunrise I feel like all I’ve done for the last month (the last year!) is blink and blink and try to get my eyes to adjust but it’s always getting brighter too bright and a little part of me wouldn’t mind crawling back into the dungeon for a bit of rest but I can’t rest the way I used to rest I can’t sleep I can’t switch off I can’t think straight I can’t eat right I can’t get into a routine because I’m driving and flying and I’m always ON which I’ll gladly do a thousand times not just to sell myself (like on a street corner) but so that telling this story helps you not do what I nearly did – I want to help you save you rescue and protect which is too much for anyone to take on but fuck it I’ll try and if I can help you process the nightmare you barely breathed through then that will make it all worthwhile and god knows I live for the attention my whole life is thunder and I live for validation and acknowledgement and I live for the applause applause applause but sometimes when I get it I shrink and think “why the fuck are all these people being nice to someone as shit as me? I’m a fucking arsehole!” and some days I can’t handle a single further word of praise and other days I’ll fall apart if I don’t get it we artists really are a unique brand of needy boofheads

and some days I’m overwhelmed with gratitude when I hear from people who went through the same as me (decades apart or minutes apart) or something goes well like the morning I found out we were going into reprint after just 7 days on sale and I stepped out of my mate’s shower in Richmond, Victoria and dried my Mohawk with his spare towel and then clutched the bathroom sink to hold myself up as I collapsed into a fit of sobs realising oh my fucking God I’m not a failure anymore after 23 years of trying my guts out and being a loser being THE loser that everyone sneered at and said “oh, how’s that writing going lol?” I have finally made this shit work and it was guttural sobs of joy and relief and arrival with my tears splashing on the slate-grey tiles of his modern Melbourne apartment while I listened to ‘I can go the distance’ from Hercules and I realised I had actually gone the distance

and I’m not ashamed of it I’m not ashamed of anything no shame no sacred cows no fucks shall be given because I am good and I am mine and I’m not even ashamed of writing a stream-of-consciousness on a Friday night when I should be (partying? Socialising? Fucking my husband?) but instead I am here putting words on a digital page because when I don’t write I get sick and I haven’t written a word for too long now and so don’t worry this isn’t me being sick in front of you, this is medicine probably the best medicine i have known

Holden

Eruption

ERUPTION

Your penitentiary life bunks in a dormitory suburb,
hopes mortgaged and remortgaged,
until you owe yourself too much.
When volcanoes are dormant they say they’re only sleeping.
Not you.
You’re extinct.
Couldn’t erupt if you tried: your molten rage all cooled to stone
retaining walls that hold three-by-twos together;
hold you in like a final breath.
The cottage blocks get smaller each year, each subdivision
Contracting in a gasp
Like shrink-wrap over your open mouth.
Until you’re suffocating behind perspex vistas of tumbleweed streets
Dream homes rising like tombstones on traffic-calmed asphalt.
Don’t you ever want to throw the door open?
and just
Race! / Run! / Thrash!
Wake the dead with a fire alarm guitar
Tear your wound open in the local park
Make lights blink on, silhouettes illuminate thresholds, heads tilt
As their neighbour bleeds on astroturf
Dying, but relieved
Finally: skin in this bloodless game.
– Holden Sheppard

I’ve Been a Bad, Bad Boy

G’day crew,

Well, I can’t believe it’s taken me this long to check in with my blog! To paraphrase one of the finest philosophers of the 1990s – one Miss Fiona Apple – I’ve been a bad, bad boy.

And also a bad, bad blogger.

I probably should have posted here a month ago to give you all the heads up about my brief absence: for those who don’t follow me on my social media, I have spent almost the entire last month abroad on my honeymoon.

In fact, I’m still swanning around Europe in a cologne-scented cloud of post-wedding bliss. I am currently in my hotel room in Rome, very close to the main bustle of the central Termini station. So close, in fact, that pretty much all we can hear from the hotel room window is:

• cars beeping their horns (every fucking three seconds)
• vendors shouting at people to buy their cheap-arse shit (yesterday it was raining and they were selling ponchos and umbrellas; today it’s sunny and they’re flogging hats and sunglasses – so adaptable!)
• people at bars and cafes shouting for no apparent reason
• people at bars and cafes laughing from being drunk
• trucks revving their engines
• police sirens blaring
• trains pulling into the station
• church bells chiming into oblivion

And, often times, all of these noises are happening simultaneously, which is kind of like living among havoc – especially since we’re up on the fourth floor of the hotel (shouldn’t it be vaguely quieter up here?). And having grown up in a country town and now living in the outer suburbs of Perth, all of this noise and chaos is foreign to me so it’s practically an adventure in itself.

In Monte Carlo, Monaco, visiting the late Prince Rainier’s private car collection – check out his sick Ferrari!

By the way, I am absolutely loving being on honeymoon. So far my husband and I have visited Lyon, Nice, Antibes, Monaco, Cannes, Sanremo, Paris, Rouen and now Rome. It’s been awesome to see new parts of France and Italy, which are countries we both love. I really love the culture, language and food of both countries, and I’ve been digging having so much time to practice my French (which is decent) and my Italian (which is rusty, but given that I’m half Sicilian and spent 5 weeks in Italy when I was 18, it’s slowly coming back to me).

For those who have asked, *yes*, my husband is actually here with me on the honeymoon but no, we don’t like to post a lot of couples photos online, at least not to our public social media. We both put a lot of ourselves out there in the world – not just in our writing, but on social media and by going to events – so it actually feels really nice to keep our relationship as private as we can. So, that’s why you’re seeing a lot of pics of me on my socials but very few of us together. But rest assured, we’re both spending every day together and we’re having a blast. 🙂

At the famous Colosseum of Rome, formerly known (as I learned today) as the Flavian Amphitheatre.

The only downside is that I am defo eating way too much: pizza and pasta of course, but also overloading on crepes with cream, gelato with cream, hot chocolate with cream, cream with cream. We return to Paris this Sunday for our last week of honeymoon, so after that, I’ll be tightening the diet back up again, especially since I have some author appearances to do in about two weeks so I don’t wanna rock up on stage like the big fatty I’m feeling like currently. But the pizza in Rome is just so bloody good – how could I resist? And more to the point – why should I? It’s half of why we chose to come here anyway!

I’ve been exercising a lot while here. Most days I’ve racked up anywhere between 15,000 and 25,000 steps which is probably the only thing offsetting all the food I’ve imbibed. I’ve been doing some bodyweight exercises in my hotel room and some basic stuff with a tiny 5kg dumbbell I smuggled in my case, but it doesn’t do much. In Rouen I found some free open-air gym equipment beside the Seine river which was awesome, so I’d do a few sets of chest and back exercises in amongst my morning jogs. And here in Rome, I found myself going stir-crazy not having been to an actual gym for so long, so I trekked into the San Lorenzo district (which is ghettoville.com) and found a grungy gym and got a day pass for 10 euros. I was the only tourist in the gym I think – everyone else was a local and most of them seemed to know each other. I smashed out some chest and biceps exercises and a bit of abs, plus cardio, and I felt a load better for it.

Chilling on the French Riviera after a run: the seaside city of Nice, Mediterranean Sea, sunshine – what better climate for a honeymoon?

Anyway … I am 100% sure not a single one of you follows this blog to hear about the banal minutiae of my diet and exercise regime – apologies!

I’m really posting here just to explain why things have been a little bit quiet here lately. In fact, this whole year I’ve only managed one post per month compared to like one post per week or fortnight last year. I’ve had a lot on my plate. From Jan – March I was working on the copy edits for Invisible Boys while simultaneously planning my wedding. In April I was occupied with planning my honeymoon and also finishing the first draft of my next novel. And I have spent basically all of May away from home: first at the Margaret River Readers & Writers Festival, then in Europe on honeymoon. Once we return to Perth, I’ll have a precious few hours at home before zooming up to my hometown of Geraldton, Western Australia for a week for the writers’ festival there.

Visiting the Arc de Triomphe in Paris, France.

Truth be told, I’m loving the magical air of suspension and lack of responsibility that comes with a long holiday – but in some weird way, it will be good to get back to normal life again once I’m back home in Perth in mid-June.

As for my writing (which, I remind myself, is what people *actually* follow this blog for), it’s been going really well. Some bullet point updates:

• The cover for my debut novel Invisible Boys has been revealed – see the bottom of this blog post – it’s amazing and I love it!
• Last week, I was announced as the winner of the 2019 Kathleen Mitchell Award from the Australia Council for the Arts. I am still pinching myself. Its a $15,000 prize, so it’s going to make a huge difference on how much time I can dedicate to writing over the next year. Plus it’s a huge vote of confidence in my book, which has now won three awards before even being published. I’m wildly grateful, still in mild disbelief that such good things could ever happen to me, and I’m desperately hopeful that people will actually like this novel once they finally get to read it in October.
• My agent is now reading the manuscript of my second novel. I am freaking the fuck out on the inside while pretending to be a cool, jaded professional on the outside.
• I promised myself I wouldn’t write while on honeymoon, as writing constitutes working. Instead, I allowed myself to read a lot, and think a lot. Not having regular access to Wi-Fi has made me pull my head out of my phone and has given my brain so much space to unwind and reflect and imagine, the way I used to years ago. Consequently, I now have a million and one ideas clamouring for my attention!
• Among these ideas are:
  • my third novel, which I’ll say nothing about, other than I pitched the concept to my husband and his eyebrows leapt off his face and he said “whoa, you have to write that!”, which is saying something because he is usually more measured and critical in his feedback;
  • my fourth novel, which I’ll also say nothing about, but it’s incredibly important to me and I so want this book out in the world, like, yesterday;
  • a novella, which in some form has been floating around in the ether of my creativity since 2011-12 when I did my Honours thesis, and the other day I was on a train in France reading Bret Easton Ellis’ new book White and suddenly the novella idea just fell into place in a way it hasn’t for the past eight years. I can’t wait to write this one, too … and I can imagine it perhaps anchoring a collection of my short fiction in the future, maybe;
  • two other, entirely separate series (plural) of novels; and
  • a TV mini-series, which has been kicking around in my head for a few years now.
• So, as you can see, I have enough to keep myself busy for the next few years at least!

In terms of what’s next, after life returns to normal-ish in late June, I’ll probably spend my writing time working on the edits for book 2, and getting back into the groove of a regular blogging practice.

Holden’s Heroes will also return in June with a new interview – I had hoped to do one in May, but it was impossible to fit in before I left overseas, and frankly, I need to learn to give myself a fucken break sometimes!

Thanks to all of you for being awesome, and I can’t wait to get back into the swing of regular blogging again in the month to come. 🙂

Cheers,

Holden

PS. Here’s the cover of Invisible Boys as promised – what do you reckon? I can’t get enough of it!