The Parts of my Unpublished Manuscript That Did Get Published

This morning I’ve been revisiting the first full-length manuscript I ever completed – the still-unpublished Young Adult action/adventure novel I wrote from 2014-2016. The pic above is from early 2015, when I was close to finishing the first draft.

Before I wrote INVISIBLE BOYS or the current version of THE BRINK, this was the book I thought would be my first published novel, and I poured a lot of time and effort into it.

I worked very hard on this manuscript, writing it mostly during a time when I was working full-time at a university. I had a mentor through the Australian Society of Authors who helped me refine the later drafts – there were seven drafts in total. I was so sure that with enough work, this book would get published.

It didn’t.

I’ve only ever spoken about this book in the context of it getting rejected by an agent in early 2017 (which I wrote about at length in an early 2019 blog posted titled A LETTER TO THE NOVEL I ABANDONED.) In some ways, I’ve spoken about it too much through that lens and not about the novel on its own terms. But that rejection was pivotal for me on two fronts.

One, it drove me into a total war/scorched earth kind of mentality – what I’ve described as “going black behind the eyes”. The failure of that manuscript hurt me so much that I doubled down on my desire for success. Weekdays, weeknights, weekends, weekend nights: all my spare time was devoted solely to the dogged pursuit of working on a new book and getting it published. No chilling, no socialising, no downtime. Work work work until I got what I wanted. I would get published or I would die trying. It’s a bit intense, but it also worked. So as much as there are unhealthy downsides to the hustle mentality, there’s also sometimes no way around it. I don’t think I would be a published author now if I hadn’t driven myself like this during that time.

Two, it catalysed the career I have now, because it made me shift the focus of my creative output. Whereas the YA action/adventure manuscript was focused on plot and action, I realised what my writing badly needed was a focus on character, humanity and heart.

It was from that new approach that INVISIBLE BOYS and THE BRINK were born.

Occasionally at events, people have asked if I would ever revisit that first, unpublished manuscript and try to get it published now.

I’ve usually said that it’s comfortably in the drawer, but that I do sometimes think about revisiting it. I’ve said that if I did, I would probably need to give the book a heart transplant, because that was the key element it was lacking, that made it unable to leap that last hurdle to becoming a publishable work.

I still think that’s what’s needed, but I spent some time reading parts of this manuscript this morning and I was surprised by a couple of things.

Firstly, I have always referred to this book as a YA fantasy novel. And it did have fantasy elements – a system of low-key magic and so on.

But at its core, it isn’t quite a fantasy novel. It’s much more an action/adventure novel, with explosions and gunfights and swordfights and running away from danger, and ancient mythologies and corrupt corporations and shady underworld organisations and a band of misfits pulled together as a kind of found family against the danger of it all.

It’s adventure fiction – like Matthew Reilly’s Jack West Jr series (The Seven Ancient Wonders etc.) mixed with Tintin and Tomorrow, When the War Began. So I reckon I’ll call it adventure from now on, rather than fantasy.

Secondly, I think if I did ever revisit this manuscript, I’d start with some fundamental changes. Apart from making it more character-driven, I’d be making it an adult protagonist instead of teenage – it just gives the story so much more room to breathe and also makes the plot more believable. I also think I’d strip out the fantasy elements and shift it towards being more of a straight-up adventure/action thriller. I think it could work that way and it would be a novel I’d actually want to write.

Thirdly, and most surprisingly, there were little glimpses of heart in this plot-driven book that I hadn’t really remembered being there. The teenage protagonist – an angry young man named Gabe – was not given a deep inner world the way my published protagonists have been. This reflects not just my tendency at the time to eschew character for plot in my writing style, but also my own inability to be emotionally vulnerable at the time. I couldn’t show real shit in my characters because I didn’t know how to confront my own feelings in real life, either.

But there are a few points in the manuscript where moments of emotion did spill through. What surprised me was that I had forgotten about some of them, and yet they showed up in different ways in the novels I wrote later on.

For instance, this scene, where Gabe storms out of the shack he is hiding in with some locals, contains elements that would later be published in INVISIBLE BOYS and THE BRINK:

(NB: I’ve never shared even a sentence from this novel publicly before, so this is a first, and for all I know, this might be the only part of the novel that ever sees the light of day … here goes.)

*

I threw the door open and stormed out, leaving the shack via the fly-wire door at the front. I didn’t care if anyone saw my face anymore. I didn’t care that I was bare-chested and barefoot, wearing only a loose pair of Heath’s boxer shorts. I didn’t even know where I was going, just that I needed to be alone. I needed to be outside and away.

I passed the burned remains of Peninsula Senior High School, the pungent smell of seaweed wafting up at me, and found myself on Peninsula Beach. I could see the CBD from here – the marina, the wharf, the port and its orange ship lifters, the markets, Horizon Terrace, the Vic, Hudson House – but it was distant. It was comforting to see it all like that, silent, spread out before the crashing waves of the Indian Ocean. It made everything feel insignificant.

I stomped a few metres along the beach sand before the desire to get wet suddenly came over me. I strode straight into the waves in my boxer shorts and waded in until I couldn’t feel the ground beneath my feet anymore.

Unlike last night’s torturous swim, the cold, salty water was refreshing. I breast stroked through the shallows for a bit and then floated on my back, eyes closed against the belting sun, as seagulls called out from the shore.

When my brain started to rumble, I dived underwater. It was cooling, satisfying, like a red-hot iron being dipped into ice water and sizzling with steam. I stayed underwater for as long as I could, my eyes closed and ears deaf, floating like a foetus in its amniotic sac.

I eventually waded back onto the beach and flopped on the soft, powdery sand, eyes shut.

A few minutes later, as the droplets of water on my bare chest began to evaporate, I heard a gruff voice behind me say, ‘Thought yer did a runner.’

‘Needed to clear my head,’ I said. I didn’t shift, didn’t open my eyes.

The sand shifted as Darren sat down beside me. ‘Does it feel clearer?’

‘No.’

*

What struck me in this scene was how much my angry teenage self was demanding expression in a novel that didn’t really have space for it. I also didn’t have the emotional intelligence in 2016 to give this scene – and Gabe – room to explore this anger. Not long after Darren arrives, it becomes a bit more surface-level, the older bloke giving the young lad a bit of a sermon, but it was all about intellectualising Gabe’s strife, rather than sitting in it and letting it be raw.

I’m also a bit happily surprised at how several parts of this scene showed up in later books. Gabe storming off in his boxer shorts is remarkably similar to Leonardo’s meltdown on Brink Island. The use of the ocean as a cleansing force and then flopping onto the sand afterwards to reflect is also very close to a scene later in THE BRINK when Leonardo flees to the island’s northern cape. Except when played out through Leonardo’s character, and written by an author who’s a few years older and more able to be vulnerable, it is a longer and deeper psychological dive into that character’s inner workings.

The part that is almost identical to something that later got published is the paragraph of Gabe looking at the burned-out remains of Peninsula Senior High School. In INVISIBLE BOYS, Charlie – my angry character of that novel – has a very similar moment of reflection from the rooftop of an abandoned school in the middle of town, where he feels better watching the town from a distance, hearing the waves of the Indian Ocean. In both scenes, the characters are at peace with how the schools are abandoned, destroyed, and therefore safe.

This might only be interesting to me, as the author, rather than to any readers. But it really does make me happy to have noticed these similarities. Until now, I really viewed my unpublished YA adventure novel as starkly separate to my later work: the surface-level, plot-driven stuff versus deeper, character-driven work.

But I can see now that I was trying. There were attempts to express my suppressed anger – and express myself – even in the earlier work. I just didn’t have the emotional bandwidth or literary skill to do it well, or sustain it for longer than a few sentences. There are only occasional glimpses of inchoate angst, a nebulous self finding brief moments to reveal itself before being swallowed by the camouflage of a plot-driven tale.

I still don’t know what I will do with this manuscript. It might stay in the drawer forever. Maybe it was just a necessary first attempt at a book – not a failure as such, but a bridge between writing fun adventure fiction and writing something more honest. Or maybe I will come back and shape it into an adult-led thriller with heart. I don’t know.

In any case, it’s not the next thing on my to-do list. I’ll be spending my summer reading some books I’ve wanted to read for a long time – for inspiration, for learning – and then the first half of 2023 will be spent doing the rewrites on my third novel. I haven’t said much about my third novel, other than it’s about an angry gym junkie named Dane hitting his thirties, and I’m glad, because I think I am going to do a pretty major rework as I write the third draft of it next year.

Even the title of book three is going to change, so I’m especially glad I didn’t follow one of my whims last year to reveal the title during the promo tour for THE BRINK. That would have been hard to walk back, especially as the old title said so much about the book’s content, and now the book is taking a different direction in some ways. In fact, currently I don’t even have a new title for it, and although I’ve brainstormed a bunch of working titles lately, I don’t think any of them will be the one that makes it to publication, because they’re not even good enough for me to want to pick them as working titles. I don’t think I’ll really get a handle on this until I’m working on it properly in like Feb/March next year.

All I do know is book three is next up, and I’m keen to share Dane Di Angelo, and his story, with youse.

And after that? Book four is about a trio of men in their twenties named Zeke, Charlie and Hammer. 😉

So, maybe my fifth book will be rework of this unpublished novel? Or maybe I’ll be inspired to chase down one of the dozen or so other book ideas I have patiently waiting for my attention. There’s a joy in not knowing, really, and a liveliness in just following my gut towards what most needs expression each time I start a new book. I’ll suss it out as I go, and just hope that people will come along for the ride.

Holden

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On the brink of The Brink

G’day crew,

My second novel THE BRINK is published tomorrow and I am so excited for it.

I had intended to write a more comprehensive blog post to herald this book’s release, but I’ve been swamped for a long time.

I was doing a podcast interview earlier today when I mentioned how I recall the specific moment my career exploded. I was standing in the art exhibition space in building 16 at Edith Cowan University’s Mount Lawley Campus in mid-2018, back when I worked there, and while setting up for the event, I glanced at my phone and saw an email from Griffith Review.

The email stated that my novella “Poster Boy” had been declared one of the five winners of the 2018 Novella Project competition, and would be published in Griffith Review #62 later that year.

I remember being numb with shock, disbelief, excitement, anticipation. It had been a long slog to get any of my work recognised. And this email came a few months after a phone call with my then-agent, who advised me that the big 5 publishers in Australia had all rejected the full-length novel manuscript we were pitching to them, titled INVISIBLE BOYS.

I remember taking that phone call in March 2018, a few minutes before teaching an Academic Writing tutorial at ECU for their University Preparation Course. My heart sank through the floor. I remember saying to my agent, “So, is INVISIBLE BOYS dead in the water, or what?” And while she assured me it wasn’t, I feared my career was over before it had begun, and had to go on to cheerily teach a class about how to write an academic essay while inside I felt devastated that I would never make it as an author.

So, just a few months later, when I stood in that white-walled art exhibition space and saw the email from Griffith Review, I was ecstatic. Something was happening! Something I wrote was getting published in a really respected journal. I remember how my colleagues – Sarah, Shad and Julie – celebrated with me, supported me, and encouraged me. It was an awesome win after a long few months of failure.

When “Poster Boy” got published, I was given a few thousand dollars of prize money. It was the first time I’d made any real money off my writing, ever. And I remember that moment as the start of an avalanche, because a few weeks later, INVISIBLE BOYS was shortlisted for the Hungerford, and then it won, and then things went KABOOM .

I mention the mid-2018 “Poster Boy” moment because it was from that moment that my career kicked up a gear and I felt overwhelmed by it for the longest time. The world became a gigantic, non-stop hustle. The INVISIBLE BOYS tour was awesome. But it also made me dissociate the fuck out of my body almost every gig, because it was just so intense to revisit that trauma over and over.

It wasn’t until late 2021 that I started to feel like I had any level of control over my life again. I started learning how to say no to things, how to put up boundaries, how to protect and defend my writing time and my time to just be a human being. I learned how to define myself beyond being a writer. I found a lot of peace and comfort in weightlifting, and cardio, and playing social footy, and working as a labourer again.

I mention this because my headspace, now, today, the day before my second novel comes out, is so wildly different to how I felt the first time.

When INVISIBLE BOYS came out I felt like a newborn foal taking his first shaky steps only to cop a torrent of fire-hose-pressure water to the face. I felt knocked off my feet. I had only just worked out who I was, and then the whole world seemed to just COME AT ME, with its misreadings and expectations and projections. Ahh, it was amazing and horrific in equal measure.

Tonight, I am sitting at my desk with a can of bourbon, pausing for just a minute to reflect on how I feel before THE BRINK goes out into the world.

I am really happy to say that this time around, I don’t feel overwhelmed. I don’t feel like a nervous foal finding his feet in a dangerous environment.

I feel like a goddamn wild stallion.

This time around, I know who I am. I know I am not everyone’s cuppa tea and I don’t give a shit. I’ve happily set up a whole tour where I can put myself out there, show up as I really am, meet a whole heap of you guys, and then promptly retreat back to my cave to take care of myself once it’s done.

This headspace was hard-won. I pushed back against the expectation that authors, gay YA authors specifically, have some duty to be good role models (fuck that – it’s unhealthy!) and I rejected the projection of literary class that was foisted upon me in the public eye by proudly accepting my status as a bogan on season seven of the ABC’s TV show YOU CAN’T ASK THAT (I’m not kidding – the moment that episode aired I felt this bulk sense of relief that I didn’t have to pretend to be anything other than a Gero dero anymore).

I really can’t overstate how much these moves have made a difference to how settled I feel.

I don’t feel any pressure to be perfect or well-behaved or anybody’s role model.

I don’t feel the weight of being an award-winning literary author.

I feel more comfortable showing up as myself now. The good parts and the bad.

It makes the eve of a new book release far less daunting than last time. Instead of this sense of dread and terror, I feel excited.

I have written a book I am proud of. It is, as John Mellencamp would say, the best that I could do. It is a book about self-discovery and self-love. It is about wrestling your own identity back from who the world wants and expects you to be – something I have spent the past few years trying to do. It is, I hope, an ode to self-empowerment and finding a way to be yourself, even if the climate around you has always made you feel like shit. It is about Leonardo, the shy, terrified boy who wants to be tough; and Kaiya, the high-achiever who wants to be bad; and Mason, the footy jock who wants to be with his best mate, Jared. It is about burning your fake persona down to find who you really are – who you really wanna be.

It’s also a kickarse thriller (well, I reckon it is). I hope youse like it.

With all the edits to THE BRINK obviously now completed, and my third book draft completed and sent off to my agent and publisher earlier today, I am finally able to get back to blogging and sharing more writing and reflections with you guys again – just in time for my tour.

You can find out more about THE BRINK here.

And if you wanna come see me on tour, here’s the details of where you can find me in the coming weeks.

Can’t wait to connect with youse again as I hit the road across Australia over the coming months – seeyas out there!

Holden

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!

 

 

 

Why 30 is the New 18

Hey guys,

So, I turned 30 recently, and now that I am on the other side, I can firstly confirm that it was a survivable experience.

Secondly, being your standard navel-gazing author, I thought I’d write about what turning 30 meant to me. But as I started writing it, I realised how many parallels there are between the idea of “becoming an adult” (which used to be ascribed to turning 18) and what our culture now expects from us when we hit the big 3-0.

So I pitched the article idea to an editor, and my article has now been published today at Ten Daily.

Have a read here if you’re interested.

I’d really love to hear from readers on this one. Did you feel like a ‘real’ grown up when you turned 18, or 21? Or was it closer to when you reached 30?

Did your Saturn Return (from the ages of 27-31) have anything to do with it? My own Saturn Return (not that I believe in astrology, but just go with it …) played a major role and was a pivotal point for me.

I have to say I’ve grown accustomed to being 30 now – and it actually makes me feel more confident and more like a grown man than I’ve ever felt before.

Here’s to the thirties. 🙂

Holden

He Shoots, He … Well, He Tried

A week ago, I set a whole bunch of what I thought were quite achievable goals, and I promised that I would check back in to say how I travelled.

I’m doing this because making a goal without actually reporting back on the outcome, whether good or bad, feels incomplete. And, especially if I didn’t do well, it would be all too easy to just never bring this up again.

But I’m not doing this either to beat myself up or to clap myself on the back, really. I’m doing it to keep myself accountable, and also to find out if the goals I set for myself are actually realistic or not.

So – how did I do?

1. Get up on time for the #5amwritersclub (four times)

I actually managed to hit this goal! I had to use my Saturday morning in order to do it, but I got there, and I’m pretty chuffed. Waking up early is hard and to be honest it’s rare that I’m out of bed bang on 5am, but getting up for work and knowing I’ve already done my writing hours for the day is a very good feeling: it means I can start the day in a happy haze, almost like a post-coital afterglow. As Robert Hass said, “It’s hell writing and it’s hell not writing. The only tolerable state is having just written.” This is very true.

2. Hit the Gym (four times)

My aim was to hit the gym four times, which is the new routine my trainer has set for me. The plan was to go on Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday and Sunday.

I manged to get to the gym three out of four times, which is not too bad and I’m not too bothered by missing the mark. Interestingly, I got there on Saturday instead of Friday, which has made me rethink how I’ll do this next time. Friday is one of my busiest days of the week with professional work and teaching at uni, so it makes absolutely no sense to try scheduling a workout in there, too.

Next week, I’m going to try for Tuesday, Wednesday, Saturday and Sunday. Thursday and Friday – my two most hectic days where I have a 1.5 hour commute each way to boot – will be kept sacrosanct, so when I get home I can just collapse. And Monday will be enshrined as my writing day, kept separate from every other commitment behind one of those thick velvet ropes.

3. Stick to my Meal Plan Perfectly (for seven days)

This is a big, fat, red-text fail. I already knew it would be hard not to snack while marking, and I held it together relatively well until Thursday, when the wheels fell off and I ended up spending $18 on creating the largest custom-made party mix known to mankind (and eating the entire thing in two days). In fact, in stark contrast to my goal, this week was probably the worst my diet has been for some time.

My preciousssss!

On the upside, my meals were all still in line with my diet plan, and I still got in all my protein shakes and egg whites and all the plain meat and vegetables I’m supposed to consume. It’s just that my snacks got in the way, especially from Thursday to Saturday. Still, I live and learn. Not giving in to temporary setbacks and failure is how I’ve gotten anything I have in life: persistence is key, and eventually things fall into place.

4. Sleep a LOT

Yeah, look, I did sleep a lot, and I don’t really have anything exciting to say about it, other than I did what I set out to do. It takes some real goddamn skill to lay very still and do nothing for seven hours.

5. Don’t Burn Out Again

I didn’t burn out last week. The signs are starting to mount that I’m getting close to a burnout, though, so I need to start taking steps now to take proper care of myself.

6. Write a Blog Post

Bam! I nailed this. I think I wrote three blog posts in the space of a week: one about failure, one about new goals, and one which was a review of Louise Allan’s debut novel, The Sisters’ Song (which was remarkably successful compared to other reviews I’ve done ages ago, so maybe I need to do more of these!).

7. LIVE, DAMN YOU, LIVE!

I’m starting to realise that Holden is becoming a dull boy, and that’s really shitty, but I hardly did any living this past week. I set myself the goal of having the whole weekend to live and enjoy, and the reality was I ended up marking and editing and submitting short stories off to journals.

For whatever reason, my personality is so flawed that I find it difficult to find ways to have fun. I didn’t used to be like this, but the more I try to juggle everything at once (working several jobs, volunteering, writing, writer admin, gym) the more my fun time gets squeezed out of my schedule, like the last gasp of minty toothpaste from a rolled-up tube.

I really, really need to stop and take some time soon not just to rest, but to actively have fun.

On balance, despite fucking some of these goals up beyond all recognition, I reckon I did okay this past week. Most importantly, I’m keen to keep trying, and trying, until I get it right, which is, I reckon, the answer to most things in life.

Onwards and upwards.

Holden

 

 

The Parting of the Ways

Whenever I speak to someone about something I’ve written, I am always at pains to point out that it is fiction and therefore totally made up.

Sometimes – like with works of epic fantasy – it’s easier for people to swallow: I don’t usually need to break a sweat trying to convince someone I am not a warrior mage from Dervine, for instance.

But when you write contemporary YA – which is the genre/category of my upcoming novel – the line between the characters of fiction and the author who brought them into being becomes blurry.

All novels are, by their nature and definition, works of fiction – but there’s no denying that they also serve to crystallise many fragments of the author. It may be elements of our psyche, our history, our politics or our worldview, but some hidden shards of us end up in the final product, like tiny cracked eggshells accidentally sprinkled into the pudding.

The degree to which this happens varies from author to author, novel to novel.

I’ve recently been poring over my printed manuscript, going over some notes from the editor and immersing myself in the novel’s aura, and today a quote came to me from the abyss.

Okay, it was from Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, but “abyss” had more gravitas.

Towards the end of that book [SPOILER ALERT, if you’re 17 years behind …], in the penultimate chapter titled “The Parting of the Ways”, Harry is forced to recount the trauma of what just happened to him at the end of the Triwizard Tournament. He’s witnessed Cedric being murdered in front of him; witnessed the spectral reincarnation of his dead parents for a cruel, infinitesimal moment; and seen the Dark Lord rise again.

In short, he’s had a bloody shit night out and the thought of talking about it is too painful.

When I first read this novel at age twelve, there was a line from this chapter that stood out to me. In subsequent years, as I’ve attempted to recover from some of the trauma I’ve put myself through in life, that line has glowed in my mind with the ferocity of a lightning bolt-shaped scar:

“Once or twice, Sirius made a noise as though about to say something, his hand still tight on Harry’s shoulder, but Dumbledore raised his hand to stop him, and Harry was glad of this, because it was easier to keep going now he had started. It was even a relief; he felt almost as though something poisonous was being extracted from him; it was costing him every bit of determination he had to keep talking, yet he sensed that once he had finished, he would feel better.”

The part in bold is what resonates with me, now, as I look at the mess of papers that constitutes my manuscript’s current draft.

I had the same feeling when I started writing this book: that something toxic was being extracted from my blood; with each sentence I pounded out on the keyboard, a few more drops of latent venom leaked out of my veins, slowing filling the vial.

Acidic pain.

Boiling rage.

Noxious regret.

Caustic shame.

It finally escaped my body and became contained in its own vessel: the manuscript that sits before me now, marked in editor’s pencil and illuminated by the afternoon sunlight.

Yes, it’s entirely fictional. The characters are made up, and so is the story. It will be read, first and foremost, as a tale. But the themes this novel tackles are so close to the bone that I drew plenty on my own past in fleshing out some elements.

My writing process for this novel reflects Harry’s experience and exhaustion, too. I had to plumb some deep reserves of determination to keep writing when I was so shattered, but I knew that once I finished, I would feel better.

I do feel better now.

Moreover, writing this book represented a Parting of the Ways of my own. That vial full of poisonous venom has left my body and is contained in the manuscript now. Now that it’s outside of me at last, I can see it more clearly. I can experiment with it. I can open it and close it. I can hold it in my hands and feel its weight.

My task now is to make some final touches and then send it into the world, where my work can, I hope, serve as balm for others whose skin right now is as burnt and raw as mine once was.

Holden

Failure, Triumph and Spear Tackling Demons

Last year I tried to do a thing, and I failed spectacularly.

The thing was NaNoWriMo – a wonderfully kooky-looking acronym that stands for National Novel Writing Month. Thousands of writers – from amateur to emerging to published and prolific – attempt to write a 50,000 word novel in the thirty days of November.

I tried my guts out last year, but it was just a hot mess.

Hell, I was a hot mess.

I’d just been told I was losing my job in a restructure; I had nothing concrete to fall back on; and I had something like eight or nine major projects or events to deliver in the space of six weeks.

And I thought this was a good time to burn the midnight oil and churn out that great Aussie novel.

50,000 word story short: I failed, badly.

I got just a little over half way, which is not too bad given the gauntlet I was facing at work. But I crashed and burned, and that manuscript – which was a YA Thriller, and which I actually really like – is collecting dust in a drawer. Or more accurately, succumbing to the early stages of data rot on my hard drive. In my head, it’s more like cake batter: I fully intend to bake a delicious sponge with it and the guests are going to love it, but the oven isn’t preheated yet.

In non-overly-extended metaphor terms: I have a few other writing projects taking priority.

One of which is my second novel.

So, July saw the latest outing for Camp NaNoWriMo, which is billed as a virtual summer camp for writers. We even had cabins, where I got to chat to my fellow writers and we could share our joys and frustrations.

Because I wanted to make some massive headway in July, I set my goal as the traditional 50,000 words and set off on Day 1, which is a good start as that doesn’t always happen in NaNoWriMo. Some writers – past me included – have a tendency to rock up late, like day 3 or 4, and then play what feels like a Sisyphean game of catch-up from there. You know you’re not off to a great start when you’re limping across the starting line.

Despite the demands of work and publishing THE BLACK FLOWER in mid-July and other life stuff, I managed to track ahead of my goal word count every day of November, which I am pretty pumped about.

And on Day 30, I finally passed 50,000 words and reached my goal.

July was a fruitful month, though I’m going to pretend that flat part of the graph doesn’t exist.

I have said it before but I will say it again: the benefits of applying an artificial and entirely arbitrary deadline to your creative practice can never be undersold. I take off my hat to the people at the Office of Letters and Light who make NaNo happen. It is, for me, the most productive way to write. I thrive off both the stress and the sense of competition.

Maybe it’s masochistic, but I work best when I know I am suffering intensely for a real, tangible and nearby reward: a completed manuscript.

And suffer I did.

This manuscript is the most personal thing I have ever written, and I am including my Honours thesis story ‘Full-Forward’ which genuinely drove me to drink.

This manuscript required me to tap into so much of my past suffering: the very worst of what others have done to me, and the very worst of what I have done to myself.

This manuscript demanded brutal honesty. From the first chapter, there could be no sacred cows, and so I refused to let myself have any. Nobody and nothing is safe from the torch beam of this manuscript. I forced myself to see it all, sit with it all, and most importantly, to speak about it all.

And I found I had so much to say.

I’m still working on this novel. There are a few chapters left to go. I’ll hopefully complete them within the next few weeks, and then the joys of editing will kick in.

Meantime, I’m enjoying the honest introspection – and extrospection – this process has offered me as a creator and a storyteller. The dogged honesty this work requires is forcing me to spear-tackle some demons, identify hard truths from chimeras, and valiantly step into marching boots I have held in the cupboard for years but have always been too terrified to lace up.

I really can’t wait to share this book with the world. I’ll be posting here about it from time to time over the coming months, so make sure to follow my blog and keep an eye on my social media channels, too.

More from me soon, in many ways.

Holden

I got writing advice from Matthew Reilly and ignored it. Because I’m a fuckwit, that’s why.

In November last year, bestselling action author and bona fide super geek Matthew Reilly stopped off in Perth as part of his book tour to promote The Four Legendary Kingdoms, the latest instalment in his uber-successful Jack West Jr series.

Keen to hear him speak about being a writer, I went along to his packed-out evening talk at Wesley College, a posh private boys’ school. I scored a seat in the nosebleed section, looking entirely out of place decked out in my favourite Five Finger Death Punch jersey and Obey cap among the white-collar types and the blazer-wearers. I’m fairly sure a pre-emptive suspicious persons report was filled out in my honour.

But I digress. Matthew Reilly was fascinating to listen to, and spoke with the confidence of someone who has been successful for a long time. He handled the Q & A like a seasoned pro. What’s most interesting about Reilly is not so much his phenomenal success as an Australian author – for which I reckon he never gets enough credit in his homeland – but his path to becoming a megastar. After being rejected by every major publisher and their poodles, Reilly self-published his first novel Contest in 1996 when he was only in his early twenties. After convincing the owner of a local bookshop to sell it, the book was spotted by an editor from Pan Macmillan, and he picked up a publishing contract.

I look up to Matthew Reilly for a number of reasons. He’s an Aussie author. He writes action/adventure novels, which I love reading. Jack West Jr is an Australian character, which I think is awesome in a blockbustery kind of novel. My fantasy novels tend to the more actiony end of the spectrum, so Reilly’s also an influence on my own work. While he often cops stick for not being “literary” enough, critics who level that at him are a little off-base. Action thrillers are a different genre to literary fiction: fans read these books because they want to be entertained. They don’t want to see Jack navelgazing for two-thirds of the book about his feelings. Reilly writes his novels as if they’re films, and once you take that on board, it’s easier to see what he’s doing.

Anyway, after the talk, I waited in a very long line (about an hour and a half, from memory) to get my copy of The Four Legendary Kingdoms signed. We were given cupcakes by the organisers, which was a nice touch. Then I got to meet the author, shake his hand, take a photo and have a brief chat with him.

Seizing my chance for advice, I told Reilly I was writing a YA Fantasy novel, that he was an influence on my work, and if he had any advice for me as I approached the querying process.

I figured it might be a boring, common question for him that would receive a one-line response, but to my pleasant surprise, Reilly was incredibly generous with his time. He essentially stopped the queue and rattled off a sequence of rapid-fire advice to me, which I quickly tried to memorise.

He made a point of adding one final piece of advice.

“Revise your manuscript again,” he said, locking eyes with me in a way that said take this seriously. “No matter how much you think it’s finished and polished, there’s always one more revision to be done.”

I nodded and smiled and thanked him for his time, and shuffled along past the weary-looking event staff.

But did I take the expert advice of this intelligent, successful, bestselling author seriously?

No.

Because I am what the French would call un connard, and the Aussies would call an arrogant fuckwit.

Most artists, myself included, tend to see-saw in a slightly unhinged manner between crippling, overwhelming self-doubt and full-blown narcissism. Sadly, that day was an egoic one: my head was wedged firmly within the warm dankness of my colon.

“Oh, Matthew, you know not who you are dealing with,” said a slightly medieval-toned fellow in my head. “For I have done seven drafts of this manuscript. I have worked with one of the greatest editors in the land, and another copyeditor has tidied it up. I am not some garden-variety amateur writer. I don’t need another revision. You, sir, are wrong.”

So I took my seventh draft of a manuscript and queried my first round of agents. I had to wait until the new year for responses. One finally came through: a form rejection, which stung. Another never replied after the initial acknowledgement of receipt.

But the third agent emailed back and said he was interested in seeing the full manuscript.

I did some metaphorical backflips, sobbed uncontrollably (that was a day of doubt) and then calmly replied with a “please see attached, kind regards” kind of way that successfully disguised how ecstatic/utterly destroyed I was.

Just getting a full request was proof, to me, that I wasn’t totally rubbish. I was good enough to generate professional interest. Even if it came back as a no, it was a confidence boost.

A couple of weeks later, I came back home from a run around the block and felt my phone vibrating. An Eastern states number. I tried to stop panting and answered in a level voice.

It was the agent who’d requested the full.

This is it, I thought. Agents don’t waste time calling people unless they’re offering representation. This is my moment!

“Great to hear from you!” I gushed to the agent.

There was an awkward silence at the other end of the line.

“Uh, you might want to hear what I have to say first, before you say that,” he said simply.

It was a rejection.

A thirty-minute phone call of a rejection, which is now my high water mark for how much disappointment my body can physically take.

The agent liked my manuscript. He said it was a strong read. He said he came to care about the characters and really liked some of them. But the word he used for the novel was “competent”, which cut me deeply. You want your accountant to be competent. You want a novel to excite you. And he wasn’t excited.

“It’s competent, but not good enough,” he said. “It really has got to be jolly good.”

I took copious notes, because this phone call – as crushing as it was – was a gift. This incredibly busy, successful agent was bothering to spend half an hour of his time on the phone with me, a no-name writer trying to get my first novel published who wasn’t an existing client. This was incredibly generous of him, and I asked as many questions as I could.

Some of his feedback didn’t land, because it was off-base for the type of story I wanted to write. But a lot of his feedback struck a nerve. It hurt because I knew he was right. Once I thought about it, and looked at the manuscript, I could see he was on point on a few matters. The manuscript still needed work.

After self-flagellating with a cat o’ nine tails and gnashing my teeth for the past few weeks, I’m finally ready to actually talk about this.

Because it means I’m no longer at the querying stage. I have to go back a step, and do an eighth draft.

You know, like Matthew Reilly told me to do.

Tail between my legs, I will admit I should’ve listened to him in the first place.

So what’s next? I’m working on a YA novel at the moment. I’m going to finish that first, because it’s burning with more urgency. And once the first draft of that is complete, I will return to my fantasy manuscript and start working on the eighth draft. And I’m going to make sure it’s bloody excellent.

Failure has always motivated me to do better, and this is no exception. I won’t finish with this novel until it is so good it demands a place on bookshelves; and I won’t stop until it’s published and sitting on one.

Holden

Review: Secret Men’s Business by John Marsden

Whoa, did this book have an incredible impact on me as a kid.

When you’re a teenage boy, there are so many things you want to ask about being a bloke.

You want to ask your dad, your brothers, your cousins, even your mates – but you don’t, because this is a verboten topic. You’re expected to know how to become a man without ever talking about it – because to talk about being a man means you must still be a boy, and the last thing a teenage boy wants to be called is a boy and not a man.

I remember finding Secret Men’s Business in the town library and being fascinated that a man had actually sat down and written all of this for us boys to just pick up and learn what we wanted to know. What an absolute champion. Marsden’s book tackled a wide range of topics, from the emotional to the sexual and highly visceral – the stuff you really couldn’t talk about with your dad. It was a thrilling, captivating read and it hit the mark.

My most vivid memory of the book is of hiding it. I don’t think my parents or anyone else knew I was reading it. I only read it in bed, after everyone in the house was asleep. It was hidden in a secret place in my bedroom. In fact, I hid it where I hid my porn magazines, and I would have probably had the same reaction if either item had been unwittingly found. There was a shame that came with reading this – because I felt like I should have already known it all: that manly wisdom should arrive via osmosis or telepathy, not from a book.

But despite that, I was still compelled to read this book. I had to know all the secret stuff about being a man – the stuff that nobody talked about. This book had it all. And I felt better once I’d finished it. I was less insecure; more confident. This book helped shape me as a man. It also helped shape me as a writer. I wanted to incorporate some of these themes, some of this masculine wisdom, some of this unabashed honesty, into my fiction – if I could find a way to do it well, of course.

John Marsden found a niche with this excellent book, and I’m so glad, because it changed my life for the better.

Holden