What's your journey as an Author?

[Graeme]

Hi all,

I started my journey as an author after major surgery re-acquainted me with my own mortality, and I decided I'd better do something about some of those stories running around in my head.

With nothing but belief in my story ideas I set to work and outlined my first real story. I spent 18 months fleshing out the design before writing a single scene.

About 9 months later, I had my first book. Rough and full of newby errors as I had no real knowledge of the practical techniques of writing.

Since then, I've pumped out a couple more books and I'm working on my fourth and I think I've graduated from novice, through apprentice to journeyman author, primarily due to the opportunity to get constructive feedback from other authors, readers and beta readers.

I.e. I've got a reasonably well developed set of skills for producing a story and creating a book.

Marketing - I'm still a novice.

What has been your journey as an author to get to where you are now?

[Ian]

I bet nobody has a history quite like mine. It all started one evening as a student in a room in Helen Connon Hall -all the women present were doing arts degrees, and two of the men were doing science, so, outnumbered, the only defence I could make was the best they could do was criticise - we would actually do something. back came the retort, you couldn't make up a plot of a novel - me: "of course I could", and the net result, cornered, I had to follow though. I asked for a day to think about it, and when I returned, they were impressed and insisted I write it. Oops! Now in a hole, I had to keep digging!

Over the summer, I worked in a freezing works (big money for a student) and in the evenings I tapped on a typewriter. I got it finished, sent it off, got about three rejections and filed it as "That was a waste of time" although what else I would have done is debatable. I came back to look at it in the early 1980s and winced at the start - it was absolutely awful, but it got a lot better quickly. So I decided a rewrite was in order. When I was wondering what to do next I got this ad for independent publishing. Yes, it would cost, but there were two things that drove me forward. First, it was tax deductible, I could spread the cost over two tax years, all at my top rate of 66%, so the government was paying for 2/3 of it. Second, I had got myself in an interesting situation. I had spent some time trying to promote a chemical industry based on durene from a synthetic gasoline plant at Motunui, and I had been in the news fairly often, and even more so, I have been on TV on a very popular consumer products show, so I had something of a platform.

Well, that did not exactly succeed, but for a rather odd reason. The chemical plant looked like it was going. I had a major financier ready to give me the equipment for a laboratory and a carried interest in the plant, which was a joint venture with a chemical major, but there was a price - I had to get out of the news. Ever tried to sell books when you are forbidden to advertise? I sold a number, and the loss overall was not too bad - nowhere nearly as bad as what happened soon.

For the next two years I was on the Board of two joint venture companies with this major, so I came across very senior business people, bankers, etc, and since the government owned the hydrocarbon stream I had dealing with a number of politicians, Ministers, etc. I had meetings with senior people in US chemical companies, etc. However, when the feasibility study was over, we had built a small starting material extraction plant, and were five million in the hole, and with absolutely stunning prospects, the government decided it did not want to own the hydrocarbon stream, tore up its supply agreement, and "sold" the plant to a competitor.

I was supposed to sell up the lab and pay back whatever to the financier, but I elected not to. The staff had to be let go, but I persisted, earning what I could, and had to rebuild the strategy of running a business that really made no sense, except there was nothing better for me.

Since business was giving me quite a bit of spare time, and the country was in the grips a a serious recession due to the late 1980s financial problems elsewhere, I elected to try to revisit writing, and putting together a number of the places I had been to on earth, and places that interested me in the solar system, and my views on politics and some pessimistic views on business, I wrote. That did to fly. Basically I was told it was too long for anyone to take on a new author. Added to which, I foretold the collapse of the Soviet Union in 2018, and it collapsed while I was trying to sell it, so I pulled that and started again. I got an agent, got the book in front of an editor in a major publisher, but the agent died on holiday, the replacement said the plot was unbelievable, and the agent dropped me for health reasons. What was unbelievable about colonising Mars or fraud? That left my surprise discovery, and the more I thought about that, the more I thought it was pretty sound. This led me to, eventually, my "Planetary Formation and Biogenesis", and eventually I sorted myself and started writing again, and when Amazon allowed self-publishing, this is where I ended up. What annoyed me about that was that Amazon excluded NZ for so long. Given that I had stuff, had I got in at the start, ant least the competition would have been a lot less, but, there we are.

[Nik]

Very interesting paths, Graeme and Ian! Hope further lie less obstacles and more success!

Ian wrote: "...I foretold the collapse of the Soviet Union in 2018.." What again?!

My writing story is quite simple. Amazed by extraordinary events unfolding in front of me in Ukraine, I conceived a story about a fictional oligarch, which I thought might be revealing. Partially, it was inspired by the series in Israel about a Russian oligarch immigrating to Israel, buying a football club and all. Seeing that it was very popular, yet primitive and naive, I thought I could offer something much more authentic and sophisticated. I even had some sketches and notes, but I never believed to be a writer to go all the way. Then, we have these get-togethers with a friend of mine from London, when he comes visit twice a year. So we were having beers on the beach and when I told him about the idea, he got pretty excited. He's quite a successful non-fiction author in the UK in the field of finance and asset management. So we decided to do it together and it was fun! So, the first book is probably 2/3 written by him, while content wise it's 2/3 of my input.
After the first one I gained confidence and got excited, while my co-author was disappointed by lack of interest on the part of the audience. So, I've written the second one solo, enthusiasm being my tailwind. The third one - absorbed its leftover -:)
I'm glad I have these books and I enjoined the experience. More so, I'm excited there are people who actually like this stuff and I'm equally attentive when someone's critical. But the response to the books is so low-key, that at this stage I feel no point in keeping writing.
If anything, I'm more into something more bizarre, like doing a literary "Four Rooms" (don't know whether you've seen the movie of Tarantino, Rodriguez & 2 more dudes)..

[Leonie]

Isn't it fascinating how we've all done it differently?

I always loved to write, and for years wanted to write a book. Got busy with life of course, and then children, but kept writing (poetry mostly), and then tore my ACL skiing.

I was really bored stuck at home, not working, for six weeks, so I started writing that book I'd always had in my head. 160,000 words later, I realised I was writing several books...

I submitted to a few agents (there are not very many in Australia) and was rejected. Revised book one quite a lot, and then saw a call for submissions in the NSW Writers Centre e-newsletter, and sent it off again. Didn't think much about it, as I'd discovered already that publishers and agents take forever to get back to you.

Went on holiday for three weeks, a month later. Came back to Australia, and worked my way through hundreds of emails, only (at around midnight) to discover and acceptance email. Woke the family up to tell them....😬😬😬😬

Three books later, and this year I'll have a fourth one published. Have had a couple of short stories published as well, although most come back with comments like: 'Great story, good characterisation....sounds like the start of a novel.'

[Scout]

Such diverse and interesting stories. Thanks for sharing, and good luck to you all.