First Page

To recap – or just to cap I guess, since we haven’t mentioned it on the blog before – First Page will be made primarily by a core group of nine already-signed on dudes. However, there will be an open chapter anteceding their contributions wherein one-off works may be showcased. We, the core group, are making multiple stories and multiple images to constitute entire chapters, they, the one-offers, are doing something like one story and one image. Last week a notice ran in writingWA’s weekly newsletter* inviting submissions, we’d like to run another one here.

To be included in the First Page open section email me or Jess (matt@themathletes.net or jessyca@mac.com) with some samples of your work and we’ll talk to see if you’re suited to the project.

What else is happening around First Page HQ? We have just finished reading some books, What is the What by Dave Eggers and Everything is Illuminated by Jonathan Safran Foer. Well, I’ve finished reading those, I don’t know if Jess has finished reading anything. Last I saw she was caught up in The God Delusion and another book with a bright pink cover called Female Chauvinist Pigs, but in addition she is still completing some university coursework so she’s a bit preoccupied. Myself, I have just wrapped up another semester of cultural studies majoring in creative writing and I tells ya, if you want to be assured of a vibrant sea of potential lapping against the shores of Perth’s writing community all you gotta do is enroll in a third year double unit of long prose fiction. Hopefully some of those mofos will put some stuff in our book, but we’ll have to wait and see.

To be confronted with those two things, the end of major achievements by hott contemporary authors and the pre-natal stages of what will surely be inspirational writing careers, makes one severely nervous about one’s own soon-to-be-published work. How does the latter end up being the former? Foer himself was once the latter, winning faculty awards for his assignments throughout his undergraduate study at Princeton University, so there must be some way, and I want to know what it is (but then he comes from a family of writers and went to a fancy prep-school so there was probably some sort of underground writer’s version of Skull and Bones engineering his success, and who knows if you can take his story as typical? I mean, you almost certainly can’t) so that I may avoid the path to frustration and obscurity.

For me the question here is about voice and subject. Once you have the writing fundamentals down what distinguishes you, I guess, are the creative choices you make. For instance, style. There are the tugging temptations to write in either the freewheeling self-conscious*** mode of an Eggers/Foer type or the solid, classic mode of, say, Gabriel Garcia Marquez. And does one go for the sweeping, all-encompassing multi-narrative like The Corrections or something more specific in scope? If I am showing my recent reading patterns to be lamely trendy then that’s a bummer but the point is: if you want your writing to be liked, or not even liked but merely taken notice of, how close to reinventing the wheel do you have to come? Very? A bit? Not so close that your precociousness puts people off but not so far that you seem behind the pace of the rest of the world? This I guess is the main anxiety I am wracking myself with, how to operate as if I am not as cut off from the rest of the world as geography and community consensus would have me believe.

One answer might be to simply write about what one wants to write about in the style one wishes to write it without entertaining these concerns. But what if one’s style and ideas suck? And what if they don’t suck completely, but just enough for one’s writing to be easily dismissable? What if one is forever wandering this aimless, unseeable terrain of dismissal and suckery? What if one deludedly churns out novel after self-published, unreadable novel for the rest of one’s days, obsessively stalking writers festivals wherein one seeks to bond with professional authors unable to maintain a conversation with one because they are too distracted by the jaunty angle of one’s camouflage bucket hat****? WHAT THEN?

Not being able to accurately predict the reception your story will have once it’s out in the world I guess the only recourse is to try not to be fake, try not to be lame, and simply try, and keep trying. Also, frustration and obscurity tend to characterise most theatres of life, so it would be foolish to think they can somehow be averted in writing. When they arise you just gotta know how to throw up your hands and say, “Fuck it. I tried.”

(Possible book sub-title: “Fuck It. We Tried.”)

Well, the reality of the book being out is probably a lot less dire than that, but in these early stages it’s easy to imagine the worst. When the work starts coming in I’ll probably feel better about everything but there’s a while to go before that. Be prepared for the coming neuroses.

*A highly decent resource for writers and publishers which most recently delivered this good news and often acts as writer’s advocate to organizations like our scurrilous, money-grubbing state government**.

**Who are actually very nice and graciously fund this project.

***By that I mean, writing that is self-conscious itself, not self-consciously written. For all writing is written self-consciously, for all writers are self-conscious, for all writers are dweebs.

****Because one is crazy.

Who proclaimed "blog" the worst neologism in recent memory?

In fact, it was Jerry Seinfeld in a recent interview on the Daily Show. I agree fervently; I too hate the word blog. Blog. Bloooog. Bleeerrrrghhhh. For me it has always sat onomatopeically between a quick vomit and a wet brown stain. The fact that it's a portmanteau of "web log", that it was as unimaginitively designed as that, out of convenience more than anything, makes it an even greater embarrassment. I can't help but think what a shame it is that a good idea - DIY publishing - has been given such a bad name. Mind you, people might have thought similar things when the word "zine" was invented, and that's developed an official sort of prestige since its inception, so maybe blog will too. For now, though, I reluctantly call this exercise of chronicling the making of our book "blogging", and welcome readers to the First Page "blogs".

Over the coming months I and a few of the other creators will be writing about the process of making the book in order to demystify both the writing and publishing processes. I would like people to read this and say, "I always thought being a clueless fuck-up would prevent me from making a book, but look at this clueless fuck-up!" Not that anyone in the group, especially me, is a clueless fuck-up. In fact, we are not fuck-ups at all, but very well organised, and experienced, and in full control of the process of creating this book, which will undoubtedly be a very fine book. A pox on the hypothetical person claiming we are fuck-ups. But still, even through the cloud of omniscience and omnipotence in which we will play the book making game, we hope that you will glimpse something of yourself and be encouraged to cultivate your literary or artistic talent, and/or disseminate it.

For now, though, there is little to report. Our efforts are put to phoning up people and asking for money. The Department of Culture and the Arts has given us enough to ensure that the book and its launch will go ahead, that it will be pretty awesome, but in our dreams it is spectacular. To get the launch, exhibition, book content and book presentation as close as possible to the ones we dream of will require a bit more moolah. So, we are calling up arts funding bodies, town councils, writing centres and anyone else who for whatever reason gives out money to strangers, and seeing if we can have some. So far it appears that few organisations are offering grants at the end of the year, but we remain optimistic and persistent.

This might be a good time to mention that applications to the Young People and the Arts funding panel at the Department of Culture and the Arts are due on February 29 next year. You should call up Rachael McHardy on 9224 7457 and talk about a project.

In this same vein of financial awareness, we are, or at least I am, questioning every non-essential purchase we make in our private lives. Should I get 400g of loin lamb chops or, for the same price, 1kg of thigh chops? Furthermore, what difference do I suppose there is between the Sunrice bag of long grain rice and this other bag that has no label or markings of any kind? It's all just rice, right? The Sunrice people can't be doing anything too radical with the $0.70 extra they charge. Although I would not recommend letting the publication of your book so pervade every decision you make in the lead up to its launch (I mean, if it was always such a pain in the arse nobody would do it) it is hard not to. One is always concerned for one's baby.

These are the annoying concerns with which one must grapple when one produces writing and art in a place that has little in the way of a writing and artistic industry. Over the coming months, we will triumph over them. Screw you, annoying concerns. Your day is nigh.

PS I got the 1kg of thigh.

PPS When buying meat in bulk, be sure to separate into smaller, manageable quantities before freezing.