When Will I Be Famous?

Just how long does it take to make it?

Photo by Behnam Norouzi on Unsplash

Hello Team CCC! I’m sending this out a little later than I’d like, because I had norovirus. (Yes, I was terribly brave.) It’s been a dramatic few days - we saw an elusive kiwi during a night hike on Kapiti Island, and we spotted a few penguins. We took the scenic train from Auckland to Paraparaumu, and watched horses frolicking and lambs gambolling. It was stunningly beautiful, and it took ten hours.

I’ve read three books, which I’ve ADORED. The Barbecue At No.9 by Jennie Godfrey - a very human mystery, utterly filled with heart and hope. Wreck by Catherine Newman - hilarious and tender, and full of family feeling - I already know I’ll be rereading it (and her Oldster Magazine Q&A is SO GOOD) and Welcome To The Neighbourhood by Jane Fallon, which is tremendous, twisty fun.

For the diary: Tonight I’m at Unity Books in Wellington at 5.30 - it’s free, and everyone is welcome! I’m at Folkestone Literary Festival with Ann Morgan on Saturday 22 November - tickets here. I’m hosting a supper club - a bookish banquet! At the Mowbray in Sheffield with Juno Books, on Wednesday 26 November - tickets are here. And I’ll be hosting a Write Like A Reader online retreat-course on 9-11 January. I’m offering paid subscribers the first chance to sign up (and you get a discount) and you can find out all about it here.

Now for this week’s letter - on writing, yearning, fame and ‘making it’…

We’ve come to New Zealand to search for Janet Frame.

I don’t know Frame’s work well. I’m very new to it. You might have heard of Jane Campion’s film, An Angel At My Table, adapted from Frame’s memoir of the same name. Frame started writing when she was very young. Before she reached her teens, her poems were being published in magazines. Her life was difficult, and dazzling. Her elder sister drowned, in a tragic accident. She was institutionalised and almost lobotomised. Shortly before the operation, her surgeon happened to pick up a newspaper and read about her first novel, Why Owls Cry, which has been awarded a prize. Frame wasn’t aware that the novel had been published. The surgeon decided not to operate. Frame went on to become a prolific novelist, memoirist and poet. She was awarded the Order Of New Zealand, the highest honour the country offers. (Fitzcarraldo is just about to reissue one of her novels, A State Of Siege.)

I could write about fame, and luck, and how writing can save our lives. But I keep circling something different, and I don’t know whether it’s infuriating, or heartbreaking, or liberating. We can find barely any evidence of Janet Frame here. She’s barely in the bookshops, or in the museums. The bach where she lived in Waiheke has been rebuilt into a McMansion. There’s no plaque, there’s no Frame Way, no leaflet suggesting that you might like to visit the places that she used to go to. It’s heartbreaking. My home town on the Kent coast, is famous because TS Eliot wrote part of a poem there. Down the road, the next town along has more or less become a Charles Dickens theme park because Charles Dickens went on holiday there. Janet Frame should be getting the same treatment – Angel At My Table restaurants, To The Is-Land ferry companies. There’s even less evidence of her countrywoman Katherine Mansfield. Sure, Mansfield spent most of her adult life living in the UK – but this was the writer Virginia Woolf described as her ‘rival’. These are legendary writers, and yet they’re not getting their flowers.

A few days ago, a very successful writer friend of mine posted about something great that is happening for her, professionally. And a different writer – one not known to my friend, or me – added a comment. (I paraphrase). ‘That’s all well and good, when you already have a profile. But what about writers like me? The talented writers who aren’t so well known and who are struggling to break through? Where are our lucky breaks?’

An issue I have with Substack – and this isn’t unique to Substack – is that it fosters the myth that you can become a ‘successful’ (wealthy) writer, if you follow the formula correctly. No matter how carefully I try to curate my homepage, I’m haunted by posts banging on about ‘growth’. This makes me feel tense and anxious. It robs me of the fun of writing, because it makes me worried about numbers. (What writer ever wants to think about numbers?) We’re living in a time of scarcity, and deep anxiety. Substack seems to offer certainty. We’re told that this is the way for writers to survive and grow. Maybe you’ve been here for months, or years – and it seems as though writers who don’t need Substack keep swooping in and scooping up your tiny pile of crumbs.

I write, I work with writers, I write about writing, and I write to writers. And I read a lot of Anne Lamott. (When you can’t tell if it’s a headache or heartache, it’s good to keep a copy of Almost Everything by the nightstand.) And I understand – some days, much better than others, admittedly – the only way to maintain any kind of emotional equilibrium is not just to trust the process, but to trust that the process is the best bit. If you’re writing because you’re coursing for validation and prizes, you’ll become miserable and resentful.

I also understand that if I were to travel back in time and share that information with my 25 year old self, she would punch me in the face. All she wanted to know was How long is this going to take? Am I doing it right? Should I keep trying? When do I give up?