Something of an anti-climax

On Sunday I finished a charity walk.

I walked 122 km in March to raise money for Orange Sky Australia. This amazing charity provides laundry and shower facilities for the unhoused community and laundry facilities in high schools for kids who don’t have access to washing machines to clean their clothes at home.

Can you imagine trying to navigate high school without clean clothes?

My walk raised $2006. My goal was to raise $576 so I’m pretty happy with that amount.

I had planned to walk the last 9 km with my husband. We planned to walk from Broadbeach to Surfers Paradise (yes that is the name of the suburb) but unfortunately he had to go into work on Sunday to do essential safety maintenance on a new piece of equipment with a team from China.

So I walked the last 9 km solo then treated myself to a coffee and a potato danish (don’t knock it till you’ve tried it) at my favourite cafe.

I wasn’t completely alone on my walk. Michael and I had walked around 25 km together earlier in the month and I walked a similar amount with my friend Sara Bragg. I walked in the gym sometimes because it was very hot and rainy but mostly I walked along our beautiful beaches.

Just as I completed my walk, I did an Instagram live. (Actually I did two. The first one was a little bit ranty about the state of the world so I didn’t save it.) I also texted my husband and son as I finished but it was still something of an anti-climax.

It made me think back to when I finished writing both my novels and when I published them. Did I celebrate achieving something so amazing?

No.

But did I do literally anything to mark the moment of a finishing two complete novels of 80,000 words?

Also no.

When I finished my most recent novel (a contemporary romance for which I have just a few hours ago received yet another rejection) I went to my favourite cafe and had, you guessed it, a coffee and a potato danish! Writing is such a quotidian part of my life I don’t think to celebrate any part of the process.

If I think about it a little more deeply (and I fear wading into this territory…) I don’t celebrate much because a) I write a lot so I hit a lot of these milestones, and b) until recently I didn’t really have a community that would celebrate with me.

Most of society, including our families and non-writing friends are overly interested in our latest short story or even a novel unless we can show how much money we made from it.

How great would it be to have a Julia Roberts-Notting Hill moment?

Them: How many copies of your last book did you sell?

Us: Fifteen million…

I’ve even experienced resentment and jealousy from a friend when I had what was a huge success at the time. I had thought it was a career game-changer but that was a bit delulu. It wasn’t but I learned to keep a low profile when I have a win. I’ll never forget being told that celebrating my success makes others feel bad…

But…Now I have a fantastic community around me. When friends and acquaintances have a win I chalk that up as a win for everyone.

So in the future, I will endeavour to celebrate my little wins because they’re hard won. Goddess knows the ‘losses’ tend to come easily enough for querying writers. The rejection I received yesterday was six months in the making. I had a full manuscript request in August last year, followed up in December (as directed) and received no response. By the end of February I figured it was a no then but I received a firm no a month later. I wasn’t surprised but it’d be nice to get a yes.

This querying life is not for the faint of heart so if we learn to celebrate the wins at least we’ll have a good time.

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I am teaching a couple of art-inspired writing workshops in April. On April 11, I’m teaching at HOTA on the Gold Coast. I’ll be taking writers through a series of exercises to build a speculative environmental fiction story. Then on the 18th, I’ll be in Melbourne for the Boroondara Library Service teaching an Art Inspired Writer workshop.

All my workshops are suitable for writers of all levels of experience and all genres.