In my last blog post 15 Things We Should Stop Doing as Writers I wrote, under the heading of 12. Giving Up, –
‘all the best writers suffer rejection, for some the rejections run into double figures but nonetheless they persist. So while we are busy writing the next thing, we should still persist in our attempts to find an agent, or a home for our latest story, a publisher for our novel. Take Eimear Mc Bride: McBride wrote A Girl Is a Half-formed Thing in just six months, but it took nine years to get it published. Galley Beggar Press of Norwich, finally picked it up in 2013. In 2014 it won the Baileys Women’s Prize for Fiction.’
I knew nothing of Eimear McBride until she won the Bailey’s Prize, and I wasn’t alone in this. She came out of obscurity published by a small independent press. If you would like to know more about her and her literary heritage you can read an excellent interview HERE in The White Review.
When I first downloaded A Girl Is A Half-formed Thing I was put off by the first few pages. They were too demanding, too experimental. It defied all my ideas about how novels should begin. I felt it was asking too much of the reader and it was going to require reading energy I didn’t have. More recently, I came back to it – I think I knew along this was a book I had to read – and very quickly I was hooked. McBride re-invents language – guttural and thick her language sticks in your throat while dazzling and holding you with its brilliance. At odd times it’s impenetrable but nonetheless the story captivates and compels you forward. It is fiction not memoir but for me it’s as if McBride rips out her soul (yours too) and lays it on the page. This is a raw, haunting novel that moved me to tears and there is so much to learn from her example:
Her persistence should inspire us all– She worked consistently hard on the novel (see interview). After it was finished it took her 7 years before she even began to be resigned to it not being published.
She was uncompromising and brave – She took risks, was experimental, wrote what she believed in. She broke the rules. It was turned down by all the major publishing houses – it was described as unmarketable. She refused to do a re-write or allow it to be marketed as memoir just to get published.
Her heart is on the page – she did not hold back – she was not afraid, or if she was, she went ahead anyway.
She is a writer of integrity, who did not give up
Of course this approach to writing will not necessarily bring success in the conventional terms of publication or prizes but it will bring the satisfaction of writing what we love and believe in, of writing with integrity. It’s time we stopped concerning ourselves with what the big publishers want because after all they are mostly just chasing the money. Hooray for writers like McBride and for the Independents – like Galley Beggar Press.
And whatever you do, don’t GIVE UP.
