BREAKING:’I’m Ready Now’ shortlisted for the 2013 ACT Book of the Year award. Shock sets in.
Some years ago a friend told me she had a rule for how she lived her writing life: if something good happened, she gave herself 24 hours to celebrate; if something bad happened, she gave herself 24 hours to commiserate – either way she just had to move on. It’s a brilliant rule. It’s all about tenacity and persistence.
Thankfully, I’ve had a reason to invoke the rule’s Option A: I’m Ready Now has been shortlisted for the $10,000 ACT Book of the Year award (on top of the previous short-listing for the 2013 ACT Publishing and Writing Award for fiction). Thank you, ACT Government. All the details, including the other three titles on the short-list, can be found at the Canberra Times.
Privately – quite clearly not so privately at all – I’m just a little bit thrilled, especially as I’m Ready Now is the only work of fiction on the list. However, I’m also shocked. I enjoyed writing the very first draft of this novella back in Tasmania in 2010, but there was significantly less enjoyment to be had once the redrafting process got into full swing and a great wave of doubt came crashing.
Still, here we are.
Speaking of awards, thanks to the glories of social media I recently stumbled on this honest and illuminating article by UK novelist Jane Rogers published in The Guardian. At core, I think, it’s about the wise imperative of writing what you want to write, what you’re passionate about, what moves you. However, it also points to the importance of small presses, which are able to take risks and, against sometimes – often – crushing odds, get recalcitrant books out to the world. Rogers also talks about what literary awards can do for books/writers on the margins, even if the books are only short-listed, or even just long-listed. It’s a terrific and timely read.
In other news, the good folk at The Writers Bloc, an emerging collective spread between Sydney, Canberra and Melbourne, and, it seems, is spreading even further afield, recently interviewed me for a pod-cast on the places where writing happens. (The pod-cast can also be found here.) For some reason I took the opportunity to talk about military deserters, isolation, and – um – maps. Nope, I can’t explain it either.
Onwards.
PS The third and final in this series of novellas is completely finished from my perspective (which, it should be admitted, is almost always the wrong perspective in the context of these things) and is now firmly in the hands of the mighty Blemish Books. I’m looking forward to sharing this story with you. It’s different from Fall on Me and I’m Ready Now, and has had a four-year gestation – as they say in Hollywood, it’s had a lot of work done. Not that I’m expecting to end up in Hollywood on the back of this one. Though wouldn’t that be nice? Okay, I’ve gotten carried away. See what a short-listing can do? It can send a writer into la-la-land. Quite happily.
Under the counter or a flutter in the dovecote 
12 comments
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March 5, 2014 at 9:16+00:00Mar
Chantal
Congratulations!! Fantastic!
March 5, 2014 at 9:16+00:00Mar
Nigel Featherstone
Many thanks, Chantal.
March 6, 2014 at 9:16+00:00Mar
Gabrielle Bryden
rules, rules, rules – hahahaha – they drive me nuts so I try not to have any (I thought you had a rule to only blog on Saturdays 😉 ). You’re on a roll Nigel – really enjoyed listening to your pod-cast interview – I’m guessing the public expects writers to look at maps and drift off into the imaginative world and that type of thing, so that’s good! Watch out Hollywood 😀
March 6, 2014 at 9:16+00:00Mar
Nigel Featherstone
Hi Gabe, yeap, in the writing world – perhaps the creativity world in general – it’s best to ignore rules! As Irvine Welsh once said, ‘This is your page – do what the fuck you want with it.’ Glad the map thing made sense – I wasn’t sure where I was going with it. Though it IS true: my writing room is covered with maps. Well, not exactly covered, but there are a lot of them. There’s also, I’ve realised lately, a lot of dust. Hollywood here I come? One can only hope (kind of).
March 9, 2014 at 9:16+00:00Mar
Tristan
Big congratulations and good luck on the ACT Book of the Year award, Nigel – very well deserved – and another big congratulations on novella number three. Looking forward to Part 23 of the Blemish Novella story!
March 10, 2014 at 9:16+00:00Mar
Nigel Featherstone
Thanks heaps, Tristan. It’s great having you along for the journey!
March 11, 2014 at 9:16+00:00Mar
Geoff
Wow congratulations Nigel… that’s big news 🙂
March 11, 2014 at 9:16+00:00Mar
Nigel Featherstone
Thanks heaps, Geoff – I appreciate it!
March 16, 2014 at 9:16+00:00Mar
whisperinggums
Oops, thought I’d sent my congratulations but clearly hadn’t as I saw the shortlist in the paper. I know some writers and some readers are negative about awards but I think that taken with the right attitude they can only be positive. I’ll read that article, and try to remember to listen to that podcast when it’s not the wee small hours as it is now.
March 16, 2014 at 9:16+00:00Mar
Nigel Featherstone
Hi Sue, thanks very much for your congratulations. In the main I’m positive about awards. They’re good for helping to connect books with readers. In the end, readers need to make their own choices about what to buy and how they respond to the work. As a reader I rarely ‘get’ the titles that win the Man Booker, though I often enjoy reading the shortlist. I also enjoy reading about all the dramas as the critics unpick the various lists! Thanks again for all your support and interest.
March 16, 2014 at 9:16+00:00Mar
whisperinggums
A pleasure Nigel … as you know. I try to read the Booker and MF winners within a year or so of their winning though don’t always make it. The (frequent) controversies around the wins do a lot for literature. I love it … Too readable, not readable enough, a genre, the author not who they say they are, no women, all women … Etc!!
March 17, 2014 at 9:16+00:00Mar
Nigel Featherstone
I love the awards drama too. I know some writers and their publishers get all tangled up worrying about how panels work, might there be conflicts of interest and bias, but I’m not sure any of that is productive. Perhaps I’m a little naive, but maybe it’s best to let the awards system do its thing, in the hope that any resulting controversy is good for building readerships.