The Goulburn Post Office, where stories are sent away. (Don’t worry: we have cars now.)
It’s there beside me on the desk, adjacent my elbow, and it feels like the most valuable thing, but also the most useless.
It’s orange, A4-sized, and inside are twenty pages – a short story and a covering letter. On the front of the envelope, written in my dreadful scrawl, is the name of a literary journal and its overseas address. On the back is my own address, in the hope that good news – the best – will be sent in reply. This is what I do: I write short stories and send them away, even though the odds are firmly stacked against me, against this thing that occupies so much of my time, the vast majority of the last twenty years.
For weeks, months, longer, so much longer, there has been in the guts of my computer that strangest of beasts: a story, something conjured, concocted. Part dream, part idea(l), part concept, part theme, part wish, part ambition. Imagined characters discovering, solving, unravelling, opening out. Blue pen ink on pad page, before becoming black lines and angles on a flickering screen, before becoming – always becoming – black ink on crisp white print-out paper. All those words, words formed up to make sense, to be read.
What is the purpose of this? To entertain? To move? To anger? To be admired?
It’s all this and more. A great deal more.
I have tried to stop; like a smoker or an alcoholic I have tried to give up. But can I give up? No. Because I wouldn’t know what to do with myself. Couldn’t I have been good at something much more useful, like fixing electrical wiring, or building decks, or progressing propositions of law? I could garden: rip out weeds for a living. Or walk dogs for cash. Or breed chickens and sell their eggs and their precious manure.
But it wouldn’t be the same. There’d be no wrestling with words and their meanings. Oh what words can do: they can illuminate. There’d be no heartache when the story comes back with a slip paper-clipped to the top: Sorry, but this isn’t what we’re looking for. But even that doesn’t bring me to a halt. Because stories are beneath my skin, and, so I’ve heard, they are beneath yours, too. Because that’s all we are in the end – stories.
Bye for now; I’m off to the post-box.
To send away my valuable, useless, infinitely beautiful purpose.
(First published in Panorama, The Canberra Times, 2 August 2014.)
Under the counter or a flutter in the dovecote 
4 comments
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August 11, 2014 at 9:16+00:00Aug
Tristan
Nice piece, Nigel. I know the feeling well enough. There’s a sense of futility to it, but also, and more importantly, hope.
Funny thing about reading this was that I took a moment to recognise the process you were talking about. Then I realised that it’s actually been a while since I submitted something on paper. It’s curious that while the process has changed – the submission process, at least – the desire and the accompanying anxiety has not.
On a side note, I like getting published a lot – but I like the writing process itself so, so much more. Is this weird?
August 12, 2014 at 9:16+00:00Aug
Nigel Featherstone
Hi Tristan, yes, it’s certainly a good thing to do, isn’t it: write and write and write, before reaching the point where the piece can be sent off. Maybe someone will like it? Maybe someone won’t? (Probably both will happen, and maybe that’s where the anxiety comes in.)
Interesting point you make about liking being published, but enjoying the writing process more. I remember Colm Tóibín saying that for him the feeling of having a book published lasted about 20 minutes – ‘Enough for a cup of tea’ – before he simply got back to work. I think what he’s saying is, in a way being published is just the end of the journey. It’s good (perhaps) to take a break, but you have to find another place to go. But I think he’s also making your point: the writing IS the point. Somehow getting a bunch of words to sit up and sing. Which is such a damn hard thing to do.
So I can only agree with you. Writing, as frustrating as it can be, ultimately means much more than having something appear in print.
But…would we write if we lived in a world where stories weren’t published at all? Where we didn’t get some kind of response to our work?
August 16, 2014 at 9:16+00:00Aug
Gabrielle Bryden
A lovely post Nigel. I am glad a lot of submissions are by email these days 😉 If we did live in a world that didn’t publish any stories I am sure you would be sitting around the fireplace with an assortment of humans, entertaining them with your tales – stories will always find a way to be told.
August 16, 2014 at 9:16+00:00Aug
Nigel Featherstone
Hi Gabe, yes, I must agree with you – electronic submissions do make things much easier. Although there is romance – and much symbolism – to slipping the stuffed (in more ways than one) orange envelope into the post box. And if we didn’t have a world were stories were published? I think I’d just sit around the fire and sing. Badly.