The semi-requited novelist

People are ask­ing me questions.

“Yes,” they say, “it’s all very well, all this busi­ness with burg­ling and urine port­age and the lesser-known works of Danny DeVito, but didn’t you used to be an unre­quited novelist?”

“Well – ” I say, but they inter­rupt me.

“Didn’t,” they inter­rupt, “you prom­ise us a unique win­dow into the life of a job­bing writer try­ing to make good?”

“There’s no need to use bad lan­guage,” I say, and there is a brief but anim­ated dis­cus­sion over the subtler defin­i­tions of the word “job”, but they have already won the argument.

I began this blog a year ago to try to describe what it is like to throw cau­tion and a reg­u­lar pay check to the wind and essay a career as a nov­el­ist, and I now feel that have some­what strayed from my brief, in life as well as in print. Since I fin­ished writ­ing Here Be Dust Bun­nies at the begin­ning of this year, things have changed in ways which I will shortly describe in detail in these pages, but which for now can be summed up in the fol­low­ing job descrip­tions: sport journ­al­ist, poker tour­na­ment dir­ector and, omin­ously, uni­ver­sity admin­is­tra­tion flunky again.

None of this is to say, how­ever, that Here Be Dust Bun­nies has stalled. In fact, noth­ing could be fur­ther from the truth, and at this point I can reveal that there is a very good reason why it is today that I am return­ing to the sub­ject here. But in order to explain prop­erly, I am going to take you back two years and trans­port you to a truck stop just out­side the rural town of Heals­ville, where a dozen groovy young Mel­bur­ni­ans, an Eng­lish­wo­man, my wife the Evil Sul­phura and I are sat around a large table, each observing with hor­ror the coffee-table sized ham­burger which has been placed before each of us.

“What is it?” the Eng­lish­wo­man asks.

“I’m not sure,” says our mutual friend Iris, “but Noel said we would all love them. I think he might be tor­tur­ing us.”

We are on a winery tour of the Yarra Val­ley, and Noel is the driver of our hired minibus. When he picked us up a few hours earlier in town, he gave us a look which I took to mean: “Huh. City folk”. We had all been very good about not ask­ing for soy lattes and demand­ing to know if everything was organic, but still Noel had set us up in this giant-hamburger trap. He is stand­ing over us now, look­ing grimly sat­is­fied at our reluctance.

Being from the outer sub­urbs, I feel I have more exper­i­ence with meat snad­wiches than Noel has anti­cpated, and I lead the way by pick­ing up the entire assemblage with barely a grunt and, my eyes never leav­ing Noel’s, take a large bite.

The Eng­lish­wo­man, whose name is Daisy, nibbles at hers experimentally.

“God,” she says, “someone’s put beet­root in this one!”

“That’s nor­mal here,” Iris says.

Daisy pauses. “Did you hear me say beetroot?”

“I heard you say beetroot.”

“So it’s nor­mal to have beet­root here.”

“In a ham­burger, yes.”

“Oh.” She nibbles a little more. “Actu­ally, now that I try it it’s not all that — Christ, there’s pine­apple under the beetroot!”

“That’s nor­mal too.”

Daisy levers up the pine­apple with a fork. “I’m just check­ing for ice-cream,” she explains.

Later, in the bus, while I am try­ing to work out how Sulph man­aged to switch our plates when I was nearly fin­ished, Daisy turns to intro­duce her­self. “Hi,” she says. “I’m Daisy, fear­less con­sumer of exotic del­ic­acies. When I’m not doing that, I’m a fic­tion editor in Lon­don. I’m here on hol­i­day, vis­it­ing Iris.”

I know all this, because Iris had told me the day before that Daisy would be here. Iris had also ensured that we sat in the same part of the bus. Iris is try­ing to set us up on a sort of pro­fes­sional blind date.

“Is that right?” I say. “Lovely.”

“What do you do?” asks Daisy.

I had told Iris I wasn’t going to men­tion to Daisy that I am a writer. It would, I said, be selfish and unpro­fes­sional for me to net­work Daisy when she was on hol­i­day. She must get hassled at parties by wan­nabe writers all the time at home. She deserves some peace.

“I’m a writer,” I say. A few seats away, Iris lets out a moan that has noth­ing to do with indigestion.

“Oh yeah?” says Daisy.

“Yes,” I say. “I’m a writer. A nov­el­ist. I’m writ­ing a novel.”

“Great,” says Daisy. “Tell me about it.”

“I shouldn’t,” I say. “You’re on holidays.”

“It’s okay,” says Daisy. “Tell me about it.”

I tell her about it. “But it’s not fin­ished,” I say. “It’ll be bet­ter when it’s finished.”

“It sounds good,” says Daisy. “When you’re fin­ished, send me a line, I’ll see what I can do.”

“Wow,” I say. “I will.”

“Is this the next winery?” says Sul­phura next to me. “Ah yes, here it is — Kissarse Hill Estate.”

“Wow,” I say.

Two years later Here Be Dust Bun­nies receives its first rejec­tion from a major Aus­tralian pub­lisher, I fire my agent for unre­lated reas­ons, and sud­denly I find myself search­ing for options. Then, two months ago, I find myself sit­ting list­lessly in my local fish and chip shop, won­der­ing what to do next, when the chef calls out: “That ham­burger with the lot, mate — you want beet­root on it?”

I run out of the shop, which is pre­sum­ably not the kind of reac­tion to beet­root the chef nor­mally gets, and race home to write an email. Sev­eral emails later — just two hours ago, in fact — I received the fol­low­ing email:

Matt [instantly for­given — ML],

Sorry not to get back to you earlier — the last few weeks have been hec­tic. But, I finally read your novel this week and I am pleased, and sur­prised (this never hap­pens!) to say that I loved it. Con­grat­u­la­tions! I think it’s a bril­liant, extremely funny, well-plotted, clever, pacy and, I dare say it, com­mer­cial novel. I’m recom­mend­ing Dust Bun­nies to my boss Nick, who’s our Pub­lish­ing Dir­ector. I’ve given you a rave review and let’s cross our fin­gers that he likes your stuff as much as me. Pub­lish­ing first nov­els is a tricky busi­ness but I really think you’ve got a shot with this. If Nick decides against tak­ing a punt, I’m more than happy to recom­mend you to agents over here — I can think of a few who would love your work — so keep in touch.

Keep me pos­ted, and if I hear any­thing, I’ll keep you pos­ted of course!

Daisy x.

I am pub­lish­ing this (in slightly edited form for propriety’s sake) des­pite the gross immod­esty it might imply because it simply doesn’t seem real.

I’m also wor­ried that pub­lish­ing it like this may expose me as a rank ama­teur to the real people involved, but the fact is I made a com­mittment. This blog is a record of what it is like to be an unre­quited nov­el­ist. There is noth­ing worse than one of those films where, after ninety minutes of emo­tional invest­ment, the romantic leads pull down the win­dow shade to enjoy the cli­mactic kiss in private, and I won’t do that here.

There are no guar­an­tees. Today I am a semi-requited nov­el­ist. Next week I might find this whole situ­ation has an unex­pec­ted slice of beet­root or pine­apple ring tucked quietly in the middle. I hope that, if I do, someone will be on hand to tell me that’s nor­mal here.