It was in the bad old days. You wait all your life to find a way to export your first novel out of your head and onto paper. You think publication will put you into heaven. I found publication, while not exactly hell,\u00a0 at least a punishment. My \u201cPainted Woman\u201d, first published by Hudson in 1989, had been scorned by many critics, though praised by others.(I have a genius for remembering criticism, and not noticing praise: in my old age I\u2019ll be sitting in the sun in a nursing home reciting sad words like \u201cirrelevant\u201d, \u201coverblown\u201d and \u201cmarshmellow\u201d). I\u2019d been repeatedly warned that a new book had six weeks to make it in the bookshops, or it was history. Mine hadn\u2019t made it. My last hope was a\u00a0 good notice in \u201cThe Sydney Morning Herald\u2019s\u201d book pages, but the then head of the literary pages saw it as \u201cjust another women\u2019s coming of age story\u201d, and therefore not worth reviewing,\u00a0 as he told a large audience in the early days of the Sydney Writers\u2019 Festival,\u00a0 not hearing my heart thumping\u00a0 in the back row. So the novel seemed to be in its death throes, and me as well,\u00a0 when, months later, something prompted him to ask Tom Keneally for his opinion of the book.\u00a0 Keneally\u2019s generous and encouraging review brought it, and me,\u00a0 back to life.<\/p>\n
It was re-published by Allen and Unwin in 1991, but even so, when I was invited three years later to my first writer-in-residence at\u00a0 Iowa University, I was only too happy to leave it at home, preferring instead to to pack an evening dress in case of glittering evenings,\u00a0 heavy jumpers and a coat as padded as a sleeping bag because the mid-west seemed like Antartica to a woman from a warm climate,\u00a0 and even a thick blanket.<\/p>\n
I was caught out. One of my hosts asked me to read it in front of scores of students.\u00a0 I had to explain, in a mixture of embarrassment and relief, that I didn\u2019t bring it. This was in the days before\u00a0 I used a computer, just one of those old-fashioned, finger- bruising typewriters, so I didn\u2019t even have the manuscript in a floppy disc with me. It was also in the days when Australian books were very difficult to come by overseas, when you had to\u00a0 achieve publication overseas to be available anywhere but home, and that seemed an impossible obstacle. Allen and Unwin had sent a shipment of the book to London, where it had been well-reviewed and had sold out,\u00a0 but, lamentably, no one over there had offered to publish it.
\n\u201cWe\u2019ll get a copy from the library,\u201d my host said.
\n\u201cThat\u2019s impossible,\u201d I replied. But I didn\u2019t like to argue, so\u00a0 I followed her to the library. Within minutes, a copy of \u201cPainted Woman\u201d was put in my hands. But it was not like the book I knew. It\u00a0 had a clumsy painting on\u00a0 the\u00a0 cover,\u00a0 and it bore the name of a publisher I hadn\u2019t\u00a0 heard of. More bewildering than anything was the spelling of\u00a0 my surname. Now every second person accidentally misspells my name, but for a publisher to make a mistake like this seemed a strange accident. While my host stood beside me, puzzled by my sudden silence, I opened the book and found it was a large print edition on coarse paper already yellowing at the edges.
\n\u201cOK?\u201d she asked. For a moment, I thought\u00a0 I\u2019d have to disappoint her, and say: \u201cThis isn\u2019t\u2019 mine\u201d \u2013 like a new mother takingone peek at a baby in a nurse\u2019s arms and saying: \u201cYou\u2019ve got the wrong one.\u201dBut the book began with the line I\u2019d worked on for so long I could recite it:
\n\u201cHis arm is above me. I\u2019m thinking that he may hit me the way he hits my mother, his face slashed between the red protuberances of nose and chin, his lips purple, his teeth flaring like a saw\u2019s edge\u2026\u201d
\nI leafed through the yellow pages, dizzyily \u2013 had someone stolen my beginning? and my name? and\u00a0 my scorned book? But I found the familiar,comforting rhythms of my prose. Even the page layout, that Hudson\u2019s had painstakingly set, was familiar.
\n\u201cOK,\u201d I agreed and\u00a0 followed her out of the library and did my reading from the book that was mine, but not mine.<\/p>\n
Much later, back in Sydney, I asked my agent how this strange edition had come about. He had no idea. His inquiries found that Allen and Unwin and Hudson had no idea either, and the US publisher seemed to have disappeard without a trace. My agent had never warmed to the book, and had initially refused to represent it, saying distressingly that even if he worked every day for four years, he wouldn\u2019t find a publisher for it. (It had taken two weeks, in the end).
\nNow he laughed.\u00a0 \u201cProbably gone bankrrupt\u201d, he said, implying that\u2019s the havoc\u00a0 my book might wreak on any publisher, although he mentioned that to sell into universities probably all over the US was a sizeable market. \u201cPity about the royalties,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
There\u2019s a happy ending to this story that all new writers should take heart from: \u201cPainted Woman\u201d survived that pirating, and in fact, twenty-one years later, is still in print in Australia. It was bought by Random House in 1997, and given its current, beautiful cover. Random even allowed me to re-write a section of it that had long weighed on me \u2013 I\u2019m a fiddly, obsessive person. The book was adapted as a radio play and broadcast on the ABC. Recently it has been translated into French by Marie-Odile Fortier Masek, and published by L\u2019Edition.\u00a0 As Frank Moorehouse once said to me: \u201cBooks have a more interesting life than we do.\u201d<\/p>\n
But now when people warn me off e publishing, saying that \u201ce\u201d books aren\u2019t safe from pirating, I reply: what\u2019s so safe about traditional publishing?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
It was in the bad old days. You wait all your life to find a way to export your first novel out of your head and onto paper. You think publication will put you into heaven. I found publication, while not exactly hell,\u00a0 at least a punishment. My \u201cPainted Woman\u201d, first published by Hudson in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1598","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-traditional-publishing"],"yoast_head":"\n