Harper Collins have been dream publishers. Just when I thought I must turn my back on traditional publishing houses, I come across a model one. For example, I\u2019m being consulted about the cover, and for most of a day I\u2019m allowed to discuss with their artist colours, desert scenery, a figure wandering blithely away across a sunlit but forbidding landscape\u2026such matters so vital for a reader to connect with my story, matters like exactly what shade of blue or purple the sky is, because the shade must reflect the turmoil in my heroine\u2019s life, yet look as if there might be joy at the end. Also, I\u2019ve been given the brilliant editor of my choice, Linda Funnell, and inspired by her, I\u2019m practically re-writing the book – I\u2019ve already past tensed most of it, a labour of months, hoping at first I could accomplish the brunt of it by instructing my computer to automatically change a list of eighty-seven common verbs to their past tense form, but soon I found what I\u2019d already suspected, \u00a0that far more was needed- \u00a0I had to re-vision the book. Now I\u2019m working on-line with Linda Funnell because she\u2019s in Sydney and I\u2019m being a writer-in-residence in Perth, at the historic house of\u00a0 Matti Furphy, invited there by the Perth Fellowship of Writers. It\u2019s near a lovely beach, and each morning I force myself not to worry about my book and whether my computer might lose it all, and how to do track changes without going crazy,\u00a0 but to think only of the golden sand and the ocean surging over it and ebbing away. Gordon comes to stay with me for a precious fortnight, then Libby joins me, and through the days we work, helping each other keep at it, keep at writing. \u00a0I\u2019m barely able to manage track changes, and saved all the changes on a memory stick, with an unquestioning assumption that memory sticks were my confidantes forever – but the stick got itself corrupted and I\u2019ve lost a week\u2019s work! \u201cOf course you can\u2019t trust computers!\u201d cries the computer expert I take it to, gazing at me, astounded at my naivet\u00e9. \u201cComputers are only machines!\u201d Linda somehow stays patient. It must be terrifying to work with me.<\/p>\n
And meanwhile, the Royalties keep having delicious dinners and excited discussions. \u00a0I\u2019m so old that I remember being a breathless eighteen year old at university, leaning over a laminex table so excitedly that its metal edge got imprinted on my chest, careful not to breathe out the one flickering candle between us all, and trying to think of something intelligent to say about the coming revolution. In those days the way ahead seemed clear; it was imperative to free oneself from the System and grow one\u2019s own food, especially carrots. Carrots seemed to go to the very heart of the change that was needed. It\u2019s hard to explain that to my daughter, hard to recapture the belief in this path to freedom. My daughter \u00a0looks up disbelievingly from \u00a0Facebook. \u201cCarrots?\u201d she echoes.<\/p>\n
But revolution has come again, this time apparently of its own accord. The revolution for authors to own their means of production. Now we\u2019re thinking that once we\u2019ve e published ourselves, we should help writers like us to publish themselves. We could show them how.<\/p>\n
But that\u2019s impossible.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Harper Collins have been dream publishers. Just when I thought I must turn my back on traditional publishing houses, I come across a model one. For example, I\u2019m being consulted about the cover, and for most of a day I\u2019m allowed to discuss with their artist colours, desert scenery, a figure wandering blithely away across […]<\/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-1600","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-traditional-publishing"],"yoast_head":"\n