What is it like to be emerging writer in an age of a thousand cuts? Being an unknown writer is a slog and a labour of love at the best of times but this year, when grants to individual writers are being cut by 70%, the decision to devote yourself to writing a book is both intrepid and wildly optimistic.
While no one was taking the microphone and screaming out “what a time to be alive!” – the mood on opening night of the Emerging writers’ festival in Melbourne last week was upbeat.
In her opening address, the festival director, Michaela McGuire, said no stone had been left unturned in a quest to find new and exciting voices. Of the writers appearing at the event, which runs until 24 June, a quarter have never done so before.
The writers are found from open call-outs, in literary magazines and through competitions such as the Victorian premier’s Unpublished manuscript awards.
Last year’s winner of that award, Jane Harper, took to the stage to talk about her experience winning for her manuscript The Dry. It’s the sort of success that most writers fantasise about. The Dry appeared on the bestseller list within days of publication three weeks ago, has been sold to 20 overseas territories and was optioned for a screen adaptation by Reese Witherspoon’s production company.
But shooting stars like this are the exception rather than the norm. Grants, small journals, mentoring and support from publishing houses are how many writers have grown and sustained their practice. Many of these supports are now gone after the latest round of federal government funding cuts.
Sam Cooney, publisher of the Melbourne-based literary journal The Lifted Brow, has watched with a keen eye how things have changed for young Australian writers.
“When you are emerging even small things can make a difference to a practice, a craft and a career,” he says. “There’s been less and less institutional support for young writers from publishers. Not that long ago a writer would be identified by a publishing house or editor at an event or a reading.”
A relationship between the writer and the publisher would then unfold. The publisher would work with the writers for many years, producing three, maybe four books before the writer really hit his or her stride – and made some money or started winning awards.
“There would be a breakthrough book later on – like the case of someone like Peter Carey – who had longtime support from UQP,” Cooney says.
“If you are an emerging writer now, there are more channels for you to get in front of the eyeballs of a publisher but you have to do a lot of the work yourself. There’s less work done by editors and publishers – they wait for writers to come to them with manuscripts that are fully formed.”
In that gap, makeshift solutions will arise – you get help from your friends or your peers. “A writer will seek that support elsewhere – that’s why writing groups have soared,” Cooney says.
McGuire has noticed “people become Twitter-famous before longer bits of their work are consumed or read. People have their brand first then their book.”
Cooney says: “I feel that writers can no longer rely on themselves being just good writers. I feel like emerging writers have to do all this work – they have be all these social butterflies – they have to seek things out for themselves.”
The internet has helped a new generation of emerging writers and provided new forums for getting published. Some have found success via overseas publications before getting recognition in Australia and, with a lack of government support, some of the rebellious and do-it-yourself spirit of the zine culture in the 1990s has returned.
Brodie Lancaster started her writing career with a printed zine – Filmme Fatales, “a feminist perspective on cinema”, she says
Through the zine, which she started herself, and commenting on the Rookie blog (which led to interactions with its US editor, Tavi Gevinson, and then a friendship) Lancaster is now a staff writer at Rookie. Her first book – a memoir – is out next year through Hachette.
“I’m lucky in that networks I have with places like Rookie have allowed me to work outside Australia, so I am not tied to stuff here,” says the 26-year-old from Melbourne.
Lancaster feels as though she has more opportunities now as an emerging writer as “the internet made it easy to go outside Australia”.
Hannah Donnelly, also 26, writes speculative fiction about a climate change event and “imagining Indigenous responses to that”. She also got her start through self-funded zines and writing for websites based outside Australia – such as the Canadian Indigenous music culture website Revolutions Per Minute.
“In terms of getting stuff out there, self-publishing platforms are the way to go for an emerging writers,” Donnelly says. “There’s a lot of cool, small projects going on and I feel that as an emerging writer, there’s a lot of opportunity out there.”
But funding cuts have meant that there’s less support to work in Australia. Lancaster says: “I would love to get a grant one day, even though there are huge funding cuts. As I’m writing a book, I’m aware of how much time and energy that it takes to write it when you don’t have any funding.”
Grants used to give people time and space to develop their voices, says Cooney, while places like the recently defunded Voiceworks nurtured new talent. But now writers have to come to the table fully formed.
“Less and less Australian publishers are less likely to take a punt,” he says. “I am wondering who is working with difficult writers – like Maggie Nelson – she took years before she wrote The Argonauts. Do we have a responsibility to help people make these books?”
Voiceworks – the only magazine in the country run by and for writers and artists under 25 years of age – lost its funding, despite giving many established writers their start, including Anna Krien, Romy Ash, Liam Pieper and Benjamin Law.
“What’s happened to Express Media [which publishes the Voiceworks quarterly] is gutting,” McGuire says. “I know so many people who feel like they owe their entire writing career to Voiceworks. I know a few people who have had their first work published there and it’s where you find a tribe and friends who want to pursue the same things that you are into.”
Cooney wonders about friends of his who showed great promise as writers – only to have their talent crowded out by the need to earn money in a job that pays better.
“I’ve seen friends who I thought were going to be the next big thing in writing kind of drop off because of the money. They are stuck in universities or are arts workers or in advertising. In previous generations they would spent the majority of their time being a writer and doing a bits of arts work on the side.”
McGuire can relate: “As a writer, I was working freelance and I felt it was really difficult for me and many of my friends. In those three years I was in a near-constant state of fear about where my career was going and money. I was nowhere near ready to have conversations about mortgages and kids.”
When asked to recommend some talented emerging writers to see at the festival, McGuire reels off a dozen names I’ve never heard before.
But, she assures me, I will soon. The talent – as always – is out there. The test now is whether we care enough about writing in Australia to give the next generation enough support to make it work.
As Cooney says, “A writers’ group can only take you so far.”
