Hedging My Bets
Electra Rhodes continues her work on the London Library’s ‘Emerging Writers’ programme and finds herself with a problem every writer wants
The miracle happens and I get a strong whiff of interest in my writing, but - and here’s the kicker, and it’s a problem all writers would like to have - for two different manuscripts.
For those reading a blog from me for the first time - this is the third in a brief series where I talk about researching and writing an intersectional biography of the British landscape as one of the London Library’s cohort of Emerging Writers for 2022/23. In my previous blogs I spoke of the origins of the project and, six months in, what the process had thrown up for me as a working-class rural writer navigating the world of publishing. It’s satisfying that the timing of this blog coincides with the next stage in the project’s evolution.
Because, it’s this biographical project that a publisher in nonfiction that tends towards landscape, nature and place, is interested in. But, and it truly is a kicker, the other proposal that's sparked interest is a manuscript that grew out of a nature/family memoir that was long-listed for the 2021 Nan Shepherd Prize. It's fabulous to know they both have legs. And also something else.
I’ve been flitting between these projects for the last two years - reading, researching, dreaming, drafting - but this interest means making some kind of decision and really committing to one of them. I humm and haa over this, I love these projects - really love them. It’s sobering to have to decide between them for the next few years, nonfiction usually being written after the book deal and not before. I remind myself again that this is a FANTASTIC problem to have.
I make a decision, opt for the memoir and celebrate. Then in a move I recognise as being part of my instinct to always hedge my bets, I also commit to a programme that will support me, later in the year, in drafting the other manuscript. I tell myself that I’ve done the bulk of the research, have a draft proposal in shape and just need some structure in my ‘spare’ time to get the sample chapters under my belt. After all, countless people work full time, and get their novel or nonfiction book written in the early hours or during their lunch hour.
I look at my diary and wince.
I check my savings account, talk to my partner and we agree I can spend three months polishing the memoir's proposal and sample chapters. I get out my hedge-clippers and clear most of my archaeology, teaching and mentoring commitments, sign up for a couple of writer boot camps, and finish various shorter commissions.
Over the next few weeks I focus, focus, focus and write, edit, write. I know what submission window I'm looking at and take aim with my big, heart-filled, nature, family and place based memoir. In my down time, I read Substacks by debuting authors, and note the repeated suggestion that the best thing to do while on submission is to write something else. I feel retrospectively smug about my hedging and that I’ve lined up something worthwhile to get me through this period.
In the middle of all this my father turns 95 and while we celebrate both my future and his present we know my plans are vulnerable to the vagaries of his health. He shrugs when I mention this, and reminds me not to let this be an excuse even if it might be a reason. I sit with this for a while, and recognise the myriad ways in which hedging writers can self-sabotage, perhaps especially when the (current) end is in sight.
I read over some notes and find something the naturalist Bob Gilbert told me when I first began sending work out in 2020 - the book you get published is the book you actually write. Since then I've discovered this isn’t always true - there are many obstacles between a writer and their book on the shelves of Waterstones. But I do recognise that I should count my blessings, stop trying to anticipate something that hasn’t yet happened, and avoid being the final hedge-shaped obstacle in my own journey to publication.
I sit down and write.
Electra Rhodes is an award winning writer and teacher with 200 pieces of published writing to her name in a range of anthologies, journals and magazines. As well as writing longform creative and narrative nonfiction she also writes in a range of short forms - micro, short story and flash. Her writing craft book is coming from Ad Hoc Fiction later this year and she teaches creative writing for a range of organisations and festivals across the US, Canada and the UK. Her most recent work, 'The Woodwose Wedding' was comissioned by BBC Radio 4, and was broadcast in February. Find her still slugging it out on twitter @electra_rhodes
Electra Rhodes
