A couple of years ago Nicole Murphy came to Brisbane and we met for coffee in town. We talked about her ‘tenacious dream’ and how hard it was to believe in yourself and keep writing. I am delighted to be able to invite Nicole onto the ROR blog to promote the first book of her series!.
Lovely cover, by the way.
Take it away, Nicole ….
I remember quite vividly the moment I decided to be a published author.
I was eleven years old. Our school had just been introduced to process writing – until then, all the writing was ‘What I did on my holidays’ or excursion reports. Then, in Year Six, we were allowed to write whatever we wanted.
I wrote what I still believe to be my magnum opus – Thunder King. The story of a boy and his horse, who won five Melbourne Cups and three Caulfield Cups and in-between, had adventures in the Australian bush such as finding and killing a rampaging lioness, then adopting her orphaned cubs.
Damn, it was a good story.
Anyhoo, the teacher decided our stories would be published. A parent typed them up. I worked feverishly on the cover (the horribleness of the horse I drew still haunts me to this day) and then it was collated, stapled together and there it was.
A book. That I wrote. With my name on the cover.
And I knew that one day, I’d have that for real.
It’s taken nearly thirty years but today, that dream has finally come true. Secret Ones, book one in the Dream of Asarlai trilogy, is on the shelves.
It’s entirely my fault it’s taken so long. You see, I kept turning away from the dream. I let things like fear, or doing the “right thing” get in the way.
But the dream never gave up on me. It sat there, tapping me on the shoulder, continually feeding me ideas, never letting up.
In 2000, I started to commit to the dream. By the end of 2003, that commitment had petered out but not before the dream sowed its greatest seed – I’d written the drafts of a three-book fantasy romance series.
In 2005-2006 I edited The Outcast, one of the CSFG anthologies (with some kick-arse stories, by the way, including by RORers Maxine, Rowena, Tansy and Richard). Finally there it was – a book with my name on it. But it was a hollow victory, because the words inside weren’t mine. Other writers had sweated and laid themselves onto the page. I hadn’t.
The dream kicked me and we got back in business. It pointed to the fantasy romance series and whispered in my ear that it was good, it was fun to work on, it was commercially viable, and this was the one that could do it for me…
The dream was right. Thanks to its persistence, the dream came true. Then, to my surprise, it very calmly stepped aside to let other dreams come to the fore.
Dreams of success. Dreams of making this a career. Dreams of writing and being published for the rest of my life.
The dream wasn’t holding on just for itself – no, it was holding on for the other dreams, which I hadn’t begun to conceive of yet.
So the moral – follow your dream, because you don’t know what dreams it’s working for.
Question for giveaway – I think coming up with this question has been harder than writing the novel. Anyway, here ‘tis – In my first published book at age 11, my horse Thunder King won five Melbourne Cups. In reality, what is the most number of Melbourne Cups won by a single horse?
(We will collect the right answers, put them in a virtual ice-cream bucket and pull one out).
NOTE -The copy of Nicole’s bookw as won by Leanne C Taylor.
Makybe Diva won three times – I think that was the record (the girl might move to Canberra, but she’s still from Melbourne).
Now, Gillian, I would not know and I lived in Melbourne for 14 years.
I love that Makybe Diva got her name from five of the owners employees – he took two letters from the beginning of each – Mary, Kylie, Belinda, Diane and Vanessa.
Yeah, I loves me a Melbourne Cup
Congratulations, Nicole. Your story is an encouragment to the rest of us!
Isn’t she just, Satima.
Sometimes all that is sitting between a writer and publication is persistence.
Sometimes all that is sitting between a writer and publication is persistence.
Okay, I’ll ask the painful question… When is it time to realise that you may have more persistence than talent? How do you know that ‘sometimes’ is never going to be your time?
I know ‘true writers’ never give up. They take each rejection and make it work for them, yadda yadda yadda. But, seriously. What does it take to make you realise your best is never going to be good enough?
Sorry for the downer in an otherwise positive conversation, but I had to ask.
Congrats, Nicole!
Cheers, Lisa.
That’s a hard one, Lisa, and one I struggled with for a long time. Part of the reason I turned away from the dream was a fear that I wasn’t good enough. In the end, I decided I needed to commit to it. My original plan was that I’d focus on it for two years. If it was clear from feedback that my writing was improving, I’d persist. If, after two years, it was clear that I wasn’t going to get any better than I was and therefore wasn’t good enough to get published, I’d stop submitting. Not stop writing, mind you, I never would.
There’s a phenomena called the Dunning/Kruger affect, where they found truly incompetent people don’t know that they’re bad at something. So I guess the correlation is keep learning, get better and eventually you’ll be competent enough to judge whether you can do it or not
http://articles.sfgate.com/2000-01-18/news/17635543_1_percentile-dunning-incompetent
Hehe, so, according to Dunning/Kruger, the fact that I can see my incompetencies means I am actually competent?? Seriously, I do believe the affect exists, I work with many sufferers…
After a good decade of being dedicated, and a few small successes, I’ve come to realise that ‘good’ might be as far as I get. So, I’m having a break that might become perminent, which will definitely change if that big publisher suddenly decides ‘good’ is good enough.
Cheers, Lisa.
Thanks Satima. Yes, it requires hard work, persistence and a great story to tell, but it does happen
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The horse that has won the most Melbourne Cups would be Makybe Diva, with 3 wins under her belt. However, as your story above proves, there’s nothing wrong with dreaming big.
Indeed, although I really do doubt a flesh and blood horse will ever win five Melbourne Cups like my Thunder King – can you imagine the weight the handicapper would give them for the last?
A robot horse, on the other hand…
There’s another big dream for you
My first accepted story was about a robot horse. Just ask Dirk!
Nicole, thanks for your inspiring post. It’s the “thirty years later” that is particularly comfortable, because I’d sort of got it into my head that I’d been trying for ten years, that ten years was a reasonable period of time to have been trying, and that not to have a novel out after ten years was…well…the writing was on the wall, wasn’t it?
Screw that. The only writing that’s on the wall is, as Rowena said in another post, “Never give up! Never surrender!”
Thoraiya
Lisa, if you stop trying, you’ll never know if you were just one step away from publication!
My answer is also Makybe Diva, for winning 3.
Peter Pan, who won 2, has a feature wall at our local museum in Singleton. But no heart or taxidermied horse is in our museum.
I would like the real answer to be THE CLONE OF PHAR LAP WHICH I MADE AFTER STEALING HIS HEART FROM THAT BIG FANCY MUSEUM IN CANBERRA!
That is all. Nothing to see here
Thoraiya
Go Thoraiya!
Would you believe I was almost 10 years between trilogies? Now that is scary.
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