Calling Oz. Anybody home?
Had a very interesting conversation with the always-delightful ![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif)
catsparx during the awards banquet at WFC. We covered a lot of ground, but one place that we kept coming back to was the desire of Australian specfic writers to break out in to the American market, and some of their perceptions about that process.
It was fascinating. One of the most interesting things about the perceptions Cat was reporting was that if you took out the word "Australian" and inserted the word "aspiring" in the phrase "editors treat Australian writers...", it would sound a great deal like the sorts of things aspiring writers in the United States tell themselves and each other.
The really strange thing about that to me is that Australia has a perfectly healthy fiction scene that these folks have been building and creating within for years. I'm talking about respected writers and editors such as Cat herself, as well as Rob Hood, Lee Battersby, Trent Jamieson, Deborah Biancotti, Trevor Stafford, Martin Livings, Ben Peek, Tansy Rayner Roberts and Alisa Krasnostein -- just to name a few of these folks that I've come to know either IRL or through the virtual world. These writers have already "come up", in a scene which is even by demanding standards equivalent to the high end of the US independent press scene.
Yet they feel as if they're hurling themselves at same walls as any new writer here. The perception, for example, that only Big Name Authors get published. That you have to know people to get published. That perhaps being Australian is a strike against them.
Though I've addressed those first two here before (and would be happy to do so again if it would be helpful) I was especially croggled by that last one. As I told Cat, being Australian is a status marker in the US. A good one. For better or worse, in the grand scheme of our prejudices and loves of foreigners, folks from Australia rank very near the top. The accent alone turns heads, if one wanders the streets here in person. And Australia has a powerful creative tradition of which many Americans are aware -- Peter Carey, Peter Weir, Nick Cave, to name three artists across three disciplines. Not to mention the usual A-list genre suspects from over Oz way, such Jonathan Strahan, Sean Williams, Sean McMullen, Garth Nix, Justine Larbalestier.
We also talked about how to start an author fund, modeled on the various fan funds, with the idea in mind of exchanging authors every year between the two scenes. I know Cat, Deborah and Trevor at least have all been over here in the last couple of years.
All that being said, my basic comment to the writers in the Australian scene is the same one I make to anyone else, anywhere else: "Write more." To them in particular, I add: "Put it in the mail." I can guarantee you that most editors never notice where a manuscript comes from geographically, and if somehow they do, being Australian is more likely to be a plus than a minus.
catsparx during the awards banquet at WFC. We covered a lot of ground, but one place that we kept coming back to was the desire of Australian specfic writers to break out in to the American market, and some of their perceptions about that process.It was fascinating. One of the most interesting things about the perceptions Cat was reporting was that if you took out the word "Australian" and inserted the word "aspiring" in the phrase "editors treat Australian writers...", it would sound a great deal like the sorts of things aspiring writers in the United States tell themselves and each other.
The really strange thing about that to me is that Australia has a perfectly healthy fiction scene that these folks have been building and creating within for years. I'm talking about respected writers and editors such as Cat herself, as well as Rob Hood, Lee Battersby, Trent Jamieson, Deborah Biancotti, Trevor Stafford, Martin Livings, Ben Peek, Tansy Rayner Roberts and Alisa Krasnostein -- just to name a few of these folks that I've come to know either IRL or through the virtual world. These writers have already "come up", in a scene which is even by demanding standards equivalent to the high end of the US independent press scene.
Yet they feel as if they're hurling themselves at same walls as any new writer here. The perception, for example, that only Big Name Authors get published. That you have to know people to get published. That perhaps being Australian is a strike against them.
Though I've addressed those first two here before (and would be happy to do so again if it would be helpful) I was especially croggled by that last one. As I told Cat, being Australian is a status marker in the US. A good one. For better or worse, in the grand scheme of our prejudices and loves of foreigners, folks from Australia rank very near the top. The accent alone turns heads, if one wanders the streets here in person. And Australia has a powerful creative tradition of which many Americans are aware -- Peter Carey, Peter Weir, Nick Cave, to name three artists across three disciplines. Not to mention the usual A-list genre suspects from over Oz way, such Jonathan Strahan, Sean Williams, Sean McMullen, Garth Nix, Justine Larbalestier.
We also talked about how to start an author fund, modeled on the various fan funds, with the idea in mind of exchanging authors every year between the two scenes. I know Cat, Deborah and Trevor at least have all been over here in the last couple of years.
All that being said, my basic comment to the writers in the Australian scene is the same one I make to anyone else, anywhere else: "Write more." To them in particular, I add: "Put it in the mail." I can guarantee you that most editors never notice where a manuscript comes from geographically, and if somehow they do, being Australian is more likely to be a plus than a minus.