Writing Life with Susannah Begbie
Canberra author and MARION member Susannah Begbie sat down recently to chat to Natasha Seymour about her debut novel, The Deed, and about how winning The Richell Prize has changed her writing life.
N: Hi, Susannah. How are you?
S: I'm well, thank you. How about you?
N: Really good. Thank you so much for making the time to talk to me this afternoon.
S: Thank you for taking the interest!
N: We really wanted to set something up with you! You're a MARION member and a treasured ACT writer. So, it's a privilege.
S: Well, I first took the idea for The Deed to a plotting workshop at the then ACT Writers Centre, so, that's where it started. In fact, I still have – and still use – the handwritten information about plotting structures. It was a great workshop. I refer to those notes often.
N: That’s amazing. I wanted to ask, just off the back of that, are you a planner when it comes to writing?
S: When I started, I'd never written a novel before. So, I started with stream-of-consciousness handwriting on paper. And then I would choose, from that writing, a word or an idea or a bit of scenery or something that had come up. And then I would write into that thing. I would write into whatever that word or idea was and see what came from that.
With The Deed, I started with Tom Edwards, and his crazy idea of getting his kids to build his coffin. Very early on I knew there would be four of them. I had that much structure, but nothing beyond that. Then I did that stream-of-consciousness writing process for a couple of years. After that, I felt I knew reasonably well who my characters were and felt like I had a voice for each of them. But in retrospect, I didn't. I had a start – the tiniest start of a consistent voice for each of them.
After a couple of years, I thought, all right, well, now I'll give it a crack. It took about six years to write. And then I got Irma Gold, a freelance editor, to edit it for me, and she was awesome. She really gave it a good going over – there was plenty to do. By the end, I cannot tell you how much organisation was in it. I had family trees, separate plot lines and narrative journeys for each character. I had maps and house plans, and timelines for what each of them were doing each year.
N: That's so common with family sagas, when you're not just writing about one character in one setting in one time, you're inevitably thinking about a 20-30-40-year timeline plus all these characters, and what their relationships are with each other. Did you use paper for all of it?
S: Yes, for all the big picture planning. The writing, no, but absolutely for the maps and so on.
N: It sounds like a lot of very hard work went into it. But I know that you're also working as a GP. Can you tell me how you went about juggling that, your writing life and, I'm sure, family life as well?
S: I do general practice part time and writing part time: two jobs. Each of them part time. That's the whole story. I think that people need to know that. That someone like me, who is a GP and a writer, I don't do an amazing time-juggling act. One thing, though, is that during a GP consultation, my mind is completely occupied with that problem. That habit of work and concentration must help with writing.
N: Definitely. How did winning the Richell Prize change things for you then?
S: Before I won the Richell Prize I had a manuscript in my study, and piles and piles of notes. And then, after I won the Richell Prize, I had a writing career. That did not exist before the Richell prize. So, I cannot overstate the importance of this manuscript prize. Without it, there was no writing career. I had been submitting to agents and manuscript prizes, and none of the agents were interested. And then when I got longlisted I wrote an email with the subject line: “longlisted in the Richell Prize,” and I sent it out to agents, a few of whom had already rejected the manuscript, and I had two call me back within half an hour.
N: That's both incredibly encouraging and a little bit discouraging at the same time.
S: I agree, it’s both. But I wasn't even sure that I would enter a manuscript prize full stop. I was talking with this editor friend, and I said, “Should I just start going for agents,” and she said, “Go for manuscript prizes. If you get recognised in a manuscript prize, then publishers will look at it.” She was right.
N: It is hard for new authors to stand out. I know that you’ve said before that you almost didn't submit to the Richell Prize. Were you discouraged?
S: By that stage, I had committed to three months off work. I said, you've written this novel for ten years, give yourself three months to submit it everywhere, make that your job. So, I just listed every competition, every prize, every agent, Australia-wide, international, wherever I could send it. And submitting to the Richell Prize was part of that. But the reason [I was hesitant], wasn't because submitting to prizes isn’t worthwhile. I looked at previous entries, and these amazing writers were writing about social and cultural issues. And, thank goodness, that is what people are writing, they're the things that need to be written about.
But The Deed is very much about ordinary people, it doesn't explicitly look at social or cultural issues. Although, because we're humans, these things are part of it. The Deed is very much about ordinary people who are placed in the context of one extraordinary demand. But, beyond that, it's not exploring something that is necessarily topical for this time. And I wasn't sure if that's what the Richell Prize was looking for.
N: It’s easy to take yourself out of the running. Sometimes you do just have to go, “I’m just going to put it there and if it takes it takes, if it doesn’t it doesn’t.”
S: 100% right. I think you've just nailed it. You've got to submit. You just have to.
N: Could you tell me a little bit about how your writing life feeds into the rest of your life and your work life?
S: Firstly, the commonality between general practice and writing is observing people. Everyday people have amazing stories. And a GP is a person they can tell their story to safely. So as a GP, I am entrusted with the stories of people who are surviving very hard things and who are living remarkable, unnoticed lives. It's a total privilege. Writing is one way of sharing the human story.
On the other hand – and this is where writing is just such a joy – general practice is analytical. There are right and wrong answers, and I have to find them. There need to be clear, known outcomes. Writing is the exact opposite. Writing is about spending time in uncertainty, not knowing what will happen. And it's very fun.
N: Are you able to tell me a little bit about some of the joys of being a debut novelist and also some of the challenges?
S: From the moment I got longlisted in the Richell Prize to the point of publication it’s been amazing. The Richell Prize was launched in memory of Matt Richell, the CEO of Hachette, who died suddenly in 2014. He was a real champion of young unpublished writers. So, Hachette, along with Matt Richell's family, his wife, Hannah Richell, and the Emerging Writers Festival, put on this prize, which is $10,000 and a 12-month mentorship with Hachette. So, winning that prize was fantastic. Getting longlisted for the prize was fantastic! Shortlisting, being taken on by the Jane Novak Literary Agency, and then winning the Richell prize – it was all incredible. I've also really enjoyed the time leading up to publication. I've loved the editors at Hachette. They're so smart. And the book launch was great fun, with a lot of friends and family there as well. So that’s a lot of joy!
The challenge is in the publishing landscape – there isn't a lot of room for a debut novel. The shelves are full enough already. So, the first thing is trying to find the audience for your book. And that continues after you publish. As an industry, everyone is stretched, there's not a lot of give there. There's no time for sitting around in your lounge chairs at lunchtime, having a cigar. That's not happening in the publishing industry.
So, I decided to do some of the publicity work myself – going and doing bookstore tours and ringing radio stations and local media and saying, “Do you have any interest?” And that's a challenge. It's not something I know how to do. Another challenge is that prior to the Richell Prize and publication, I'd never been on social media. But now I have it all: Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook. I've got a website; I’ve got all of it. And it takes so much time, and so much attention. On social media everyone puts their best face forward, so it seems like everyone else is highly successful and having a really good time. This is true for writers too. I guess it’s true for everyone. I don’t like the capacity Instagram has to foster comparison and envy. Learning how to have separation from that machine is so important. I haven't conquered that. I hope I'll get better at it!
N: Social media can be such a challenge. No matter who you are, as long as you have a strong Wi-Fi connection, you can be on social media. So, it is an equaliser for authors, but it can be a burden, too. There's a lot of pressure to meet these invisible standards and be doing what everyone else is doing.
S: And doing it better and more interestingly, so that people like you!
N: So, you've touched on this, but I wanted you to reflect a little bit on what you think the barriers are for new and emerging writers.
S: I think that there is no room left for people who have written a draft and think it could be worth publishing. From my own experience, I wrote my novel, and then I paid a freelance editor to do a structural edit from top to bottom. And then I rewrote it. I had an editor help me with my title, my synopsis, my chapter summary. I asked for help for all of those things. I’m sure people do write novels in 12 months and barely have to edit it. There might be 0.01% of people who can write that novel, and get it published. And that's awesome. But there is the other 99.9% of us that have to work our way through. So, for me, to win the Richell Prize required me to have a complete and edited manuscript. It's not going to be the same for everyone. But I would say to emerging writers: put your best foot forward, and then get it edited, and then put it forward again, and then get it edited again, and then see how it's going. I did the Diploma of Professional Writing at UCAN, and I took the idea for The Deed to a writing workshop. It’s not a freak incident, it’s not that I just got lucky. But there has been joy in all of it.
N: What does your writing life look like now that you have a debut novel out in the world?
S: I was lucky enough to get a two-book contract with Hachette. So, it's been awesome. And a bit scary. The second novel is in the making right now. Except that currently I'm doing publicity. If I want my second book to sell, my first book must have sold. Hachette have been fantastic with the whole process – editing, cover design, publicity opportunities – the whole lot, but the author still has work to do.
N: What stage is the next novel at? Are you in drafting at the moment?
S: Drafting is a good way of putting it. Let's call it drafting.
N: Maybe we need to line up another MARION workshop for you to come along to. We'll keep it all analogue. Just paper and pen.
S: That will help me a lot. Really.
N: It's been so great to chat with you, Susannah. Thanks so much.
Tom Edwards is dying, and cranky. He's made his peace with the dying part. But he'd bet his property - the whole ten thousand acres of it - that there'd be no wailing at his funeral. His kids wouldn't be able to chop down a tree, let alone build a coffin to bury him in.
Then Tom has an idea ...
The Deed is out now with Hachette
Susannah Begbie grew up in rural New South Wales on a sheep farm and is now a GP who has worked all over Australia. In 2006, Susannah started a Graduate Diploma in Professional Writing at Canberra University and was awarded the Editor's Pick for her short story Fly to Meet You in the University's First Anthology. She was also awarded the best-written text for her children's book Don't You Dare! in The Get Real Project. The Deed is her first novel.
Natasha Seymour is the Managing Editor of Overland, Australia’s oldest radical literary journal. She was previously Development Manager at MARION and has worked across the literary and publishing sectors in Australia for many years, holding diverse roles in editorial, communications, events management, and publicity. A passionate reader and advocate for Australian books and writing, she holds a Master of Writing, Editing and Publishing from the University of Melbourne and a Bachelor of Arts (Hons) from the Australian National University.
