Going back

It felt like the right thing to do, from the moment I started it all.

I’ve been reconnecting with my past, ever since I decided to write my book.  Not unusual, given I was writing about life in Melbourne in the 1990’s. But at some point I will need to move on.

As we face 2018, I ask myself, Surely I’m done with all that now?  The book is published, I’ve dedicated a few months to marketing and sales, and now the next project beckons.

Yet, from the outset, pieces of the past have continued to materialise, as if I’ve opened a very full cupboard, and things just keep falling out.  The book hasn’t offered closure, as I might have expected with a memoir.  True, it has been a lovely stroll down memory lane, but also a portal to my former self.  Perhaps that’s the risk of writing non-fiction.  It has a life of its own, and with the proliferation of social media, it’s so much easier to connect the dots now, to be found.  The past refuses to stay put.  It can time travel from right across the globe, it can find you from crumbs that you’d inadvertantly left, it can speak to you after decades of silence.

At the local radio station in Manchester I spoke with a random person who picked up my phone call in August.  It turned out that he’d lived in Melbourne briefly, in the 90’s, and had seen the band (The Fish John West Reject), been to several of their gigs in fact; and yes, he was still in touch with the drummer, Graham.  That’s the sort of thing I mean.  Unexpected. Revelatory.

So, yes, it’s true that it’s difficult to move on.  I won’t deny that.  The story has been part of my life for a year;  I’ve lived it day after day, and then finally realised a long held dream, to see it in print. What a rush.  What a sense of achievement.  But after such a high, there is only one other trajectory.

I’ve read other writers’ experiences of post-publishing blues.  Whilst filled with the joys of sharing your creation, you mourn the loss of your daily visits to that world of your imagination. It feels like you’ve lost a friend.

I can sense there’s more to come from this story. I’m not sure how to explain it.  When you write something you just know when it’s finished, when it all feels right, when it flows.  I said everything I could about that time.  It felt finished.

But I don’t feel it’s really had chance to be discovered yet.  It’s one of many books on Amazon. It’s just a pebble on a beach.  Perhaps if I offer some context, it might help you to understand.  During my latest research, I read that there were over 786, 900 barcodes issued in the US alone during 2016.  That’s the number of books flooding the market that year, and it didn’t even include ebook numbers.  If that was a mound of books, imagine trying to find mine in it.  That’s what I’m talking about.

I have done what many people only dream of doing – writing and publishing a book.  Nothing can diminish that achievement.  But it’s up to me to ensure it has legs, that it continues to get into the right hands, that it doesn’t get buried and forgotten.

That portal I opened hasn’t closed yet.