Won’t anyone think of the first-time novelists?
If there is one word that perhaps best describes a first-time novelist, it is perhaps needy. Really though, the odds are against them, the world needs no more debut novels, and if one of them does make it big the first time out, well, all the worse for the rest of them. How can they not be needy?
Author John Degen confirms all this in a short essay in THIS magazine on the plight of a first-time novelist, entitled, appropriately enough, “Pick me! Pick me!”
Publishing a first novel in Canada can be a lot like tossing a note-laden bottle into Lake Superior. First of all, you’re littering, so there’s that to feel guilty about. And who needs another book, wonder the trees. Then, you have to ponder the long odds of anyone actually finding the damn thing – there’s a lot of cold, angry water out there and endless kilometres of unpopulated shoreline, metaphorically speaking.
Degen gets points for including, in the midst of his cri de coeur, a blurb from the Globe and Mail upon first mention of his novel.
I thought it was the second novel that was supposed to be the difficult one.
The second one?
I don’t wanna talk about it.