Nobody Told Me There'd Be Days Like These

There's more to writing a novel than sitting at a keyboard, as Martina Devlin describes...

I'm sitting in a taxi en route to TV3 : it's so early it's dark outside, there's frost on the road and wouldn't you know it, the car heater is broken. Meanwhile, my brain is so befuddled with sleep it can hardly chug through giving the address to the driver let alone grapple with the concept of being witty and charming on air in a matter of minutes.

I arrive late - unbelievably there are traffic jams in Tallaght at this hour of the morning - to be greeted by someone with a clipboard who calls me Marian. Oh no, I think, they imagine they're getting Marian Keyes. Sneakily I don't correct him in case he bundles me back into the taxi. I'm whisked off to make-up (no time for coffee, they say, in that frenetic way TV people have) and a metamorphosis occurs. The make-up lady transforms me into someone vaguely human. I'm in awe of her skills, I want to bring her home and have her live in my bathroom cabinet. But her sterling efforts are in vain because I'm trotted off to a studio by another member of the crew - everyone seems to have clipboards in TV Land - where a bank of 1,000-watt light bulbs are trained on my face. It's like facing a Gestapo interrogation.

The newscaster finishes and it's over to breakfast TV show presenter Emma Buckley. It's against the laws of nature for her to look so flawless under 1,000-watt light bulbs. I'm brooding as she reads the autocue. She's talking about some writer who's published a book and my attention wanders - only to be lassoed into line when she mentions my name. Good grief, I'm the writer, pay attention woman. And we're up and running. It's over in a flash, I haven't a clue what I said and the clipboarders are too busy lining up the next guest to reassure me. At least my sister's recording the interview, I console myself. Except she pressed the wrong button on her video so I never do find out if I was a natural or if I gabbled like an idiot.

Once in work at the Irish Independent (where I'm a reporter), it immediately becomes apparent nobody's seen me on TV. So they can't even lie and claim I was sensational. A colleague notices my extravagant excess of make-up. Got a job interview lined up? he asks. Then I'm sent to cover a glorified photocall at Dublin City Hall. It's raining, I don't have an umbrella, the mascara starts running ... ho hum, it's a glamorous life as an author.

But like it or lump it, you have to grasp every opportunity for publicity that's offered because writing books isn't only about story telling. In the modern world it's about marketing, advertising and that all-important ability to deliver a soundbite. You have to become a multi-media machine.

It's not sufficient to write the best book you can - that alone doesn't guarantee exposure. The jacket must spell out that you've written a worthwhile book too. The people who have a strong influence on whether or not your book sells are the backroom team who design the cover, write the jacket blurb, organise distribution and publicity. While a striking cover can help sell an indifferent novel, a poor cover can kill a fine book. That's the commercial reality.

My début novel, Three Wise Men, introduced me to the way the market works and the subsequent two consolidated the message that business is business. Your book, which you laboured over to create, is a product sold like bars of soap. And you can't just hand it over to the publisher as though your role in the process stops when the novel hits the shelves. You become part of the product. The cult of the personality applies to book sales as much as to records or films. Which is why you're trundled around shops on signing sessions. People value a novel inscribed by the writer and that `signed by the author' sticker may persuade someone to buy your book over another's unautographed one.

This is where you'll meet your public, if you're lucky, and for the first time become directly answerable for your characters' misdemeanours. It's a peculiar experience but you realise a book which evolved from your imagination no longer belongs solely to you. Readers have opinions on characters and their behaviour, theories about their motives which astonish you and forcefully suggested ideas for a sequel. On the interview circuit you have to be prepared to talk about yourself - tricky to do without sounding self- important. It's a strange position to find yourself in, at once challenging and daunting. You may not have a great deal of interest to say just because you've written a book, yet you're under pressure to entertain. Everybody, but everybody, wants to know if your book is autobiographical. If you deny it they think you're lying and if you admit it you're pressed for specifics.

You also need to be prepared for the fact many of the interviewers feel they have a book inside themselves, so sometimes you wind up discussing their notional work rather than yours. And believe me, if you don't do it with a smile on your face you'll suffer in print. Marketeers describe everyone as having a unique selling point; the conundrum is to figure out yours. It helps that Ireland is a village so you're automatically a celebrity of sorts in your own small patch. I come from Tyrone, which has only a handful of living authors Benedict Kiely is the best known. Thankfully the local media were supportive about running stories. I also have strong family connections with Tipperary and Limerick through my mother's side of the family so local newspapers and radio stations were willing to give coverage there. If I could have rustled up a cousin in every county of Ireland, believe me I'd have done it.

Many people are familiar with the morality tale of how Bertie Ahern's name was hijacked by pornographers and turned into a raunchy website. As an author you become a brand name. Prepared by my convent education for porn merchants at every turn, I registered martinadevlin.com before anyone nefarious bought the name and tried to sell it back to me. One of the advantages of this is that books can be bought over the web around the world.

The worst aspect of writing a book is having it reviewed. Although if there's one thing worse than being reviewed it's not being reviewed. I can recite from cringing memory every sentence of criticism, but you tend to forget the praise. Writers new to the game should expect comparisons to other novelists, inevitably in less flattering terms. Authors are told they're sub-Kathy Lette or a combination of Maeve Binchy and Edna O'Brien but without their skill. You're meant to have a thick skin but it takes time to develop.

Nobody warned me it would be like this but there is a tangible reward: seeing your novel in bookshops. Each one takes a year to write and once it's out there you have no choice but to use publicity to alert people to its existence. Books don't sell themselves and you want to give yours the best boost you can.

Even Dickens knew the value of the soundbite circuit. If he were alive today he'd probably be in a taxi right now hurtling towards TV3 and those 1,000-watt light bulbs.

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