Hard work but worth it.
Happy Birthday eve, West Side Honey.
My third book comes out tomorrow. I have what I like to refer to as ‘school tummy,’ which is something my best mate from primary school and I used to say about the excited, nervous, anxious, holy-shit-bigness of the night before the first day of a new school year. There’s a funny waiting place period between when you finish a novel and when it is released into the world, like holding a bird in your two hands ready for release. Or at least that’s what it feels like to me. Tomorrow I get to let the bird go, my job is done, the book in many ways ceases to be just mine tomorrow and it becomes something else entirely. It becomes a thing that readers will have a relationship with. That readers will bring their own history and thoughts and beliefs about romance and friendship and writing and they will place that lens on top of my book, which is precisely what’s meant to happen. But it’s still strange and beautiful all the same. I suppose once tomorrow happens I can let my grip on it go and make space for the other projects I want to dedicate my muse to, and that is exciting and terrifying too. What if I can’t do it again? What if this is it? What if i’ve forgotten how? Take a breath, Christian, it’ll be okay.
I wrote West Side Honey methodically in 2020, a chunk of words every day that i’d record myself reading and send to my best friend. It’s the first thing i’ve ever written sequentially. I usually like to write haphazardly, in bursts of inspiration. This book was a buoy in a tumultuous year, all my work was cancelled, a European trip was cancelled, I couldn’t see my family, or my best mate who was in the thickness of Melbourne lock downs, my marriage ended, and yet I showed up to the first draft of this book with a devotion and routine that felt compulsive, almost. I did it for her, so she’d be included in this loving ode to best friendship at times inspired directly by us. This book anchored me that year. Writing about friendship anchored me that year.
The book that gets unleashed into the world tomorrow is very different to the first draft I submitted at the end of 2020. That version was a split narrative about two characters, told from a third person perspective. This version is a first person story with about 40,000 words of that first draft cut from it - and I don’t know if that version of the story, or those words, will ever see the light of day. There’s something bittersweet about them only ever being seen by me and her (and my editor).
I’m proud of this book. Of me. It kicked my butt. Who I am now on the eve of release is very, very different to the woman who initially had the idea. This book will always be the project that rode the wild wave of the last few years of my life. And this woman writing this very post was inconceivable to me back then, so that feels like something worth noting.
What’s at the heart of this novel is a woman learning to take up space in her own life. It’s about a person working out what the hell she wants and needs and then working out how on earth you be brave enough to ask for it.
People cannot meet your needs if they don’t know what they are.
I was learning this at the same time as Cleo Novak, my central character, and the piece we don’t often talk about in this is in order to ask for what you need, you’ve gotta do the work to know it is that you want, and you’ve got to be believe that you’re worthy of it.
Healing is hard work. But worth it.
This book was hard work, but worth it.
Happy birthday eve, West Side Honey.
WHAT’S COMING UP
Book Launch at Avid Reader in conversation with Dave Burton: April 12
Book Launch at Readings, Carlton in conversation with Kate Mildenhall: Monday May 8
I’ve got two events at Brisbane Writers Festival this year. I’m on a panel and hosting a panel. Check out the program it’s bloody snazzy.
Pearler is written on the unceded lands of the Yugerr and Turrbal people here in Meanjin, and Claire acknowledges and pays respect to First Nations Elders past and present. This always was and always will be Aboriginal Land.
Happy book birthday West Side Honey! It’s a phenomenal book, I fucking love Cleo and Jude!