Sunday, January 20, 2013
I'd Like To Thank My Cats, My Chook, My Computer.
I'd like to send very big, individual thank yous to everyone who, by one means of communication or another, sent lovely congratses about my getting into Aliens:Recent Encounters. They're much appreciated. I feel like a rock/pop/movie star :) Well, almost.
And a HUGE thank you to Steve Cameron for posting about my good fortune on his blog.
I have to say that personally it's been an inspiring thing. I've been typing away for many hours this weekend - confidence tends to oil the writing machinery - and I almost feel brave enough to send my shiny new SF story off to one of the Big Three. Well, maybe after another edit or two.
Still, one must always bear in mind that like any of the arts, writing is an wilful and unpredictable business. Who knows when the next sale will occur, if at all, and whether one will be able to keep up with the market's zeitgeist, or even defy it and turn the world in a new direction! One that it didn't even know it wanted to go in before! Or not :) Underscoring the uncertainty of an artistic life, we went to see the movie Hitchcock yesterday, and I couldn't help but be amazed that a such an iconic director with so many hits under his belt still had such a hard time raising funds for a movie just because he wanted to do something different. Where is the trust, people? Conformity, alas, is the default setting of most money-people, be they filmmakers, gallery owners or publishers. That Psycho eventually became a classic is neither here nor there - it only hit the big screen because Hitch believed in it so much he financed it himself. Self publishing anyone?
And by the by, I read this morning that Sense and Sensibility was published at the author's own expense, so the late, great Jane Austen actually forked out all of her savings to get her first book published. I didn't know that. Or I'd forgotten. Anyway, it was only after sales of S&S went well (read by royalty etc) that a publisher finally, after many years (from 1797 until 1811 as far as I can ascertain from the article) of the manuscript sitting in the bottom drawer of an elegant escritoire, purchased the copyright to Pride and Prejudice for a scandalously small amount and, thanks entirely to her own belief in her own work, Jane Austen was well on her way to literary immortality.
So, the more things change...
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3 comments:
Very well deserved. Congratulations again, Gitte.
As I was driving somewhere, sometime, recently, I heard someone on the radio say Richard Burton and Elizabeth helped finance the film Cleopatra. (Or something like that. They each put a million in and got no salary, only a share of the - huge - profits.)
Hmm, I always thought Cleopatra technically lost money, even though it grossed big, because of the huge production costs. And La Liz was paid a million straight up, which was unheard of at the time. But there was a lot of financial turmoil, threats of cancellations and production delays, so maybe they snuck some money into the movie kitty then. I must go investigating. And it wouldn't surprise me if they did help out after putting so much of themselves into the project.
That said, I do love that movie. It's so much better than many people think it is.
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