After the Book Launch: Afterglow or Aftermath? Part One

After the Book Launch: Afterglow or Aftermath?

Are we strengthened or rendered vulnerable by putting our truth into the hands of strangers?

By Cathy Park Kelly

As writers, we are always being advised to show up naked on the page. This, we are told, leads to powerful writing, words that come alive on the page. But the question is – when our pens have laid the truth on the paper, and the publishing process has churned us through its cogs, when our story lies glossy and new on readers’ bedside tables – what are the after-effects?

I spoke to three authors who have been published in the past year: Tracy Going’s – an award-winning former South African TV and radio news anchor – haunting memoir ‘Brutal Legacy’ tells of her brutal assault by her intimate partner and delves into her childhood with a violent father.

Désirée-Anne Martin’s book, ‘We Don’t Talk About It. Ever.’ is a harrowing memoir of a good girl’s descent into drug addiction.

Niki Malherbe’s book ‘Somewhere In Between’, is her second self-published book and explores the elusive concept of ‘work / life’ balance for women.

What has the process of getting published been like for you?

DM: It’s been both magical and mortifying. Writing the story was like opening up a wound. Releasing the story out into the world…it was as though the wound was still open and it took a while for it to heal. That was the mortifying aspect. I made myself vulnerable to people I didn’t even know.

But the magical aspect is that I have spoken my truth. It’s a lifelong dream come true. I’ve had amazing feedback from strangers. I’ve had no negative feedback. It’s a huge risk – and then it was surprising that people, from different circles and walks of life, were relating to it.

TG: Where I’m lucky is that my story has been tried and tested in a court room, and I’ve stuck to court records. So it can’t be challenged on that level. I was very aware when I was writing the book that I had to be as specific and as truthful as I could be.

My motivation for writing the book was in outrage and protest. I never wrote it as a form of catharsis or healing. So I think that also protected me.

Although it took me a very long time to write it…to be able to live with being looked at differently. I needed to get sufficient distance between me and my story so that it wasn’t one of bitterness and anger.

My most vulnerable time was during the editing process, just before the book was due to be released. I had an enormous moment of asking myself, What have you done??

NM: Because my book is more essay and opinion and not memoir as such, it’s not quite as revealing or as anxiety-provoking as Martin or Going’s books.

But I do feel like it has gone slightly against the grain in terms of what I share about being a woman in the world. Before I wrote the book, I’d been this poster girl for something I believed in – that, as a ‘feminist’, I had found the perfect balance of work/life in the legal world  – and suddenly, I was writing a book saying I didn’t know if I could be that person anymore. So that, for me, was quite hard to stand by. It was almost as though I had failed at something.

In preparing to be in the public eye, what layers of protection did you create around yourself?  

DM: At the beginning it was quite difficult to field questions about my book, but now I’m quite comfortable. My no-go zones in interviews are my children. But no one’s gone there, so it’s ok.

I’ve found that, because my book is so honest, readers proceed to tell me their life stories. People are as open with me as I am in the book. So, being a counsellor, I’ve had to put in boundaries at work: if a prospective client has read my book then I refer them to someone else.

TG: I was very careful when I wrote it, not to tell other people’s stories. And then, when I got to writing about the terrible things that had happened to me – that to this day I’m still mortified by – I pretended that I was writing about somebody else. And even now, I pretend that it’s not really me.

In my conversation with these three women, I see that expressing our truth renders us vulnerable. Yet at the same time, it strengthens us. When that truth of ours is packaged up into a book and travels along the publishing channels to land on a reader’s lap, sitting curled up on the couch, mug of something warm in hand, the truth the author has told can make tears well up in the reader’s eyes, or bring a rush of warmth to her heart… It seems that truth shared is never wasted.

You can find all three books on Amazon:

‘Brutal Legacy’ by Tracy Going

‘Somewhere In Between’ by Niki Malherbe

‘We Don’t Talk About It. Ever’ by Désirée-Anne Martin

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Tags: featured, women writers

Category: Contemporary Women Writers, Interviews