Just Another Week in Suburbia and The Hachette Manuscript Development Program
The Hachette Manuscript Program is a joint initiative between Hachette Australia and the Queensland Writers Centre, which involves a week of workshops on writing, editing, publishing, marketing, agents, among other things. Entrants submit fifty pages. If they’re chosen, they submit the rest of the manuscript, then go to Queensland to participate in the Program. In 2013, I submitted Just Another Week in Suburbia and “Prudence” (the book I wrote immediately after) and, as had become my wont, didn’t expect anything. However, Just Another Week in Suburbia was shortlisted. It was gratifying given it was the novel I’d designated as THE ONE (as in the one where I was determined that…
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Before I was published, I had several novels that got close – well, that’s what the glowing rejections suggested. However, I did feel that those novels were – in their way – reserved in some areas. I was holding back. It was intimidating to put work out there where people who knew me would be reading it, and possibly judging me through what I’d written. I’m sure lots of writers feel the same. So I wrote through a filter – I held back in scenes (be they explorations of emotional vulnerability or realisations, intimacy, etc.) where I thought somebody might think of me, I can’t believe he wrote that! Going…