When your new novel is read for the first time.

If it is true that a play only comes alive when the actors speak your lines when does your novel begin to live? Is it the first time other eyes than your own start reading and absorbing the story?  Hard to say. Writers will tell you it has been living in their minds for so long, months, perhaps even years,and now it is out in the public for all to see. But most will agree there is nothing quite like that first time when others assess it  and it is no longer just your book anymore - but .now belongs to others. I remember giving an advance reading in June of my second book due to be published in the autumn. It was a strange, almost heady feeling, speaking aloud the words that up until then no one had seen or heard but myself. If I could have somehow been outside of myself at that moment with the ability to become a looker on/listener in, it would surely have given me some idea of how it appeared to my listeners.  I had been close to it for a number of years, maybe too close  to be able to judge it impartially and I had to rely on the opinions of that first audience.. Their comments were important and I listened nervously, not so much wanting an honest opinion as a favourable one. When following the titillating foretaste I had given them one of my friends said it was just the kind of book she would like to curl up in bed with and, true or not, it was just what I needed  to hear just  then.

So how come, as writers, we are so bold on paper and yet timid in person when it comes to our work, more inclined to apologise for it than accept compliments with pride. Once at a book launch Clare Boylan commented on this when I was guilty of over-explaining myself and she quoted her friend and fellow-writer, Molly Keane, who had advised her early on in their relationship 'One thing you must never do is apologise for your work.'  It was good advice but when young and untried writers are inclined to be uneasy about claiming credit or even gracefully accepting it. On that subject the poet, Eavan Boland, spoke at a workshop I attended some years ago, stating in her eyes the biggest sin was for writers to meekly admit to 'doing a bit of writing'.instead of coming out boldly with the words 'I am a writer.'  But then we are all a bit superstitious about claiming before time to be something we aspire to be, as if by admitting it too early we will put a hex on it.