Competing with the regatta taking place around the beautiful Foster City lagoon on a gorgeous, sunny Saturday, November 12, I was very pleased with the surprisingly good turnout of attendees at my author talk Aspiring to write a bestselling novel? The Dream, the Journey, the Reality. Here is a summarazed transcript of my presentation.
The Dream
My initial and early reason for writing novels is I have always loved to write fiction, and novels give me ample space to tell my stories the way I want them told, more room to express myself than a short story.
I have loved writing from the time I was in 7th or 8th grade or its equivalent in Hong Kong. In my adult life, there is another big reason for my writing novels, and that is I want to express in a fiction genre what I want to say. For every novel I have written, and the one I am currently writing, I have something to say, a sense of purpose beyond the story itself. I want to write about a subject or a place that means a lot to me, but under guise of a story to make it more interesting and perhaps more entertaining.
A bestseller? Certainly don’t mind if I have one. But to me, the success in sales is the gravy on the steak, the icing on the cake. It’s very nice, but not essential for my sense of fulfillment and gratification which I find in the writing, during the process of creating the work. There is the saying the best part of a destination is the getting there. That literally applies to novel writing.
The Journey
From the time I was in high school in Hong Kong, like many students whose favorite and perhaps best subject is English, I was selected to send in essays for the British Commonwealth essay competitions. I won commendations and prizes in those competitions several times, little perks of encouragement that gave me incentives to write, and eventually I dreamed of becoming a novelist some day.
My undergraduate major at the University in Hong Kong was English Literature. Couldn’t think of any other subject I wanted more to study. Then in graduate school at the University of Toronto, I did a masters degree program again in English. At the age of 23, I was confronted for the first time with the practical question ‘What can I do with two degrees in English to make a living? Where do I go from there? What about my dream of writing novels and getting them published? Little did I know that it would take me two different careers before I finally wrote and published my first novel, 36 years later. Writing is my third career.
Yes I had to bank that dream of writing a novel for 36 years. Instead, I took another program in education at the University of Toronto and became a teacher of English in high school. A few years later, I realized I really preferred library work more than teaching, and so I diligently returned to studying for a degree in Library Science, this time at the University of Chicago. After that, between raising a family, I spent 17 years as a librarian, in Illinois, then Toronto, Canada.
Then one day I said to myself when I was in mid-life, “Elsie, you are not getting any younger. If you want to follow your dream of writing a novel (and my ambition then was a novel, not more), you had better do something about it. It’s now or never.” I was determined to act on it.
So, while still working as a librarian, I took a summer workshop and some correspondence courses in creative writing with a reputable writing school in Toronto. The instructors were all established Canadian authors. The result was my first novel, Hui Gui: a Chinese story. It’s a historical novel that spanned 37 years of Chinese history from 1934, the rise of communism, the Long March, through the Japanese invasion of China, and the 2nd World War, the establishment of the People’s Republic of China, then on to British Hong Kong with the influx of refugees from China as a result of communism controlling the country. The novel ends with the return of Hong Kong by Britain to China in 1997. With a well-edited manuscript, I signed up with a literary agent in Canada. There were a couple of near breakthroughs, and my hopes were temporarily raised that I would land a book contract, but as my agent said, “Don’t count on it until a contract lands in your lap.” After a year with the agent, and without definite results, I decided to take matters into my own hands, and self publish Hui Gui: a Chinese story in 2005. The book was professionally produced, printed by the University of Toronto Press, distributed by a professional distributor who placed multiple copies of the novel in bookstores of the Chapters/Indigo chain across Canada, and many academic and public libraries in Canada and the U.S. As well, the novel was distributed through online bookstores, the most popular one being amazon.com and its worldwide network. I hired a publicist for a while to promote it, and attended many radio and TV interviews.
A national Chinese TV station in Canada, Fairchild TV, did an-hour long documentary of me and my novel Hui Gui, aired during prime time on a Sunday evening just before Christmas, 2005. Everything was done right. Sales were good the first year after publication. Over the years, I have become my own distributor of this novel, and now in its eleventh year since publication, it is still being purchased and read. Earlier this year, I saw a copy of it on the shelf of Kinokunya Bookstore in San Francisco. I just sent out two copies of the book to amazon.com to fill customer’s orders in the last few days. The shelf life of Hui Gui has been quite long for a first novel.
My second novel was The Heart of the Buddha, a mystery and love story set in the Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan. I had traveled to Bhutan in 2000 for 5 days, and I fell in love with the little kingdom. Two years later in 2002, I returned to Bhutan to research for a story. I subsequently wrote my novel and it was published in 2009. Again the novel was well received, and it is still alive and well on online bookstores.
I had a special dream for this book. It was to make it accessible to the Bhutanese people. Sold for US $15 on online bookstores, it was relatively unaffordable to them. Then in 2011, I received a request from a publisher in India who wanted to republish The Heart of the Buddha for distribution in the Indian subcontinent which would include Bhutan. A contract was signed and the book under a different cover was published and distributed in India, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Nepal and Bhutan. I specified to the Indian publisher that I wanted the book to be made accessible and affordable to the Bhutanese people. My dream of having the novel available to the reading public in Bhutan was realized. A year later, a Bhutanese Facebook friend posted to me that she found the novel in her college library, and she was reading it.
I had gone to Sarawak on the island of Borneo several times in recent years, to visit my relatives there and also to research my third novel. I completed the manuscript in 2012. In 2013, it so happened the Women in Publishing Society in Hong Kong of which I was a member inaugurated a literary prize called the Saphira Prize for unpublished fiction. I submitted my completed manuscript, and won the Saphira Prize which was that the novel would be published by the Women in Publishing Society. The novel Ghost Cave: a novel of Sarawak was launched in March, 2014 in Hong Kong, and again at the literAsian Festival in Vancouver a few months later in October same year. I was invited to participate at the Hong Kong International Literary Festival in 2015 at which I gave a presentation about Ghost Cave.
The Reality
How much your dream becomes reality depends on what your dream is.
An overnight success? A national bestseller? No matter how good one is as a writer, luck and opportunity play a very important role in one's success, as in the cases of struggling artists in all genres of creativity. The reality is that not every novelist will be a JK Rowling. If a writer wants to create a potential bestseller novel, he or she might stand a better chance picking a subject that’s popular for the majority of the reading public, something that goes with the current and the tide, a timely topical matter, or a fantasy that goes well with the young and the not-so-young.
But even if your novel does not get to the level of a bestseller, be happy with what you have achieved but do not stop there. Keep plucking away with a passion even if your notion of success seems to elude you.
On the other hand, if you have something you want to say, or a story you want to tell, then listen to your heart, and write your story even if you suspect it may not have worldwide appeal, or the topic is not a trending one. The settings of my three novels are a. China and Hong Kong in the last century; b. Bhutan; c. Sarawak on the island of Borneo. Ask people around you where Bhutan is, or where Sarawak, or even Borneo is. See how many can tell you instantaneously and accurately. Why did I pick these settings for my novels? Because they all meant something to me in a personal, intimate way. Take Ghost Cave: a novel of Sarawak for instance. I wrote it for my father who was born and grew up in Sarawak. He was a third generation descendant of Chinese immigrants to Sarawak, his grandparents having migrated there from China in the early 20th century. I wanted to write a novel for him and for the family there. My dream was realized, my goal was reached when I presented the newly published novel to my family in Sarawak soon as the book came out in 2014, and particularly to my father who was 97 and living in Edmonton, Canada at the time. He held the book in his hands and looked pleased and proud. His first question to me when I presented it to him was : “How many copies have you sold?” He passed away four months later.
I have enjoyed and loved every moment spent researching and composing my novels. Call me a dreamer, an idealist, but aren’t all novelists so, one way or another? Are my novels bestsellers? No. But they are still selling. Readers have sent me reviews and comments. They are not bestselling novels, never will be, unless one gets picked up accidentally by Ang Li or some other movie producer! We can always dream! But I am happy with the outcome of my work. To me, having written my stories which embody what I want to say, and having my novels published and read are the realization of my dream.
Finally a few tips on creating opportunities for yourself as a writer:
Networking is important. Use different ways and means to communicate with the publishing community, writers and readers.
- Join writers’ groups;
- Use social media to reach out far and wide;
- Have a website and a blog;
- Attend writers' conferences, writing functions, literary events, readings, book fairs, occasions that may give you opportunities to meet the publishing community, writers, editors, publishers, agents, be involved in social media, build a writer's platform.
- If and when invited to do readings or give talks, etc., say yes.