By Gabrielle Brinsmead
H. F. Brinsmead, the environmentalist, author and my grandmother, gave me the ambition to write. She and my grandfather (whose successful weed-spraying business may have prompted her environmentalism: they argued about everything), lived in a two-storey colonial homestead on Australia’s Gold Coast. Her writing room was a tiny cubby-hole on the ground floor looking out over frangipane and mulberry trees. My siblings and I ransacked that room. Along with my grandmother’s type-writer (she never owned a computer), it was stuffed with teetering piles of books, some age-appropriate, some not at all. James Thurber. P.G. Wodehouse. Agatha Christie. Ngaio Marsh. Idries Shah. Richard Gordon. Atlases of the world. Tattered maps of Uzbekistan, Italy, Russia and South America, as well as many copies of my grandmother’s own books. One of these, Once There Was a Swagman, was dedicated to my siblings and me. Again and again, I would open its cream hardcover to read my own name (which was misspelled, Gabriella not Gabrielle; my grandmother yearned to be Italian).
Like everyone else, we called her Pixie (not nonna, as she would have preferred) because it was such a great description of her. As far as my future career was concerned, Pixie was not encouraging or supportive in the slightest. My sister Faye is named after her, so Pixie insisted that she, and not I, was the one who would shine in print. At fifteen, I told Pixie that I had written my first novel; would she like to read it? Pixie declined, saying that she would wait until I could type to read my handwritten masterpiece. I learned to type, but never shared anything else I wrote with her, which suited her very well.
What especially dazzles me about my younger self was my certainty that every manuscript I finished would turn into a bestseller and a goldmine. Sending entries in to The Australian/ Vogel Award for Young Writers is a rite of passage for many aspiring Australian authors. When my first entry did not win, I was surprised and disappointed, but not fatally so. When my second and third attempts were equally unsuccessful, I still believed that there might be something wrong with the judges, rather than with my submissions. Only when my last effort, just before my thirty-fifth birthday, was not even shortlisted, did I fully realize that this ambition of mine was going to take much longer and be much more difficult than I had ever imagined.
As rejections kept coming, hitting me more profoundly with each passing year, I fantasized about and even attempted to give up. I got sick of that feeling of being bludgeoned, mind and body, when my work was not wanted. I wanted to be recognized for my efforts. I wanted a pay-day, and to be able to call myself something. How can you be a writer, when you haven’t published anything? How can you be proud of your achievements, when all you get for your trouble is a range of no’s, from polite to peremptory? I have tried to be other things: chef, aerobics instructor, artist, schoolteacher, ballet dancer. But in the end, I always find myself back at my desk in front of a blank page.
It is not the desire for adulation or remuneration that returns me to my work, but mental and emotional necessity. Writing things down improves my life. Virginia Woolf suggests that nothing happens unless you write about it. Jacques Derrida, the French philosopher, argues that to write one’s own life and thought is akin to assuming control over one’s destiny, that books and writing are valuable beyond measure and worth fighting for. For Ferdinand de Saussure, the Swiss linguist, language is a treasure that each of us carries around in our heads. For me, making up characters and writing about them is like taking out my personal treasure-trove and playing with it.
I have also learned a lot by continuing on in the face of rejection and despair. Firstly, to keep reaching out to experts. Not that I like to admit it, but my first novels were neither very good nor ready for publication. Secondly, while it’s good to listen to helpful advice, don’t side with the people who knock you back, and decide that you have nothing to say. Never descend to self-destruction. Most importantly, call yourself a writer and know that what you do matters, before anyone else calls you that. Re-evaluate your definition of success, so that you can acknowledge how much you have already achieved. While I wait (still) for a novel of mine to burst into the world, I feel proud of keeping a daily journal, sending clear and uplifting emails and messages, and of writing succinct and helpful to-do lists for myself and the people I love. I have a lot to communicate, which I already do very well, no matter how many of my manuscripts have quietly and mercifully died along the way.
My grandmother gave me so much: an appreciation of bright colors, gaudy clothes, hot climates and crime fiction. She also left the rights of everything she wrote to my siblings. We still benefit from the books that are in print, and plan to bring more of them back (especially the one she dedicated to us!) She also left behind handwritten scraps, written when she was old and sick. They were plans for a new novel, a journey that her unwritten protagonist was going to take. In pain and almost ready to die, living in a house whose bottom story was overrun by her own remaindered books, all my grandmother wanted to do was to write again. I’m sure it will be the same for me. Writing is what I do, who I am and who I will continue to be, no matter what.
Gabrielle Brinsmead is an Australian writer, artist and curator. She lives in Pakistan with her husband, her children and her pets. You can contact her here: gbrinsmead@gmail.com or see her Instagram here: gabriellebrins@insta
