Smoke in the Room

  

Like most writers Emily Maguire had always written in her childhood and teenage years, but again like many writers, the idea that she would one day become a successful writer was simply unfathomable, she remembers.

It was with her first novel Taming the Beast which came about as a late night refuge from a singularly unsatisfying job, that the profile of Maguire the writer came to be. At first she remembers the exercise of writing as being something useful and gratifying after a bad day at work.

“I was writing it at night almost as therapy” she recalls.

But the story evolved and the main character Sarah stayed stuck to Emily, and it was clear that Maguire the writer was heading towards a full 300 plus page narrative.

“At some point the way I felt about the writing changed and I started to think – this is a book and I am not just going to keep banging away at it. It started to feel right and I started to take it seriously through the work and it became something worth pursing.”

Two years later and by them with some specific ideas in mind regarding how to get the book to publishers, Maguire had her first novel Taming the Beast - an incredibly raw story of a young teenage school girl sexually obsessed with her English teacher, with a story line thick and full of psychosexual sociological analysis, and written by a young writer with a strong literary and lyrical voice.

After reading this book in a night (it’s the sort of work that stays on your mind), it is clear that this was a brave first book for any emerging writer, but Maguire seems pragmatic. In the end she remembers it as a story that hung together easily and a character that Maguire knew from word go. She even knew where the story would all end. Confidence in the ending in fact is what helped focus Maguire to complete the novel.

“In the end however I only sent it to small publishing houses because I had researched the industry and knew how hard it was to get read in larger publishing houses if you weren’t agented or known in some way. This worked well for me because in the end the book suited the publisher that picked it up. Taming the Beast was first published by Brandl & Schlesinger in 2004 when the house was only two people working there at the time.

According to Maguire Brandl & Schlesinger were one of the few publishing houses that didn’t accept only agented works, and that was of course one of the major reasons she sent them her text. Talking to emerging writers now Maguire agrees it seems to be getting harder all the time to get a manuscript read.

“I was lucky that there were still a few publishers that looked at un-agented work and I was lucky again, in that they were very aggressive in overseas sales."

Brandl & Schlesinger not only on-sold the rights to Serpent's Tail in the UK, but also to Harper Collins in the US.

“It didn’t even occur to me that this would happen!” Remembers Maguire when asked what she thought when she heard Harper Collins would publish her book in the US.

“It was beyond my expectations for a first novel – or any novel I wrote. It was not a typical kind of journey but it opened up so many opportunities, not just in terms of books sales but also in my development as a writer. I was invited to writers festivals overseas and met other writers and could finally see the world of a professional writer opening up, meeting people who took the work seriously.”

So how important is networking really, in a job that seems so solitary by nature? Can't a writer just be left to write?

“I was so naïve and felt so on the outer at first” Maguire admits.

“There are others I know who are proactive and go out to make themselves known and become part of writers groups, but honestly for me it didn’t happen until I was published and was invited to be part of things. I never did any of that before, but they are great things to do if you have the personality for it. I’m introverted and have had to learn not to be.”

“Starting out I kept to myself which wasn’t very helpful. To a real outsider that can make it look like its jobs for the boys, but those people know each other in the way that people in any organisation know each other. You become friends once you are in the industry.”

“Taming of the Beast Maguire says, came from a really strong sense of the lead character. The plot evolved from thinking about this character Sarah, and where she found herself and why and what she would do next. But Maguire is now into her third novel Smoke in the Room where the main character of Graeme is named after Graeme Greene and the narrative evolves around activist Graeme, and wild, misunderstood Katie.

With each of her works, Maguire does feel she is becoming more organised in her writing process. Not in the sense that she has a specific outline and knows exactly where a story is going. “But the first one was more chaotic” she remembers, simply because “I didn’t realise I was writing a book.”

Whilst Taming of the Beast took Maguire about two years to write, writing at night, Smoke in the Room has taken three years. Maguire however also wrote her non fiction book in between. Her 2008 non-fiction book, Princesses and Pornstars: Sex, Power, Identity, looks at the argument that the mis- perception of young women as helpless and in need of protection is potentially as damaging and containing as that of them as uber-sexual beings.

Maguire says she is writing all the time now. “A lot of it I never use” she laughs. “But I always write things down in a notebook (just in case).”

“It’s always a bit nerve wracking as I start writing” Maguire admits before summing up the eternal challenge of all writers.

“Ideas are one thing. But sometimes you feel that it wont come together for a novel or that you won’t have the passion to write this at this particular moment.”

Smoke in the Room is currently sold at all good bookstores and to visit http://emilymaguire.typepad.com/ for information on Emily Maguire’s other books.