On the Subject of Thin Skin

As a writer, I have tough skin, unless I have a flood of rejections in a row. I reckon I have about a 25% acceptance rate from short stories/poems/novels I send out. If I can see that the publishing company/agent has accepted someone as a client/author who I consider to be less talented, I can just shrug a rejection off and say to myself, well, bad taste, better luck next time. There is a codicil here that has to do with Girl on a Stick. I worked my ass off on Girl on a Stick, and it was devastating nearly every time I got another rejection before it was accepted, and I guess what made it particularly awful was big-deal agents saying how much they loved my writing, but this just didn't grab them/they weren't in love with it (I am sure any writer knows well the not-in-love-with-it phrase; as I've been a fiction editor, I know it's what editors use when they have no good reason to reject other than personal taste, which is fair enough).

With Girl on a Stick, it got a little pathological, and even as a published novelist and someone who has been in love with books and reading my entire life, I found myself resenting every new book I saw, and trying to keep myself from envying other people's success when I couldn't understand why GOAS wasn't being lauded/accepted. That was painful, and bitterness is not a common trait with me, or something I admire in myself. That eased when GOAS got a publisher, but I still think it hasn't gotten its due, and possibly never will. I tend to be very self-critical, so if I say that something I have created is good, it's probably very good. It has taken me years to be able to say "I am a writer" to people. People still say, "Really? Self-published?" Er, no. (And, again not something I am proud of: "Fuck you for your underestimation!", but only in my head, of course.) Anyway, GOAS aside, usually thick skin.

As a painter, even thicker skin, possibly because I am so outside the system anyway. I don't even know how to work it. I just keep painting, and putting shows on from time to time, and people keep buying the paintings. I would love to have a manager/agent who discovered and believed in me, but I don't have the energy/time to look for one. If someone doesn't like my art, I can usually think, in a good-natured way, of course, "To hell with ya." Lately, though, I see contemporaries have the $$$ to devote to their painting careers full-time and I am jealous of that, though not of them, really. I have a good feeling about my paintings, actually, like one day I actually will be discovered and hopefully by this I won't be too cynical to be delighted by the stardom.

As a filmmaker and actor, rice-paper thin skin. For the former, lack of experience playing the festival/distribution game and therefore lack of confidence in my own work (men never seem to suffer from this, I've noticed); for the latter, residual neurosis from a fucked-up experience at drama school, which has been partly healed by taking part in the lovely Sarah Wood's films and being praised etc. I am definitely someone who blooms under praise, not criticism.

My last posts have been heavily narcissistic, but that's art for ya. Besides, I feel uncomfortable spilling personal details about my life, my girlfriend, my family, my friends. And I rarely even discuss my "artistic life" anyway with anyone, so these last two posts are something quite new for me as well. One personal detail is that, for some reason, I have really been missing my London-based friend Venetia recently. It's weird to live 10 years in one place and then have all those people, all those memories, just gone. It was sort of the same with Stockholm, where I lived for around 3 years and then left abruptly, never to return. I always assume I'll just show up for a film festival or a book reading at some point. I still dream in fluent Swedish from time to time. It would be odd to see the way it smells, feels. But London, I feel, is current with me, kind of more in my present blood (like Seattle, 3 years as well). Stockholm feels like Alaska, something taken for given. It's not exactly the past. London, New York, even San Francisco, Barcelona, my sell-out dream beachhouse in San Diego, all feel like the present and the future to me.