Susan Sellers was an Escalator winner in 2007-2008 where she completed her first novel, Vanessa and Virginia. She began her second novel, Given the Choice, with her Escalator mentor Sally Cline and the support of an Arts Council Grant for the Arts. It is published this month by Cillian Press. Here Susan blogs on the challenge of writing the second novel, and the importance of having writing support:
I vividly recall when I launched Vanessa and Virginia during my Escalator year in 2008, a friend saying to me ‘of course, what’s really difficult is writing a second novel.’ At the time I laughed and thought ‘how can anything be more difficult than the first?’ But he was right.
I had been researching the close, sometimes turbulent relationship between Virginia Woolf and her painter sister Vanessa Bell for the best part of ten years, and with Vanessa and Virginia I simply plunged in, without thinking too closely about the process.
Given the Choice was different. The pitfalls seemed to announce themselves in flashing neon even before I stumbled into them. There was also – if this is possible – an acceleration in every kind of displacement activity. It remains a mystery to me why all those otherwise tedious tasks – organizing email, dusting, even on one memorable occasion hemming my sitting-room curtains – can suddenly seem so utterly compelling when writing is at stake.
I can honestly say that without the ongoing support I have received from WCN, my Escalator mentors and the other writers who were with me on the scheme, I might never have finished Given the Choice, let alone bring it to the point where it could be published.
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