The grit is the good bit

On launching a junior fiction series, deadlines, jelly shots, and life lessons from the TV show Hacks

Hello friends,

It’s been awhile between drinks and newsletters. My excuse (not that you need one) is I’ve been living, breathing, writing and launching my new junior fiction series Ella and the Frogs into the world. Ella and the Amazing Frog Orchestra (Book 1) is out now, and Ella and the Sleepover Safari (Book 2) is on its way. Early bookseller support has been great and I’ve been nervously excited to get early reviews, especially from the target readership of 5 to 8 year olds.

There have also been birthdays (my daughter’s, Ella’s and mine all fell within six days of one another), friends’ book launches and trade shows. Oh and school holidays, that sticky morass of time when the days are long and full but precious little gets done. Best to lean into it. School goes back next week, and it will be time to get back into a routine, get stuck into writing Book 3 and to try to remember what exercise is.

1. A rare babysitting window and the library's odd opening hours led to this cafe writing session (My verdict on cafe writing? Delicious and distracting). 2. Signing books at the glorious Readings Kids. 3. Launch day often feels a bit anti-climactic. So we marked the day with B's first Frog in a Pond (and my first time making them). Any 80s/90s kids remember these party favourites?

To unwind in the evenings, my drug of choice has been Hacks. Season 3 recently dropped on Stan and it’s as brilliant and biting and funny as ever. For those who haven’t yet had the pleasure, the premise of the series is what happens when an ageing comedian (Jean Smart as Deborah Vance) and feisty twenty-something comedy writer (Hannah Einbinder as Ava Daniels) are thrown together against their will in a bid to relaunch each other’s careers. It’s a searing yet sympathetic commentary on comedy, creativity, show business, ambition, feminism, family (rifts, estrangement and found families), bisexuality, boomerism, the generation gap and what we can learn from each other. It's also consistently laugh-out-loud funny, with a killer cast. This season in particular is choc-full wisdom, much of which could apply to book publishing as easily as comedy (or indeed any endeavour where creativity and capitalism are forced to coexist).

Here are 3 creative life lessons we can all learn from Hacks:

1. The grit is the good bit.

‘It is really, really hard. To be honest, that doesn’t ever change. You gotta scratch and claw, and it doesn’t get better, it just gets harder. But the scratch in the very beginning is the fun part ... try to enjoy where you’re at right now, cos you’ll miss it. And you can never go back.’

Comedy writer Ava gives this answer to a despondent newbie writer in the audience of a panel she’s on, and I found myself nodding away. There really is nothing like the first time you hold your first book in your hands, or see it in a bookstore. There’s so much doubt and anxiety and imposter syndrome that goes with being a debut, it can cloud the joy sometimes. But the truth is the doubt and anxiety and imposter syndrome doesn’t go away, so you might as well enjoy your moment.

2. Focus on what you can control.

When Deborah lands a huge opportunity and self doubt begins to creep in, she seeks out an old colleague, a veteran producer, and asks if there’s something she should do differently this time. His response:

‘This is the problem with you creatives, you think it’s all about talent and hard work: “The harder I work, the more successful I’ll be.” And it is, but it’s also about luck. And you can’t control luck. You guys want it so bad, you trick yourself into thinking that you can.’

3. Sometimes this industry be crazy.

‘Original is harder to sell. Honestly, nobody wants it.’

Paul W. Downs is one of show’s creators and plays Deborah and Ava’s talent manager Jimmy Jnr. Jimmy is largely the comedy straight man to his wacky assistant Kayla (played to perfection by Megan Stalter) and his delivery is second to none. (The platonic plane proposal is one of my top moments in season 3). This scene, where he and Ava discuss new writing prospects, is another favourite and feels lifted right from real-life conversations I’ve had recently.

CURRENTLY…

WORKING ON
It’s all Ella, Ella, Ella at the moment. Promoting one book while editing another and attempting to draft a third is a privileged problem and I certainly can’t complain. Let’s just say I’m looking forward to doing one thing at a time again in the (hopefully) not too distant future. I’ve also begin editing stories written by brilliant young writers at a Melbourne primary school where I had the pleasure of being Writer in Residence over four weeks earlier this year. Thanks to a wonderful program coordinated by Ardoch Australia, the stories these students dreamed up in our sessions will be designed, typeset and printed as real books, to be distributed at their very own book launch later this year.

READING
Tis the season for hygge and rom coms. I loved David Nicholls’ new one You Are Here, about two middle-aged singletons battered by life and love, who meet on an epic group hike in the English countryside. And I was thrilled to score an advance reader copy of Nina Kenwood’s first foray into adult fiction at a trade show recently. I loved Nina’s first two YA romcoms so I had dangerously high hopes for this one, but it didn’t disappoint. The Wedding Forecast (out in September) has funny, flawed, loveable characters, author and bookshop plotlines, plus weddings, Melbourne and New York. I also enjoyed fellow UWAP author Kirsty Iltner’s beautiful and heartbreaking novel Depth of Field, which won the 2023 Dorothy Hewett Award.

WATCHING
Other than Hacks, I’ve been enjoying armchair travel with Stanley Tucci’s Italy. All the sun and scenery and watching people eating can be triggering, but musical language and memories it stirs up make it worth it. Also loving the new ABC iView series Austin, about a cancelled English children’s author who discovers he has an adult autistic son while on tour in Australia, starring the wonderful Michael Theo who many will remember from Love on the Spectrum, and Kay Kerr’s book Love and Autism.

LISTENING
A surprise birthday visit to Lightscape at the Royal Botanic Gardens has me listening to Tame Impala again and dreaming trippy dreams.

If you see Ella in your travels, know any young nature-loving readers or schools with frog bogs you’d like to share it with or want to talk about the genius of Hacks or the rollercoaster of publishing, you know where to find me.

Cassy