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This article originally appeared in the Staebrook News, September 26th 2004
© Staebrook News
Following her dreams: Sharon Maas
By Andre Haynes
Sunday, September 26th 2004
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Author Sharon Maas addressing the audience at a book signing at the National Art Gallery, Castellani House on Tuesday evening.
(Photo by Lawrence Fanfair)
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How does a woman with little ambition end up a best-selling author? Dreams, discipline and a cold German winter.
Sharon Maas has followed her dreams all the way from a young intern shunning sexual advances from her boss at her first job to a critically-acclaimed writer with three books in the bag.
Maas, the daughter of political activist David Westmaas and consumer advocate Eileen Cox, spoke about her early life and her work at a book signing at the National Art Gallery, Castellani House, on Tuesday evening.
She told the large audience comprising almost exclusively women, that the road to her career began while she was a student at the Bishops' High School.
It was 1967 and the lower sixth form student was a self-described "restless and naughty 16-year-old and the last thing on my mind was Shakespeare's Julius Caesar."
Maas, more interested in fun and frolic, found the deconstruction of literature utterly boring. So much so, in fact, that she and one of her friends found a much better way to pass the time - they co-wrote a book of love letters to their English teacher's 90-something-year-old husband who was the only man at the then all-girls' school.
This would go on for some time until her teacher caught her while she was making an entry into the book.
The letter-writers were both promptly handed a one-week suspension. "I had fun doing that but when I came back, [she] said to me, `Sharon Westmaas, you definitely have a talent for writing and I think you are wasting it.'"
Maas took the observation to heart but followed friends overseas where she completed her studies. She returned but was still keen on fun rather than taking things seriously, according to her. She drifted around for some time before noticing a vacancy at the Guyana Graphic for a trainee reporter.
Maas was taken on for a probationary stint along with two young men and so began her life as a journalist.
Although her shy disposition did not mesh with her chosen career, she was nevertheless encouraged by the more established reporters, who took her under their wings.
The turning point for her came when she wrote a story about orphans who were sick with polio. She put her heart into it and was given a byline for her efforts.
Maas told her fascinated audience that everything was going well, but left the room gasping when she shared a closely-guarded secret about her brief experience at the newspaper.
"...But there was one problem," she said calmly, "...one secret."
She said one of her editors would call her into his office, where he complimented her on her work. "...And he told me to sit on his lap."
She refused every time. And when the three-month probationary period expired, she was let go in favour of the two men, neither of whom had been given any credit for their work. She did not mention whether either of them was asked to sit on the editor's lap.
"I just wanna tell him, thank you," she said of her former lecherous boss, explaining that the experience gave her the drive to show him up. She went to every other newspaper and showed her work in hope of getting another job.
The Sunday Chronicle hired her on the spot as a feature writer and as romance advice columnist, 'Dear Diane,' eventually.
It was the latter that she considers her first attempt at fiction since she sometimes made up her own letters to make things more interesting.
But a much more serious foray into the world of fiction writing came decades later after her travels across South America and in India.
By the early 90s she was married to her second German husband and was a mother of two.
They were living in a farmhouse in Germany without any central heating.
It was winter and the pressures of the existence began to set in. To escape it all she began to write, using a computer she got from a friend. Although, most of the time she was wrapped almost from head to toe trying to survive the winter.
Many days found her tucked away with the computer in a corner, wearing a coat, a cap and gloves as she wrote. "It was cold... but it was like going to this world of my own..." she recalled.
Maas wrote to her heart's content every day and soon there were about seven hundred pages of a book. She sent it to an agent who helped her cut it down by nearly half and polish it up. But it was rejected by almost every publisher they showed it to.
Maas was frustrated but did not give up, drawing her strength from a tale her father told her about Scottish King Robert "the Bruce." It is legend that he found inspiration after a defeat in battle, while hiding in a cave where he observed a spider building a web in the cave's entrance.
The web fell down time after time, but the spider persevered and finally he succeeded in the end.
But Maas tried a slightly different tactic; she dropped the book and started another, which she wrote just for the sake of writing it, she said.
"...And somehow the story came out of me... Of Marriageable Age... it grew on me, it just kept me going, I didn't worry about publisher..."
Bitten once before, she didn't send it to an agent or publisher, but opted for a literary consultant who loved it and sent it to an agent in the UK.
The woman who had been rejected by every publisher she approached now had three, who were all dying to publish in her book.
Harper Collins was her first pick and published the work in 1999. Her book was acclaimed by critics and it sold modestly in England but it was a hit in both France and Denmark, where it achieved best-seller status.
She has since had two books published, both with modest success, Peacocks Dancing (2000) and The Speech of Angels (2003).
"The moral of the story is that it is not easy to write a book," she told the audience. "And especially if you are like me, a dreamer, a born dreamer, and not somebody who is naturally ambitious or naturally hardworking."
Maas noted the importance of being a dreamer and also cautioned against having them smothered by what she called prosaic hard-learning. In fact, it is for this reason that she renounced her contract with Harper Collins. She explained that she had planned to set her next book entirely in Guyana.
She wrote three chapters and she showed it to one of her editors, who was more interested in having her revisit the vistas of India.
So she wrote three chapters of this and she showed it to one of her editors, who was more interested in having her make changes to make it a big commercial seller. "I can't do that. No way. And I renounced the contract and will write the book the way I want to write it and will look for a publisher who likes it."
Dreams and the winter aside Maas also fancies another reason for her success - discipline.
Germany and the people there have instilled this quality in her, since she says the Germans have a drive and determination that may seem an alien virtue closer to home.
To this end she quipped that a few Germans might do Guyana well.
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