2008: After my book, The Agony of Ecstasy, was published in 2004 (and anthologised in 2007 in Cape Town Calling), I took Andrew Motion's MA in Creative Writing at RHUL and an extract from the novel I've been (very slowly) working on is published in Bedford Square, below. I am currently working on a proposal for a non-fiction book and have been taken on by London literary agent Andrew Lownie.
I write books for commercial commissions, too. In 2007 I wrote two children's books commissioned by Ticktock Publishing and am always open to commissions.
January 2008 update. Bedford Square 3, an anthology of writing from my MA Creative Writing, is now published (John Murray, £7.99). Here's the blurb from the back. 'In 2004 Poet Laureate Andrew Motion established a brand new creative writing course at Royal Holloway, University of London. Bedford Square 3 showcases the writers from the Class of 2007: smartly original and refreshingly varied, here are some of the most exciting new voices in contemporary writing.'
Cape Town Calling : July 2007 update. An extract from The Agony of Ecstasy has just been used in this new South African anthology of contemporary writing on 'the mother city' including international travel writers and much-loved locals such as JM Coetzee, Paul Theroux, Nelson Mandela, Rian Malan, Mamphela Ramphele and Pieter-Dirk Uys.
'In the tradition of literary drug-taking which stretches from Thomas de Quincy to Aldous Huxley and Hunter S. Thompson. It screams of teenage angst and the pressures to be cool, beautiful and self-possessed.' The Times
'A cool classic for the youth of the age. Fascinating...gripping...a work of spiritual literature in its extraordinary honesty and sensitivity and luminous voice, in its sharp, astute observation and rebellious tough-mindedness. I read it in a day, and felt it was a modern Pilgrim's Progess.' Sacvan Bercovitch
'A thoughtful, sometimes brutally honest account. If you've ever wondered why young people take drugs, read The Agony of Ecstasy.' The Oxford Times
'From St John on the Cross onwards, religious, mystical and new age texts unanimously agreed that transcendence or entry to paradise must always be preceded by a long dark night of the soul. But that was before MDMA (Ecstasy). Olivia Gordon's memoir of her time as a teenage raver in Cape Town in the late 90s, reverses that traditional narrative. On swallowing her first sixth of an ecstasy tablet all of her anxieties, inhibitions and ego dissolved to be replaced by feelings of, well, ecstasy. Ten pills later she suffered a six-month long bout of depression, which she followed with a prolonged period of enquiry into the nature of experience and a search for authentic feeling. That ecstasy makes people happy is incontrovertible, but it was that element of compulsion that disturbed her, revealing as it does that emotions are reducible to chemical reactions, "that humans really were just puppets with a master chemist pulling the strings." Gordon had a hypersensitivity to MDMA that is uncommon, but the lack of understanding she received from friends and clinicians alike must still have been distressing. Her story will certainly be of comfort to anyone suffering a similar depression.' Independent on Sunday
'Captivating...While such a tale could have been an irritating story of self-destruction, Gordon's smart enough to present her situation for what it was -- innocent fun with inadvertently serious consequences. A welcome bit of sanity.' The Calgary Herald
About the Agony of Ecstasy
When I was 23 and an aspiring journalist who would frankly have written about absolutely anything to get in print in a national newspaper, an editor suggested I write a feature about my own experience of taking Ecstasy as a naive 17-year-old: my contemporaries' misguided search for philosophical understanding through the use of drugs, how taking Ecstasy made me depressed for six months, and how I then discovered real happiness (a cultured, gentle, sober grown-up world a million miles away from clubs, raves and class As, which I never went near again).
I sold the feature to the Evening Standard, which was wonderful enough for me as a keen young journalist. But I was amazed at the chain of events that followed. A scout for London/New York publisher Continuum read my feature and showed it to Continuum London's trade publishing director, Robin Baird Smith. Robin then asked me if I would like to write a whole book about my story. So I did, and the book, The Agony of Ecstasy - a partly fictional memoir - was published in 2004.
My story of my late teenage years isn't really one of extreme drugs or depression, but is rather a philosophical enquiry into the metaphysical issues introduced to society by the drug Ecstasy and other common substances like antidepressants: the nature of the experience of happiness; whether happiness is something which can be artificially induced, and whether chemically-created happiness is authentic. My book is an exploration of these questions, and the conclusion I came to was that artificially-induced joy is not joy at all. The 'depression' I experienced was the lonely questioning of the assumption made by society that happiness can be artificially created.
My thankfully short-lived teenage dark night of the soul was a philosophical search for the meaning of truth and happiness in the plastic modern world. I hate to say this as a journalist, since most people in my trade try very hard not to sensationalise facts to make a good story, but my serious enquiry didn't make a very saleable story for the media. They generally preferred a simplistic 'drug/depression hell' angle, and, looking back today, I'm taken aback by how many of the interviews and features done on my book - many still floating around on the web - added various inventions and inaccuracies to my story.
As a journalist, I've been privileged to learn what it is like to be on the other side of the notebook, being asked personal questions and, sometimes, having your story sensationalised with scant regard for the truth. I feel that this experience has helped me to become a sensitive and honourable journalist - something for which many people I've interviewed have thanked me.
More than a decade on from the experiences which inspired my book, my interests are today very tame: writing, reading, seeing my parents and friends. I'm working on a proposal for a second non-fiction book.
I'm cautiously happy to comment about my story and the Ecstasy experience. You can read a good print interview with me here: The Oxford Times
A number of personal features in my own words have also been in various other papers and magazines. You can find these in the main portofolio of my work under Hot Issues and Real Life!