My own journey - not a pretty story. Part 1

Many people who read Write to be Published comment on the story at the end, when I tell the details of my difficult journey to publication. People often say I'm "brave" to have told it. I don't think so. I have nothing to hide. People see me now - strong, healthy, confident, full of ridiculous energy - and find it hard to believe that I was none of those things in my younger adulthood.

For those of you who haven't heard the story, I tell it now. It's neither pretty nor short. Get coffee. It also explains the whole answer to the question: Why do you spend so much time helping writers who are trying to be published?

Reproduced from Write to be Published with kind permission of Snowbooks.

HOW WAS IT FOR ME?
This book is a case of “Do as I say and not as I used to do.” I failed, as you know, for many years. Twenty-one years of failure to have a novel published. Towards the end of that time, I did have some small things published, home learning books mostly – they did very well in terms of sales, and many are still in print, but it was not what I wanted. I wanted, desperately, to be published as a novelist. Failure made me ill and consumed me with jealousy. It’s not a pretty story. It’s also a personal story, because every story of a writer struggling and failing is personal. Everything is wrapped up in it: health, family, psyche, location, support, income, and more. So, here’s my story.

Aged twenty, wondering what on earth a Cambridge degree in Classics and Philosophy was for, I decided that I wanted to be A Novelist. I knew I couldn’t earn a living immediately – hollow laugh – so I needed a job. I went to London, where streets are paved with wondrousness, and got a job cooking for an advertising agency, and dinner parties for Belgravia ladies who wanted strawberries only in December and smoked salmon if it was twice as expensive as the stuff their neighbours had.

And I wrote. I started a novel and also wrote stories aimed at women’s magazines, none of which got published, because they were completely wrong for their market. I had something published in Reader’s Digest and was paid £150 for about 50 words, an enormous payment in the early 1980s. My photo was on page one. Fame and fortune, I thought. I was almost right about fame: on a bus, I saw a man reading it, looking back and forth between the picture and me. I grinned. He asked me to sign it. My first signing!

Meanwhile, I was writing The Novel, on a cheap type-writer, while working as an English teacher. Somehow, in holidays and evenings, the novel grew and was finished. I sent it off. And received it back. Often. Each time I “improved” it. Trouble is, sometimes they said it was too long, and sometimes too short, so I was confused. One praised the original plot and another criticised its traditional nature. There was no internet and little advice available. I knew no one in the business, no one who was published, no one who was even trying.

Every time it came back, I fell apart. To most people, I seemed fine. But inside I was devastated that I couldn’t find the key to publication. I didn’t know what I was doing wrong. I felt useless.

After three years as an English teacher, I decided to give myself a year of writing full-time, really going for it, because being a teacher was incredibly exhausting and time-consuming and I couldn’t write enough. I also wasn’t well. I had glandular fever, toxoplasmosis and a couple of knee operations. So, supported by my lovely husband, I gave in my notice for the end of that third year. A month before term ended, I discovered I was pregnant. So, I didn’t get my year of full-time writing: I got a lovely daughter. But I was still sending off that bloody novel, still getting it thrown back. I’d revised it endlessly and didn’t know what to do. So I did the right thing and started another one.

We moved to Edinburgh and soon had our second daughter. I was still writing. But my health wasn’t good and I now believe that this was down to the gnawing pain of failure. I wanted publication so much and I was trying so hard. I felt I was good enough, so why wasn’t it happening? It wasn’t enough to be a mother, wife, cook and damn good house-person; I wanted more and I wanted it so much that it was making me ill. Postnatal depression was diagnosed, followed by an under-active thyroid, followed by Chronic Fatigue Syndrome or M.E. The thyroid was true, and I still take thyroxine, but the rest wasn’t: it was Bruised Soul Syndrome. I was damaged where it matters. I was happy as a mother and wife, but I had a chasm where “myself” should be. The odd thing was that to everyone else I was Mrs Efficiency, Mrs High-Achiever, Mrs Get-Christmas-Sorted-in-October. Failure was inside.

Then, a dull government organisation offered me work, writing documents. I sailed out of that interview feeling fantastic. Energy flowed through me. I still remember that. God, those documents were boring but they gave me my life back. But I still wasn’t really someone who could call herself a writer, not in public.

The school where I’d taught had lots of kids with dyslexia, and I’d become fascinated. So I did a diploma in teaching pupils with Specific Learning Difficulties. That sparked an interest in the brain – a huge strand of my writing and speaking now – and a chance to be an expert in dyslexia and then literacy in general. I won’t bore you here with the literacy work I was doing, as it’s only relevant to the extent that it led to my first book contracts. To cut the story short, I self-published (badly) some home-learning books, sold the first print run of a thousand, and sent a set to the educational wing of Egmont. By chance, they were about to commission a major home-learning series, called I Can Learn. They asked me to write the whole series, for a glorious fee and my first experience of a nightmare deadline: twelve books in three weeks. Although it was fee-based rather than royalty-based, there have been reprint payments and internet spin-offs so I have been treated well. Also, when I do talks to teenagers now, many of them recognise those books from their childhood.

Anyway, now I could call myself an author. I was published. I was earning. I was valued. My books were in shops. I was reasonably well.

But I wasn’t A Novelist. My second novel was still coming back. I’d had near-misses: a fabulous letter from Collins; a story being short-listed for the Ian St James Awards; several times when the novel got as far as acquisitions meetings. But nearly being published is still failing. I started a third novel. I was full of hope. Sent the first part to an agent, got a lovely reply asking for the rest. (More rules broken: don’t send a novel out before it’s finished, but you know that now.) Went back to it, but didn’t finish it because by chance I read a new children’s novel. I’d been writing for adults and had never thought of writing for kids. Why would I? I wanted to break boundaries with language, not be held back by simplicity. Oh, how wrong that analysis was!

The book I read was Skellig, by David Almond, a beautiful writer with an extraordinary voice. He expresses deep ideas in language which is only simple because it is perfect, not because it’s trying to avoid complexity. He is unselfconscious and his words are crystalline and generous where mine were convoluted and self-indulgent. This was what I wanted to do. I’d been so tangled in prose that I’d forgotten about story. And now I could do both. From reading that one book, I learnt everything that I’d been missing in my failed quest for publication: that writing is about the reader more than the writer.

So I began to write Mondays Are Red. When I’d written about a third of it I became impatient and broke that rule again: I sent it to an agent and two publishers before it was finished. The agent and one publisher wanted to see the rest. I explained to the agent that I hadn’t finished but would do so now, and to the publisher that I had interest from an agent and would be in touch soon. I then wrote furiously and sent it off to the agent. The agent said that she loved it but that she was now ill and had decided she couldn’t take anyone on. (Pause for a scream.) I told the publisher this and sent them the rest of the book. Meanwhile, the second publisher, Hodder, rejected it. (Hold that thought.)

The first editor was very excited but wanted changes. She also suggested that I got an agent. I contacted two agents that day, one by letter because she had no email address and one by email. I included in my covering letters some glowing quotes from the editor. The agent I’d contacted by post phoned the next day and said she wanted to take me on. Just like that. When I opened my emails, I found a reply from the agent I’d emailed, apologising for not contacting me immediately. She was interested. Help! I contacted the first agent, explained and said I needed to know if she definitely wanted to sign me. Yes, she said. So, remarkably, I turned an agent down.

My new agent and I worked on Mondays are Red, and got it to the state we wanted it; but the editor who’d been interested wanted one change too many and my agent advised that we go elsewhere. She didn’t believe further changes were necessary.

Which publisher took Mondays are Red? Hodder, who had rejected it when I’d sent it on my own. Useful things, agents.

Mondays are Red was published in 2002 and I have been very lucky ever since, though it has not always been easy and I’ve had my knockbacks. Authors tend to hide those bad times and you should realise that beneath every apparently successful author’s confident exterior are bruises and scars. But do I wish I hadn’t had the years of failure, of not knowing whether I’d ever be published? No. They stop me taking anything for granted or thinking too highly of myself. They are crucial to who I am now; they are also why I understand what gets published and why some perfectly wonderful writing does not.

Now, I am wholly well. I put that down to having repaired my bruised soul. In the dark days, a clever medical person told me we need heartsong in our lives and that the key to health was finding my heartsong. When he said that, I knew what he meant and where I needed to find it. That’s why I spend time blogging for talented, hard-working, non-delusional writers and why I’m writing this book: because if you have that same need for heartsong, I understand.

Next week, I'll tell you the story of how I learnt about my first publishing deal and why my first novel is dedicated to "Alison". You'll need tissues.

If you'd like to buy the brand new ebook version of that novel, Mondays are Red, please do! It's published on Monday and you can be very sure I'll bring you details then. THANK YOU!

Edited to add: LOOK! A fab video trailer. *dances*