It took me more than a decade to write my first novel, The First Ethereal. To be precise, it was eleven years, four months and one day between writing the short story where I first ‘met’ Storm, one of my main characters, and, feeling physically sick, hitting the publish button with a shaking hand in October 2020.
Publishing that book was, without question, the best thing I’ve ever done (save from saying yes to that first date with my now husband) but why did it take so long? As I dive into writing book four, I’ve been pondering this. Here’s what I think:
I thought I needed to be a grammar guru
This was a big one for me. I assumed that being a writer meant I needed to be an expert on all things grammar related. I’ve always struggled with spelling certain words and while I can apply the rules of grammar (mostly) I can’t explain them very well. I took this shortcoming as a fatal flaw in my plan to be a writer, and so I kept trying to learn.
I have an entire shelf of books; my phone is stuffed with audio books and podcasts on the topic and I’m still finding old notebooks and flash cards with rules and definitions scribbled on them. I tried courses, and I even paid for a lesson with a private tutor who just frowned and asked me why I didn’t learn this stuff in school. I left thirty quid lighter and feeling ten times worse.
The thing is, grammar bores the life out of me, which is why I find it so difficult to study and retain the information no matter how hard I try. But ‘real writers’ are grammar gurus whispered my inner critic and so I persisted.
It wasn’t until I confessed my anxiety to an English tutor friend of mine that I could finally put an end to my self-inflicted misery. She laughed and told me, ‘Your job is writing the stories. Leave the grammar to the editors, they enjoy that bit.’ She also told me that the best way to learn is by writing, and she was right on that too (although my editor may be rolling his eyes at that one!)
I thought I had to plot
This one was a huge barrier to me, too. In the beginning, I didn’t really know any writers and the couple I knew were huge plotters. Spreadsheets, notebooks, colour-coded Post-it notes, they even had names for their methods and rules about where in a story each thing should occur.
Just like the grammar thing, I bought the books and yet more index cards, and I tried SO hard. I found the cards I did for Ethereal just the other day. The stack was about six inches thick! I remember it took me weeks to do, and I wrote every single word through gritted teeth, hating every minute of it.
I flicked through the cards before they went in the recycling bin and guess what? The story I eventually published bore little resemblance to the one I planned out on those stupid cards. I say eventually, because after forcing myself through the agony of plotting, I lost all interest in the story and didn’t return to writing for months.
The day I heard Joanna Penn talk about ‘discovery writers’ on her ‘Creative Pen’ podcast was the day the cell door swung open for me. I now sometimes sketch out roughly what’s going to happen in a story, but I’m way happier going with the flow and discovering the story as I go along. It might make for a slower process, but it works for me.
I thought I needed a qualification
I wanted to be a ‘proper’ writer, and so my ‘good girl’ brain whispered that I needed to go back to college and get a bit of paper to prove it. Juggling a busy freelance business and my writing was proving hard enough, so I had no idea where I’d fit in a university course too. Then there was the money which I didn’t have lying around.
The biggest block, though, was how it made me feel. When I think about writing, I feel a buzz of excitement. I feel lighter, like someone’s turning up the wattage on a bulb nestled somewhere under my ribs. When I thought about going to study writing, I felt like someone just dropped a brick in my gut.
Now, I know we can’t always do the things that light us up, tax returns and cleaning the dishwasher filter are just two examples that spring to mind, but as an adult who gets to choose, the minute I realised this, I binned the idea of going back to college. Maybe I’ll feel differently one day, but for now, I’m happiest getting my stories on the page and learning as I go.
I thought I needed to be traditionally published
Back in 2019, I attended my first writer’s conference at Winchester. I felt like a complete imposter, but I and a group of my fellow writing group buddies were talked into attending by our teacher. By then, I’d had my ‘when life gives you lemons’ horrors and finishing Ethereal had become something of a lifebuoy for me.
I went to the conference and, gathering my courage, had booked one-to-one sessions with literary agents. I’d already queried a few and, if thinking about going back to college left me with the feeling of a brick in my stomach, that left me feeling like there was a whole frickin’ wall collapsed in there.
The first workshop I attended at Winchester was called ‘Publishing 101’ run by an industry expert called Scott Pack. He explained how the business worked and listed the pros and cons of traditional vs self-publishing. By the time I walked out of the room, I was mentally archiving my ‘Agent Queries’ folder on my Mac.
I thought I needed to be a best-seller
Hands up, I would love nothing more than for my books to take off and start hitting the best-sellers' lists, who wouldn’t? I love writing more than anything else, but I still need my day job to pay the mortgage and keep the lights on. More sales would give me more time to do what I love – write.
The thing is, so long as I’m writing, so long as I’m making that day job vs writing passion juggle work, I’m already successful. Success is holding three books in my hands.
I feel a little queasy when I think about how close I came to giving up on this dream; of how these misbeliefs held me back and crushed my confidence. Bob Dylan sang about not dying with your music left inside you – I feel the same way about my stories. That three of my stories are already out in the world has given me the greatest joy and sense of achievement of my life – and if that’s the total of my ‘success’ then, best-sellers or not, I’m taking it as a win.