The Hound Takes Over!

Hello lovely blog readers. My minion human just got her copyedits for ACID, so she's asked me to step in and blog for her this week (after making me promise I won't do what I did at Christmas). So after much careful thought and chewing on my squeaky alien toy, I've decided to share the formula for building your very own Hound…

© Emma Pass 2012

© Emma Pass 2012

Or, if building your own Hound isn't practical, why not adopt one from the Retired Greyhounds Trust?

See you next week!

Love, 

The Hound x

Human's note: This was originally posted on the Friday the Thirteeners blog in April - you can see it here. No hats were harmed in the making of this post.

The How I Got My Agent Post

It was a list. Just a list, written on an A4 sheet of lined paper torn from a notebook. Names and addresses, with neatly ruled lines in between them.

A list that could change everything, or nothing.

I’d just completed my third YA novel, and with two previous attempts consigned to a bottom drawer, I’d decided it was time to take the plunge and start querying agents. As I like to be organised about these things, I’d gone through the Writers’ and Artists’ yearbook and made my list, picking out agents who represented YA authors I loved.

I sent my chapters and synopsis off to the first agent – by snail mail, as I didn’t have the internet or email at home at this time – and got a rejection back a couple of weeks later. The same happened with the second. I crossed them off the list and moved on to the next agent: Carolyn Whitaker at London Independent Books. Off my words went, and I tried to prepare myself, mentally, for another rejection.

But I was also hoping against hope that maybe this time, it would be third time lucky. Because Carolyn represented two authors I hero-worshipped: Chris Wooding and, at that time, Keith Gray. Imagine having the same agent as Chris Wooding and Keith Gray.

Just the thought of it sent shivers down my spine.

Luckily, I had plenty of other stuff going on to keep me occupied: I was getting married soon, and was busy making the final preparations. By the time the day arrived, I’d more or less forgotten about my query. I got married, and hubby and I went off on our honeymoon. It wasn’t until we got back home that I thought about my query again, when I found an envelope from London Independent Books lying on the front doormat. A thin envelope, containing a single sheet of paper. Another rejection, I thought as I unfolded it, bracing myself for the inevitable rush of disappointment.

But it wasn’t a rejection. It was a letter from Carolyn, saying she’d like to see the next 10,000 words of my novel.

I sent them off (with another SAE). Waited. Prepared myself for rejection. Instead, Carolyn wrote back to say she’d like to see the rest. Oh my god. I spent the next day or so reading and re-reading the end of my manuscript frantically, checking one last time for typos and awkward sentences before packaging it up and sending it off, using recorded delivery just to be on the safe side (and enclosing yet another SAE, because you always include SAEs when you send stuff to agents, right? Even if they have two other SAEs from you already that, if you weren’t so excited you could hardly think straight, you’d remember sending them).

Cue more waiting. And obsessive checking of the Royal Mail website to track my manuscript and see if it had arrived.

Nothing.

I rang Royal Mail to see if there was any record of the manuscript being delivered, but no-one could tell me anything. In despair, I realised what must have happened: it had got lost in the post.

Probably the most important parcel I’d ever sent, and it had gone into a black hole.

This isn't me, but this IS what I looked like when I thought my manuscripts had been lost.

There was only one thing I could do – re-send the manuscript. Meanwhile, Carolyn had been waiting all this time. What if she thought I wasn’t bothered any more? I posted another copy of the manuscript and tried not to think about how I’d probably missed my chance.

But that one didn’t arrive either. This could only happen to me, I thought as, in despair, I scraped together the courage to phone London Independent Books and leave a message on the answerphone, explaining what had happened. Then I posted my manuscript for a third time, convinced I’d really blown it now.

A few days later, hubby and I were driving to the supermarket when my mobile rang. It was a withheld number. Work?

No.

It was Carolyn.

Somehow, I managed to signal to hubby to pull over. Somehow I managed to keep my voice from going up about two octaves while Carolyn explained she had actually received my manuscripts (all three of them). Somehow I managed not to burst into tears when she said she really liked the story and had some suggestions for revision. Frantically, I scrabbled in the glove box and, by some miracle, found both a notebook and a pen in there. I think I may have interspersed my scribbled notes with OMG several times as hubby frowned at me, wondering, quite rightly, what on earth was going on. After we got home I started work on the revisions right away. When they were done, I sent the manuscript back to Carolyn, and after some more revisions it was ready to send out (although, ultimately, it didn’t sell; it would be another book and another four years before Random House Children's Books bought ACID).

So that’s how I got my agent. In the car, on the way to the supermarket.

And we were only going for milk!

Back To School

When I went to visit my publisher for the first time last summer, just after they bought ACID, they asked me if I’d be willing to do school visits. “Definitely!” I said, whilst thinking, my book’s not out for almost two years. Plenty of time to prepare myself for doing stuff like that. And in the general whirlwind of excitement that is meeting your publisher for the first time, I didn’t really think about it again.

Then, a few weeks ago, I got a phonecall from Anne Palmer, librarian at Murray Park Community School in Derby, asking if I’d like to do an author visit.

I won’t lie: the thought of it made me pretty nervous. Me and school… well, it wasn’t my favourite place, and I was more than glad to get out of there and escape to art college. On the other hand, this was an opportunity to talk to and work with the target audience for my book. And any school which wants to promote writing, books and reading, and inspire their students to be creative – well, how can you not jump at the opportunity to be involved with something like that?

So of course, I said yes.

By the time the day came around, I was prepared. I was going to be working with year 9 (13-14-year-olds) all day, doing an hour’s workshop on dystopian fiction for 30 students, then two 2-hour ‘writing masterclasses’ for 55 students at a time… Talk about hitting the ground running! But the students were fantastic. The stuff they came up with was incredibly creative and fun, and the sessions seemed to fly past.

Highlights? Well, they have to be one student’s answer to ‘things you’d do if you were brave enough’: ‘slap a gorilla’, which I’m still giggling over now; the table of girls who were all into writing in a big way and told me about the stories they work on in their spare time (yay!); the three students in the afternoon session who got me to come up with a story about zombies invading the school, then work out what they’d do if they were characters in that story (the zombie-fighting ninja-girl with knives in her boots, you know who you are!); and of course, all the students who were kind enough to say they wanted to read ACID and why couldn’t it be out now!

The staff were brilliant too – really supportive and keen – and Dan Seaman, assistant director of English, was a huge help with planning the day. So a MASSIVE thank you to Year 9, Dan, Anne Palmer, and all the staff at Murray Park Community School who helped out with the sessions, supplied me with chocolate biscuits and coffee and generally helped make my first time back at school in, oh, a good few years such a fantastic one!

UPDATE
After posting this this morning, I received a card from the staff at Murray Park saying how much they and the students enjoyed my visit – what a lovely surprise! Another big thank you to everyone. :)

Publication Day Interview with Dan Smith, Author of THE CHILD THIEF

Today, I'm talking to Dan Smith, whose (quite literally) chilling THE CHILD THIEF is published today by Orion Books. Dan and I share an agent, and it was she who first introduced me to Dan's books. He's an incredibly talented writer with two other fantastic novels, DRY SEASON and DARK HORIZONS under his belt (you can read my review of DARK HORIZONS here), and I'm thrilled to be interviewing him today!

In the snow, death is not the coldest thing waiting for you...

December 1930, Western Ukraine. Luka is a veteran of the First World War and the Russian Civil War. All he wants now is a quiet life with his wife, twin sons and young daughter. Their small village has, so far, managed to remain hidden from the advancing Soviet brutality and labour camp deportations.But everything changes the day the stranger arrives, pulling a sled bearing the bodies of two children. In a fervour, the villagers lynch the stranger, despite Luka's protests. But when calm is restored, the mob leader, Dimitri, discovers his daughter has vanished. Luka is the only man with the skills to find who could have stolen a child in these frozen white wastelands - and besides, the missing girl is best friends with Luka's daughter Lara, and he promises her that he will find her friend and bring her home.Together with his sons and Dimitri, Luka sets out in pursuit across lands ravaged by war and gripped by treachery. Soon they realise that the man they are tracking is a no ordinary criminal, but a skilful hunter with the kidnapped child as the bait in his violent game. It will take all of Luka's strength to battle the harshest of conditions, and all of his wit to stay a step ahead of Soviet authorities. And though his toughest enemy is the man he tracks, his strongest bond is a whispered promise to his family back at home. 

(Summary from the Orion Books website)

Hi, Dan. Welcome to the blog! Tell us a bit about yourself.

 

Thank you for inviting me along – it’s great to be here. In the electronic sense, anyway . . .

I’m an author with two published novels so far - Dry Season was out a couple of years ago, with Dark Horizons following it up last year. This year will see the publication of my third novel The Child Thief.

I spent a lot of my childhood travelling the world with my parents which is probably why, when I write, I feel the need to take the reader somewhere they might not have been before. Now, though, I live in Newcastle with my wife and two children, and while ‘The Toon’ sometimes feels like another world, I don’t see myself setting my novels here just yet.

When did you start writing, and why?

Growing up, I spent a lot of time in places where there wasn’t much to do other than read when the sun went down. In Indonesia, television was awful, and in Brazil the plantation generator went off at nine, so the whole family used to sit under gas lamps and read. Losing myself in fiction was also a great way to escape the regimented humdrum of boarding school, but it wasn’t until I was an angst riddled teenager that I first put pen to paper.

I haven’t always been a writer, but I think it’s what I was always supposed to be.

What made you decide to write thrillers?

I’m not sure I did, really. My first novel was a children’s book, but it’s not great, so is now tucked away in the bottom drawer feeling ashamed of itself. After that I wrote a couple of crime novels before Dry Season came along. The thing is, though, I’m not so sure my books are out-and-out thrillers. Graeme Greene used to describe his novels as ‘entertainments’ and I think that’s a great expression. I want people to read my books because they know they’ll be entertained and get something out of them, not because the books fall into one category or another. All my published novels so far have a thriller element to them, but I hope they have other sides to them too. Having said all that, The Child Thief falls rather neatly into the ‘thriller’ section . . .

How long did it take you to get published?

That’s a difficult question to answer because I’m not sure when the starting point was. I was a teenager when I decided I wanted to be a published writer but I didn’t do anything about it. I was in my late twenties before I sent anything to an agent and, even then, my attempts were half-hearted – probably due to a lack of confidence. When I started to make a real effort, I think it took me a couple of years to find an agent and within a year of that, I had a publishing deal.

Your third novel, THE CHILD THIEF, is out today from Orion. What’s it about, and what was the inspiration behind it?

I always find the ‘inspiration’ question a hard one to answer. I’m not a planner, you see. I sit down and start typing, often without anything other than a starting image in my mind. For The Child Thief I saw a bleak landscape, a family struggling to survive, and a stranger coming out of the wilderness and into their lives bringing something terrible with him. Then a child goes missing and there is only one man with the skill to find her and bring her home. And what’s more emotive than a stolen child? In terms of the setting, I loved The Road and thought this was going to be my post-apocalypse novel, but it turned out to be Ukraine in 1930. Who knew?

What is your favourite book?

Favourite book? Wow. There are so many to choose from. I love The Old Man and The Sea; it’s such a perfect book. But then, The Go-Between is great, too. And The Road. Oh, and I could read Lord of The Flies again and again (and have). Or maybe it’s The Outsider . . . can I have that many?

Your favourite film?

This is a tough one to answer too. I’m a sucker for eighties horror films (the cheesier the better) and I have a particular fondness for The Evil Dead, but then I love a good western too - The Outlaw Josey Wales is fantastic. And I re-watched the excellent Apocalypse Now the other day and . . . well, I can quote The Princess Bride almost word for word. I’m so indecisive.

Your favourite music?

For me, music is a mood thing, but I’m definitely more rock than rap. The Ramones and The Clash are still hanging on from my younger days, but now it’s more likely to be The Killers on the iPod – the whole family can get behind Mr Brightside. Mind you, coming back from London the other night, looking out of the train window as the rain began to drum against the glass, Riders On The Storm was playing on my iPod and it was just the perfect moment.

Your favourite joke?

I used to know a lot of jokes, but now I mostly hear jokes suitable for six year olds. Example – what’s brown and sticky? A stick. Or – and this always gets a laugh from my son – knock, knock, who’s there? Smellip, Smellip who? (you have to say it out loud)

Describe your perfect writing day…

I don’t have any writing quirks other than the need for peace and quiet. I don’t need the pencils laid out just so, or to have my lucky whatever beside me. I don’t need to turn around three times before I start writing, I just need . . . peace. I need to go to the place where the story is happening, and I find that hard to do if I’m surrounded by noise.

…and your actual writing day.

I’m lucky, I suppose, because mostly I get the peace I need. During school holidays it’s a little more difficult but it’s not impossible. My children are old enough to entertain themselves, get on with homework etc, and (shh, don’t tell) I love having them around. What could be a better break from writing than a smiling face and a warm hug?

If you could tell your younger self one thing, what would it be?

Don’t be so angry. Stop rebelling. Everything’s going to work out just fine. Oh, and work a bit harder at school.

And finally, what’s next?

 

Well, that’s a good question. I’m writing, of course – always writing. When one book is finished, I move straight on to the next. At the moment I’m working on a follow up to The Child Thief. This one has similar themes of families being torn apart, people battling against man and nature to find what they’re looking for . . . oh, there might be a touch of insanity, too, and there will almost certainly be dark mystery at the heart of it.

Thank you for such a great interview, Dan, and happy Publication Day!

Want to get hold of a copy of THE CHILD THIEF for yourself? It's available on amazon here. You can check out Dan's website here, and read his blog here. He's also on Twitter and has a Facebook author page.

The Scent of Memory

What does the smell of a freshly-opened packet of mint gum mean to you? For me, it’s being 14, opening a brand new notebook and starting to write the beginning (and usually only the beginning – I was notoriously bad at finishing stuff at that age) of my next story.

What about creosote? That’s summer holidays, pavements melting in the heat, the horizon shimmering hazily and the air filled with the drone of lawnmowers.

Imperial Leather soap? My grandmother’s downstairs bathroom, decorated in underwater shades of green, with plants on the windowsill and a shower that had a crinkly-textured plastic screen. 

 

Linseed oil? I’m a student again, mixing up glazes for oil paintings while the sun slants in the attic windows of my college studio, and beyond them, a view of the beach and the sea, beckoning to me.

And then there’s the certain sort of washing powder that reminds me of a friend I had at school; the smell of coffee, which transports me to mornings at my parents’ house; the scent of bruised summer grass, which reminds me of playing in the garden with my mum’s springer spaniel, Jennie, who was part of our family when I was very young.

I started thinking about the connection between smell and memory after reading this wonderful blog post by AbiBurlingham about the power of imagination, then having a conversation with her on Twitter with about how, for both of us, certain scents trigger strong memories.

Apparently, this occurs because of a link between the olfactory bulb and the amygdyla (the part of the brain which processes emotion) and hippocampus (the part of the brain which is, among other things, responsible for learning and memory). The memories certain smells like the ones listed above trigger for me are so strong, I’m literally transported back to the time and place I first smelled them – almost an olfactory hallucination (you can find a more scientific explanation of this phenomenon here).

I also have a memory for smells. When I was 12, my parents took me and my sister to Switzerland for 2 weeks where they were teaching a course. The village we stayed in was right up in the Alps, surrounded by mountains, and the air was so fresh you could taste it – clear and cold and crisp. When I look through the photos I took back then, I can smell that air again, and that smell takes me straight back to looking out of my hotel room window each morning at the little white church opposite, with cloud rising up from the valley behind it and the rising sun pink on the mountains that surrounded the village.

Are there certain smells which trigger strong memories for you? What are they, and where do they take you?

One More Sleep Until Abi Burlingham's Buttercup Magic!

Finishing up edits again, so I'm not really here, but I thought I'd drop by to tell you some very exciting news. Tomorrow is the launch of my writer friend Abi Burlingham's latest book, BUTTERCUP MAGIC - A MYSTERY FOR MEGAN. Hurrah!

When nine year old Megan moves to Buttercup House, she has no idea how special the house is. With her new best friend, Freya, who lives next door, they find out all the wonderful secrets about her new home, and she meets the magical animals that live there: some very clever mice, Dorothy, the mysterious black cat, and a very sepcial dog called Buttercup. A book about friendship and magic, aimed at 6-9 years. (Description from Goodreads)

LAUNCH DETAILS

Where: Clay Cross Library, Holmgate Road, Clay Cross, Derbyshire S42 6YQ

When: Thursday 26th April, 3.30-4.30pm

All are welcome, and I have it on good authority that there will be lollies! So hopefully see you there. BIG congratulations on your new book, Abi!

You can buy Buttercup Magic - a Mystery for Megan here. There is a lovely review on Serendipity Viv's blog here and you can find out more about how the book came to exist on Abi's blog here and Jenny Alexander's blog here.

Word-by-Word, Scene-by-Scene, Chapter-by-Chapter - a Guest Post by Julia Munroe Martin

Today, I'm absolutely thrilled to welcome Julia Martin Munroe Martin to the blog. I first met Julia, a freelance writer and editor who describes herself as a 'Novelist-in-progress', on Twitter, where I discovered her fascinating blog, wordsxo.com. There, she blogs about all sorts of things to do with writing and her life on the coast of Maine - if you haven't checked it out yet, it's well worth a read!

Take it away, Julia…

When Emma posted recently about feeling like she was on the Outside Looking In as a teenager, I could really relate.

I felt a lot of the same ways Emma wrote about feeling—and in many ways I really was on the outside. That’s because even though I’m an American, I spent a significant amount of my childhood outside the U.S.

In fact, I wasn’t even born in the U.S.—I was born in France. Then, when I was seven, a year in Belize; at eleven I lived in Kenya and Uganda; at fifteen I lived another year in a different part of Kenya. My problems were compounded by the fact that I also missed formal schooling (and more importantly meeting friends) during those years. Add in that time, my parents moved our permanent U.S. home base 3000 miles from one coast to the other…. and I think any of us who are parents can clearly see a perfect storm of problems gathering like clouds for a child raised like this.

But here’s the thing…my parents—cross cultural researchers—didn’t see. They were so focused on the end result of their own work that their own child’s, my fitting in, my cultural experience, took a back seat. (I should add that a few years ago—when I was in my forties—my father apologized for “dragging” me all over the world, acknowledging that it might not have been a best practice in child rearing.)

I know, I know, lots of you may be thinking “cry me a river, what an amazing life, Julia.” And sure, I had an amazing life: game parks in Africa, traveling by river boats in Central America, eating hippopotamus on the shores of the Nile River, side trips to the Egyptian pyramids, London, Paris, Rome, just to name a few.

But for every exotic lovely memory, there are the others too: no friends to speak of, always feeling and being different in every culture, never fitting in anywhere, and really never knowing what on Earth (or where on Earth) I was going to be.

So much so, that here’s what happened. The only time I ever felt comfortable, really comfortable, was when I was with other people who had the same background I did—other third culture kids:

A third culture kid (TCK) (first coined by sociologist and anthropologist Ruth Hill Useem) refers to children who accompany their parents into another society—a child who spends a significant period of time in one or more cultures outside their own.

And now, to quote Emma: “The trouble is, when you’re a teenager, fitting in can be everything.” And I didn’t. Fit in. Not ever. So I kept looking and wondering: where do I find those people, those kids, those other third culture kids? They were few and far between.

The phrase uncomfortable in my own skin probably best describes it even now. Unsure. Always questioning why, as Emma said. Usually a loner. Add to that, almost always feeling more comfortable with people who aren’t “from the U.S.” or more—were brought up like me: in cultures outside their own.

It’s one of the things I love most about social media: meeting people in other countries and cultures, with different experiences, far from my usual beaten path, and realizing the world is truly getting smaller—people who make me feel more at home. It’s especially wonderful when I meet other writers, like Emma, who make me feel less alone, less different.

So what’s the upside? Is there one? Yes being a TCK makes me a better writer—this feeling of not belonging, of looking at things from every possible angle—providing me with not just a multi-cultural but a multi-dimensional view. And writing also gives me a way to help make sense of everything, especially where I fit in—both literally and figuratively—again and again I write about home and searching and wanting to fit in—in my fiction, my personal essays, and on my blog too.

Because here’s the thing, I am searching, always searching, but I’ve also come to terms with the realization that I’m comfortable with the discomfort—and that’s partly because of the writing. In the writing, when I create those other worlds, I can also create the closure, and by doing that I create the transformation for my characters that I myself have so desperately sought my whole life long.

But my story, that story? My story is still being written word-by-word, scene-by-scene and chapter-by-chapter.

If you want to find out more about Julia, here's her blog link again: wordsxo.com You can also follow her on Twitter: @wordsxo 

Thank you so much for stopping by, Julia! 

Jaffa Cakes & Mini Eggs (AKA My First Ever Creative Writing Workshop)

On Tuesday night, I ran my first ever proper workshop session at Chesterfield Library. It was for a group of young writers called the Write Here Group, which is run by River Wolton – a recent Derbyshire Poet Laureate and workshop wizard extraordinaire, who I’ve worked with before and who will be chairing the panel discussion I’m taking part in for the Derbyshire Literature Festival next month. I'd been asked to talk about getting published and how to write believable fiction that's set in the future.

Was I nervous? Definitely. I’ve been running a small writing group at the library where I work for several years now, so I wasn’t quite as terrified as I might have been if I was going into this cold, but it was still a slightly scary prospect. What if no-one turned up? What if they thought I was boring? What if they thought the exercises I was going to do with them were crap? I even had an anxiety dream the night before, where I had to meet the group at a party in the hallway of a large, posh house. Everyone was talking so loudly I couldn’t make myself heard, even when I shouted. Then I realised I’d forgotten all the worksheets I’d so painstakingly put together and printed out. NIGHTMARE.

Thankfully, the reality was completely different. When I arrived at the library, I was met by River, and when we got down to the meeting room, two of the group were already there. I chatted to them about the novels they’re currently working on, which sound amazing. There were chocolate mini eggs, and grapes to snack on, and when the rest of the group arrived someone had even brought a box of Jaffa cakes with them.

So far, so good.

We kicked off by talking about how I got my agent, and how to look for an agent that represents your genre (look at the Writers and Artist’s Yearbook, and find out who represents the authors you like to read in your genre – which is how I found mine). Then we did an exercise about how to make up believable future names, which resulted in creating a character biography, then writing a scene featuring that character on the theme of ‘most frightening/exciting day in their life’.

After that we did a more general exercise about worldbuilding, and then I had the opportunity to answer more questions about writing and getting published. Before I knew it, the two hours were up. And I’d loved every minute of it! The group were awesome – friendly and talented, and the quality of their writing just blew me away. It was an honour to be asked to speak to them. 

A huge thank you to the Write Here group and River for making me feel so welcome!

I'm Not Here Today…

But I will be tomorrow. In the meantime, you can find me over at the fabulous Friday The Thirteeners blog, where I've been dared by Thirteener and fellow Lucky 13 April Tucholke to draw a cartoon strip featuring The Hound. Did I do it? Find out here!

Keep Writing

Firstly! A fantastic new blog for all things UK YA has been launched, courtesy of Keris Stainton, Keren David and Susie Day. Check it out for book recommendations, reviews, guest posts and more.

Secondly! I'm taking part in Crits for Water 2012, which has been set up by the fab Kat Brauer. You can donate to charity:water in return for critiques of your work from authors, agents and editors. I'm not up till June, but the campaign is already running, and there are some amazing critiques to bid for. So go! Bid!

Thirdly! The details of the Derbyshire Literature Festival are up, and you can find out more about mine, Chelsey Flood's and Helen Mort's event on 15th May, where we'll be answering questions about our writing and getting published here. We'll also be reading from our upcoming debuts, so you could get a sneak preview of the opening chapter of ACID!

Fourthly! I have an interview up at fellow Lucky 13 Mindy McGinnis's awesome Writer, Writer, Pants on Fire blog, where you can read more about my writing process, how I got my lovely agent and what it was like to be querying and out on submission.

Which brings me to today's post… 

This time last year, ACID was still being sent out to publishers. I’d already had one book out on sub that hadn’t sold, although it was a near miss. With that book, I hadn’t found the process too stressful, because (and this probably sounds pretty naive) I had an agent! Surely that meant my book would sell… right?

Wrong. Because they don’t. Not always. No-one was to blame – it just wasn’t the right book, and it wasn’t the right time, and eventually, my agent and I agreed we should put the MS to rest.

While that first novel (a contemporary YA) was doing the rounds, I’d already written another, which, for various reasons and after about 5 drafts, got trunked. After that, I started writing ACID. Thankfully, that MS worked out, but when my agent sent it out on submission, I didn’t feel quite so sure about anything any more. Because it doesn’t matter how many people (or books, or blogs) tell you to take the rejections in your stride, to move on, it’s hard – really hard – not to let them knock your confidence. Or it is for me, anyway, as, like most people, I suspect, there’s always that tiny voice in my ear telling me nothing I do is any good. That voice I have to ignore at all costs if I want to get anything written at-all.

This time last year, that voice nearly got the better of me.

With each rejection, I got more miserable and stressed. I was trying to work on a new book, but I wasn’t enjoying it because my confidence had dipped so low. I started to question whether I should be a writer at-all. And I lost sight of the most important thing of all – the writing itself.

Then, right in the middle of all this, I remember asking myself, does my life depend on getting published right now?

And I asked myself, If ACID doesn’t sell, will I stop writing?

The answer to both those questions, of course, was No.

It didn’t make the rejections any less disappointing, and it didn’t quiet my fears that I’d never be a good enough writer to get published, but it did help me gain a sense of perspective about the whole thing. I was putting all my energies into wanting to get published when what I needed to do was put them into my writing. I first started writing (and have kept writing ever since) because I love writing, and I can’t imagine not doing it. I’m also a firm believer that things happen when they’re meant to happen, and reminding myself of that helped too. If I wasn’t meant to get published yet, I wasn’t meant to. Instead, I needed to keep writing, and keep improving.

Easy for you to say, you might think. Your book sold. But it could so easily not have. And if I’d kept get published as my overriding ambition, instead of becoming a better writer, I’m not sure where I’d be right now. Not in a very happy place, that’s for sure.

So if you’re in the query trenches or out on submission right now? Keep writing. Because that’s why you’re there in the first place. And that’s what will get you through… whatever the end result.