With Liz’s publication day for The Cornish House only a month away, I’ve been thinking back to how
I felt when I was in her shoes. (That’s me in the picture above, at the launch
party for my second novel, Mariana,
back in 1994).
I was—in addition to being Much Younger and Thinner then—much
more naïve about writing and publishing, and looking back I can think of a lot
of things I wish I’d known then.
So here are five things I wish someone had told me, when I
first got published:
1. That getting published is only the beginning of the
journey. When I was starting out, publication seemed like the finish line.
Everything I did—querying agents, querying editors, learning the business—was
aimed at achieving that one single goal, and I always thought that when I reached
that goal I’d be able to say, “This is it! I’ve arrived.” But there wasn’t a
finish line, as it turned out…just a turn in the track and a whole lot of
distance to cover beyond that. I’ve been on that track almost twenty years now,
and I still don’t feel like I’ve arrived. I still have to pitch, and I still
get rejected, and boy, do I still have a lot left to learn.
2. That the first editor I worked with probably wouldn’t be my
editor a few books down the line. I was in my twenties when I first got
published. I dreamed of developing a Pascal Covici-John Steinbeck-like
connection with my editor, and I’m sure many editors working today still aspire
to that, too, but the reality of modern publishing is that editors don’t always
get the final say in whether they continue to acquire your work. They also—being
rarely paid enough for what they do—tend to get mobile in this business, move
from house to house, change jobs, get sacked, get married and have children and
leave publishing for other work. I’ve had three different editors in the UK,
four in Canada, three in the USA, and four in Germany, and each of them has
taught me something valuable and helped me to advance my craft. But being me, I
tend to get attached, and find it difficult each time I have to lose one.
3. That I will always feel the same way in the middle of a
book. It won’t get easier. I’ll always think it’s rubbish and I’ll always feel
like stopping and just throwing it away, because it’s clear to me it’s never
going to turn out half as good as I imagined it. I know now that I’m not the
only writer who has ever felt this way (Hi, Julie!), and I’ve learned I just
have to ignore the doubts and forge ahead and finish, but I wish someone had
told me it would always be this way.
4. That, while some writers start out successful, for most
of us this is a long game. It’s always been thus, though. Jack Higgins wrote 22
novels before he came out with The Eagle
Has Landed, and Rosamunde Pilcher wrote at least that many over almost 40
years before she found bestselling status with The Shell Seekers. Learning a craft can take time. It’s a good
thing to cultivate patience.
5. That the relationships I’d build with other writers would
become one of the most wonderful, supportive, and sustaining forces in my life,
helping me through crisis after crisis—and not only in my work, but in my life. We’re
an odd bunch, writers, but no one can hold you up better than someone who’s
been down themselves, and although I once had the impression, when I started
out, that writing was a solitary job, that hasn’t been my own experience. In my
writing-room, I’ve always had my characters to keep me company, and outside my
writing-room, I have the friendship of writers like my fellow Heroine Addicts. A
pretty good thing, in my view.
If you write, what are some of the things you wish you’d known, when you first got
published?
(And be sure to come back Thursday, to find out what Julie's up to...)
(And be sure to come back Thursday, to find out what Julie's up to...)
