Some background.
Like those 'get to know me tag' videos you used to watch on YouTube in the early 2010s
For my first real post here, I thought I would introduce myself and share a little bit about my writing timeline. It’s hard to know where to start; I’ve started this piece a couple of times and the tone has swung quite drastically between formal and weirdly jaunty. So, I’ll be simple: here are the facts.
In 2021, I started a creative writing masters at the university of Glasgow, straight after I got my undergraduate degree in English literature. I had realised during my first degree that I wasn’t very good at writing academically. I was always getting comments from my tutors to cut long paragraphs from my essays - usually these notes would say: irrelevant! or You’re rambling. At least they were concise with their criticism, or certainly more concise than my essays were. Whenever I was proud of a piece of work I would hand in, I would be told that my voice was too distinctive or the style wasn’t conducive to academic writing: and they were right! Creative writing was much more my style.
I had been drawn to english literature because I have always loved reading, but the form of the writing didn’t suit me. I was a creative trying to fit myself into the box of an academic, and I found this out almost by mistake after signing up for an elective course in CW that I thought would be an easy pass. I feel very lucky to have found fiction writing when I did, although I am very sorry to my early tutors who were forced to read some pretty dire short stories.
Doing a masters in creative writing was an obvious next step. The pandemic was raging, I got a sweet COVID discount if I enrolled straight away, and I wasn’t ready to enter the real world just yet. I continued working part time as a nanny and charity facilitator and I treated the masters as a present to myself before I got a ‘proper’ job.
And then I wrote a novel! And then I won a competition at my uni to meet a literary agent! And then I got a book deal! In the space of three months I finished my manuscript, signed with an agency and sold the book to a publishers. It seems ridiculous written down and I can confirm that it felt ridiculous too. That novel, Gender Theory, came out in June of this year and I’ve been able to live off my advance for over a year now. I know they always say not to quit your day job, but I did. Immediately.
Forgive me some self promotion now: Gender Theory is a coming-of-age novel set in Glasgow about chronic pain, queerness and learning how to be a person. If you like Sally Rooney, Jean Rhys, or general sad girl lit (I actually hate this term because it feels sexist but the label has been ascribed to my work many times and therefore I shall bear it proudly) then you might enjoy Gender Theory. It’s written in the second person and structured through a series of vignettes over several years that give us snapshots into the unnamed narrators life. So, if you like interesting literary techniques, you might also enjoy Gender Theory. Ok promo over.
Learning how to write creatively was a lightbulb moment; I couldn’t believe that I hadn’t always been doing it. I’ve always been a big reader, but when I was a young teenager I was diagnosed with the first of many chronic illnesses and reading became less of a hobby and more of a life-raft. Reading novels was a coping mechanism I developed to deal with the long stretches of time where I was too unwell to do anything else. It became a way of life when I was first diagnosed, and there is nothing I do more of and nothing that makes me happier. I think that’s why writing felt so familiar to me from the beginning, and why it felt natural to write a novel about chronic pain. For more of my thoughts on illness… read Gender Theory. Ok I genuinely am finished with the self-promotion now.
So, here I am, a published author working away on her second novel. I still can’t quite believe that this is my life, and writing it all down like this has been quite therapeutic.
Regrettably, I’ve found the experience of writing a novel more difficult the second time round. I have a tendency to view the creation of GT through rose-coloured specs; my memories are all long afternoons in the pub alternating typing with sips of wine, and cosy workshops on campus where I shared my work and received useful feedback and plenty of flattery. I skim over the minor meltdowns when I doubted I would ever finish the manuscript or the hurried writing sessions I squeezed in before and after work. But such is life! We have an urge to view periods of our lives as all good or all bad. And if GT’s writing was all good, I’m sure you can infer where I am with the second manuscript at this moment in time (🙃). But my second born is coming along, slowly but surely. I’m trying to pull her wet and screaming into the world like a newborn calf (sorry for the bad simile) and I’ll be giving you a running commentary on here while I do so. And I will also be divulging all of my tips on breaking into the publishing industry. Surprise: I don’t have any! I was stupid lucky.
I wanted to start a Substack because I do miss writing for fun, a little. It’s nice to be creative in a way that feels less high-stakes. Here, I have no editor or agent, no readers I’m worried about disappointing (yet). I’m excited to see where it goes. Thanks for reading 📖
