Thoughts from a debut author
My first novel came out six months ago and I feel like I'm still reeling
I’ve been writing on here for about six weeks now and, as far as I can tell from looking at my posting stats, Substack really likes writing about writing. I have a lot of thoughts on this tendency (not all of them positive) but that’s not what I’m thinking about right now. Today, like most days, I’m wasting time thinking about my first novel, Gender Theory. It came out almost six months ago, but I signed my book deal in March 2023, which means that I’ve been a debut author1 for over a year and a half. It’s the job I always dreamed of having, and on the whole, it’s been wonderful. But it’s also been bad and isolating. Here, I’m sharing a listicle2 of things that I wish I knew before I was thrust into the strange new world of being an author. Knowing these things wouldn’t have changed my decision to publish GT, but it would have prepared me for the experience.
Having good people around you makes everything easier
This is applicable to most things, right? Well, publishing a novel is no different. For me, the most stressful part of the whole process was being on submission. This is the part where a bunch (in my case ten) of publishing houses agree to read your novel to see if they want to buy it. The time between them receiving the manuscript and you receiving an offer or a rejection is usually referred to as being ‘on submission’ or ‘on sub’. I can confidently say that if I didn’t have a solid support system during this time, I would have crumbled into a pile of anxiety dust. It all happened so fast for me; in the space of ten days, I signed with my agent, went on submission, had a meeting with my now publishers, received an offer and signed my book deal. It was amazing, of course, but overwhelming, and I was lucky to have a supportive partner to listen to my stress and cook me dinner, and I was lucky to have a best friend who accompanied me on daily anxiety walks and didn’t block my phone number after the hundredth ‘not heard anything yet do you think that’s good or bad’ text message. Supportive friends and loved ones also give you permission to celebrate and feel proud of yourself when you achieve something, which is permission that you may need or you may not.
A lot happens and then NOTHING HAPPENS
In the past year and a half, I have developed an unhealthy relationship with refreshing my emails; I do it while I’m peeing, while I’m walking, while I’m actually in the middle of a conversation. I think this has been caused by the residual shock of receiving a number of life changing book-related emails over a period of months. I would be searching for a discount code for something or details of a restaurant reservation and then whoosh I would get an email that would literally change my life. After this happened a few times, I started expecting these emails, yearning for them, and so I would refresh, refresh, refresh. When I didn’t hear from my new agent or my new editor or my new marketing manager for a couple of weeks, I would panic. I didn’t realise that publishing a novel with a traditional publishing house means that you get lots of news quickly and then none at all, over and over again in a cycle. This is normal! I wasn’t expecting it, and so I was constantly in the state of feeling overwhelmed or abandoned, and I would deal with these feelings by sending my agent way too many emails that were all a variation on the words: “anything going on? haha”. The way to deal with all this dead time is to have other things going on, or to throw your phone and laptop deep into a cavernous cave and secure the entrance to that cave with an unmovable boulder. While I was in the process of selling and editing my first novel, I wasn’t writing, and I should have been.
It is possible to earn a living from your writing
My total advance (which was split up over four instalments and paid to me after my agent took his commission) was almost twice as much as my yearly salary. I don’t know how or why this happened; I write literary fiction, a genre3 of novel that, usually, doesn’t make a lot of money. I was lucky, I suppose, to be trying to sell the right thing at the right time to the right people. My novel was never going to be the subject of a fierce auction, or the kind of thing that would sell hundreds of thousands of copies, but my (now) publishers bought it in a pre-empt4 because they loved it. I quit my day job immediately even though a lot of people thought it was a bad idea and I haven’t regretted it for a second. So many of my creative writing teachers told me that making money from writing was impossible, and in the end, for me, it wasn’t. It was hard, obviously, and I was lucky, but it wasn’t impossible. Take your creative work seriously!
You don’t need a platform, but it helps
In my first meeting with my now publishers, someone asked me if I used social media and I said ‘recreationally’ as if we were talking about party drugs. I’m 25, so I grew up online, and I was briefly a digital marketing intern, so I know a thing or two about the epic highs and lows of Posting Online, but I’m not an aspiring influencer and I do not have a following. When I explained this, the woman who asked the question said that was fine, that they don’t really mind if their authors have Instagram. I was thrilled. Did this mean that it would fall to my publishers to market and promote my work, and I could live a blissful existence where my only focus was writing novels? NO! Or yes, in theory. I have never felt at all pressured by my publishers to promote my book on social media, but I have seen the way that other authors with an internet following have benefitted when it comes to building an audience and getting your work out there. Trying to build an audience for my writing is a huge reason why I started posting on Substack. I saw something on Reddit the other day (outing myself as a Reddit user feels more embarrassing than telling you the details of my advance) that said a social media following is required to secure a book deal. This isn’t true. At all. But if you want to feel like you have a semblance of control over the way your novel is presented during the marketing process or if you want to get good blurbs then Jeeeeeeeesus Fucking Christ a platform helps and I wish I had one.
Your relationship to writing will change
Surprise! Monetising your writing changes your relationship with writing. I’ve written a little bit about this before in my post Bad Days so I won’t repeat myself too much, but essentially, sometimes free time can be the enemy of creativity. I wrote the first part of GT during my masters while I was working part-time, and I wrote the second half while I was working two part-time jobs. So, a full-time job, I guess. Lol. Basically, I had a lot of things on that had nothing to do with my book; I was nannying and copywriting and facilitating and fitting writing in around the edges. Being a full-time writer is way more fun, but I’m less productive with my time because I’m less busy.
ALSO - and this is the worst thing of all - NOW THERE IS A GOBLIN THAT LIVES IN MY HEAD AND EATS MY BRAIN. The goblin is marketing, the goblin is goodreads reviews, the goblin is a myriad of opinions and criticism from hypothetical haters. When I was writing my first novel, I didn’t know anything about publishing and so, I wrote exactly the book I wanted to write. My intended reader was myself and I was writing to my own standards, to please and impress only myself. Since then, I’ve learned a little bit more about the publishing industry and the marketing process, and it has not been good for my writing! Now, when I write, the goblin in my head whispers to me that my writing is unappealing or weird or niche. It whispers that I should flatten my own, distinctive voice into something that might sell well or be more popular than Gender Theory has been. If I was speaking directly to my 2023-unpublished-self, this is what I would say. You have to kill the goblin. You have to focus your attention and capability on writing things that are good and true. Anything else is a waste of time. Also - Goodreads is for readers not writers. Get off there! Whatever people are saying about your book online is none of your business.
I prefer novelist, but I feel like you have to have more than one book out to earn that label, which is something I’m still working on.
Something else that Substackers really seem to like and I have mixed feelings on
Actually not really a genre
A pre-empt is an early offer for a book deal from an editor that is often regarded as 'too good to refuse' ie. they offer you more money than they think anyone else will. If you accept your pre-empt, your book is taken off submission immediately so you don’t hear back from any other publishing houses.