Writing the next thing

What do you do when you get bad book news?

I finished writing my second novel on the 31st December 2024, and when I wrote the final words, the only thing I felt was relief. It had taken me five months to write it, and during that time, I scrapped over 40,000 words and ended up with an 80,000 word manuscript - which was almost a hundred pages longer than my first novel, Gender Theory. Writing book two was a different experience in almost every way; and although it wasn’t all bad, it wasn’t good either. I felt so unsure of myself while I was working on it; unsure of my skill, my taste, my craft, and this lack of surety was a new feeling for me. Usually, I know when something is working, and I know when it isn’t; it’s one of my skills as a writer, I thought. But with this one I flip flopped constantly. I took stuff out, I put it back in, I changed the setting, the narrative style, the tone. It got to a point where I could barely read back through the pages; because all I could see was a frankenstein’s monster of a manuscript; so chopped up and pasted together that it was barely a book at all.

I should have given up on this manuscript when I first started feeling unsure, but I had recently given up on a different manuscript and I was feeling worried about my own impulsiveness. I felt like I needed to prove to myself that I had a good work ethic, that I wasn’t lazy; that I could finish something.¹ I read a lot of books on writing and I set myself a daily word count goal and I wrote myself cute organised lists about the things I wanted to achieve. I overhauled my whole approach and the way I thought about writing, and in the end, I did manage to write a novel. But, as I said above, the novel wasn’t good.

My agent disagreed with me, and sent the m/s to my editor, and then my editor sent me a very kind email with a list of bullet points on why the novel in its current form wasn’t working, and she was soooooo right on every count. I had this strange feeling while I was reading the email, a sort of stomach dropping feeling like I was on a rollercoaster. She had voiced a series of problems with the m/s that I had been struggling to articulate, and although I felt rejected and sad, I also felt relieved that I didn’t have to think about it anymore. I had been lying awake worrying for nights; going back and forth between hoping the book would sell so I could make some money, and hoping it wouldn’t sell, so I wouldn’t have to spend the next two years of my life promoting it and pretending I thought it was good. I found being on submission with Gender Theory so stressful, and I loved that book; I still love it. I didn’t want to go through the same thing with a book I wasn’t proud of.

So, what do you do after you don’t sell your book? In my case, you spend the afternoon getting stoned and playing computer games, and then you wake up the next morning and write the next fucking thing!!!!! Usually, I’m a wallower, but this time, I actually felt pretty good² and was able to start working on a different project straight away. This book had been wrecking my head for months, and now it had been officially rejected and I was officially free. My agent was keen to keep working on the manuscript but I was adamant I wanted to shove it in a proverbial drawer and leave it to gather proverbial dust. Also… in the meantime my TV option for Gender Theory had been renewed and I had been doing a little freelance work, so my financial situation wasn’t as dire as it had been previously. It feels pretty gross to talk about money on here, if I’m being honest, but I would be omitting essential context if I didn’t share that piece of the puzzle.

Writing that book wasn’t a waste of time because it taught me a lot of lessons. Namely how I do and do not like to write. I don’t like planning or drafting, I edit as I go and I spend as little time at my laptop as possible. If I don’t have things to say, I shouldn’t be writing. If I’m tapping keys to fill out the page and reach an arbitrary word count goal, I shouldn’t be writing! I learned that if I feel like something isn’t working, I should leave it a couple of days and then, if my feelings haven’t changed, I should give up. Giving up is wholly underrated in creative projects, and can reap many rewards!!! I am a lazy writer; I don’t like pouring over sentences and moving commas around until the end of time. I like things to be quick and clean, and when I’m writing something good, they usually are. Unfortunately, I had to learn these lessons by myself; by spending five months of my one and precious life writing a shit book. I’m too stubborn and stupid to take advice from other people, so I end up making mistakes constantly. But I try not to make the same one twice!

I’m writing about this experience because I find it difficult to be honest with people about the bad stuff. I share the career wins and the personal highs, but I gloss over the less glamorous parts; the chronic illness flare ups and the freelancer woes and especially the author lows. I also gloss over the work it takes behind the scenes to achieve these kinds of goals. The last few years of my life have been brilliantly insane; the book deal and the tv rights and getting to write full-time. Sometimes I can hardly believe my own luck. But I did work hard too, and all of that hard work stayed behind the scenes. Before I sold Gender Theory, barely anyone knew I was writing a novel because I was so mortified by the idea of sharing something so personal and earnest. Why is trying so embarrassing! And trying and failing is even worse! Telling people I was writing a novel (before I was agented and had a deal) felt like walking up to someone, ripping my heart out of my chest and handing it over all gooey and dripping. Better to present the illusion that everything came easy, that I just sort of tripped and landed on a book deal. But that isn’t true babe! I worked really hard (for free). And I worked hard on my second novel too, even though it didn’t work out. It feels embarrassing to be honest about that, but sometimes embarrassment is good; it pushes you out of your comfort zone. We should be talking about our failures as well as out successes; because then the successes are even sweeter! Book 3, here I come xo

1. Reader, none of these are good reasons to write a book.

2. Except from the bruised ego obv