My lovely publisher Fly on the Wall Press asked me to write a short piece on 'my publication journey.' Here is the piece I sent them ...
I was fifty eight years old when my first proper novel was published. So it must have quite a journey then.
Well – not so much.
My problem was a
supreme lack of confidence. I never believed anyone would want to read my
stories. So I wrote them, and I put them in a drawer, and no one ever saw them.
Not even my family. Eventually, one by one, I lost them. A novella about a genetically
modified marathon runner. A novel about a brotherhood of monks who happen to be
immortal. A half-finished book about a brush salesman who finds himself hailed
as a new messiah. A novel in a similar vein about a student doctor who gets
sent back in time to first century Israel to document the life of Jesus, but
cannot find him. Anywhere. He trawls Jerusalem and Galilee looking. One day he
uses his twenty-first century medical skills to resuscitate a man in a coma
whose body is being prepared for burial. And later to save the life of a child.
Oops. ‘I’m not the messiah,’ he tells people. But it’s too late. Already he has
a set of disciples. And you get the idea
from there. A set of short stories. A
novella about the last living tiger ‘Claws’ who has huntsmen clamouring to
shoot him. Not all of these were ever finished, some petered out halfway
through, but all are dust now.
It's tough, you see,
when novel-writing is your calling. If you’re a painter you can show your
painting to a thousand people in a single afternoon. They will look at it for twenty-five
seconds (that’s the average time apparently). It isn’t asking much of anyone to
find twenty-five seconds to appreciate your picture. But a novel asks more. So
very much more. For a novel I want a week of your time – for two hours a day.
Frankly I never had the nerve to ask that.
But of course I did
get published. And that is the next part of the journey. I wrote a non-fiction
book (The Good Zoo Guide). I parcelled up the manuscript and posted it to
Harper Collins and they phoned me at 9:00 AM the next morning to say they would
have it. Gosh. I never thought it would be that easy. In trepidation I sent
them a novel – ‘Daughters of Artemis,’ a sci-fi tale about a world
populated only by women. They didn’t want it. So I self-published it, barely
mentioned it to anyone, and it is still out there somewhere selling about ten
copies a year – presumably to people who buy it by mistake.
Then one day in my mid
forties I sat at my laptop and wrote a first line. The line was, ‘I am
Maximillian Zygmer Quentin Kavadis John Cabwhill Teller. My name includes every
one of the letters of the Roman alphabet with the exception of the letter F. My
father, it seems, took exception to F.‘ I had no idea what this story was
going to be about. I just wanted to start it. Then I discovered that the name
lacked a P. So he became Maximilian Ponder.
He became a man who had locked himself away to catalogue his own brain.
Well, writing was only
a hobby. The Notable Brain of Maximilian Ponder took me about five years
to write. Once it was done, I hid it away; as usual. But three years later I
came across it on my hard drive and I sent a copy to my son, Jon, who by now was
working as a journalist with the BBC. What did he think of it? Of course he
told me he liked it. ‘You must send it away Dad,’ he urged me. But I didn’t.
Not for two years. All the same, he pestered, so one day, on impulse I emailed
three literary agents with the manuscript. And I guess the rest is history.
There was a publishers’ auction, I sold the book to Orion for a six-figure sum,
and it went on to get short-listed for the Costa.
There is a moral to
this story for young writers (or even for old ones). First – be patient. Your
first novel may not be your masterpiece. It probably won’t be (unless you are
Harper Lee or Mary Shelley.) But writing
is a craft. The more hours you spend writing, the better you get at it. It’s no
different in this respect from playing piano. So go on writing. Enjoy it. Treat
it as a hobby, as a way to unwind. Don’t nurture any great ambitions. Lots of
people play piano without ever setting foot on a concert stage. If you don’t
enjoy the writing, then readers won’t enjoy the reading. So do it because you
love it. Because you have to. Because something inside you makes you do it. Second,
when you have a novel that you are genuinely proud of – show it to someone you
trust. Take advice. And if you both truly believe in it, then go out and look
for a publisher or an agent. Don’t wait as long as I did.
But if you do wait as
long as I did – well that’s not a bad thing either. Because by now you will
know how to write.
Good luck. And good
writing.
John
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