A Lot About Humiliation, And A Little Bit About Self-Publishing

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I knew within the first five minutes that we weren’t going to be BFFs. We wouldn’t be connecting on LinkedIn. She wasn’t exactly Susan from Magpie Murders¹, a sharp-minded but kind-hearted editor with a Greek boyfriend, a penchant for G&Ts which are considerably more G than T, and a capacity to solve crimes in her spare time. My editor was more the Alan Sugar school of publishing. Her mission it seemed was to weed out anyone who may have grandiose ideas about the value of their writing in the world. She’d taken one look at me and fired me.

Except, I wasn’t pitching to her. My sensitive spirit knows that those rejections are like a soldering iron to the soul. I’ve heard it’s rarely a No, it’s just a nothing, a continual waiting to hear back until you draw your own conclusions. It’s an industry that doesn’t even bother with ‘Dear Johns’ because it’s just too busy. I had booked a one-hour £99 mini-consultation to get some advice on self-publishing. I was ready to skip all the heartache and get straight to something I could display on the worktop. “Did you choose me because I wrote that amazing piece on seven steps to ….?” she said. I honestly couldn’t remember why. It may have been an error of judgement whilst under the influence of romantic notions about myself. I had done a quick google on non-fiction because I wasn’t sure where else I fitted. “Why do you want to publish a book?” she asked. I wasn’t prepared for an interrogation. I thought of my ten-year-old self, who loved the feel of books, the smell of bookshops, who liked to write little stories about imaginary people. “I want to hold something in my hand,” I said quietly. “Who’s going to buy it?” she asked. I was sure I’d seen films where someone who loves someone else an awful lot runs round and buys up all the copies. “My husband,” I said.

I explained that I wasn’t expecting to make a fortune, I’d be happy to cover the costs, maybe even half of them. I know how hard it is to reach a virtual audience never mind a real one. She mentioned something about my lack of market. “Have you thought about just taking a Word document to the printers?”. It didn’t sound like the softback with the bright yellow cover I’d envisaged, the black-and-white photograph of me with my palm resting against my chin, the inscription to everyone who’d ever inspired me. I’d been told I needed to have a huge social media following or a long-standing friendship with Hillary Clinton to be successful. “That’s a myth,” she said, “plenty of people have sold millions and they weren’t well-known”. She rambled off a couple of examples. They sounded like Daily Mail headlines, sensationalised lives most of us will never live that you’d throw in your handbag at the airport. But I didn’t have an interesting back-story, I hadn’t escaped from a cult, sorted out peace in Northern Ireland, had an affair with my sister’s nephew’s uncle. I wasn’t a footballer or Prince Harry.

“So, if you’ve no track record,” she said, “you’ll have no sales and no reviews. Your reputation will be in ruins and no one will publish you EVER AGAIN”. It was dramatic stuff. She’d definitely under-estimated my ability to pull in a couple of favours. I thought of my husband again, the various aliases he could take on, one for each copy he’d buy. I’d pay my daughters to say nice things. I could help my parents to type a few words of admiration on Amazon. “Have you thought about writing for magazines,” she said, “just writing what they want”. “No,” I said. “I want to write what I want to write about”. I want to make my own kind of music, sing my own special song. But, she’d never heard of Mama Cass.

As my finger was hovering over the leave button, I wondered if ending a Zoom would feel as satisfying as slamming down the phone. “You seem to just write about your daily life,” she said. “Days like this …. I cleared out my shoes …. I bought a house. You sound like one of those home organisers”. I started to mumble a bit about context, newsletters, subscribers, how Days Like This is a Van Morrison song, that I grew up in Belfast during ‘The Troubles’. “Are you mocking me?” I said. She was sorry I felt that way. I reckoned this could be gaslighting. “Have you read any of my writing?” I asked. “I only look at titles,” she said. Titles are why I occasionally click on the Harvard Business Review. Those articles don’t make me feel anything. And maybe titles aren’t my thing. I couldn’t even pick a good one for this but then that’s why there are back covers and blurbs and trust. She was already on to yoga pants². I couldn’t be bothered telling her how many people had been in touch to say they had a pair too, how I’d opened up a debate around navy versus black, how there is meaning attached to all the mundane aspects of our lives. Twenty minutes had been more than enough and so I thanked her for wasting my money and left.

As I sat staring into the abyss, thinking I would never get over it, replaying our conversation, I realised I had booked a room in my own house until 5pm and I might as well take advantage of it until someone started practising the piano or asked what was for dinner. It had definitely been a bit of a humiliation. I was seven-year-old Deborah again whose knitting was held up in front of the class, twelve-year-old Deborah who couldn’t get a note out of the flute when unexpectedly required to do a solo, forty-something Deborah who didn’t get any of those jobs even though she was the only candidate. I knew how those singers felt, the ones whose Granny had told them they had a nice voice, only to be destroyed by Simon Cowell, and sniggered at by the whole of the UK. I’ll admit I was a tad weepy. When my second-eldest came in to check what was for dinner at 5.01pm, I told her what had happened. I could hardly get the words out. “Forget it mum,” she said.

When I went for a walk that evening, I bumped into an old friend. She mentioned the piece I’d written about Alice going off to university³, how it had made her cry. I guess sometimes people can save you without even knowing. It is still my favourite writing, because it’s love on a page, personal yet universal, a child leaving, bringing her home. Yesterday, a lovely man on BBC Radio 2⁴ would say not just to me but it was for me because I was especially listening, “Keep going, you’ll get there. You’re not last, you’re ahead of everyone else who never showed up”. And for those that have been asking, I did 9.5 box jumps on Tuesday and survived with only one bruise. I know it would be much easier to succeed in so many other places but then it wouldn’t be a challenge. As I spent most of this week writing up the journey of a couple going through infertility, I realised how much I’ve been entrusted with as a writer, what a privilege it is to tell others’ stories.

I’m not naïve. I know self-publishing comes with financial risk, that I’ll need a copy-editor, a proofreader, a designer, a team of experts, a full marketing plan. I’ll have to treat it like a business, organise a press release but my husband has told me I’m at my least annoying when I have a project and I think this one will be worth it.

“Do it, have a launch party,” said someone on Substack. So, I’m just letting you know to keep the date free, whenever it might be, that pre-orders matter, that it’ll probably cost at least a tenner so start saving. Last night, I went to another self-publishing course. It was a Zoom filled with kindness, all notions mattered, it was worth every cent of the 35 euros. It restored my faith. It was suggested that we look at other books for ideas about what we liked. I picked up one by Richard Rohr this morning. “This book is written for you,” it said. And that’s what I’ll do too. I’ll dedicate my book to you, to all of you that read my writing.

1. Available on BBC iPlayer. And no one says ‘dead’ quite like Lesley Manville.

2. The Second Half Of Life - Adventures In My Yoga Pants

3. A Pilgrimage to Home - A Week of Alice and The Queen

4. Pause For Thought - https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p0fhj6xj