I don’t know who all needs to hear this, but I want you to know that you are remarkable.
Do you know how many people want to write a book one day? It’s nearly everybody. And you did it! You actually just sat down and wrote until you had a book shaped thing with (I’m making wild assumptions but go with me here) a beginning, a middle and an end. You know that’s remarkable right? It’s not usual. Very few people will ever do it. It took imagination, and courage, and determination, and time to do what you have done.
And yet in spite of this, in spite of the fact that every single person who has written a book is one in a million (or at least one in a few thousand, I have no idea what the per capita of people who’ve written a book is), so many of you are somehow labouring under the misapprehension that you are not remarkable at all.
Indeed, not only are you not remarkable, but you’re very dull and more than usually stupid, and your book is stupid, and your career as a writer is already over.
And it doesn’t seem to matter what stage of your publishing journey you are at, or what level of ‘success’ you’re having. Somehow, regardless, you’re pretty certain you’re doomed.
You didn’t get the agent you’d hoped for – or you didn’t get an agent at all.
Or you got a shit-hot agent, but your book didn’t get picked up by a big five imprint.
Or you did get signed by a big five imprint, but you didn’t get a six figure advance.
Or you DID get a six figure advance, but you didn’t get into any book boxes. Or you didn’t get on the NYT/Sunday Times bestseller list. Or you didn’t sell UK rights. Or you haven’t sold screen rights yet.
There’s always something, right? Even when you think you’ve dotted every t and crossed every i (genuinely just typed that and I’m leaving it) you suddenly run across something you didn’t even realise you were meant to care about, like the correct order to sell rights in, or joint vs separate accounting, or option clauses, or the fact I have to do taxes now which really might give me an ulcer.
And you’ve always made a mistake, somehow – or worse, just never been presented with the option to do the correct thing! You should never have agreed to that deal. You should never have signed that clause. The choices that have been presented to you are all traps. Your agent has failed you. Your writing has failed you.
The more we learn about the publishing industry the more helpless we can feel. It seems like so many of the factors that guarantee some measure of success are completely outwith our control. There’s so much advice coming from all sides that no matter what exciting thing happens it’s all too easy to find the black fly in your chardonnay, some way in which this amazing achievement you should be celebrating is Bad, Actually.
And look, you’ve made your own call about what you want from this endeavour, and I’m sure you have your reasons and I’m not here to tell you that your priorities are wrong.
But I am here to tell you that you are remarkable. Regardless whether you are where you wanted to be, or where you think you should be. I really want you to take a minute, to step back and look at what you’ve achieved, and recognise wherever you are on this journey and however it’s going, that what you have done is incredibly impressive, and you ought to be very proud.
You wrote a book.
You wrote a bloody book.
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