First, let me give my own shameful truth. My gut instinct whenever I hear this from an author is to think it takes two. This bias, formed by the us-and-them culture in corporate publishing and a couple of difficult experiences when I was starting out, is conditioned to see authors as nearly always the problem. Obviously this is not the case — indeed I’d argue it is a big part of the problem.

When we discuss the problem further and I find out more detail, it often comes to light that the client’s editor does indeed seem to lack many key communication skills. Some common complaints: they are defensive, losing their temper when challenged; they don’t deliver on their promises; they veto reasonable ideas or make unilateral ones without adequate explanation; a general lack of communication, conveying disrespect for the author. In short, it feels like they hold all the power, and they aren’t afraid to show it. Why are these such common complaints, and what can you do about it?

Authors and editors have clashed since publishing began. They have also been close friends; indeed you could argue that these are two sides of the same coin. Take Harper Lee and her editor Tay Hohoff, who famously challenged Lee to revise her manuscript over a two and a half year period, taking it from a loose collection of anecdotes into a fully formed novel, To Kill a Mockingbird. The process sounds collaborative yet gruelling, with Lee throwing the manuscript out of the window into the snow at one point in despair, before being encouraged by Hohoff to gather it back up and persevere. Over many years they became involved in each other’s lives, Hohoff reportedly helping Lee to adopt a kitten at one point.

Hohoff is a great example of the fact that genius — and some editors possess a genius as great as the most talented of authors — often comes with an exacting, perfectionist approach. It is, I believe, vital to helping a book achieve its potential.

On the other hand, I also believe there to be a smaller group of senior editors who are less geniuses, more mini dictators, and this can be devastating to their authors. They edit like a military coup, and publish likewise. That they are able to continue unchecked is indicative of the prevailing attitude in the corporate world, i.e. money trumps all. If their books sell enough — which often involves more of an aptitude for the art of climbing than editorial skill — then they are untouchable. It is worth bearing in mind that what the author experiences in these cases is often the same for this senior editor’s subordinates: one needs only look at the recent Bookseller article on bullying to see the evidence.

On the other hand, I believe that much of the conflict these days comes down to the lack of time editors have, and the financial pressures of a diminishing economy. In my deep dive on the Lee-Hohoff collaboration, I found this quote from Lee: ‘we talked it out, sometimes for hours. And sometimes she came around to my way of thinking, sometimes I to hers, sometimes the discussion would open up an entirely new line of country.’ This is how the process should be, and yet what in-house editor has the time for that these days, for any niceties in fact? As margins get tighter, so does the space for compassion and creativity.

The nature of most publishing contracts means the writer owns the book in name. They appear on the cover, and they own the copyright; but they have less to do with the work of art being put into the world than the publisher, giving up all publishing decisions and most of the financial proceeds to their publishing house, who in turn shoulder the financial risk (though, it should be emphasised, not the personal). The editor is the conductor through which the work of art passes to the publishing house, and they often have a different idea about how it should be presented to the world; how it should be, even.

The result is that you can end up with two artists who both feel they own the work of art, and this is compounded by it never being acknowledged, everything shrouded in the appearance of collaboration, like two children ‘sharing’ a toy.

You could view this grappling as a necessary part of the process: that a little friction is needed to turn out a diamond. The trouble comes when you hit a bump — which always, at some point, happens. A change in your publicity team perhaps, which means your book doesn't sell so well, and suddenly the retailers aren’t paying the same attention and your publishers follow suit. It happens to the very best of writers. And this is where your relationship becomes very important.

Even if a publishing professional sets out to be unbiased, they will inevitably go further for someone whose company they enjoy or whom they deeply admire. Remuneration being famously limited, an editor’s work is done almost entirely for love and/or ego, and thus they give their extra time and energy to those they believe are worth it. How they feel about you matters when times get tough.

However, that’s not to say good will is enough to keep you in work, or that you should mould yourself to a publishing tyrant’s every wish.

Advice

This is my advice on how to start, maintain and manage this relationship — in fact it applies to everyone in a business partnership, including my fellow editors.

Start off with sensible boundaries. You are in a partnership, so keep your communication to business matters, professional in tone and content. Your editor might not love you if you act like this, but — crucially — they won’t ever dislike you.

Know what kind of person you are. We can only change ourselves, so if for example you have a pattern of tempestuous relationships in work and/or life, or are always subservient before finally blowing up, recognise that and make a determined effort to understand yourself and the behavioural patterns you slip into that may contribute to it. Try not to bring it to this relationship by establishing a different pattern.

Recognise, and repeat: my editor is not my best friend. That’s not to say you can’t be friendly and enjoy time together, but a true friendship can rarely flourish between an editor and an author, (or any member of staff and an author) because it’s a relationship predicated by a financial agreement. Would you still want to be friends with your editor even if they said no to your next novel? If yes, then by all means pursue a friendship. If no, keep it professional.

If you are already in a difficult relationship, then the work will be harder. But you have many options — here are my top ten.

1. Leave them. I put this at the top, because it is important to hold close the idea that you can always leave. Being powerless in a relationship over many years can degrade the soul and hamper what brought you here: your creativity. Recognise when it isn’t worth it, despite all money and success, despite the fear, and leave. You don’t know what amazing opportunities you’re missing by sticking with the known.

2. Engage empathy. The next most important point. Your editor is likely very stressed. They may seem to be in a position of power, but most likely don’t feel that way at all. Defensiveness is nearly always a sign of fear. What might be making them feel like that? Empathy doesn’t make you weak, it makes you strong, because it takes out the personal-feeling sting from the interaction and allows you to look at it from a position of power.

3. Address the behaviour. This is advice for when you are in extremis, for example if the relationship is affecting your mental health or ability to work. Try to do it when you’re not in the middle of an ongoing argument about something, and when you’re not in an active emotional state. First write down, perhaps with the help of a friend or a coach, the behaviours you’d like your editor to change. Reflect on how you might also change. This is not about calling someone out but pointing out ways you can work better together in future. Then ask for a meeting and make it clear from the start of the meeting that you’d like to discuss some aspects of your relationship that you’re finding difficult so that they are prepared. Next, be curious. Ask them how they feel about your relationship and how it might improve. Try to listen to their answer. Ask if they’d be open to hearing some of the things you find difficult, and give concrete suggestions for what might change. If you find it getting heated, suggest you both take some time to sit with it before reconvening. Remember your goal: you want this relationship to work for both of you. NB. Some agents understandably do not like this option, as they are scared that the author will further damage the relationship. But the problem I see with this is that it further infantilises an already disempowered person. We need to be able to make our own mistakes as well as solve our own problems.

4. Get your agent involved. Having said that, a direct approach might not feel sensible. In which case, talk to your agent and ask them to have a conversation with the editor with clear and practical non-judgemental suggestions about how communication might improve. If that is not well received, they could talk to the editor’s manager. Again, agents can be hesitant about doing this, often for good reason. But if they can’t give you a good reason, then it may be worth interrogating that.

5. Accept them. The fact of the matter is, it’s unlikely you’ll ever have any editor-author relationship without conflict. A bit of confrontation is normal. It can feel horrible at the time, but it is OK to disagree and speak your mind, and it is OK for them to speak theirs. You are not married to this person; they don’t need to suit you perfectly, and you don’t need to agree with everything they do or say.

6. Connect with them. I’ve said that I don’t recommend being close friends with your editor. However I do think a connection is important. Recognise the areas that you do agree on and acknowledge them, to yourself and to them. Show appreciation for good work. Find shared topics of interest, books being the obvious choice! Seeing each other as human is vital to finding solutions.

7. Accept yourself. If you are someone who struggles with disagreements, e.g. reacts emotionally or gets angry when provoked, first recognise it. You could then choose to accept it, which means also accepting that things will be difficult sometimes. But it might also mean accepting that you need to find a different solution, e.g. you could ask your agent to take over communication with your editor in certain parts of the process.

8. Teach yourself. Learn about healthy communication. You can’t change your editor’s reaction, but you can change yours in ways that might stop a confrontation from spiralling. There are ways to phrase what you think (and remember your thoughts are not facts, there is no incontrovertibly ‘right’ answer in book publishing) without it feeling confrontational. A good tip is to keep it factual and collaborative e.g. ‘I can see from feedback that readers really responded to X cover last time. Could we try testing some other covers that fit more closely with that?’ Another tip is knowing when not to communicate, i.e. suggesting a pause. Time to process the emotion, time to think — it nearly always produces a better result. Agree to come back to it in a week’s or a month’s time.

9. Learn when to let things go. As I pointed out above, your book isn’t wholly yours. The manuscript you wrote before you signed the deal was, but this edited, decorated thing isn’t. If it is important to you for everything to be as you want it, then self-publish. This is a totally valid decision. If however you want financial help and expert opinions then accept that some decisions will be made that you don’t like or agree with. The goal is not to win, but to end up with a book that is good and also sells, which means listening to each other’s ideas and compromising at times, especially on the publishing as opposed to the writing side of things.

10. Find the lessons learnt. Any difficult experience can be seen in a more positive light if you can take some learning from it. So after every conversation write down one thing that worked, and one thing that didn’t about your approach to your editor. Read them before your next conversation. Read them again if you move to a different editor.

Finding an editor can be like falling in love. But like all infatuations, we cannot know immediately if the foundations for a good relationship are there. Like building a romantic relationship, it is actions and not words that count. It is a continual building of trust over years, through highs and lows, lessons learnt on both sides, open and direct communication. I hope for us all to get there.

I’d love to know if you have any experiences you want to share, or advice for your fellow writers, agents or editors. Share in the comments!

I went on a run today in the woods behind the house. Because of the caffeine I ran fast, and — possibly also because of the caffeine — I tripped. I experienced it in slow motion, a disinterested observer; a dissociative miracle.

Here is what my observer self saw:

Toe, catching on root,

Feet — left-right — slowing the fall,

Hands, reaching,

A slight roll to the side,

And I’m down.

I laugh, I get up, I continue running.

*

My impression as I write down this account of my fall is that it was less a crash and more like a plane doing a strategic landing. It wasn’t really a fall at all. It was a trip, and a trip is something quite different.

Let’s spend a minute on the word itself. The psychedelic-induced variety seems pertinent, not least because I’ve just advised on two novels dealing with the medical use of LSD. When someone takes a trip time slows down, in fact becomes irrelevant — a phenomenon that is also associated with the state of artistic flow. Even the fact of finding it relevant is relevant: one of the other phenomena associated with a psychedelic trip is that of making connections between things. This is a skill vital to the artist, and vital also to being human. By creating we come up with novel solutions, whether in writing or in life.

I rarely take a trip, other than to Dorset or Italy, though some of the research on the psychedelic kind is compelling.

But tripping of the over-a-root variety is just as rare for me. It’s not something I make a habit of because I don’t want to get hurt, and this makes me very careful. But I didn’t see the root coming, and when it came it was too late to worry, my body had already dealt with it. It was like it had a superpower that I’d never been aware of, sitting in abeyance, ready to react, completely separate from my thinking self. Even if my body hadn’t reacted, even if I’d fallen and broken something, worrying in advance wouldn’t have helped.

After the trip, there was the rush, the body celebrating its victory despite bruised knees and muddy hands: adrenaline, endorphins, coursing between limbs and brain. I had seen the void, or at least a great quantity of mud rushing towards me. I had been thrown out of myself, and it provoked a day of creativity and intensity, of daring.

Children trip all the time — my 6-year-old niece three times only yesterday. This is because they don’t have all their motor skills quite down yet; but it’s also because they leap.

Such a simple thing, tripping. So mundane.

Yet the mundane is ripe with meaning, and my over-root flight has taught me — or rather reminded me — of some lessons that are just as relevant to creative endeavour as they are to life.

Sometimes the answer is in the body, not the mind. Gut, not head.

Fear stops you from tripping. We must dare to run headlong.

Only when you trip will you find out what extraordinary things your Other Self is capable of.

The mundane is the most extraordinary. Write it.

The longer I work with writers, and the longer I write myself, the more I realise the truth of this statement.

The words you just wrote might not be your best, but right now you contain more lives lived and words written than ever before. Hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions of words. You have made many mistakes and learnt from them; you have written scenes you can’t believe came from your shaking fingers; you have wept and laughed and raged and revelled in this writing life.

This is why one of the things I most frequently find myself recommending to authors before pitching their book to agents is to rewrite the first scene. This can elicit an emotional reaction. It’s the scene you first wrote, the one that came to you as if by magic. You may have already edited it a million times to the point you can no longer see it.

But you are never a better writer than you are now. And you know your book better right now — the beating, thorny heart of it — better than ever before.

So get yourself a blissfully blank sheet of paper or, second best, a blank document. Then shut yourself up in your quiet writing place and write the chapter of your life; the first chapter that sets off the fire that is your story, the place it all begins. Write unconstrainedly and boldly, as though everything is to play for.

You can start your first chapter differently, in a totally different time, or with a different character, or from a different point of view. You control this story; you can turn back time. What have you got to lose?

You might find that familiar phrases bubble up, lines you couldn’t change if you tried; these are the ones to keep. You might find that you write much shorter, or longer — keep going, following where your fingers lead.

When you’ve finished, leave it a while — at least a couple of hours — and then compare the two. Notice how you feel about the potential to develop the new version. Do you want to go back to the first draft? Why? Is there fear in there? Or does it bring up uncomfortable thoughts about the rest of the novel: that you need to rewrite other parts, or that you want to change the plot? In all cases, ask yourself this: what would you do if you weren’t scared?

Or how about this possibility: have you just written the best chapter you’ve ever written?

There is no right or wrong here, but it is always worth doing the exercise. It will take only minutes, maybe hours if you’re writing the new Middlemarch, but you will always discover something through the process.

Your best ever chapter is the chapter that agents want to see. Give yourself the chance to write it.

First, an editor-finding platform penalising me for not putting my out of office on when I was away. The penalty took the form of being hidden in search results for a month, a digital annihilation affecting workflow to the point I wondered whether I existed at all.

Next, an email from an agency offering to list me on their books in exchange for 20% of my earnings. So many of these are springing up of late, seeing the money to be made from an author’s hope and freelance editor’s lack of investment capital for SEO. Many of them stipulate you can’t work for other companies or cultivate business direct; you’re basically working for a company again in all but benefits package.

Finally an approach by a TikTok influencer; we had what felt like a genuine exchange before their purpose was revealed. A partnership that wasn’t so much a partnership as me paying a very large amount of money for a very small post about my services. It was enraging mainly because it spoke to a truth: I was unfindable online. But it brought to mind many of the stories my author clients have told me — various scam-adjacent offerings trying to make a quick buck out of the hope and desire that jostle for space in this industry.

I decided that instead of moaning any more I should do something: I would make a list of highly qualified fiction editors to share with you in the hope you’d share it too. But being lazy, I decided to ask AI to help me – and it didn’t suggest one of the people I knew to be out there, only a bunch of (excellent) editors who work for an agency. Further evidence if I ever needed it, that this list is needed; and that I was as much of the problem as anyone.

So I did some actual hard work. This list is the carefully considered result. They are all experienced ex-corporate** fiction editors with many publications to their name, and excellent author testimonials. The kind of editing I am talking about here is structural, sometimes called developmental — they help you get your book to the standard required to attract an agent (not copyediting or proofreading, though some offer those services too). Many also offer advisory or coaching services. They are your secret weapon in the race to get published, with unrivalled expertise and insight into the world of publishing.

Please restack or share if you can, so that via the gift of Substack these editors’ voices might be discovered in the great seething morass of the internet.

But first, if you need more convincing, this is why you need one of these fantastic indie editors…

They care. This is a cut-throat business, make no mistake. An indie freelance editor understands that — they’ve lived it — and now they have set out to help you, not chase the golden goose. They will be there for you in a confusing industry at a time when it can feel very lonely; chances are, they have also felt the same.

They offer an individualised service. They generally don’t charge fixed fees as an agency will, but tailor each job to you, depending on what your book requires. This means it’s also better value.

They have inside knowledge. This bunch have been inside the whale. They know the stuff you can’t find out easily online: what agents and publishers are looking for and what it’s like to be published by them.

But they have a wider perspective. The longer I’ve been outside, the more I realise how coloured my advice was by the biases of the publishing echo chamber — in London that’s just a few hundred people. Being outside has helped me connect back to what really makes a good book with popular appeal — which is why I succeeded in publishing in the first place.

They have no hidden agendas. Everyone employed by a company has multiple competing priorities, which can end up being contradictory to yours. For an editor working for a company this might include their own career prospects, their boss’s opinions, targets etc. An indie freelance editor is just trying to get your book to as good a place as possible and be paid for it.

They’re brave. As I’ve said, it’s hard. Some of the editors below are visionaries who wouldn’t conform to corporate culture, and this has made them resilient, independent thinking and ferociously determined. If you are the same, then you’re likely to get along.

My List of Top UK Indie Fiction Editors*

Alice Youell

Katie Seaman

Abi Fenton

Rali Chorbadzhiyska

Siân Heap

Rebecca Millar

Poppy Hampson

In addition to these there is a free resource (to both freelancers and authors) called Bookbindr which lists non-fiction and children’s book editors as well. Though I can’t vouch for everyone on it, I know it is a highly curated list and run with other motives than profit in mind.

*It’s a small list isn’t it? I am sure I haven’t found everyone. If you are not mentioned here and think you should be, please email me with details. I will update.

** These are all ex-corporate, not because I think you have to be to be a good editor, but because it means they also have the specialist knowledge that comes from knowing the industry from the inside, as well as how to edit. These are also all fiction editors, because that is the world I inhabit and can vouch for.

Thank you so much, kind Substackers, for sharing.

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Not all of my thinking is negatively biased. It is being what a clinical psychologist friend of mine calls ‘the problem solving brain.’ It was fully activated in my job as a publisher at Viking Penguin. I was working quite literally 24/7, because when I wasn’t at work, I was still thinking about it, dreaming about it, worrying away at the current dilemma: what title should I choose for that book, which authors should I send that book to, how could I solve that narrative issue? It was absorbing and satisfying — and it worked — until it was exhausting and then debilitating. Then it didn’t work at all.

Psychotherapist , whose fantastic books I’ve recently started re-reading as a form of budget therapy, reminds me that this is a habit formed likely in childhood, and indeed I remember always thinking, planning, worrying. I once worried obsessively all summer holiday about my trumpet which I’d left at school by accident, leaving it open to all kinds of threats, from burglary to illegal usage by persons unknown. If my cash-strapped parents had found out…I literally couldn’t tell you what would have happened, so awful would it have been. When the trumpet was there after the holidays, untouched, I was left with a gaping worry-hole, which I then had to fill with something else. The point wasn’t the worry so much as the hole.

When it comes to my own writing, this thinking habit is a real bummer. I’ve written about this before, in my piece A Letter to the Writer In You. Essentially it is the pragmatist part of me, pointing out helpfully that most books never get published, and even if they do, most are published without any kind of success. That I am way behind other writers of my age and that anyway, it’s not that fun and why don’t you just read a book instead. Logically, becoming a writer is an illogical thing to do.

But I want to do it despite that, and I want to do many other things. So what to do about this thinking problem?

The problem with overthinking is that you can’t just go cold turkey. Like eating, we need to do a bit of it, just not too much; and like an eating addiction it is therefore very hard to moderate. At present it can feel like my thinking problem turns every task into ten, and stops me from achieving my potential in work, in my writing, and my personal life. Apart from when it gives me a genius idea…and then I am back to where I started.

I’ve tried so many things, including practising mindfulness, which is essentially the cultivated practice of seeing our own thoughts non-judgementally and at a distance. However I’ve come to think that it is incredibly hard for human animals, and most definitely for me. ‘People spend 46.9 percent of their waking hours thinking about something other than what they’re doing, and this mind-wandering typically makes them unhappy’ — so says the latest in one of many studies confirming my suspicions. Even experienced mindfulness practitioners don’t do a whole lot better.

So for me mindfulness hasn’t been a solution, though I know there are people who have found it incredibly helpful. If I could give up work and spend my life as a monk, then maybe it would work for me too. Instead, I’ve started to tap into a different way of doing things.

This highly scientific process is, wait for it…daydreaming. I had a breakthrough moment — stay with me here — when I realised that it was easy to turn off the negative thinking if I was, ahem, fantasising. Something about the strength or quality of that type of thinking turned off the negativity tap and took me into another mindset.

This piece is not a call to start masturbating at work. My example merely illustrates that to overcome one type of thinking, one can engage in another more powerful type. What if one could cultivate instead the power of daydreaming? What if you could fill the worry-hole with something better?

I recently read The House that Joy Built, an enormously kind and encouraging memoir-meets-self-help-meets-how to write book by , which extols the virtues of daydreaming, and shares some science to back it up. Ringland quotes psychology professor and author of a big study into daydreaming, Erin Westgate, who says that it’s part of the normal human toolkit, aiding mental health and wellbeing, and, most interestingly…problem solving! The reasons behind this link are still mostly conjecture, but what I keep coming back to is this: if it’s just as helpful to daydream as it is to overthink, then why not do the former?

Until recently any form of daydreaming made me deeply uncomfortable. It felt like a form of self-delusion. My publisher brain didn’t like it when clients seemed to be indulging too much in what I saw as fantasy; I was scared they were going to get hurt by the inevitable disappointments coming their way, perhaps even blame me when they didn’t reach their goals. But I’ve come to see that, much as I now think about religion, reality is beside the point. It doesn’t matter whether or not God exists, but whether you believe; and believing might just make life better, the process as well as the outcome. Daydreaming might be a key tool for getting a book done. And most importantly, getting it done with enjoyment.

So now when I notice my mind doing that thinking thing, often with a negative bias, I deliberately step into fantasy land. My current writing-related daydream is this: the novel I’m working on is at first turned down by every agent…but then I bounce back, because I know I’m doing something good here. So I self-publish, with a whole host of book friends behind me, choosing the wackiest title I can, and print a small but covetable limited edition which a friend of mine has designed, which somehow finds and tweets about, and now all the editors are clamouring to publish it for me, but I say, No, editors, I will keep doing this my way…and also all the proceeds will go to a charity for mental health research (after I’ve bought myself a massive house in the country) etc etc.

Writing the above has made me feel acutely embarrassed; more so the idea of sharing it with you. You can easily pinpoint my psychological vulnerabilities and secret egotistic desires.

But think about it this way: this kind of absurdly positive thinking is technically no more absurd than its inverse, catastrophising — ‘no agent will represent me and my book will never get read, the end’ — which is equally lacking in evidence base and equally loaded with ego. You could look at overthinking as negatively-biased daydreaming. One is simply more culturally acceptable than the other.

So I’m sharing my embarrassing daydream in the hope you’ll see your own daydreams as equally valid and purposeful, as a tool for survival, and even productivity and happiness. I hope you’ll give it a go. Because actually, when I look back at my embarrassing daydream, I see some genuine positive problem solving occurring: what if I could get Miranda July to read it…

How to Daydream with Purpose:

Daydreaming is where your skills as a writer are your superpower. I was finding it hard to daydream without some help, and so I started writing down some scenarios as a way to get myself started — for me, the physical act of writing gets my creative brain going. Here are some writing-related prompts I’ve written to get you started:

• You could write about finishing that epic novel you’ve been working on. Think of the room you’re doing it in, the music you’re soundtracked by, the outfit you’re wearing. How does it feel? What will you think? Who will you tell?

• You could write about how your book changed the world. Whose mind did it change by reading it? What policy changes did it trigger?

• You could write about drinking champagne in your garden with all your friends and family, having just published your masterwork to universal acclaim. Graham Norton wants you on his show. There’s going to be a film starring Zendaya. Taylor Swift who is now the Queen (anything is allowed, remember), is knighting you for services to art — and you say no because you’re too busy writing the next.

You decide.

Why don’t we share? Please write your most outlandish and wonderful writing-related daydreams below, OR you can write them to me and I’ll publish them anonymously, or simply reply saying wow.

Thank you. Here’s a cat daydreaming.

In my role as freelance editor I only take on work from debut writers when I consider they have true potential to be published. I judge that potential the same way that an agent does: via a sample of their project and a brief synopsis. I am assessing whether the novel has a good concept – hooky; original; interesting; popular appeal – and whether the writing shows a high level of finesse. If I judge both to be good, my hope is that the full manuscript will deliver on that promise.

But it is much harder to write a novel than it is to have a good idea and write thirty good pages – as so many authors experience, having excitedly sent off their work in response to many full manuscript requests, only to receive the quiet death of rejection. For around 90% of my debut clients the work they need to do to get to the next level is overwhelmingly in one area: structure.

What is special about the novel form is that we can choose the method of delivery: we can mould all of the elements so that it becomes a story with the power to conjure meaning and emotion. Most debut authors need to work on harnessing this power.

One of the main things an editor like me is looking for when reading a novel is the pace slowing or tension decreasing. When this happens it is often because the writer is telling the story as it comes to them, but not necessarily as it should arrive to the reader.

Some writing theorists talk of the arc. This might mean the events of the story or the plot, but it can also mean the arc of a character; they are often one and the same. The word arc, though ephemeral in its exact meaning, creates a visual representation of the feelings a reader should have when reading; an emotional journey that happens in response to the events of the novel. What journey do you want your reader to go on?

Here are my tips for creating your journey:

1. Learn. The best way to learn about structure is to read it. Here are some examples of the most talented structuralists across English language fiction. (I would love anyone with links to other cultural literary traditions to post their recommendations, or indeed add to mine.) Don’t just read and enjoy them though: make a note or a chart of how they are structured, noticing what effect this has on the reading experience.

Classic & Literary Fiction

Anna Karenina – Leo Tolstoy
A dual-plot structure (Anna/Vronsky and Levin/Kitty) that mirrors and contrasts their stories. What would the effect have been if he’d only told one or the other’s story?

Middlemarch – George Eliot

Multiple interwoven plots, thematically linked, with the result a building sense of this community and its dynamics, particularly women’s roles in it.

Modern Literary Fiction

Never Let Me Go – Kazuo Ishiguro
Controlled, gradual revelation via intimate first person; the structure withholds key truths that land like emotional bombshells. Consider how different it would be if told truthfully and linearly!

Life of Pi – Yann Martel
A framed narrative that forces the reader to reinterpret the entire story at the end.

Genre Fiction

Gone Girl – Gillian Flynn Split narration with an unexpected midpoint reversal and discovery of the artificiality of the first half — metafiction meets crime fiction. At the time this had never been done, and the effect was explosive.

Dune – Frank Herbert
Carefully layered political, religious, and ecological arcs; long but architecturally deliberate.

2. Redraft. You don’t have to be as clever as these authors, but you do have to be as intentional. Write that first draft – I like to think of the first draft as simply figuring out the story – and then take a big step back, wait, and look at it again from this new distant place. How might one of the writers you love mould this raw material? What are you trying to say, and how might your structure help you say this? What are the natural climaxes? How can you draw out those moments? What can you withhold and reveal to create suspense? Who might tell the story, and when? Be prepared to throw your first draft out entirely. Then rewrite. This time you are telling the story.

3. Check. Ultimately, only one person can judge if your structure is definitely working: anyone but you. Structural integrity is the one element of your novel that is almost impossible to see clearly. You know the machinery behind the design too well.

Rather than get someone like me in straight away, I urge you to acquire as many beta readers as you possibly can amongst your reading friends and colleagues. Multiple opinions means you can isolate the anomalies. They won’t give you the answers — an editor is better equipped for that — but they will show you what is and isn’t working. All you need to do is to ask them these questions:

• What emotions did you feel as you went through the book?

• Which bits were boring?

• Which characters did you care about the most? Which did you want to see more/ less of?

• Which bits didn’t you understand?

• Did you feel satisfied at the end? If not, why not?

• Which bits did you love (because we all need a boost now and then)

Take a deep breath before reading their answers! They’re most likely right, but it takes ambition and bravery to meet those criticisms with creativity.

Godspeed, structural adventurers!

The rest of us also love it: the writing. We live and breathe it. So much so that we can’t actually, most of the time, bring ourselves to — well — actually do it. We can do all the other things life asks of us, the cat poo-clearing and the report writing and the inbox clearing and the bill switching and the kids’ sandwich making. We may even write other things — articles, theses, even other books — to avoid writing THE book.

Then the New Year arrives. We call a meeting with ourselves at the desk. We mean business: we have a pen. We tell our recalcitrant selves that now is the time. Now or never. We are going to make a pact: with ourselves, with the writing gods, with any god, with all of the online people. Just you wait and see! This is the year we are going to write that book. We are going to corral that idea that’s been hanging around sheepishly and just do it. It’s only a book. A little tiny book. Words on a page. Lines of symbols strung together to make meaning. We stare at the page before us.

Go on, just fill it. But with what?

We decide to read a book for inspiration. That should do the trick. But oh no, it’s not done the trick at all, it’s made us question everything. Why would we ever try to emulate Jane Austen, or think we could breathe the same holy air as George R. R. Martin?

We decide to jot some ideas down, to plot it out. But on the page the ideas look so lost, so paltry. They can’t possibly make a book, they’re so tiny and stupid.

We decide to research our idea online, to bolster ourselves. But that isn’t such a great plan either. Though on the other hand, perhaps it’s saved us from making a massive big twerp of ourselves — because at least three other people seem to have written the same exact book. EXACTLY THE SAME BOOK.

And so the idea dies, unwritten, and we thank ourselves for avoiding such embarrassment, such shame, as a badly written book.

I see you, you great ideas-havers-but-not-see-throughers. I know you. And I have a new New Years’ resolution for you.

Write something bad.

A writer and friend once told me what their personal mantra was: write a shit first draft. Aiming to write a really good book on the first try is impossible. It would be like aiming to write a symphony when you have just learnt to hum in tune. Even when you’re an experienced writer, you must expect the first draft to be shitter than the rest.

Write something bad. Tell yourself you’re going to start with the worst possible piece of writing you could possibly produce. This is it. This is the worst it will ever be. Have some fun with it!

Don’t aim to write a book. That’s not how most books start. They start with a few words which may or may not make it into the next version, let alone the final version.

Think instead about writing a scene. Think about who’s in it and what they’re doing. But mind yourself: it must be bad. It probably won’t make it to the final cut. Nobody will ever read it. Which means you’re free! You could sneakily make it quite good if you like, I won’t tell.

Is that too much? Then write a terrible first sentence. Make it hammy and ridiculous. Maybe it’s the first sentence your character says, or a detailed description of their bowel movements. Maybe it’s a long description of the weather, because you are a rule breaker. Stop after that, because you’ve done it. Don’t overexert yourself. That took a lot of effort.

Tomorrow, or next Thursday, or in February — because what mad person starts a book in January — do the same. Write something bad, and keep on doing it. That’s all it takes.

I didn’t know what I was doing wrong. I’d quit my stressful corporate publishing job two years before, was in general much happier, living a life of relative calm. But the truth is more complex than that.

The truth, as vulnerable as it makes me feel to admit this, is that I am still not ‘better.’ I work around 25 hours per week on average — which sounds like the dream, doesn’t it? But it is not because I choose it; or rather, I do choose it, but I do so because it is a necessity. My brain and body are different after years of chronic stress. I become overwhelmed cognitively and emotionally if I attempt a ‘normal’ working week. I experience many small burnouts a year. It necessitates a continual guarding of my energy, a finite resource, which is in itself energy-sapping. I sometimes find it hard to process things, to make decisions, to manage a normal life. A recent week in London left me severely exhausted.

There are the physical symptoms too. I was diagnosed with various ailments in my year of peak stress and just after it, which essentially labelled my insides as that of a seventy-year-old takeaway addict; borderline type-2 diabetes and very high cholesterol levels. Yet my BMI is good, I exercise, I eat an extremely healthy diet, I don’t smoke or drink to excess. There is a genetic factor to the cholesterol; but no one else in my family has such severe symptoms.

The narrative around burnout is overwhelmingly thus: you have it, and then you take a break, and then you don’t. But the science tells us the contrary: burnout isn’t something you recover from quickly — for some people, never. It leads not only to long-term mental health problems, but serious physical illness, long-term cognitive difficulties, and because of those, life and occupational disruption. Recent meta-analysis found that burnout was a significant predictor of hypercholesterolemia, type 2 diabetes, coronary heart disease, musculoskeletal pain, changes in pain experiences, prolonged fatigue, gastrointestinal issues and respiratory problems, to name a few. The psychological effects were long-term insomnia, depressive symptoms, use of psychotropic and antidepressant medications and hospitalization for mental disorders.*

What I am realising is that the legacy of my burnout may continue despite no longer being in the situation that provoked it. Pushing myself over so many years and allowing myself to be pushed, had greater implications than I thought.

At the moment I am lucky. I experienced burnout at the peak of my success, while my profile was good, and thus I can afford to work the hours I do now; just, though I sold my house and live rather differently now. I think about all the people who have quit in similar circumstances but without those advantages. Part-time work is not enough to provide most people with any form of life security.

In my recent London trip, talking to people at every publisher and at every level, it seems that advances made post-Covid towards better working practices are stalling. Pressure to be in the office more, hiring freezes when profits are still being made, in-house mentoring schemes faltering, pressure to return to work early after parental leave, workplace bullying going unchecked. Economic pressures taking precedence over lives.

What I want to say today, as we go into the festive season, is this. Don’t take your health for granted. Don’t expect that you can push forever and be OK. Don’t be fooled by thinking that the next step — that promotion, that payrise — will be what fixes the problem. A holiday and self-care will go a certain way, but they are not enough. What works is to work fewer hours, under less pressure. Choose yourself over the job, whatever that might look like.

I still get that alarm in my neck. But I see it now as a legacy, a scar still stitching itself back together. A reminder not to forget the important things in life. A reminder to share my story.

***

If you have a story you’d like to share, particularly any insights about how working in publishing is affecting your mental health, I’d love to hear from you — anonymously or otherwise. By sharing our stories we can become stronger.

Research:

There’s a lot out there, but these are two of the biggest studies:

Pihlaja M, Tuominen PPA, Peräkylä J, Hartikainen KM. Occupational Burnout Is Linked with Inefficient Executive Functioning, Elevated Average Heart Rate, and Decreased Physical Activity in Daily Life - Initial Evidence from Teaching Professionals. Brain Sci. 2022 Dec 16;12(12):1723. doi: 10.3390/brainsci12121723. PMID: 36552182; PMCID: PMC9775632.

Salvagioni DAJ, Melanda FN, Mesas AE, González AD, Gabani FL, Andrade SM. Physical, psychological and occupational consequences of job burnout: A systematic review of prospective studies. PLoS One. 2017 Oct 4;12(10):e0185781. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0185781. PMID: 28977041; PMCID: PMC5627926.

Yes — and also no. Bookclub could indeed be said to be fiction that hangs out in the grey area between commercial fiction and literary fiction. But the case is more complicated than that: it depends on who is saying it, and to whom. After all, publishing is really just a series of conversations about books in the attempt to persuade someone to buy them. The term ‘bookclub’ is thus used:

Author to agent: I think I’ve written a really good book that will sell well and appeal to almost everyone.

Agent to publisher: this is a better-than-averagely well-written book with a commercial hook, and I am expecting you to pay a lot of money for it. Alternatively, depending on the person involved, this might mean ‘I have no idea how to classify this novel.’

Publisher to retailer: this is one of our priority titles, which we are willing to put money behind (probably because we paid Big for it) and we think it could sell a lot if you back it. Specifically, we would like one of your promotions please, e.g. Richard and Judy Bookclub.

Retailer to reader: and here lies the rub. Unless a book is in a book promotion with ‘bookclub’ in its name, i.e. the one mentioned above, there is no dialogue other than books put on a shelf, categorised by genre or sales status. There is no ‘bookclub’ shelf in any major retailer. This is because of the following.

Readers to readers: in reality no one uses the word ‘bookclub’ unless they’ve been touched by industry. They might suggest a book for their bookclub; but in my experience those books vary, dependent on postcode, from the memoir of a controversial footballer to a slim novella of translated French fiction.

I don’t believe that bookclub fiction exists. I am a bookclub fiction denier. In one of my best years in-house, I had three books that made it into the Waterstones Book of the Month promotion, which could arguably be the closest that retailer gets to defining ‘bookclub.’ They were variously a crime novel, a historical novel, and a speculative thriller. Genre was not a factor. But whether or not you agree the genre exists, I’d argue it certainly isn’t a useful term, when it is used so variously. Like so much of publishing terminology, in fact. Instead, there are books that are, via their hook or their writing or accidental nudging of the zeitgeist (believe me, trying to write to zeitgeist rarely works), or a combination of all, simply superior to the rest.

However, I know that to most who have googled this question, my answer has not provided that handy nutshell. So here, for the serious-minded amongst you, is my best answer.

Most agents and publishers in the UK use ‘bookclub’ to mean well-written popular fiction, which could be in any genre, but will appeal – through an interesting and original hook, that might touch on a big prescient issue – to the majority of reading people in the country they’re in.

The caveat, as to all statements regarding books, is that there is no definitive truth, and much is in the eye of the beholder.

And a final word to authors here. Don’t try to write a bookclub book; to write to market is near-impossible. What defined those books in the Waterstones promotion mentioned above, in the retailer’s eyes at least, was just being good books: interesting, compelling, imaginative, emotive and crafted with flair and originality. That’s enough of a list to be getting on with.

As always, I’d love to hear from people who have something to say about this subject, or any questions of their own. Write in the comments below or email me. Anonymity always respected.

It sounds like the dream, doesn’t it? And it is, while it lasts.

We are as a nation increasingly obsessed with debuts. It speaks to a lack of constancy and loyalty; much as we scroll endlessly through social content we scroll through authors, constantly looking for the next big thing, motivated by a sense of FOMO and boredom. Some kind of status seems to be aligned with the debut writer, perhaps akin to being an original adopter, the music fan who loves the early works.

Equal share of the blame for this focus on debuts lies at the door of the retailers. They too are always trying to discover the next big thing, to be there first. They like to ‘own’ a book, as one of the major high street retailers used to say to us at Penguin. It’s certainly not about encouraging new talent (the exception being a few indie stores). Retailers are guided by sales predictions, and as debuts have no track record by which they can estimate, this can work in their favour. The new is unknowable, which is why so few are ordered in any quantity; but if a publisher is promising big things and has a campaign lined up to match, then the retailer can be ambitious and order big in order to be market leaders. However, most books don’t live up to the retailers’ predictions and that has a very real effect on the following novel from that author. There’s nothing more guaranteed to turn off a retailer than looking at their first book’s sales and seeing how much they fell short of their own predictions.

All of this means that there are powerful external forces swirling around the debut writer. Lots of potential for success, but great dangers too. The one I want to talk about today is love-bombing.

Love-bombing is a term used most frequently in the context of relationships to mean ‘the act of showing someone a lot of love or positive attention in order to make them do what you want’ (CED). In the context of publishing it most often manifests as high levels of undiluted praise and enthusiasm for a book project, and it can happen when finding an agent, and when finding a publisher. I use this terminology because that is how I’ve heard multiple authors describe their experiences.

What many debut authors don’t realise is that while the praise may be genuine it doesn’t mean security. The most common story I hear is a variation on this one: an author is lucky enough to have an auction for their book. They are paid a large sum and are heaped with praise…until the first novel comes out. The hardback does OK, let’s say 7k copies (UK), and then the paperback goes out. It doesn’t exactly flop, let’s say it sells 20k copies, but the trouble is that it doesn’t ‘earn out’, i.e. pay the publisher back what they paid the author in advance, plus what they invested in production and marketing costs etc. This means the book was a bad investment, even if everyone loved the book. Depending on whether they struck a one or two book deal, the editor is now facing having to publish a second novel that in effect already owes the company money, knowing that retailers won’t be interested in it, or break the news that any advance for a second will be much reduced; or that they don’t want it at all.

The author doesn’t realise this though, because it isn’t explained; at least not implicitly. All they know is that suddenly the mood changes. Communication gets less frequent, more vague. No longer is there that kind of minute attention that can make someone feel so understood and valued. Less attention is paid to every part of the process, as well as the author themselves. They might be passed onto a more junior colleague, have decisions overridden. The author may feel like they’ve done something wrong, that this is their fault. And this might be coming at them from their agent as well as the publisher, if the agent is particularly bottom line-focussed.

This is not exactly love-bombing with evil intent. It’s caused by the market, because publishers are in a competitive situation to win your novel, and thus most assume that the way to do that – other than the money – is to show how much they adore your novel. For the most vulnerable authors, they can make them feel seen and validated in a way they perhaps never have been before. It’s a dangerous combination for everyone involved.

A publisher, however, is not normally ruined by the failure of a novel, whereas an author can be. That is why it is absolutely crucial for publishers to be up-front about the reality of the situation. A hard truth is far better than the absence of it, which can break down a person’s self-worth in a surprisingly short amount of time. Let’s be businesspeople, not emotional manipulators.

We must all take responsibility for our own actions and reactions though, so here are some ideas for how, as an author, you can shore yourself up against these dangers.

Draw a psychological line between yourself and the book. Your book is in the process of becoming a commodity. You are giving it over willingly, so be prepared for the consequences. It can be helpful if you see it in these stark terms, because you will hopefully come to understand that writing it has worth beyond what anyone else says about it, or how much it eventually sells.

Trust honesty, not undiluted praise. No book is perfect. You want an editor who will tell you honestly what they think, whether that’s editorial feedback or sales figures. Always ask for editorial feedback during an auction situation if they don’t offer it up front, and use it as a test for your editorial chemistry.

Ask difficult questions. You only get one chance to be in the driving seat. An auction situation is it. You are not the one on audition here. So think of something you’re scared of asking them and ask it. Look for honest truth in the reply, even if - especially if - it’s not something you particularly wanted to hear.

Specifically: ask about sales. Ask your potential publishers what a good sale would look like for a book like yours. And what would they class as a bad sale. Ask them which retailers they’d want to pitch to, and what slots they’d want to pitch it for. What is the sales team like? How many imprints do they serve?

Let the love grow. Love doesn’t conquer all. You need the structure behind it. If all you are being offered is words of love, grand emotions, that’s not enough. Love — by which I mean true respect — between publisher and author grows over time, through actions. Conflict solved with honesty and kindness, through joint wins and joint losses, a slow accrual of mutual trust. It can be glorious, but it takes time. Let it.

I was having a writing coaching session with a friend. As she spoke, the face of an old boss sprung fresh to mind, snarly eyed and pointy worded. I still dream about that face, hear that voice. Perhaps it sunk so far in because it’s a voice very like one of my own, incubated since childhood, as most of our inner narrators are.

It’s a helpful voice to listen to if you want to avoid danger, which for me meant do well at school, avoid the bullies, and later in life meant publish successful books, avoid the bullies. It warns you about all the ways a project can go wrong and puts you in fear of failure to the point that you simply don’t allow it. It gets you up in the morning, floods you with a cocktail of jostling hormones, flips the switch on the sympathetic nervous system so that you can achieve, achieve, achieve.

My friend calls this part of me The Publisher. The Publisher wouldn’t touch an elasticated waist with a bargepole and has protein shakes instead of lunch. She has served me pretty well, up to a point. The problem is, she keeps interfering in my work. Not my editing work, where she can be useful as long as she doesn’t take over. Much of my work with authors now involves listening to her, but then saying ‘And what about art?’ What about the urge to create, which cannot be tamed or moulded to the market. The reason I am able to argue with her is compassion, which I am much easier able to do for others than myself.

Where she oversteps the mark is my other work, the Writing of the Many Books I have Inside and Haven’t Yet Written. Ah yes, those. When it comes to those, The Publisher is a royal pain in the ass. Sometimes she tries to come up with the ideas, and so although they’re brilliant concepts which would sell to publishers in seconds, they’re not fired by inspiration, which I am only just realising is a very different thing. To follow through with the writing there needs to be an internal imperative, something that wants to crawl out of you and onto the page.

The Publisher has other ways of confounding me. Sometimes I’m halfway through writing a novel and she hosts an impromptu acquisitions meeting in which she tells me, in front of everyone I know and admire in publishing, that it’ll never sell. She’s right, and so I stop. Sometimes I make it only as far as chapter 3 before she calls in her colleague The Editor, who gets the red pen out and starts butchering sentences with gleeful abandon.

The thing is, the act of creative writing has little to do with the publishing of it. This is the root cause of much of the conflict in the industry. An author recently told me about an interaction with their editor. The editor said they weren’t sure about the author’s newest book idea and thought they should brainstorm it together. ‘But that’s not how ideas work,’ the author said. But many publishers genuinely don’t realise this, as I didn’t when I was in the luxurious position of judging books, rather than waiting to have mine judged.

Now that I am dabbling in the business of writing myself, I’ve come to realise that ideas are magic. ’s Big Magic is the seminal text on this concept. I don’t believe in magic, and so I never read it until last year. But that’s the thing I’ve come to realise about creativity. It requires setting logic aside; setting The Publisher aside. It needs a whole different system of belief, because it requires use of a different part of the brain to the one we use to navigate daily life. You can’t hack writing a book. You have to go through it. You have to listen to the artist in you.

Second novels are famously difficult – as a publisher I saw countless authors struggle with this. A common pattern I noticed was that authors are often pushed to share their idea too early. Before they’ve started writing, even. I can count on half a hand the number of authors who stuck with that original idea. Almost all of the ideas were burnt to a crisp through over-thinking, which engages the logical brain and kills the creative worm inside it.

My coach friend gave me some homework. I had to write two letters: one to The Publisher, and a second to The Writer. This evolved into them writing to each other, and it got quite bitchy, so I had to intervene. (See, that’s what happens when you start putting words on a page without thinking first: creativity!) Sharing them feels like showing you two embarrassing body parts. But I’ll do it anyway.

Dear Publisher Katy,

You’re great at what you do. You did a good job of keeping me safe and publishing books well and earning money. But it’s time for you to pipe down a bit. You’re getting in the way of the important work I need to do.

Thanks, Writer Katy

Dear Writer Katy,

I’m sorry that I’ve stopped you from doing important work. I did it because I was worried about you. Plus I’m so hyped up on caffeine and adrenaline that everything feels like an emergency. I hereby promise to let you have some time at the desk. I could do with a rest anyway.

Love from Publisher Katy

—

Maybe you have a voice similar to my Publisher voice. A voice that stops you from finishing, or from starting. Maybe you’d like to write them a little letter, on your own substack or in your journal or in your head. If you do, I hope it is helpful.

First went the job as Publisher, then the city of London, my home for ten years, along with the flat I’d bought with the salary I also lost. Then there are the intangibles that feel so much more tangible than the worldly losses: status, connections, power. The intangibles that I didn’t give away, but felt more like they were wrested from me: mental health, stability, working relationships with authors I loved.

It’s a funny thing. I didn’t set out to follow this path, and yet now I am on it I seem unable to divert from it. Unable and perhaps unwilling. I read Susan Cain’s recent essay on the loss of ambition, and I feel very similarly to her. That it is not a loss but an obscure kind of gain. I see my life like a bell curve, a slow-and-then-fast accrual of everything, followed by a slow-and-then-fast dispersal. A natural feel to it. And that bell curve could just as well be flipped over.

The loss this time is my house in Bristol, which I sold just under a month ago. I bought it thinking it was a forever home. But as I lost my ambition, so I lost my wish to hold onto this symbol of success, specifically to work hard enough and for the right people to earn enough to keep it. The only thing that made me pause was the safety it represented; a place all my own, where I could be still and silent and unseen; immovable. But I am lucky that I have a brilliant sister who will take my money in exchange for temporary ownership of her spare room, and so I still have a place of silence and safety. So I sold the sofa and the bed frame I bought from John Lewis, and all the many totems of middle-class English life, and I tried to convince my utilities providers that I was no longer solely liable for my own warmth or water. On the night before the sale completed I considered that I might still pull out, work harder instead. But there was a guiding force inside me, a voice that said go.

Last week I was reminded of that first loss, the job, when I received an invitation to the premiere of an adaptation of one of the books I published just before quitting corporate publishing. The thing is, I had missed the event entirely, as I’d taken a month away from my work inbox to do the move. I felt relief followed by a surge of regret. But while it seemed like the choice was taken out of my hands, the truth is it wasn’t: I had chosen to be away from work, and being away from work is what had happened. I suspect my new life won’t ever be free from this specific ache, but it will also be the sweeter for having been able to choose it.

The only other element I remember of Bishop’s poem, before I allow myself to go back and re-read it, is that it has a slowly gaining rhythm to it, a runaway syntax that captures exactly how I feel about the art of losing. That you start it and get a taste for it and that you let it run away with you because it takes you ever closer to being free. I am pleased to note I was not wrong about that part.

I gained something new in my re-reading too. That last line, with its parenthetical exhortation which always confused me, I now read and (think I) understand:

‘…the art of losing’s not too hard to master, though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.’

If you feel like it, I’d love to read about your artful disaster. Comment below, link to a piece, or write to me directly.

A note to my frequent readers.

I’ve been away for a few months, and I hope you will forgive me for the long period of silence. I think this may always be a pattern for me, at least when life is in a pattern of change. (When is it ever not?) So thank you for sticking with me, and for your kindness, and for any and all manner of response, including those not externally voiced.

Their doggedness is admirable. And they all have talent and could be published. But their allegiance to this particular project sends up a warning signal. It brings to mind those relationships we’ve all observed where the partners will do anything to stay together, despite a lack of basic shared values and goals. Where I suspect both people are really making do because they are scared of launching into the unknown.

It is so much easier to keep plugging away at a project. To keep on doing what is safe and knowable. I do love researching an unconscious bias, and this one I believe to be a form of commitment bias or sunk cost fallacy. It warns us not to give up on something lest we waste all that effort; it’s there to facilitate the ability to push through persistent problems. We’re generally a change-averse species, convinced the risk lies in the unknown. And sometimes that serves us. But what if we’re actually risking more in staying?

Sometimes, I tell the authors I work with, you’ve got to read the room. This book, for whatever reason, isn’t selling. Yes, there are those fables out there of the authors who laboured for years on one project, riches and glory duly following. But they are the exception that proves the much more prosaic rule. There are exponentially more success stories about authors who embraced the no and wrote something else — you just may not have heard about them, because who wants to share their failures? But failure is the stepping stone to success. One of my authors who embraced the no has just got their first deal, in fact: a second novel that was born in the wake of a bruising first novel submission, proof that they’ve always had talent, they just hadn’t found their subject.

This question of knowing when to quit brings to mind my decision to leave my job at Penguin UK. I was doing well, at least by industry metrics. But I was unwell because of it, in body and mind. It took me six months while on sick leave to make the decision to leave. I was convinced that all the risk was in leaving; it felt alien to everything I was. How would I pay the bills when I had no other means to support myself? Would anyone ever want to employ me after being publicly unwell? Who would I even be when I didn’t have that job? It was my body, not my so-called logical mind that eventually made the right decision for me. I now realise that the thing I hadn’t considered in those months was the many possibilities inherent in leaving. I did lose many things, of course, but what I gained has outweighed those losses ten-fold.

The reason I’ve been quiet lately is that I have recently made another such decision (is this article just about me convincing myself I’m right; I must research what that bias is called…). I am selling my home, the dream home I bought when I was a salaried publisher, its two floors and yellow door signifying my raised place in the world. I have been so scared of leaving it, convinced I could never be happy elsewhere, even as the bills have become untenable. But in writing this I realise that what I was not seeing is all the other places I might live, where I might be happy. I am going forward in hope.

Perhaps therein lies the key. How about asking yourself what you would do if you were to go into this decision hopefully? Would you keep working on this project because it is the thing you most want to put into the world? Or would you be exploring a new one, because who knows what other works of genius are in you?

Ask yourself what serves you: if this project is your passion, the only thing that you care about, then by all means keep going. Like a garden, you could tend it forever with great joy, no end goal other than the feeling of the soil on your hands. If being published is your passion, then you may need to move house.

I realise in writing this I may have done myself out of many new jobs. But I hope that in publishing it I’m helping some of you find the novel that’s out there waiting for you.

Off now to paint a wall. Does anyone want to buy a house?

Towards the end of the novel these words jumped out at me:

‘You know how it is when a tricky job is going well because you’re doing things the way they should be done, when you’re working in rhythm and feel a reassuring confidence that everything is unravelling naturally and all will be right in the end. That’s about it. I knew what I was doing. It’s really what being professional means.’

I read this book in the middle of a week visiting the city I used to work and live in. During my visit I travelled from meeting to meeting, café to café, catching up with publishing friends and colleagues, fitting work in between. I wondered why I was doing it. It felt good at times, but I came away spent. I thought about how every week used to be like that, a carousel of meetings: Acquisitions, Editorial, Cover Art, Campaigns, plus two or three agent meetings and a smattering of internal management ones. How did I ever do it? How do you do it still, I wonder, seeing the friends who remain in-house, fitting me in between their ricocheting schedules. Are they just different people? But I don’t think the answer is that simple.

Because this kind of life felt good to me too, sometimes. I remember the days when I was flying, when each meeting felt like a victory won, when the positive feedback loop was an endless stream. A book picked for the Richard and Judy book club promotion, a cover signed off, a new book deal negotiated. So what happened? How did all that feeling good somehow turn into feeling bad? I wonder now if it is the quality or style of work that made the difference. That churning life was a type of neural reward system that relied on immediacy and completion, though — and this is key — I was attempting to complete a list that would never end.

It reminds me of how I used to feel during my teenage years when I was diagnosed with OCD. When I was in the motion of washing — be it my hands, between every lesson at sixth form, or my whole body, at least twice a day to the point I got through a bottle of shower gel a week — I was happy. Or not happy, perhaps, but definitely not bad. I was doing something about the bad feeling. Now I don’t do anything about the urge to wash; my obsessions come in other forms. But always that itchy feeling, like if only I could answer all the emails or wash the imaginary dirt away for the last time, I’d finally feel good.

This constant churning is what the working world for most of the professional classes is now. It’s most definitely what publishing is now, and not just for its employees. When we think about an author we imagine them alone in a room writing, but anyone doing it knows the reality to be quite different: for the professional author life is at times a round of intensive and scattered action, whether it’s doing TikTok or talking to an audience at the Barbican. It’s a list that has no real end and often no tangible results, so the itch remains. Very few authors are able to opt out of this, though there was someone I worked with and won’t name here, who was successful enough to say no. Oh how frustrating that was as their publisher, and oh how I admire them now!

The protagonist in A Month in the Country also used the word ‘professional’. I think it was that word, it’s strangeness in that sentence, that first grabbed my eye. Yet how stark the difference between our definition and his. He was writing about restoring a painting in a church, painstaking work over many months, with great potential for boredom and despair. Yet for him it was a route to transcendence. No lesser a word than that. It reminds me of what we call ‘flow’ in both the disciplines I dabble in: writing and yoga. It can be defined as a state of being or focussed concentration that is fully immersive yet — and this is where it differs from busywork — deeply calming. Research suggests that flow is both encouraged by and encourages changes in the body associated with lowered stress levels, not just at the time, but for a period after. Or: it feels good.

Another aspect of the science of flow tells us that a job must also be challenging — challenging to the right level, as overwhelming levels of challenge lead directly to increased stress and lesser ability. But crucially, satisfaction comes from long-term challenges overcome, not short-term challenges that constantly replace each other. Challenges we’re good at, and give us purpose.

My dad, who I’ve been away with this week, is a builder. He started off doing small jobs for friends and now buys houses, does them up, and sells them on. This kind of business can be very profitable, but the thing is, my dad refuses every business model that would make money. For a start, he takes years. Literally years. He refuses to get help, doing every bit himself. He spends too much money on the very best products; but he also spends hours skip-diving to make it more sustainable. Both questionable choices when profit is the goal. But despite his moans, I think my dad is actually quite content. I imagine him now like the man in the book, spending hours getting a piece of slate laid just right. The satisfaction in that. He answers to no one but himself and he lives in his masterwork.

I think I’ve unwittingly followed him, though I can’t claim to be completing any masterwork (though perhaps we must also redefine what masterwork is). My dad used to be a teacher before his building days. I too have eschewed the known for the unknown and the scattered for the singular of focus. When I feel most happy in my current work is when I’m in a novel, editing it. No meetings on the horizon, my diary simply says: ‘MS EDIT.’ I work on one novel at a time. I wake up, I make a coffee, and I read and take notes. It takes me about an hour to get into the flow, but when I do I frequently experience a timelessness. An hour can go in an instant. Reading a novel for pleasure also achieves the same effect. Research suggests that this kind of experience is associated with lower levels of activity in the parts of the brain associated with self-reflection. Put another way, we leave our worries behind and live in the moment.

I think of that quote: ‘I am doing things the way they should be done’. I used to edit, but it used to be crammed in around my job, which meant quick stretches after or before work, snatched hours at weekends. I was still doing it, but not the way it should be done. Slowly, one thing at a time, concentratedly and methodically. The reward is much slower, less like an endorphin rush and more like the feeling I associate with dopamine release. It’s like being in love, not falling in love. Imagine a professional life like that.

This piece is very much a thought in the process of being formed. I’d love to hear from you if you have more to add to the discussion, particularly any resources.

Further reading

This article brings together a lot of the latest research on the subject of flow: https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychology/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.645498/full

This article is a simpler, more digestible version: https://www.headspace.com/articles/flow-state#

But still I have been castigating myself. We must at all costs achieve our goals. But what of life’s other goals? What about finding that person who makes the unseen parts of your days better? I worked with an author once whose life was upended by falling in love, who couldn’t write a word. Who didn’t care a jot about that fact. I wondered what madness had possessed her. Now, I wonder again. And I think about the gorgeous, fundamentally transformed prose she wrote later, nothing like her last few books. It felt as though her writing and her soul had combined.

So today I am giving myself a free pass, and I hope you’ll allow yourself one too — if not this week then soon. Let’s bunk off work and go swimming. Let’s spend time playing with our kids outdoors. Let’s write, if that’s what feels like falling in love to you. Let me hold you close and dream the same dream.

Sure, maybe the book also needs more work, maybe it’s not as polished or brilliant as it will be eventually. But the hope is — and should be — that an agent will be the missing piece, will see how to stretch her and push her to make the experimental unmissable. Every successful author has someone, an agent or a friend or another author, who pushes them to be more brilliant. It seems unbelievable to me that there’s won’t be someone who sees the mountains of potential this writer has and offer her representation. This woman breathes creativity, her life is a work of art, and this book is a unique offering to the world of literature.

But what if the unbelievable does happen? As her friend, and as a publishing professional, I don’t think this should be the end for her book. I can see a market for it very clearly. I know exactly what someone searching for a book like this would type into the search bar. She also, I believe, needs to put her words into the world for future generations to see. She’s writing from a moment in time and about a particular cultural shift that will become history.

In cases like these — where the author has had many near-misses, but not quite got over the line with an agent, and, importantly, where there is a clear market or personal need — I always discuss two alternatives. Option one is submitting directly to those independent and digital publishers that will take such submissions; and the second option is self-publishing. Many writers baulk at these options, and I want to examine that aversion, particularly to self-publishing, in this piece.

To many, these options feel like failure. And certainly they are much riskier financially, with little or no advances in the world of independent publishing, and in the case of self-publishing, money actually outlaid. But when the financial rewards are potentially so much higher, it’s clear that the aversion is more complex than that. Many of us are happy to take great financial risks, setting up our own businesses, investing in stocks and shares, buying houses in uncertain markets. So why aren’t we happy to invest in a book we have written and believe in?

As humans we have evolved to see inclusion (in the literal meaning of the word) as safety; we want to be part of the pack. Being published by a big publisher is a message saying that the pack accepts you. You are on the inside, safe. But not only that: it’s about status, again something we are highly attuned to as humans. A big publisher puts you near the top of the pack hierarchy, where you are even safer. So it’s no surprise that self-publishing can feel like a difficult, even dangerous way to go, especially if you’re a person who struggles with self-esteem or who looks to their writing as a source of self-worth.

For this and many other reasons, the authors I work with often opt for submission to indie and digital publishers as their next option. It still connotes a certain financial and social safety. And it can be a great path to publication, with the main benefit being the financial backing and expert help — though often it will be on a very frayed shoestring. Companies have to be rigorous about only backing the books that start selling, so you can quickly fall by the wayside. You have to accept a certain amount of compromise, taking these companies as they are. The people doing it are not in it to make a quick buck, they are often idealists, innovators, and don’t themselves fit within the mainstream. This can be invigorating or challenging, depending on who you are as a person. I did some work experience when I was just starting out in publishing, at Tindal Street Press, who were independently owned back then. It was two people in a room in Birmingham, full of passion for their work and committed to their authors, but stretched in every way. It brought home how minute an amount of time and resource each author must get. Doing some projects for a digital publisher in more recent years reminded me of this all over again. What is powering these places is pure passion rather than deep pockets of investment, and thus they are brilliant but volatile places to be partnered with. Of course there is a big range within the world of independent publishing, and some have been around for decades and do fantastically well — but they are the exception.*

But let’s consider the other way, the way with the most potential stigma: self-publishing. Many think of it as the last resort. I felt the power of that narrative myself when I was publishing bestsellers for Penguin Random House. But mainstream publishing gets it wrong all the time, because mainstream publishing is a few people in rooms mostly in London and New York, who even if from different backgrounds, soon become part of the hegemony. It is also built on an economic model that values uniformity of product over variety. Innovation may happen in the mechanisms of production and selling, but most publishers want their books to be similar to something else; and that occurs too in the literary sphere, where trends rule just as much as in commercial publishing. You have to be the right kind of literary.

My point here is that history is chock-full of examples of mainstream publishing getting it wrong. Assessing what the market wanted, only for that assumption to be proven false by the authors themselves. Consider the Brontë sisters, who self-published their first collection after they were roundly rejected. Or in the early years of my career E. L. James, whose Fifty Shades of Grey was originally published online as fan fiction before it became too successful for mainstream publishing to ignore. I remember the disapproval in London circles even as that deal was done, shakes of the head that such literature could be so popular. More recently there is LJ Ross, whose DCI Ryan novels were rejected by UK mainstream publishing and have now sold over 7 million copies via her own channels. I myself published a couple of authors who’d first self-published, and they were the better writers for it, independent thinkers and in touch with what their readers liked. The recent romantasy surge is largely self-published, lead by consumer desire not publisher predictions.

The fact is that a small number of people are never going to accurately predict what the masses want, especially when there is little interest or investment in finding that out. There’s a certain value for some people in exclusion.

It may help to think of self-publishing as simply a form of independent publishing. You get to make all the decisions, and you also get to take all the risks; but I frame that positively because taking the risks inherently means you have agency. The feeling of control over one’s destiny is so important to one’s psyche as creator. I work with many writers who feel out of control and disempowered in their relationship with their publisher, big and small. They often stay far too long, which is often related to that fear of losing status and inclusion. But self-publishing can mean huge profits, huge audience success, and a community that can feel much more inclusive than that of mainstream publishing. Finding those other people like you and creating bonds forged through shared experience can be so much more powerful and motivating than fighting it out for your publisher’s attention.

Successful self-publishing can and often does lead to an eventual deal in the mainstream publishing world. But unlike my historical examples where the happy ending is the author’s eventual inclusion and even triumph at reaching the top of the mainstream pack hierarchy, the story looks a little different now. There are a growing number of self-published authors who have become so successful that they are refusing publishing deals from major houses, or agreeing new deals with start-up publishers that allow them retain a good amount of the rights and profits. This is the part of the industry where great innovation is happening. When a company can break outside accepted financial models it can support authors who want to break outside the bounds of accepted creativity.

There is also a third option – a between-place – which is what I would do if I were to self-publish, and is indeed what many of the most successful self-published authors do, though it does require investment. That is to assemble a team of freelancers in whatever areas of expertise you lack, to create what is essentially a small indie publishing house of your own. For most people this looks like a cover designer, a copyeditor and a digital marketer. Maybe a publishing consultant who can advise on strategy. For some people it’s a publicity manager. There are now many freelancers and small companies out there offering these services, many of whom have been inside mainstream publishing but chosen another way. They have the same level of experience but unlike in-house professionals, they are contracted to work on your project to your specifications; not according to unknowable company priorities, but according to yours.

This article has run out of space to be an exhaustive account of how to self-publish, and that’s probably a good thing as I am not an expert in the nuts and bolts of it. But what I hope it has done is to make you question your own preconceptions of the different avenues to publication. If getting a book in people’s hands is your goal then you must do whatever you can to get it there. There is no one good way to be published. There is no sure route to success. So think about how you want to make the journey, and who you want to do it with.

Self-publishing resources:

First of all, I’d like to encourage any readers to post helpful links below; communally shared knowledge is what this place is all about!

Here are some Substack writers I’ve checked out who I think talk about self-publishing well – big thanks to them for sharing their knowledge:

How To Turn Your Draft Into A Self-Published Novel: The 101, by @EllenFrancesWrites, from the POV of an author who’s done it successfully

To Build a Book | Part One - Drafting your book, by @WinstonMalone – the first in a four-part series covering everything about putting out your own book, by a publisher and author. I am a big fan of this community-based Substack.

6 Steps to Self-Publish a Book: Leveraging AI is a MUST, by @BranKop – for the tech-curious amongst you

I wrote a novel and sent it to a load of agents, and all of them said no. Can you help me make it better so it gets represented?

The simple answer with almost no exception is: no, as horrible as that is to hear. But I want to go into why this is in the hope it elucidates some parts of the industry, as well as decoding some typical agent responses; and how you go about deciding what to do next.

When people ask me their version of this question, I always make more enquiries. First of all, whether they had done much work on the novel before sending it to their agent list. I.e. have they shown it to other people, and have they done a few rounds of edits? A surprising number of people haven’t shown their book to anyone, or maybe just to one person. Sadly, even though there may be a huge amount this person could do to their novel, it isn’t an option that is likely to result in a different answer, i.e. getting an agent. No agent who has rejected something is going to look at another version. A novel would need an entirely new plot and new characters; essentially to be a different novel with a new title in order to be resubmitted to the same agents. We all know how it feels to be asked to do something we’ve already said no to. Most of us have a kind of confirmation bias that prevents us from changing our minds (see all of politics). If the author in question is considering sending to different agents, then work could be done, but I’d always suggest first getting as many reads for free before even consulting a professional. See my articles about the importance of editing multiple times before submitting and how to go about this for free and for some money. The main lesson here is to make sure your first novel’s first outing is done with intention and full consideration, not hurriedly sent off in the dead of night after writing your last sentence.

Next I enquire how many agents have turned down the author’s novel. Occasionally they will have only sent it to one or two agents; in which case, there is time, and they may yet find representation. But my general rule is that if your novel has reached more than ten top agents, and they’re all saying no — even with helpful feedback — then it is extremely unlikely you’ll get them to change their minds. You may fare better with other agents, but you must consider whether your goal is only to get an agent, or whether it is to get a good one who will find you a good deal. Also whether the fact that ten of the best have turned it down means there is something missing in your novel. It comes down to what you want from publication: if you want your book to be read by more than a thousand people, or you are relying on it for income, then you need to be aiming for top tier agents and large or well-known publishers. Those are not the only worthy goals though, and I expand on that a little more below.

I also ask for detail about the agent feedback. If you’ve sent to twenty or thirty agents and received standard rejections, then your chances of a renaissance for this novel are practically zero. Sadly either your writing isn’t good enough, or your subject; or both. That doesn’t mean you can’t work on it and get another book published, but this is a good time to accept you need help. A writing course or joining a writing group is a good place to start.

If you’ve sent to twenty agents and had ten personal responses saying roughly the same thing then the likelihood is that that thing will prevent other agents from taking you on for this book. However, feedback is good! Something about your submission made an agent read your book, which means you’re one in a thousand, and you have the skills to be able to reach your goal.

All feedback isn’t equal though, and I will go over some different types of response to attempt to decode them for you:

Market-related feedback: if the majority of your feedback is that ‘X genre isn’t selling at the moment’, it’s important to accept that there is probably some truth in it, however annoying it might be. Mainstream publishing is exactly that; there’s a certain homogeny of taste, and a reluctance to stretch the bounds; there’s also a copycat mentality induced by the hold of the big book retailers and industry heads, who want a safe bet for next year’s budget. However you should also know this: any book, whatever genre it is, if blindingly brilliant, WILL sell. Publishing history is full of the resurgence of particular genres spearheaded by one particular book (The Miniaturist is the one in my own lifetime, for historical fiction). So if agents are telling you this then it says that yes, it might be hard for them to sell, but also that you probably still have some work to do other than simply finding a new genre. You need to make your book the one they can’t refuse.

List-related feedback, e.g. an agent says they already represent something similar. This is another fallback response that has both truth and kind-intentioned falsehood in it. Yes, it can be hard to represent someone writing books like yours for many reasons, from the personal — they might not want to have competition between their authors because it makes for ill feeling; to the practical — they don’t feel they can differentiate the pitches well enough to convince editors to buy both. However some agents specialise in a certain kind of book and do better because of it; editors know that when they send them a new romance it’s automatically going to be good. And again, this: if a book is overwhelmingly, indisputably brilliant then no agent will turn it down however similar other books on their list might be. Ergo, you still have work to do.

Manuscript-related feedback: if you are lucky enough to get notes on your book itself, (I promise, this is genuinely a lucky outcome, meaning they liked it and saw potential in the concept) then listen. If more than 3 or 4 agents say something specific about your book, e.g. it’s too long or the narrative would be better in third, then even if you disagree it’s worth exploring more. A professional like me might be able to delve into why this is so, and what you might do about it, having more time than an agent who is replying to you for free. This still isn’t likely to change the outcome for this book, unless an agent has specifically said ‘send me the manuscript when you’ve done this’, but you may well learn enough in the process to help you get your next book over the line.

Remember that having a novel rejected roundly doesn’t mean your novel wasn’t good. I see so many that are written well enough to get representation, with a hook that is compelling and unique, and yet they don’t get that representation I expect them to. We’ve all had that experience of reading a bestselling book and knowing we could do better; so why did that author’s book get represented and not mine? The truth is there is a good amount of luck involved in finding representation. It could be as personal as connecting with an agent who lost their father on the same day you sent them a book about grief; in some cases this could make your novel appealing to them, in others completely the opposite. Of course agents try to be objective, but in the end they need to want to work with you and on your book and to passion-pitch it to editors, so objectivity isn’t always a sensible objective. This is where being on-trend does help: if your book is borderline, an agent is more likely to take it on if they think this genre is on an upward curve.

Sometimes good is enough to get you past the post. Sometimes it isn’t. It really is that simple and that unfair.

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In the end it comes down to what you want. If this novel is your beating heart and you can’t bear to let it go, then keep going with it. We’ve all heard those unicorn stories where a novelist kept trying and finally found representation and then a six figure offer. If it still serves you to work on it for whatever reason, then who am I to tell you to stop. And of course this article presumes on a literary agent being the only route to publication, and I will talk a bit more about other possibilities in the following piece, including self-publishing and smaller publishers.

So don’t feel that this round of rejections is the end. It may be the end of this book, but it won’t be the end of you. Your book may well be good, just not written at the right time. Or it may be good, but still need more work. Or it may be good, but it has just fallen foul of luck. You may have more to learn. You always have more to learn.

Most importantly: this does not mean you have been rejected, or you aren’t good. This writing thing is just one part of you, and it doesn’t define your worth. But it is, perhaps, time for something new. And that new thing could be the making of you as a writer.

All of this is to say that I lost my iPad, and I’m not too sad about it. I went on holiday intending to write, then left the electronic device I use for said writing under a pillow in a hotel in the most unreachable part of the whole country. It’s now in the hands of a couple from the USA who have told the hotel manager they’ll post it to me when they get home. Perhaps. This is only one of the many, many disasters-that-aren’t-really-disasters that I’ve experienced on this trip and others like it. I forget to worry and so I forget things. To me it’s the sign of a trip gone well.

I am therefore drafting this piece on my iPhone; possibly the longest I have looked at its face this holiday. I exist in an ocean of serotonin. My body feels at home in the intense heat, sucking it up like the banded iguanas that creep behind me on the beach. The sun fuels and relaxes me in equal measure, and my depression of the past few months seems like a century ago. Sometimes I wonder if it is my deep ancestry speaking; a yearning for the African sun our species were born under. Our small cold country, though I love it, does not meet my body’s needs.

Intense heat has brought other revelations too. I participated in a Temezcal ceremony, which is essentially a pizza oven for humans. I can’t remember how I was persuaded to it, but it seemed like the thing to do. It’s meant to induce a psychological rebirth, or at least give your skin a good cleansing. As I lay there in a pool of sweat and eucalyptus water, foetal position, listening to the men panic (of six participants all three men bailed before the second session was up) my mind kept circling the book I’ve been working on for two years now. I realised it had become a worry, a mosquito bite to scratch compulsively rather than an act of creation with a purpose beyond finishing. It started two years ago after meeting someone on a trip to Scotland and became a book almost by accident, streaming out of me in early mornings before I started my freelance work. But the last twenty thousand words have stayed at a distance the last year. They’re there; I know them, but I haven’t been driven to write them down. In the Temezcal I knew it was time to let go, to let the bite heal, at least for now.

Nothing has been wasted though. I still wrote a book, though some of it remains in my head, and I am immensely proud of it. I learnt so much about the craft of novel writing: particularly the need to know a character inside out before getting them to do things, a lesson I explore more below. I also learnt about the need for an intrinsic driving force beyond completion and publication. Neither are strong enough for me — it must satisfy a psychological need deeper than my inner student and employee.

And there’s a new book circling. Something that feels fun. If it doesn’t turn into something publishable I’m ok with that too. It feels less autobiographical and more sophisticated. Perhaps more achievable. I wonder if you have ever left a novel behind? Did you mourn its loss? Did you come back to it? It’s my belief that it’s as important to know when to walk away as when to persevere, though our society mostly celebrates the latter. Writing must serve us, not enslave us, if we want it to retain its meaning beyond commercial gain.

***

My lack of planning stretches to my holiday reading choices too. Unlike most book lovers I don’t curate a careful list; instead I hold my breath and see what comes my way, reading by recommendation and happenstance. So here are some more books you won’t have heard of — yet:

CARMEN LYRA. I tried hard but in vain to find English editions of Costa Rican novels. There is not a huge literary canon to begin with, at least not an internationally recognised one, and even fewer women within that, though I know the talent will have been out there. I desperately wanted to read Carmen Lyra’s Los cuentos de mi tía Panchita, (Tales of my aunt Panchita), but it only seemed to be available in an expensive collection, and not in the country it was written. Lyra was an activist and writer of adult and children’s fiction and non-fiction from the 1910s to 1930s, instrumental in the vote for women and many other socially progressive movements. All I could find was an essay about the collection and the socio-politcal context she wrote in. This is on my list to explore when I’m home; perhaps there’s a way she can be rediscovered by an English-speaking audience.

WHEN THERE WAS FIRE. I did however find one contemporary literary novel by a Costa Rican author, John Manuel Arias, published in 2024 by Picador, and I loved it. A richly layered multi-generational family saga set over the last century that takes as its backdrop the history of the American Fruit Company’s exploitation of the country’s resources and its people. But this isn’t a tale of victimhood — the women of the Valverde family are the decided heroes of the story, and this really is a story about the indomitability and passion of its female characters as they navigate birth and death, love and loss, and the legacy of their history. Arias’ writing is gorgeous; elements of folklore and magical realism bringing to life the country of his birth. It got a decent write up at the time from the TLS but I suspect sold few copies. If you are a fan of historical literary fiction set in other places I strongly recommend buying a copy.

THE HOUSE IS ON FIRE. This discovery was pure holiday fate. Discovered on a table in my last hotel: an advance copy of a book that was published last year. And with the word ‘fire’ in it — the heat continuing to call to me. Well-thumbed and water damaged, I tried to imagine the author or editor or journalist who’d brought it here a year after it was published. Normally I’d steer clear of anything with too much hype, but the author blurbs promised pulse-pounding historical storytelling, and to my surprise I indeed found myself gripped. In fact I read the whole book in a day. Rachel Beanland’s novel tells the story of the first major man-made disaster in the USA, the Richmond Theatre Fire of 1811, through the eyes of some of the people who were there. Based on astonishing true stories, it centres around Cecily, an enslaved woman who seizes the fire as her chance for freedom. It sidesteps many of the tropes and tells a fresh story, while unashamedly keeping us on tenterhooks. I don’t think it was officially published in the UK, perhaps a sign of the weakening interest in historical fiction here, but it is available online. I left it back on the table for the next guest, a few more water stains on the pages, reminded of the power of certain books to seize the attention entirely.

THE COVENANT OF WATER. I clearly needed to balance my elements, and in due course came this recommendation from one of the many New Yorkers I met. Abraham Verghese is huge in the USA; not so big in the UK. I was very ready to try the sample and put it down, expecting to find it too simplistic. But what I discovered in his latest novel was a delightfully complex tapestry of a story spanning the last century in Kerala – coincidentally, the place I travelled to last year. It follows a disparate set of characters from a poor Glaswegian man who joins the Indian Medical Service to Baby Mol, a girl with Down’s syndrome who can tell the future, and matriarch Big Ammachi who presides over them all. Verghese’s characters are as fully fleshed as they come, due in part to his other career as a physician, and his medical knowledge adds an enlivening layer to his writing; from a breach birth to the reconstruction of a terribly burnt hand, never before have I appreciated the artistic potential of medical writing quite this much. What I appreciated the most about his storytelling though was his lack of sentimentality about his characters; he has great empathy, but each is shown to be acutely fallible, making terrible, unforgiveable mistakes, as we all do. An epic, gloriously peopled novel that draws on a lifetime’s wisdom, I urge you to give it a try.

What can we learn from these novels? For me it was a reminder about character. It’s been said a million times, but so often I see writers forget its importance, instead focussing on plot or setting or writing. Characterisation is the vital thread, the enervating influence. Character is what we take away, what binds us to a novel for life. Verghese’s novel is couched in simpler language than Arias’, yet it is his novel that stays with me longest, as though I have lived a hundred lives while reading it. Beanland’s novel has fewer POV characters and yet she doesn’t quite breathe life into them as Verghese does with his twenty or so. Each of them is given such fantastical traits that you’d scarcely believe in them — yet aren’t we all strange and fantastical creatures with thoughts and desires that would shock if they were seen? To really know a character, one must know how they came to be, which means knowing their history. This is a mistake I made in my novel: I didn’t know my characters well enough. I knew who they were now, but not how they’d become. Next time I intend to spend far more time talking to them about their lives before I start committing them to paper.

I leave Costa Rica with a sense of peace, a burnt left knee and a bag of whole cacao beans which I plan to crush and temper and press into chocolate with my nieces, who will undoubtedly get bored halfway through and continue only through pity for me. I return with the knowledge that I am out of my depression but the troubling realisation that it takes a planet-damaging flight to the sun to achieve it. I have left behind an old novel on an iPad I may never retrieve. But I am bringing home the idea for a new, and the yearning to do it. I want to grow things here; a life, and a writing community and a garden full of green things. So perhaps I do have some goals.

First let’s take a step back, and discuss what I mean by editing here, as I realise there’s often confusion about what an editor in my position does. In this case I mean structural or development editing — not copyediting or proofreading, which are much cheaper and easier to find; they are also fairly technical and thus easier to monitor and regulate. Hopefully this piece will help you navigate the Wild West of editing services and find someone you can trust, who will help you get your novel on its way to publication.

Structural or development editing looks at the major storytelling devices: narrative arc, plot, pacing, characterisation, scene structure, narrative POV, and how they all operate together. It may also contain some elements of stylistic feedback and look at the premise or concept itself.

The standard is to receive a written report covering all these elements. You may also receive your manuscript with comments on it illustrating the editor’s feedback. (It won’t be a line edit, which goes into each sentence of your novel honing the style. That’s generally the next step.) The point of such an edit is normally to get you on the route to submission — either to agents, or to publishers. But bear in mind that one round won’t be enough, and at least one subsequent read will be needed. This could be by the same editor, and should take less time, or you could ask someone else with fewer qualifications to feed back to you. In my opinion, most debuts take at least five rounds of edits before they’re ready for submission to agents. But as I said in my previous article, these do not necessarily have to be paid for.

The following options don’t replace the stages I mentioned in my previous article on the topic. The below are supplements, though they will undoubtedly give you a greater chance of finding an agent/publisher, if you pick wisely. It’s important to acknowledge that the chance remains statistically small: doing this step is not a guarantee of success.

Mid-range options: these all essentially involve paying one or two professionals to read and feed back on your book. Cost between £700 to £4000 depending on who they are, their experience, what level of detail you want them to go into, and the length and complexity of your book.

The upside of paying for an edit is you will hopefully get someone who is experienced at giving feedback — and crucially, the market context, i.e. what agents and publishing houses are looking for, who your competition is etc.

Where do you find these people? This is the tricky part, and it requires you to be part search engine operator and part industry detective. I’ve listed the three main routes below, roughly in order of price, low to high:

1. Specialist self-employed freelancers — the most opaque route. These are one-person businesses, much like your local plumber who gets all their work via word-of-mouth. The most successful are ex-corporate people like me who’ve set up their own businesses but know enough from the inside to be able to truly help you. I don’t want to give preferential treatment to anyone here, (though I am intending to set up a directory at some point), but most of them have websites or have their own businesses alongside being listed on one of the below-mentioned platforms. Much like the amazing local plumber, there’s often a waiting list, and you need to know the right people to find them.

Tips:

• If you are part of any online writing communities, ask them for recommendations.

• Linkedin is good for finding people who’ve had a corporate career. Search ‘freelance editor’ alongside the name of a publishing house you know, and you’ll find those who’ve had the kind of experience you’re looking for.

• Look for a CV that includes at least three years working in editorial, at a publishing house that you can look up, with a list of published authors.

• If you’re still not sure, look up the books they’ve worked on and see if they have reviews in recognisable publications e.g. national broadsheet or magazine culture pages. Another way of checking their credentials is to look at the books they say they’ve worked on and see if they’re name-checked by the author in the acknowledgments.

• Do due diligence — once you’ve whittled down your options, ask them some questions. You are absolutely able to ask people for more detail on their CV, and to see a sample of their work. I always do a call with people for free, prior to contracting with them, to give us both the chance to ask questions and suss each other out.

2. Specialist editing platforms. Much like Airbnb, these platforms seek to connect someone who provides a service with someone who wants it, and take a cut from the provider. I have decided not to recommend any platforms by name here, instead trying to help you navigate them, but if you search ‘find editor for my book’ you’ll see them. Don’t look at generalist freelancer sites — you want a platform specific to book publishing.

Tips:

• As with option 1, I suggest choosing people who have at some point been employed by one of the big publishers, and analysing their CV in the same way.

• As with all platforms, those who satisfy the algorithms best will turn up at the top, but that doesn’t mean they’re the best for you. Just be aware of this fact as you search and consult my list of questions below.

3. Publishing agencies — sometimes called ‘publishing consultants,’ sometimes simply billing themselves as publishers, these places essentially do any part of the publishing process for a price — including editing. The editors they employ are more like temporary staff, working from project to project. Again, they’re easily searchable online and mostly employ ex-corporate people.

4. Writing school or course. These have proliferated in recent years, and have become in many ways a stand-in for an agent, or perhaps a pre-agent agent. While they are best known for their writing courses, many offer shorter courses, manuscript reports, or mentoring options. If you want to get a finished novel really finished, i.e. submittable, this is the closest to some form of guarantee one can get. The biggest names stand as a mark of quality. Note: this is very specific to the UK.

Tips:

• Again, a basic google search will bring up the main ones. As there is little competition in this area, and I want to help you avoid getting conned by some of the pretenders, I have decided to list them here: Faber Academy, Curtis Brown Creative, The Novelry. Each is aimed towards a slightly different market.

• Look for a list of published alumni. Even better, look to see how many books those alumni had published after the first book.

• Look at which tutors are on your specific course of interest. One brilliant tutor is often what it takes to lift a course from good to excellent.

• If you’re looking at a course rather than a manuscript report or one-to-one mentoring, look at exactly what you will learn. Each course is very different.

How to choose between these options? Ask yourself these questions:

What stage are you at with the novel? Have you just finished a first draft, or have you redrafted many times? Do you need to know if the concept works before moving onto more in-depth narrative work? Are you happy with your story but you don’t know what genre it is or how you’d pitch it? Do you need general writing lessons, or do you want something more specific to your book?

If you had to write down one thing you most want from the service you commission, what would it be? Is it confidence? Industry perspective? A writing community? Contacts? Genre-specific advice?

What learning style suits you? Think back to times you’ve learnt well / achieved goals. Was it self-motivated, or did it require someone supporting or pushing you? Does it help you to be able to learn with others, or do you prefer solo work? When will you be able to fit in the work you’ll need to do?

What are you most scared of? This is always worth asking yourself, and it may be the opposite of your answer to the above. If what you’re scared of is lots of people reading your work and feeding back, then I want to challenge you to consider a course with others. If you’re most scared of a ‘proper’ industry person reading your book, then I challenge you to go for one-to-one mentoring. Often what we most need is what we’re most scared of.

Whatever you choose, know that it may be difficult, challenging your view of your novel and even yourself. Know that if it does, you are on your way to being an author!

NB. I live in fear of people taking my word as gospel! If you know of other great alternatives, I would love you to post them below as a resource for other writers.

Did you know that if we split up all the land in the UK there’d be enough for half an acre each? Okay, the land isn’t all technically farmable, but still this fact conjures in my mind a misty-eyed vision of a different country, so near and yet so far from our grasp. An expansive, rolling allotment-country where my neighbour gives me freshly laid eggs in exchange for my winter kale and each helps the other through drought and flood. It’s a thought that has followed me this year as I balance out the interior, inevitably commercial nature of my editing job with voluntary work on a local organic farm. I type today with fingernails steeped in Somerset clay.

Apple Acre. The words leapt out at me as I browsed the bookshelves in a local charity shop in that sedate moment between Christmas and New Year. The cover showed an abstract apple tree, and opening the fly leaf I saw it was first published in 1942, with the edition I held in ‘64, and it was written by an author called Adrian Bell. It was an account of a year he spent living on an acre in a small Suffolk village ‘so small you would hardly notice it’, during the latter half of the Second World War.

What delight there is in this mode of discovery, unprompted by PR or marketing, un-influenced by social media or Goodreads reviews. A book that sold me on its title and cover, that delivered into my hands the exact words I wanted to read over the holiday and into January, when the apple trees in my own village are blessed during the wassail, and the days lighten towards a slowly beckoning spring. A cosmic alignment of my searching and the world’s providence. It cost £2.99.

We take a risk when we buy such a book. Who knows whether it will give us what we want. But consider this: it has survived, loved, for sixty years. It was reprinted with illustrations for the edition I hold. It won’t disappoint.

The foreword reads just like the accounts of people looking back on that first summer of Covid — at least those who escaped illness — when life was stripped back and the sun always shone. ‘Life was a narrow round of days,’ Bell writes twenty years after the events told, ‘but looking back on them and the straightforward tasks of farming and rearing a young family…I think that, but for the war, they could have been the happiest days of my life.’

Everywhere we look these days we see signs of our tendency towards complication. Technology promising simplicity and tugging us ever further away. My own experience working on the land testifies to the great and absorbing pleasure of practical, useful work that can be seen and eaten. It contrasts with my current editorial work, yes; but my life as a publisher cannot even be measured on the same scale. Yet it seems that this feeling is not exclusive to our current decade or century even. In 1964 Bell was looking back longingly to a past where horses and bikes were the primary mode of transport, and the world was made up of a few square miles but incorporated everything he needed.

Reading his words transports you back to such a world. The war rarely surfaces. Instead, the small trials of winter frost and wet springs. The triumphs of harvest and the joys of a Christmas where the village doctor dresses up and drives a cart with a horse with antlers tied to its head through the village square and the children sing by a great tree, and ‘something lovely that lived in this land raised its head.’ It is an ode to the English countryside, without aggrandization, mud and damp featuring as much as sunrise and nightingale. It is testament to the grounding nature of outdoor work that I recognise myself, the original mindfulness that most of us have lost, where all aspiration is to ‘live in the moment of tilth and green’. Bell’s children feature as well as the land, their enjoyable small trials and tribulations; Anthea, whose best day ever, her fourth birthday, cannot be overshadowed even by one of the worst days of the war. A whole chapter is given to the transportation of chickens, who must be got home with only two bicycles and a cat carrier.

The chapters circle as the mind has a tendency to, as though Bell is telling from memory, aloud. They weave his thoughts on agriculture, literature, history, animal husbandry and society. Flights of fancy trail into observations on winter beet. Field philosophy as its finest. When I read the foreword again I see that Bell was part of a group championing organic growing back in the 40s, though for them it seems to have a much deeper meaning. As with all language, we have commercialised the term, so that is means a very specific, certifiable mode of farming. To Bell and his contemporaries, it meant a more holistic approach that is embodied by the small stories he tells of country life. A common way of being, in the world and on the land, that fosters what our soul truly seeks: community, meaning, belonging.

Cyclical too are our reading habits, it seems. In times of difficulty we look towards nature. In my own time of difficulty in 2020 I read only books about people doing very long walks. I often think there are only about nineteen books out there, nineteen genres, and we discover them anew about every decade. The repetition is part of the healing. Bell writes into a tradition that’s existed since cities began, since Hardy wrote Jude, and continues to this day, with writers like James Rebanks and Raynor Winn. It will doubtless continue, just as we continue to use up the earth ill-advisedly.

Part of me wants to play the cynical reviewer, probe Bell’s motivations in writing this story, his privilege as an outsider coming into the community he writes about, whether the misty eyes are in fact clouded — but that is the beauty of a book discovered in this fashion, in a charity shop, sixty years after it was written, on a cold winter’s day. I can put aside all the noise and take away from it what I will, weigh the words for themselves.

The very last thing I do as I write this article is to look up the book and the author. I refuse to read too much and destroy the charm of my discovery, but I can see that he was a journalist and ‘ruralist’ as well as writer of a few similar books. Some are still in print, and I will seek them out. I hope you might too.