Greetings .... echo echo echo. Is anyone out there?
It's been nearly a year since I posted here. What happened? It just seemed like yesterday that I was writing about burning food and now it's April 2023. Not that you could tell by the weather outside my window. How is it that I am still wearing my puffer jacket and scarf in LATE APRIL? The UK weather has never been known for glory but COME ON. Spring has far from sprung.
I really have become a Brit. This post was not supposed to be about the weather.
In May 2019, I posted that I was going on a blog hiatus because I wanted to focus on finishing my children's book. I didn't quite stick to it, posting sporadically during lockdown (how could I not write about toilet paper) but since 2020, the posts have been...non existent.
But guess what? I did it. I finished the book!
By that I don't mean you can now go to Foyles and buy it. I mean that I finished it to a standard whereby I felt it was ready to submit to literary agents in hope they would like it enough to offer to represent me.
The book went out on submission in March 2021 briefly. It wasn't quite ready so I did more work on it and sent it out again in July 2022. By that time I had been working on this idea since 2016. If that makes you feel tired, you're not wrong. To keep me sane, I wrote other things alongside this book. I wrote adult short fiction. I wrote parts of a memoir. I wrote articles. I wrote a second kids book draft in five months, to prove to myself I could. I moaned to other writers. They moaned to me. I helped facilitate three writer's feedback groups. I had work published in anthologies and undertook paid commissions. I completed development schemes on narrative non- fiction, children's literature, memoir and short fiction. I kept writing going in my life in whatever way I could.
The thing is, most first book attempts are discarded. They are literary roadkill on your path to becoming a better author. You make all your mistakes on your first book. You learn. You improve. You move on. I tried to kill my first book many times before it killed me but I could not give up on it. The main character would not leave me. I felt an irrevocable responsibility to bring her to life.
She is why I finished the book to this stage, despite it being the hardest thing I have done to date.*
Once the book was out on submission to agents, some good things happened. I was offered agent representation and won a literary award for under represented children's writers and illustrators. This attention meant I got a few more offers of representation from other agents.
It was a surreal whirlwind after years of plugging away. I tried to relish the moment but in truth, it felt like an out of body experience.
Which brings us to current times. I now have a literary agent. Together we did a wee bit more work on the book before sending it out on submission (yes, it's the s word again) to publishers.
Getting to this stage has been a long, brutal labour of love. And it's far from over (I hope)
Watch this space!
*Yup, harder than parenthood so far.
