Fall Down Seven Times, Stand Up Eight

How long does it take to write a book? One of my favourite sayings is: fall down seven times, stand up eight. I've written constantly but with varying amounts of time to devote to it since I joined a writers group in 1998 — we used to meet in the basement of a book store on the Fulham Road after work, and it was then I started writing the first novel, getting up an hour before work to pound away on a green screen computer with the keyboard balanced on my boyfriend's sock drawer. Tip number one: 200,000+ words is a tad long for a first novel. But it was enough to interest a great agent. Tip number two: finish the novel but then write something new. I spent the good part of ten years tweaking this much loved book when we sold up in London for the pilot to follow his dream of flying, and in Valencia I started to teach myself to write properly and did work for people like Traveller and Condé Nast.

As the babies came, I worked full time running a business and we moved back to the UK. I thought I had given up writing during this time (frankly the whole early motherhood years are a bit of a blur) — but I found an old notebook the other day and was amazed that it didn't stop. Yes, it was way on the back burner, bubbling away, but it was still writing. Around 2005 I picked up the manuscript again when the babies were asleep and the pilot was away, and began rewriting it. By 2007 I used a small inheritance from my Great Aunt Rose to hire an editor, and employ a babysitter two mornings a week for the summer. The babysitter memorably managed to paint three children and my Afghan Hound blue one day, and I wrote another book.

So you stand up again. In 2009 I started a long distance MA in creative writing and my memoir (all those long, quiet days in Devon came good), was chosen for ITV's People's Author. Then hundreds of pilots were made redundant. Had I won the competition, it would have bought some time in the UK — I'm not ashamed to say I walked to the tube from TV Centre with tears rolling down my cheeks because that was the point I realised it was over and we were on the way to the Middle East, the only place recruiting pilots. I loved our life in England, and I loved writing, and neither had worked out.

So, rejection, heartbreak … give up? Stand up again. I finished writing ‘The Beauty Chorus’. The night before I moved out to the Middle East with the children in March 2010, my lovely agent rang with the news of a publishing deal. 2011 the debut came out, and in 2012 ‘The Perfume Garden’, (which to date has sold in nine territories). Then the entire publishing team left.

Stand up. That year both our fathers died within the space of five months. What can you do but write out the grief, and Stand Up. 2013, I wrote another book, out of contract, which was published in Germany as ‘Das Sonntagsmädchen’ and the US as ‘The House of Dreams’.

2014, ‘The Perfume Garden’ was shortlisted for Romantic Novel of the Year, and was a bestseller internationally. I’ve published regularly since. Is that lucky or easy? No. But I still think it’s the best job in the world. From talking to other writers, many of them have unpublished book(s) tucked away that never saw the light of day, but taught them how to write. Many of us hoped they would be published and went through submissions that went nowhere. How long did it take to become a writer? Are you one when you first pick up a pen and craft a story, or when someone pays you for what you've written? Or perhaps when you don't give up and just keep writing.

A question you often get asked at talks is: how long does it take to write a book? (Children also invariably ask if you get paid to do this, and are most impressed by the sight of ratty old folders full of handwriting — ‘you wrote all that??’) It depends where you begin — from the start of the first draft, or the spark of the first idea and all the years of reading (if so, for example — ‘The Perfume Garden’ took ten years of notes and reading and thinking, but only a year of writing). Who knows, does it matter? Loving life, and family matter more, and books are — I think — like babies. They come when they are ready, not you, and you just have to prepare the ground and do the work to be ready for them. Be ready, pay attention, listen. Simple.

Perhaps there is a career writer out there who hasn't been blocked, rejected, written still born books or deleted thousands of words from a work in progress because somewhere along the line they took the wrong path, but I haven't met them yet. A finished book looks entire, perfect, like an immaculate conception — but its birth takes love and sheer hard work. You get to work with amazing editors, copy editors, proof readers, agents, publicists and publishers who are invested in making your work the best it can be. A book is a team effort, a story that has been on a long journey from the first glimmer in the writer's mind.

It may not be easy (when is anything worthwhile), but I am lucky. It still feels new — with nine books out in the world, it feels like I'm just beginning, and being a published novelist that people pay to read still feels like a privilege. I hope that never stops. For me, I just want to make each book better than the last. And when the view from the desk looks this good, it doesn't really matter where you work, East or West. Happy writing.