Five years on

I wrote this in April 2022, reflecting on my breakthrough book.

In April 2017, I travelled to York by train to meet my editor, have dinner, and then launch 'Lost For Words'. I had written my novel, about a young woman who only feels safe in the second-hand bookshop where she works, out of contract - that is, no publisher was waiting for it, and it went out to editors as a full manuscript. It had sold at auction, just over a year before.

After the launch, my editor said to me: 'with most books, you know within six weeks how it's going to do. With Loveday it's going to be six months, because readers and word of mouth are going to be the forces behind this book.'

I have to admit, I felt a bit deflated. 'Lost For Words' was my third published novel and my fifth published book. My previous novels had found small, admiring audiences. Which I wasn't knocking. But I knew that, long-term, my heart and my career were in my writing. I wanted a great big sign from the universe that I was on the right path. I wanted a large, admiring audience, and I wanted it NOW.

Or that's what I thought.

What's happened since has been a different kind of success. Slowly, gradually, the Loveday love built, just as my editor said it would. Thanks to my tireless agent and his team, translation rights sold in auctions in the US and Germany, and to publishers in France, Spain, Portugal, China, Italy, and Sweden. In the UK, there was a reprint, and another, and another. I talked with reading groups, and did events at bookshops, and spoke on panels at festivals. I replied to emails and messages from readers who told me personal stories of loss, of leaving care, of the book that saved them.

And - this is important, too, in a writing career - 'Lost For Words' made money. It earned out and it keeps earning.

'Lost For Words' changed my life. It changed it quietly, over time. It meant that readers were waiting for 'The Curious Heart Of Ailsa Rae' and that when I pitched a feminist novel about photography to my editor, she listened. It meant my two previous novels found new readerships. It made me think of myself as a writer.

Why am I telling you this?

Well, partly because it's what's on my mind today. My phone keeps reminding me what I was doing 5 years ago, and it was mostly grinning in front of big displays of my novel in bookshops up and down the country.

But mostly I'm telling you this because this change in my life and identity - culminating in my becoming a full-time writer - didn't have a single moment. It had a lot of tiny moments: of progress, of exploration, of trying things out. Of leaning in to my desire to learn my craft, and moving away from the temptation to envy Sunday Times instant bestsellers.

Like writing, becoming a writer has been a day-by-day thing.

Words on a Post-it; ten minutes of getting an idea down before work; a paragraph rewritten before you go to bed. These are the things that matter. They don't feel like much at the time, but they add up.

Keep going.