Reasons to be cheerful
All of my creative energy is now being completely sapped by book 4, so all I have left for you here is a diary of sorts, on my mindset, and my progress. I’ve just about finished an absolute belter of a chapter, nearly ten thousand words, which has taken me several weeks. I read a good quote from Beth Nielsen Chapman about half way through the process:
“All songs are already perfectly written. It is the writer’s job to find it and get it on paper.”
That is how writing feels for me, it’s as if I know that, somewhere out there in the ether, or perhaps the future? there is a perfect chapter on this topic, and I just have to find it and bring it safely onto the page. A bit like the childbirth quote that ‘a woman in labour travels to the stars to collect her baby’. It’s not even as neat as childbirth, though, writing! With this latest chapter, I know I haven’t quite got it yet. Even though I sent it to my editor yesterday, I didn’t feel satisfied, and I woke up this morning with thoughts in my mind of points that I may have missed. Sometimes it feels like the conclusion to the chapter, those last couple of paragraphs, are everything, and if you don’t get them right, you kind of undo any good work you may have done in the middle. So there’s still work to do I think.
As those of you who have read my last few posts know, I’ve been struggling a bit, in particular with some crap occurring with The Positive Birth Book which has led to it not being available anywhere (except Amazon print on demand), amongst other things. Through this I’ve learned a lot about publishing contracts and how much you are signing your life’s work over into the hands, safe or otherwise, of someone else. During some of my darker moments over the last couple of years, I’ve occasionally looked at my books on the shelf and thought, “Well at least they can never take that away from me”. But of course, that was slightly naive, because they absolutely can!
All of this was creating a sense of pointlessness in me about writing books, which was affecting my motivation. Something shifted, though, when I tried to use that sense of pointlessness to my own ends (yes I am the Queen of Reframing!). Basically I just thought to myself: “Fuck It. I am not going to try and write what other people want me to say. I am not going to try and write a book that ‘sells’. I am not going to try not to offend anyone, or even try to prevent people from thinking I am bonkers. All of that is in the lap of the gods anyway, so Fuck It.”. And that has been quite liberating, allowing me to be more creative in my writing, and generally having the feeling of dancing by myself at a party and not caring what anyone thinks.
Thoughts and conversations about the ‘author experience’ continue, with the overwhelming feeling that something needs to change. A recent conversation in another author group about ‘foreign rights’ made me realise that it’s not just me who is thinking all these things. So many authors are not being given any information about the sales of their book once it has been translated. Everything is chaotic. Some people are told, ‘great news, your book is going to be translated into Spanish!’, and then they never hear anything else, or they get £1k or £2k for the rights, and then never hear anything else, or they get sent a copy of the translated book, but then never get another sales statement or another penny. Somehow they are expected to trust that this simply means literally nobody in Spain was remotely interested in their book, and not that their royalty statement has slipped down the side of someone’s desk in Barcelona, or worse still, that someone is sipping cocktails on the Costa del Sol at their expense.
This week a parcel arrived with a single copy of My Period in simplified Chinese. I had been told that it was going to be translated into Chinese (and Polish) over a year ago, and heard nothing since. Recently I emailed the publishers (twice) to ask if there was any news on these two translations. They did not reply, but then the parcel arrived - which I have to assume was not a co-incidence?! Who knows! And who are the publishers in China, and what does this mean for me etc? And what about the Polish version? Again, no idea! It made me happy though, to receive it and see my creation in such a very different language!
I now have just over a month to finish the first draft of ‘book 4’, which I do wish I could tell you more about! News soon I hope. I don’t think I’m going to make the deadline to be honest! I’ve still got about 30k words to write, and it’s taken me since September to do 45k. Shit. Oh well. Watch this space, but again, forgive me if I don’t create anything more here than just updates and shouts into the void for the next few weeks!
Love for now, and thank you all for subscribing and sticking with me on the rollercoaster! I’ll leave you with one of the perfectly written songs Chapman found and got on paper, Milli x
Oh and ps, I’m also trying to use tiktok a little more…come and find me (or send your offspring my way!)
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Absolutely! Write what YOU want - it’s your book - as I read yesterday about Annie Ernaux, she said of writing “...if it’s not a risk...it’s not worth writing...” - fabulous woman who won a Nobel Prize in Literature - https://www.theguardian.com/books/2023/may/21/annie-ernaux-french-writer-nobel-prize-literature?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other
You have discovered the secret to great writing Milli. I believe if I write from the passion in my innermost being, it will send a message that others will hear. Being true to yourself will resonate with your readership so much better than you trying to guess what you are supposed to believe.