This weeks Dear Unpublished Me post comes to you from the author of Wishbones, Virginia Macgregor! Here is a little bit about the woman behind the dust jacket,
"I was brought up in Germany, France and England by a mother who never stopped telling stories. From the moment I was old enough to hold a pen, I set about writing my own, often late into the night – or behind my Maths textbook at school. My maiden name is Virginia Woods: I was named after two great women, Virginia Wade and Virginia Woolf, in the hope I would be a writer and a tennis star. My early years were those of a scribbling, rain-loving child who prayed for lightning to strike my tennis coach."
Concord, New Hampshire, September 2017
Dear Virginia,
As you start out on
this journey, promise me that you’ll do this: celebrate the small steps along
the way, not just the big, successful moments or the final destination. Because
looking back, I’ve learnt this: it’s in the process of getting to where you
want to be that the real magic happens.
You don’t know it yet,
but each step is an amazing achievement – and an amazing experience. It’s
what’s making you into the writer you’re meant to be.
So, first of all, I
want you to celebrate making a bold commitment to becoming a published writer. I
know that you’re feeling pretty nervous about the whole thing and that you’re
asking yourself lots of questions like: What will it be like not having a
proper, respectable, well paid job for a year? Will you have enough money to
live on? What if you find out that you’re not that good at writing after all?
What happens if you don’t get an agent or a publishing deal and have to go back
to your day job with your tail between your legs with everyone knowing that you
haven’t made it? How will you be able to face the people who doubted your
decision? Throwing yourself off the edge without knowing what lies beneath is an
act of great courage and creativity. So, take a deep breath and say: well done,
you’ve done something amazing just by carving out this time to do what you love
most in the world – writing.
Next, I want you to
celebrate the fact that you’re writing every day, even when you don’t feel like
it, even when you don’t feel inspired, even if you’re not sure where your story
is going or whether anyone’s ever going to read it. The fact that you’re
putting in the hours, that you’re sitting on that chair and writing those
words, come rain or shine, shows that you mean business, that writing matters
to you and that you are committed to developing your craft. That’s what it
takes to be a good writer and it’s especially impressive when no one is
watching and you don’t have a deadline or a publishing deal or readers waiting
for your next book.
Here’s something else
I’ve learnt: although you might think that not having a publishing deal or a
deadline or readers waiting for your next book sucks, it’s actually the most
awesome kind of freedom: you’ve got a blank canvas, you can write what you want
and how you want and that probably means you’ll write more naturally and less
self-consciously and with less restraint than at any other point in your
career.
Next, I want you to
celebrate putting your work out there for an agent to look at. Well done for
going to the agent’s party even though you didn’t much feel like it and well
done for going up to lots of agents and pitching the YA novel you’ve written
even though you feel like you’re the worst salesperson in the world. Agents are
scary: they’re the gatekeepers to the publishing world and so to your dreams of
being a published writer. Putting yourself out there, knowing that you might be
rejected – or, more likely, ignored – is hard and shows courage. Doing it again
and again shows resilience and it shows how much you care about sharing your
stories with the world. If some agents don’t respond well, don’t give up. If
you’ve worked and reworked and reworked your story and if you believe that it’s
a story that others will enjoy and if you believe you’ve given it your best,
then have faith that someone will see that too. And remember that agents are
human beings with different tastes and perspectives and that what leaves one
agent cold will keep another reading all night. Keep going until you find that
agent that stays up all night reading and that emails you at midnight to say
how much they love your story.
Next, I want you to
celebrate choosing an agent who you know will accompany you through your
writing life – and for being humble enough to take on their feedback. You have
to be pretty strong to hear someone picking apart what you love and telling you
how to make it better, but knowing that that person wants what you want – to
bring your story to the world and to make it the best that it can be – should
help you realise that the constructive criticism is a gift, one that will help
you grow and become a better storyteller. And make sure you celebrate having
finished the edits and having the manuscript ready to go out to publishers.
And now, I want you to celebrate the fact that you found the strength not to
lose hope as you waited to hear from publishers. No one tells you that this is the
hardest bit: that after you’ve written the novel and after you’ve got an agent
and after you’ve revised it into an inch of its life, you’ll have weeks and
maybe months waiting for publishers to get back to your agent. And that waiting
time is hard because you’ll be asking yourself a million questions:
Who’s reading my
story? Is it even making it to the top of the pile and being read? Is an editor
out there enjoying my story are they tossing it aside? If an editor has taken a
shine to your story, are they sharing it with the rest of the team in the
publishing house and how are those people responding? Do they get what’s
special about your novel or is the editor who likes it on their own? All of
this, is hard to sit with, day after day, night after night, never knowing
whether any of it will come to anything. You’ll look at your phone and inbox
and snail mail post-box a million items each day, waiting for news and it will
be agony. But remember to celebrate this time too: how magical to think that
your story is landing on editors’ desks – and that out there, there’s someone
who might just fall in love with it.
And then celebrate
when the waiting stops – when you get that amazing phone call. An editor likes
your story. An editor wants to invite you in to talk to you about the vision
for your novel. Enjoy that feeling. Enjoy going into the publishing house.
Enjoy feeling, for a second, like a real writer. Enjoy dreaming big and getting
a vision of your book propped up in the front window of every bookshop in the
world – because we all need to do that sometimes, to hope and dream and you’re
allowed to do that, it’s okay. And when that editor shows interest, it’s normal
to have your hopes rocketing to the sky.
But celebrate this
too: that you don’t give up when that dream comes crashing to the ground. When you
get a phone call from your agent to say that the editor wasn’t able to get your
novel through sales and marketing meeting. That your novel fell at the last
hurdle. That someone decided it might not make enough money and so pulled the
plug.
You could have given
up then. You could have gone back to the day job. You could have seen it as a
sign that no matter how much you give and how far you get, it’s not good enough
and so not worth the time and the energy and the heartache.
But you didn’t do
that, did you?
You put the YA
manuscript aside and you started writing another story. A story that you really
wanted to tell. A very different story. Because, regardless of what happens,
you know this: you’re a writer. You’re made to put words on paper and to tell
stories and no one can ever stop you doing that. Celebrate this with all your
heart and never lose sight of it. That you can always keep writing. That you must
always keep writing. Because it’s who you are and so it’s what you do.
Because that story,
the one you write in the aftermath of rejection and disappointment, is the one
that another publisher will fall in love with. An adult publisher who will take
your writing in a different direction from the one that you thought it would go
in, but that direction turns out to be a wonderful one, one in which you find
your voice and your confidence and your joy as a writer.
And celebrate the fact that even though you’ve now got a two-book publishing
deal with a publisher of adult fiction, you never lose sight of that dream you
first had of writing books for young adults. That you keep writing down story
ideas and filling notebooks until, when there’s a lull between books, you
decide to write it, a new YA book, a better one than you wrote a first – one
that reflects the more mature writer that you are now, one who’s gone through
the rollercoaster of writing and editing and rejection and publication. Because
as it turns out, maybe you needed to wait a bit to write the YA story you were
meant to write; maybe you were meant to write a few other books first. And as
it turns out, several publishing houses wanted your ne YA novel and you got to
choose who go with – and now you have even more than you could ever have dreamt
of: you write for adults and young adults. And you’d never had had that if you
hadn’t experienced that first rejection.
So, to my younger,
unpublished self, I would say this: remember to celebrate every step of the
way, every small achievement. Bake a cake. Raise a glass. Do a little jig
around your writing room. Pat yourself on the back. Celebrate every small
achievement and remember that the greatest achievement of all is this: that
you’re a writer, that you’ll always keep looking for new ideas and characters
and stories – that you’ll always, always, keep writing – and that doing this,
regardless of what happens afterwards, is the most magical way to live.
Lots of love,
Your older, published self – who, by the way, is still riddled with self-doubt
and filled with dreams and hopes and who has to keep reminding herself that
it’s the process that matters, it’s the writing every day that matters – that
the magic lies in the journey.
Virginia x
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Publication Date: May 23rd 2017
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Summary
Feather Tucker has two wishes:
1)To get her mum healthy again
2) To win the Junior UK swimming championships
When Feather comes home on New Year’s Eve to find her mother – one of Britain’s most obese women- in a diabetic coma, she realises something has to be done to save her mum’s life. But when her Mum refuses to co-operate Feather realises that the problem run deeper than just her mum’s unhealthy appetite.
Over time, Feather’s mission to help her Mum becomes an investigation. With the help of friends old and new, and the hindrance of runaway pet goat Houdini, Feather’s starting to uncover when her mum’s life began to spiral out of control and why. But can Feather fix it in time for her mum to watch her swim to victory? And can she save her family for good?
