Jenni Clarke's Blogcast Podcast

BECOMING AN AUTHOR

Some people live and let go and others look back and analyse, question, and search for deeper meanings. I am the latter and I wonder how many other authors are the same, forever asking why and what if? What if I had started writing when I was younger? What if I had persisted when a publisher rejected my stories? What if’s can be a spiral into black despair so I no longer go there, but I will analyse my journey.

‘I can’t’ has been my constant companion since childhood. Why? Maybe being the youngest of three girls, always wanting to do what my sisters could, and failing. However hard I tried, my knowledge, understanding, and skills were never as good as theirs. I was painfully shy and always worried about doing or saying the wrong thing. Was this where my desire to be perfect came from too? Such an impossible task for a young child so I retreated into stories. My imagination was my best friend, my comfort zone, my safe place.

Written down this feels sad, but it wasn’t. I had a wonderful childhood full of magic and adventure in a loving family. Every night my mother would read us a story and I would continue the tale in my head as I drifted off to sleep.

‘The Folk of the Faraway Tree’ by Enid Blyton was one of these. I loved to imagine a new land arriving and being able to explore it. I was world building even then, and if I fell asleep before the story ended, I clung tight to where I was in my adventure and continued it the next night. This may be why I can think about a story problem and remember my ideas the next morning. A blessing, as many writers lament the loss of a great almost-asleep idea.

Other stories such as Narnia and The Hobbit wove their essence into my life. I took an invisible Aslan to school with me when we moved to a new town. He shrunk and sat under my table, protecting me from the strangeness of a new environment. I dreamt of dragons and wrote stories of fantastic adventures.

I applied to read ‘English’ at Loughborough university (there were no creative writing courses then) and was devastated when I didn’t get the grades I needed. I remember tears pouring down my face but no sobbing, it was as if my soul was melting.

I liked being with children and became a teacher. This turned out to be a great profession for story creating.

The desire to be an author faded into the background as I married and enjoyed my own children’s imaginations. It was still there, but children and work absorbed me. Life flew past at a blur, whirling around until the stress was too much and we stepped off the well-paid career ladder and moved to a quiet corner of France.

Immersion in the beauty of waterfalls, forests, lakes, and mountains and the gentle quiet of a simple family life, nourished my neglected imagination and the desire blossomed into a need. Once more pushed aside with ‘I can’t’ as I helped my husband renovate the old building into our home, home-schooled my sons under the negative scrutiny of two French women, and tried to keep up with the social events in the village.

Then one of my sons found the Myers-Briggs Personality type test while researching for a project and my perception of me flipped.

I was an introvert and sensitive to other’s emotions. I was not an alien. It was like permission to be me, and I started to write.

Pleased with my story I posted the first few chapters for others to see. The pain of an honest comment sent me scurrying back to ‘I can’t’ for a few days until the value of the comment sunk in and I stepped onto the path of writing enlightenment at long last.

It’s not been an easy path, with it’s potholes of ‘imposter syndrome,’ mountains of ‘Yes I understand, oh no, there is a higher range of knowledge beyond,’ swamps of ‘I’m wasting my time,’ switchbacks of ‘unlearning bad habits’, and ponds of ‘putting an idea aside.’

I attended a writer’s festival and allowed agents to look at two of my stories. Mixed messages left me wallowing in ‘I’m not good enough to be an author.’ I tried rewriting but my heart wasn’t in it. I needed to learn more. Online courses, podcasts, webinars, and blogs absorbed my time and my brain ached with extra synapses and my shelves groaned with filled notebooks.

Then someone mentioned NaNoWriMo. My supressed imagination erupted into several first drafts of varying lengths. Messy, no chapters, terrible spelling, lots of telling and ‘Name A’ and ‘Describe this more’ first drafts. I loved the rush of words, but they needed polishing before I could approach agents.

Instead of ‘I can’t.’ I said, ‘I can learn.’

I still am.

I missed the heady rush of first drafting, so I found writer friends, wrote flash fiction, and entered short-story competitions. It scratched the itch and confirmed I could write as I won a competition and had three stories published in anthologies.

I’d come to a split in the road: Traditional publication or Indie publishing.

Soul-searching walks revealed I’d wanted traditional for the confirmation I was good enough and because ‘I can’t market my books.’

Of course, I can.

I chose the Indie path.

Perfectionism lingers but the mix of thrill and fear when clicking ‘publish’ followed by a hollow ache for the fully-fledged story flying out to readers, is strangely addictive.

With four books published, four books in rewrite or edit mode, and many more waiting to be polished or written I know I am an author.