Why failing has made me free to succeed.

This is an unusually long post - possibly because it's been a long journey of discovery. I wanted to share with you my story in the hope that it might inspire and motivate - or even be of passing interest to anybody wanting to know me better. I'd love to hear your personal stories on this matter and so please leave a comment if you manage to get to the end of it x

Firstly the words ‘success’ and ‘failure’ are such interesting words – both of them are totally unwilling to be defined by a specific definition; they are as people say, relative. Yet if that is the case why does society seem to have such fixed and antiquated ideas about what success and failure look like?

I explore these ideas a lot with the children I teach. It's desperately sad to witness so many young people identify themselves as a failure when so young. I tell them that at their age, failure is a paradox; they haven’t had enough time to fail. And thinking about it, that applies to everybody, no matter what age you are. Sure there is a cut off when certain regrets can not be healed or made good – but they are a very, very long way off in anybody's existence.

Now please don’t shoot me, but I really don’t like ‘To Kill A Mocking Bird’ but studying it with my GCSE class I couldn’t help but stifle a genuine sob at the little vignette story of Mrs Dubose – a woman riddled with cancer and addicted to drugs who in the last days of her life wished to be free and independent. She’d seen it as an intense spiritual failure and she rectified it. Atticus calls her ‘The bravest women he ever knew’ and with this I sort of agree.

You see what makes us triumphant as human beings is not easily attaining our successes but the struggle of overcoming our failures.

When I ask my students to define what success looks like, too many of them invariably link it to the thorny issue of money – in all of its various veiled forms; big house, flash car, new game station, smart threads blah, blah, blah. So few of them mention the words 'happiness', 'family' or 'love' and it saddens me to think that this is the crock of crap 'the media' revels in perpetuating.

I’m not going to rant on about celebrity culture (trust me, I could) or ‘Reality T.V’ (I use the term ‘reality’ very loosely) perpetuating the myth that success is a tangible prize gained by being beautiful with a modicum of talent. I’m going to talk to you on a personal level about how sometimes success is taking a step back from the social merry-go-round and assessing what really makes you feel fulfilled and creative.

I came from a background in which things like college, university, ‘having a profession’ were the pinnacle of success. We lived in a small town and there was this particular road called St James road. It was the eighties and these faux Georgian, mini mansions with their theme-park classic Corinthian columns and mock Tudor leaded windows, were the palaces of the successful. People carriers graced the brick drives and mummy’s who didn’t have to work but spent their time on the sun-bed or bulk buying form catalogues, lounged around on department store furniture (Yeah I’m wiser now but to my developing brain this was glamorous – I brought into the dream.) St James road was where the dentists, doctors, business men and senior teachers lived. This was what I thought success looked like, and strangely even when I moved to London at eighteen and discovered that St. James Road was a very poor imitation of the kind of success you saw all around you in the leafy suburbs of Richmond upon Thames, I was still fooled by the notion of success. In a nutshell this is what I thought it was;
1. Owning a black woollen coat and pashmina (Annoraks and woollen scarves were de rigour in my homeland) 2. Owning a very expensive collection of leather handbags. 3. Competitive working hours – who can stay at work the longest producing bits of essential and important information. 4. Shopping at Waitrose and buying luxury wine and ready meals. 5. Having a really big title on your door – and a lot of keys (the more keys the more important) 6. Being able to go to a club and put your card behind the counter and drink champagne cocktails all night. 7. Going to a very ludicrously expensive gym which in fact you mainly used for the massage and restaurant facility.

There are more but I won’t bore you with the inane banality of them – you get the picture and this is the picture of my wonderful newly married, ‘Blairite’ twenties. We were both on incredibly ‘good’ money for our age and we had this thing called disposable income. (Remember those pre-recession days). Note how there is no mention of happiness, contentment, creativity, friends or family in that list.

Then in the eyes of ‘the institute’ I started to fail. We wanted a family, which meant maternity leave and a request for flexible working – “No, No, No” the suits shook their head. So I took a voluntary reduction in role and money (because that is what women still have to do in the 21st century) When I insisted on going home within contracted hours to collect my daughter from childcare “tut, tut, tut” went the suits. When I had to take time off to look after my daughter when she was too sick to go to the childminder – or our childminder was too sick to look after my daughter - I had to take unpaid leave.

And guess what – the promotions and the pay rises stopped, the demands and criticisms increased. I became de-skilled, overlooked, patronised, and talked-over in meetings. My male contemporaries who were still gliding up that greasy pole would pat me on the back and make sympathetic noises; telling me how wonderful I was at my job and how unfair the whole system was – which was nice of them but somewhat hollow as they weren’t prepared to do anything about it.

For a while I was angry – I still am in principle – but strangely, most of all I felt free. I stopped chasing and fighting and accepted. Suddenly I found myself with an intense energy, creativity and capability which it was clear did not fit in to the system and which I could use to pursue my own dream; the one which I had set aside at the age of eighteen as nothing more than a romantic notion linked to poverty and a slide into alcoholism.

I started to come home and rather than spending hours silently working at home on work projects which would be delivered by my line-manager as his, I started writing. I wrote the story that I had been carrying in my heart and head for the last decade. It wasn’t easy. Despite having qualified in the study of English / American literature up to Masters level and reading thousands of other people’s stories – I found the story telling process almost alien. I behaved like I thought writers aught to; I drank a lot of wine and stayed up until the midnight hours. I bashed out scenes believing the more pain I poured into them, the better they’d be. After a year, I had a manuscript and I brought a copy of the Writers’ and Artists book: ‘A must’ for any aspiring writer.

I printed off my opening chapters and made some pretty little promo postcards and colour co-ordinated folders. I aimed high (I was naïve!) and I waited anxiously for the post to arrive. And it did – rejection after rejection,

“No market”, “Great idea but not what we’re looking for”, “Thanks but no thanks”, “Shows promise but we’re full” or worse of all, the returned manuscript not even opened with a ‘compliments’ slip attached to the folder.

Failure.

Then in October 2010 a friend brought around a small cut out article from The Times. It was about a new product called Amazon Kindle and the idea of e-publishing. I jumped straight onto it despite the article suggesting that it was an idea that would never take off. I applied my work-skills and planned out a detailed strategy (I’m secretly a strategy and statistics geek – hard to believe I know) and pressed the publish button. Well it wasn’t quite that simple but this post is long enough already.

We’re now eighteen months down the line and I’ve two of the trilogy published, both consistently in the top 5-10,000 bestsellers and both having made it into the top 1,000 bestsellers of Amazon. ‘The Forest of Adventures’ Book One has been ranked a #1 Bestselling / Most popular Fairytale and both books have consistently sat in two or three #100 categories for the last twelve months. “No Market!” - I’d love to have a coffee with that agent.

I have an amazing readership and the most wonderful fan-base who engage with me daily, send me gorgeous fan mail and share the world I have created. I’ve had some incredible letters and I still can’t believe it when someone writes to me and tells me that my humble little books are amongst their favourite books of all time.

I’ve not started making enough pennies to quit the day job yet, but I do have an income which is large enough to pay the monthly food bill – which is a start. Now I just need to work on the books paying for the utilities and shelter and we’re done.

In indie publishing terms I am a long way off of being one of the superstars who have sold hundreds of thousands of books – I’m currently creeping towards 6,000 books but it’s increasing each month like a satisfying snowball – and I take reassurance in the statistic that of the thousands of ‘traditionally published’ books the average lifetime sales is around 5,000 copies, and in the world of indie publishing half of the books published sell no more than 100 copies.

I’m not trying to show-boat my success here – in fact you can see that my total honesty about where I’m at clearly shows to some there is still, in their opinion, little evidence of success yet – but do you know what – I am happy. I feel like finally I am using my talents and following my dream. I may be poorer, have a smaller title, far fewer keys, a second hand satchel from the car-boot sale and shop for our food at the local discount store but I finally think I am succeeding more than I ever have.

Check in.

www.theknighttrilogy.com

Sorry not to have checked in for a while. I am racing towards deadline on Book Three. It's so nearly there but my characters keep popping up and reminding me of ends that need to be tied up. I've also spent a little bit of time playing around with the website, my Amazon author page and our facebook #TeamBlake community page.

As you can see, I've been having great fun playing around with imagery to support the series. This isn't an 'official' image but a bit of fun for the fans. I'm thinking of doing a cast range of cheeky little pics but let's get book three done first. 

I've officially started my maternity leave; so I have a whole six weeks of playing at being a full time writer before slightly more demanding things take over. The thought of undisturbed days of writing is both delicious and terrifying and I'm not entirely sure that it is the most balanced way to spend all of your working week. There is an almost overwhelming pressure to feel that you have to do everything that you've been telling yourself for months you'd do if you had more time. 

As a result, my brain is literally all over the place. I've got short-stories, poems, website designs, novel plots literally all bouncing around in my head - it's as if they know they've got this window of opportunity and they are all going to scream for attention. 

Bloggers and Authors: War & Peace.

This Friday I sent out some Twitter #FF love to some of my favourite Book Bloggers, spreading the love between this author and some amazingly supportive people who have helped me on my journey to selling thousands of copies of my book and helping me to personally connect with my readership.

I've read with some incredulity that there is (or certainly seems to be) a certain tension between Authors and Bloggers. I just don't understand this -  *head-desk*.  It's not an overt thing but every now and then there are mutterings on the old Twitter stream or in various posts; usually when some author/blogger drama is erupting.

There was one last week (purposely keeping out of that one) and out the old tension came, [sic] "Bloggers are evil" v "Writers are precious and precocious". To be fair there have been those spectacular circus-moments of social networking when some poor misguided author (I always assume to be intoxicated because they wouldn't surely commit such kamakaze self destruction otherwise) responds to a Blog Post about their book. These attacks are rare but excite a lot of valid criticism, but rare or not - they give a lasting impression. As we all know, it only takes one rotten apple to spoil the taste of the rest.

As a writer I've been involved in the on-line book community for over two years and I have to say I have had nothing but positive experiences. I've also been the beneficiary of some incredible generosity. That DOES NOT mean that I have never received a bad review or a cutting blog post about my work. Fortunately they have been few and far between (enough not for me to  knock my confidence or belief in my work). I always read all blogposts and reviews of my work; always with the humility before opening it that if they liked and loved it, then I am relieved and happy and if they didn't that is entirely their right.

Bloggers are people and it would be foolish and arrogant to assume that everybody you met in your day to day life fell in love with you - why is it any different for a blogger and your work?

Book blogging is a big commitment, it requires dedication, inspiration and effort. It has many rewards and is a great way of sharing and connecting with people, but every blog is the personal domain of the blogger and their opinions and critiques should not be censored because they are 'afraid' of booklash. (I meant to write backlash but I kind of like the pun)

There is no denying that a negative review, especially on a very successful and 'influencial' blog can be damaging to a writer's potential sales and it is incredibly galling if the reviewer has clearly misunderstood your work or clearly rushed / scanned the reading of it. Sometimes their review is biased by outside influences ie/ they don't like the genre

So whether a newbie (or intoxicated) may I offer this very-simple-never-to-be-broken rule: NEVER respond to a negative review or blog - never, not even to "inform of inaccuracies."

IF YOU MUST respond then do it positively: Find links to three of your most glowing reviews and Tweet and FB them. That way you can rest peaceful that you have regained control of the situation.

Finally but importantly THANK YOU to all those wonderful bloggers who have helped me on my journey and become good friends.

***** BIRTHDAY GIVEAWAY ****

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Creating the Real: A Writers' Paradox.

I've discovered that the daily life of a writer is full of paradox and contradiction. One of the greatest of these is the relationship between fantasy and the real. Now this is perhaps more pronounced because I write Contemporary Fantasy in which there is an overt movement into the 'unreal', but I believe that the very nature of writing makes this paradox a concern regardless of which genre you write.

The whole paradox centres around the idea that a writer, is by very definition an individual who constructs reality. And a 'good' writer is one who can create an alternative world with authenticity. Research is a very valuable starting point but it's not enough by itself. A 'world' can be meticulously planned out and researched but can still ring untrue in the minds of the reader.

Authenticity is the ultimate aim - but how can an invention of the imagination be authentic?
When I think about this idea I come back to the idea of the Simulacrum: a notion we briefly explored at university and which was reduced to a scrawled side note in the margin along the lines of

"An accurate copy of something that never existed in the first place." 

Followed by the mysterious "Plato" which could also have been "Pluto" depending on how much you squint to read my appalling handwriting. 

Being a good student I will have probably gone and got a book out of the library and looked it up - but being a typical student, I was probably half cut on cheap French red at the time and so my full understanding of it might be somewhat 'flawed'.

I've since come to understand the word Simulacrum to basically mean similar to - which is no major revelation when you actually break down the impressive looking word. Somewhere along the way it has managed to pick up an attachment of inferiority, as if it lacks the sacred qualities of the original. An idea that the pop artists of the 50's and 60's took great delight in challenging. 

Perhaps one of the easiest ways to show this concept is by showing you Magritte's: 'Ceci n'est pas une pipe' - God love those surrealists and their witty banter. I remember seeing this image for the first time when I was about fifteen and that moment of intellectual awakening never left me. Of course there are now even simulacrums of this piece, indeed a whole website dedicated to it cecinestpasunsiteweb.com - how can anybody fail to love post-modernism and its irony!

This idea of the Simulacrum has been a fascination to writers, artists and philosophers for as long as thought has been thought about. The idea of image making, either in writing or any other art form has always posed a delicious contradiction.

Back to Plato  who gave a good example by using Greek Statuary; carved proportionately bigger at the top than at the bottom so that mere mortals looking up at it would see it 'correctly' - the idea that distorting the real creates an illusion of the real - and possibly a more accurate version of the real. Writers such as Palahnuick, Ballard and Everett are masters at these alternative realities exposing a more accurate version of the real world than the real world itself  - just think Orwell and work 'Nineteen Eighty Four'.

Nietzche argues that as soon as experience is articulated / translated into language then the reality is no longer. Baudrillard takes this one step further arguing that the experience made language becomes its own version of real - something that every writer lost within their own created worlds understands possibly more than most. It's certainly the argument that I am going to throw out next time some non-writer friend looks at me with a clear sense of fear at my diminishing sanity when I say things like, "Well, don't you have voices in your head that talk to you?" or "Of course my characters are real people!"

So fellow writer friends - how do you navigate this paradox? I'd love to hear your thoughts.