THE QUACK

Can’t be bothered to read? Let me read for you. Skip introduction 2:21

I was going to write about getting a coil put in, but changed my mind. Yesterday, Hodder announced they were publishing my novels, so I thought it would be more relevant to write about writing books.

It’s been almost six years since I decided I was going to try to write a novel, and it’s been quite the adventure along the way, so I thought I’d make a Quack series, telling the story of how it all came about.

This is part one… the book that died.

It was March 2020, and I was pulling my pink suitcase up the stairs at St Erth railway station in Cornwall. I had just moved back to the UK that morning from Australia after splitting up with my boyfriend. I had been in a relationship for a few years, so I hadn’t lifted my own bag for a while. It was a real shock to the system.

I was 28 and now living with my mum. Spring was in the air and so was Covid. Her partner Rich had been diagosed with Multiple Myeloma only a few months beforehand, so we were not going to fluff with the rules. Boris wanted us to stay indoors, so that’s exactly what we were going to do. We were the three (stationary) muskateers.

I was back to life’s drawing board. I had been a producer for most of my twenties, but not the best one. (I’m terrible at putting things into folders and not the most assertive person in the world).

Writing, though, was always something I enjoyed. I loved making up quirky characters and working out what they should do and say. I had written blogs, some terrible poetry, and attempted a few stories, but I was curious to see if I could go the whole hog and write a novel. If there was ever a time to find that out, it was during a global pandemic at my mum’s house.

Rich is an artist, and since I’ve known him, he has gone to his studio every day without fail. He says that you may not produce good work some days, but the main thing is that you are there. So the first thing I did was make myself a studio/writing space.

There was a trailer in the garden, which Mum and Rich lived in while they were developing the house. It was an off-yellow and had a plastic sign saying Arizona. I cleared it out, sucking up spiders with Henry and spraying out the damp stench with Febreze. I lit candles, put felt pens in a jar, placed a pile of paper on the table, and my laptop. I sat down and smiled…my very own studio. I felt like I was in Breaking Bad, but without the drugs.

Every morning, I would walk a few meters to Arizona. I had a few screenwriting books from my film school degree and a book called The Artist’s Way, which told me to write three A4 pages every morning to get the creative juices flowing. I did that for a while until I felt juiced up.

Eventually, I got my first idea for my book. A rom-com about a woman publishing a fiction book based on her teenage relationship, which would consequently bring her first love back into her life. It would be called Can of Worms. Sunday Times Bestseller List, here I come.

I would write in the morning, watch a film in the afternoon, and read in the evening. The goal was a film a day, a book a week. Rich is a film lover, so he would recommend movies to me. Most I liked…others I did not.

“So what did you think?” Rich would ask.

“WHAT ON EARTH DID I JUST WATCH? Why was he making him oink like that?”

“Not a fan of Deliverance then?”

“NO! It’s like a f**** up version of Without a Paddle.”

There were other skills in the house that were being tested during that lockdown. I learned all the states in America, and Rich taught me how to hang pictures properly – with a drill and tape and everything. Mum bought a sewing machine so we could learn how to make our own clothes. But after an afternoon of tearing apart a pair of trousers and making them into lopsided shorts and headbands, we decided it was best just to order our clothes from shops like we had always done. We tried to become bakers, only to kill a very old and expensive sourdough starter.

Meanwhile, Can of Worms was going swimmingly. I had made up a few writing systems for myself. I liked seeing the book as if I was building a body. The first draft was the skeleton, the second was the muscle… and so on. I would use Post-it notes to keep track of my chapters and change to a different colored Post-it note once I had redrafted the chapter. It was visually motivating to see the colours change. Seinfeld does something similar by putting a cross through each calendar day after he has done his writing, the idea being that he can never break the chain.

After a quiet Christmas with my lockdown musketeers, I woke up early on January 1st to watch the sunrise on the beach. This was the year Can of Worms was going to be published…I was sure of it.

By February, I decided it was good enough to be put on the shelf. I had a fantasy of printing my manuscript and sending it off to publishers in a big brown envelope, but Google told me that this was not what you do.

First, I had to get an agent. There was no printing or brown envelopes required. Instead, I was instructed to send the first three chapters by email, along with an outline and pitch line, and reasonable suggestions of other novels that I would compare my book to.

“My book is Normal People meets Moby Dick.”

(I didn’t say this).

I made a spreadsheet of agents, with (another) colour system.

Orange meant it needed to be sent.

Green was sent.

Red was rejected.

Over the next few months, line by line, my spreadsheet turned red. Can of Worms wasn’t having the future I thought it would. In my gut, I knew it wasn’t good enough. It wasn’t romantic or comical…which was catastrophic considering it was a rom-com.

I didn’t want to give up though, because I had used up all my lockdown, writing, so it would have been a waste to pack it all in. What I needed was some guidance from people who knew what they were talking about. I began to search for a creative writing course, and that’s when I stumbled across the Oxford Brookes Creative Writing MA. I sent off Can of Worms in the MA application, and I got accepted onto the course, so it had some use.

By August 2021, Rich was in a sort of remission and back in his studio, and Mum had gotten into selling everything she had on Vinted. It was time for me to leave my musketeers behind. I packed up my car and moved to Oxford, with the goal of becoming a better writer.

Part 2 – The MA – coming soon.

You can now pre order AMY ELMAN DOESN’T FEEL SEXY on Amazon!