Am I a writer? This is a question I ask myself daily. What I mean by that is am I a real writer? I don’t feel like one. Yes – I have published a book; but I feel like an imposter – a fraud.
Sharron, my friend, and colleague at the school I work in, was listening to my woes one day and suggested I write down and explain to others how difficult it is to be a writer and the process I went through to publish my novel. I decided to do it as a record of my experiences before I forget and it becomes a hazy memory. Also it’s an opportunity to thank everyone who has supported me. It seems to me that most writers are tortured souls and full of angst and having researched this I found that Imposter Theory is quite common amongst the writing fraternity.
According to Brianna Bennett: “The important thing to remember is that all writers feel this way at some point. It’s a fatal flaw. You know that thing that your characters are supposed to have as well? It’s what makes them, and you in turn, human.”
This is comforting to a degree; however, when the doubts come crowding in like wasps at a picnic, I don’t want to be a human.
I have always loved writing. I remember enjoying writing stories at middle school and, being an avid reader, I must have decided at some point to try to emulate my heroes and want to become an author. Over the years I wrote bits and pieces – mainly poems – but having a busy life and lots of kids I didn’t have much time.
I went to Exeter College to do an access course and had a wonderful English teacher, Mark who asked the class to write a poem about something that cared about. I wrote mine about my grandmother, Margaret and my fond memories of staying with her as a child. At that point, I had no idea that this was the start of her becoming my muse and I would spend years of my life writing about her and trying to imagine her younger self. A few days after handing it in I was walking into college with a friend when Mark stopped me and surprised me by saying, “I loved your poem!”
His words that day changed me. As a result of things going wrong in my life and suffering from depression, I left school at the age of 14 with no exams to my name so had never had feedback on my writing before. This is why I feel I’m an imposter; had I followed a mainstream route through education perhaps I would have more confidence. As a child whenever anyone asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up, I was adamant I wanted to be a teacher. I was fairly sickly and often absent from school which resulted in me never getting a handle on maths properly and as I don’t have a Maths GCSE, I can’t become an English teacher. A positive of being off school was that I became a keen observer. In our house we had a bay window with two winged armchairs covered in soft mustard coloured velvet. My mother would turn them around to make a small bed for me and I would sit in the window under a blanket watching the world pass by and make up stories about people’s lives.
Mark’s kind words woke a latent desire in me to write and once I started it felt like coming home and gave me the confidence to write more poetry and pass the course. Now it is so much more than that it has become essential for my mental health. Below is the poem.
Reminiscing
The smell of baking bread
Synonymous with her.
My delicious comforting
Wonderful Grandmother.
The mornings then, a happy ritual
Never changing. My privilege to see,
Ensure the long table was laid ready with knives,
And plates with saucers balancing cups of tea.
Carefully opening the sideboard door,
I would cautiously, reverently bring out
The heavenly, heavily laden Lazy Susan
And give it a gentle twirl about.
A wheel housing honey, marmalade, jam.
Beautiful wooden object, round.
Smooth turning table keeps on
Spinning slowly around.
The centrepiece elevated on the table.
We sit round and anticipate the food;
The arrival of the toast holder, carrying
Perfect golden triangles that taste so good.
Served with love, spread thickly.
The yellow butter, her plum jam would
Make me feel no breakfast since then,
Has ever tasted as good.
She was a giver, not a taker.
Strong, capable, caring for me.
Always nurturing, loving,
Feeding her family.
A fabulous cook. I picture her
Standing, holding aloft proudly
Sumptuous, crispy roasted duck,
Which was her speciality.
After breakfast one day, my Grandfather died.
A heart attack. We watched it together
The past we had known, loved and lived gone.
Hopelessly clinging to it and one another.
Her smile faded, went, and the pain
Became etched in her face, deep lining.
She stooped and began to shrink,
Her eyes dull and red from crying.
She changed completely before my eyes.
I changed but did not want to at all.
She asked me to hold her arm, when we
Went out as she was scared she would fall.
I held her up and learnt to make tea
Helplessly trying to make her happy.
Bewildered wanting to turn back time
Both my Grandparents were lost to me.
The smell of cooking toast
synonymous with her.
My delicious comforting
wonderful Grandmother.
It’s not the best written poem. Some of it doesn’t scan very well but what I think Mark saw in it was the love with which it was written and it is important to me as it is the gateway to my writing journey.
After college I was thrilled to be offered a place to study English Literature and History at Exeter University; however, when I went there I felt more of an imposter than ever. Being surrounded by clever 18-year-olds who made everything seem effortless filled me with anxiety. What I did enjoy were the creative writing lessons, although they told me poetry shouldn’t rhyme anymore and I realised I needed to learn to write in a contemporary way to get good marks. The first assignment was to write a short story entitled: ‘An Inherited Animal’. On the train on my way home I came up with the idea of how to write about Margaret as her early life had always interested me. Prior to meeting my grandfather, she was married to a man named, Leslie Mallows. Unfortunately, according to family folklore, their marriage was not a happy one as he was somewhat odd in the fact that he had a foot fetish which resulted in their marriage not being consummated. Consequently, Margaret had to obtain a divorce which was not easy back in the 1920s. This had to be done in a complicated way. In an elaborate set-up, Margaret had to be ‘found’ by a maid at a hotel with another man, my grandfather, so that adultery could be cited as a reason for the marriage annulment. The inherited animal for the assignment became an onyx brooch of a panther with a diamond eye that she wore to the hotel pinned to her coat. I was very close to Margaret when I was a child but she died when I was in my 20s and I didn’t get a chance to ask her about her life unfortunately, so I had to join the dots myself. The short story I wrote at university was the prelude to my novel Love, Life and Lemons.
One of the things I loved while writing was researching. Towards the end of the novel there is an Italian folk story called The Merla Days. Initially I wanted there to be a robin in the book to represent and give solace to a character who has lost their mother. I soon realised this wasn’t going to work when I discovered that they don’t have robins in Italy. What they do have though is blackbirds – the males are called merlos – and the females merlas. Then I found this story which I rewrote in my own words but I had no idea before that I was going to put it in. An important thing I learnt at university was to always have a notebook with me in case inspiration hit. I ended up with three full ones at the end.
They are full of ideas and descriptions of people, places and parties. The book evolved so much over the seven years. The characters became my friends and I spent hours and hours working out their lives imagining them, especially at night when I had insomnia. Their names changed; people died, married and had children. The story began to write itself.
Writing the book was seven years hard slog. For the first two years I was still at university; then I had a couple more when I didn’t have a job so wrote most days. It’s strange though, because as I said at the start, I spent the majority of the time wondering what was the point thinking it will never be finished or published. Once I started working at school in 2016 I found it much harder to write but used to get a lot done during the holidays. The real turning point came when we went on holiday to Italy and walked into the square in Civita. It was exactly as I had written it. After that things began to fall into place. We bought the guide book which charted its history and from that the lemon tree stories were born based on real historical figures from the area.
The writing process was a rollercoaster of emotions. Without Jason I couldn’t have done it. He kept me going when I wanted to give up. He listened to my worries and read bits of the manuscript. He helped with the plot especially with the Lemon Tree stories injecting humour and thinking outside the box to make them come to life. We went on long dog walks every day and he helped me unravel the problems I was having with a character or crisis of confidence.
It must have got very tedious for him but one thing he enjoyed, and so did I, was when I wanted to describe certain foods and the processes of making them he cooked them. One of the recipes is Lemon Tart which is one we love so it was great fun writing the description of him making it. Our son, Jack, the chef was the go to for recipes and this was his favourite.
Jason is also excellent at making pasta and bread so when Corrado is cooking in the story it is based on watching him kneading, rolling and shaping. I call him the dough man!
Fast forward to 2019 – seven years after that first short story – and I thought I had a finished book. My friend from work, Nikki, kindly proofread it for me and gave me sound advice particularly about one of the characters. I was on holiday with Jason, my husband and we were celebrating our wedding anniversary in Polzeath in Cornwall, where we had our honeymoon, when she texted me and said she’d finished reading it. She gave me a compliment and real hope when she said that she had been reading it prior to having to go out but didn’t want to as she was at a crucial part of the story. When she got back home she stayed up until 2 am so she could finish it and messaged me to say she loved it.
During writing it, and once it was finished, I sent it to several publishers and agents trying to get someone to represent me. You might think this would be straightforward but it’s an absolute minefield. Every publishing house wants something different or parts of your story in a variety of formats. I researched how to write letters the correct way and spent hours composing a different one for each agent or publisher. Then it’s a long wait to either get a rejection email or more often just to hear nothing. I became very disheartened and was at work one day talking to my friend Sharon (a different friend and colleague). She told me about her friend who had experienced the same problem and decided to publish his book himself on Amazon. We were in a homework lesson with a couple of students and one boy, who I had a good relationship as I often worked with him, kept asking about it. He was really interested in the idea and told me I should publish mine too. I went home and talked to Jase about it but didn’t act on it. At school every time the student saw me, he would badger me saying, ‘Miss have you published your book yet?’ As a result of his drip feeding into my brain and challenging me, I started doing some research and it kind of snowballed from there. At that point I thought the real hurdle I’d overcome was writing a 500+ page novel if only I’d realised then how many more were to come…
My computer skills are basic and when I say that I mean pretty dire. I’ve learnt a lot over the years and I can get by at work but it seems I have this knack of managing to screw up anything I touch that is technological. I’m often found crying at a screen saying things like, ‘this computer hates me’ which drives Jase mad and leads to him telling me they have no emotions; however, there have been points in this process where even he has had to admit that things have gone spectacularly wrong on occasions and it’s not always been my fault. Once I had finished writing it as I wanted to print it out so Nikki could read it I took it to a computer shop on my data stick and asked the man in the shop to print it in A4 for me. So far so good I thought until I went and collected it. He gave me this enormous booklet and told me that because the book had been saved in an odd format it meant each page was mainly blank with a small square of writing in the middle. I sighed as I handed him £40 and my contempt for computers and my incompetence deepened. You might think at this point, Jane why don’t you do a course and teach yourself to be proficient and this won’t be a problem any longer? Well unbelievable as it is, I’ve actually got a GCSE in computing, although I’m still not sure how I achieved it and none of the information seems to have stuck in my brain. Consequently, I’m incredibly grateful and indebted to poor Nikki who spent several nights sitting up in bed undertaking her biggest marking marathon ever with this monster of a manuscript and her red pen getting rid of all the comma splices and Englishing it up.
While writing my novel, after explaining the concept, I asked my mother, who is an artist, to paint a picture for the cover. When she gave it to me it was perfect, exactly what I had hoped and it is something almost everyone who has bought the book has commented on as it is inviting, beautiful and vibrant and I believe encapsulates the contents.
As I was unsure of how to get it into a printable form, I went back to the computer shop and asked the man’s advice. He was great and made it digital so we could transfer it into the document ready to publish. Jase tried to do it and it wouldn’t accept it due to resolution issues – as so often in my life it was a ‘Computer says NO’ moment. We tried everything but nothing worked. I was impatient and frustrated but fortunately in the end a colleague of Jase’s managed to sort it out so a few days later the cover was in place. Then Jase had to work out how to write the title and include the blurb and a photo of Civita where it is set on the back. By this point Sharon and Rae, another friend from work, had also read it in manuscript form and along with Nikki wrote reviews for the back. It was starting to happen and my excitement was building.
When you publish your own book there are all sorts of decisions that need to be made like the size and colour of pages and weird things that we had no idea about, so we went with the Amazon advice about the size suggestion of standard expecting it to be the same as a normal paperback. So once I had the finished manuscript we (I say we and mean Jase!) had to transfer it into a document compatible with the Amazon publishing template which unsurprisingly proved incredibly complicated. Fortunately, my cousin Stevie, who’s a computer whiz, was staying with us. We were trying to upload it on the day that he was leaving to drive back to Manchester, so I asked for his help. He took over formatting it and I was so excited that it was going to be published that I rushed it and didn’t check the uploaded version properly.
The 6th of July 2019 is a day I’ll always remember. I was at work and an email came through from Amazon saying the book had been published and was available to buy. My work friends all bought a copy and so did I and then had to wait excitedly for two days until it came. The night it was published we drank champagne to celebrate an end to seven years hard work. I put a link on Facebook and got lots of lovely congratulatory messages. When the book arrived, we were surprised as it was huge – not what we’d expected or been led to believe. It was glossy and the cover looked fabulous.
I loved it until I looked inside and realised to my horror that I had given Stevie the wrong version to format and this was an older version with masses of mistakes. I cried then and the whole euphoria of seeing my book in print for the first time disappeared. I was acutely embarrassed as so many people had bought it and it was absolutely shit! It had repeated paragraphs, typos, strange, and different fonts running through it and and gaps all .over the place. It was a disaster and I spent a whole weekend crying and reading it and making copious notes on where all the errors were. Once I’d done that I had to go through and change everything on the digital version and message everyone who had bought it explaining what had happened. To add insult to injury Amazon said I had to charge £12.50 per book. Each book costs around £6.50 to print. I receive about £1 and Amazon pockets the rest! Love, Life and Lemons is also available as an e-book and I get about £1.20 when someone buys one of them. It’s an absolute rip off but there it is. I’m still sad about it all going wrong as I know quite a few people have read it in that state and it detracts from the story, makes me look unprofessional and although those that have read it have been polite it gives an impression of me that I don’t want anyone to have. It’s hard enough baring my soul by sharing my writing without that. My work friends were very sweet and said things like, ‘it’s a first edition one day we might be able to sell it for thousands of pounds’ to try and cheer me up. Unfortunately I don’t think this will be the case.
Another of my friends from work, Roz, suggested that her daughter, Annabel could help me as she was hoping to change career and go into marketing. Promoting my book became her project and was an absolute Godsend as she taught me so much. She was brilliant and set me up on various social media platforms and made me a WordPress account and website which is what I use now. She wrote a long list of things to do which I still have. It was down to her recommendation that I started writing blogs. She suggested that I write one a month which is what I have tried to do. This opened up a whole new world of computer stress for me as I had to learn how to navigate the site and she must have got fed up with me texting her with help messages. Even now a year later I’m still fairly mystified by most of it and each time I write a blog I’m pleasantly surprised that it works. Thankfully, Annabel was patient and kind and without her I wouldn’t have achieved half as much. Poppy, my daughter also helped with my social media by creating Love, Life and Lemons Facebook and Instagram accounts. A friend, Katy, put me in touch with another Jane who is also a self-published writer which was so helpful. She gave me loads of advice about blogging and I looked on her site for inspiration. She also interviewed me as one of her blog posts and I did the same for her. Similarly, I was interviewed by Honiton Nub News a local paper. It was all extremely exciting.
Payhembury, where I live, is a wonderful village full of community spirit. The shop is run entirely by volunteers who are always looking for opportunities to support community projects. On hearing about my book, Mary, a friend asked me if I would like to sell my novels and do a book signing in the shop. It was a wonderful experience. A lady called Toni, who used to work in a book shop, helped organise the day and several other friends from the village gave up their time, made cakes and served tea. I was nervous but did a short reading and felt like a celebrity. Especially as the last person to do a book signing there had been Kirstie Allsopp!
After the initial excitement people began putting great reviews on Amazon and Goodreads. It was weird and gratifying to realise that complete strangers had enjoyed it. Of course, my friends and family were going to be biased but reading reviews such as this one by D. Dobbinson who gave it 5 stars and wrote:
“Excellent and inspirational. Brilliant read, loved every minute of it”, made me believe that perhaps it is a great story.
Friends Ali, Becky and Michelle from work wrote lovely reviews too. It was a real buzz when each day someone would be telling me where they were or what they were enjoying about it. Several people said it made them hungry! It was an amazing experience despite all the setbacks. My parents both loved it. Mum kept phoning me and saying things like where did you learn to do this. The way you write bears no resemblance to how you talk! My father and I have had a troubled relationship over the years. I was a difficult teenager and a lot of water has gone under the bridge. My sister, Liz, bought it for him. Once he’d read it he called me and we were on the phone for about an hour discussing it. Margaret was his mother so he was pleased that I was writing about her. He is a published author and has written several books. My abiding memory is of him being in his office tapping away at his typewriter. During that phone call he made me cry because for the first time in my life he told me he was proud of me!
In hindsight I should have got someone to proofread the digital version for me. Afterwards, when I explained what had happened, lots of people offered but I felt like at the time they weren’t that keen and it’s quite a big ask. Next time I will. I shouldn’t have been so impetuous – a big failing of mine. Through all these experiences, I have definitely learned a lot for the future. I didn’t think I would have to go through all that stress again; however, I was wrong.
A few different friends at work were reading Love, Life and Lemons during the Christmas holidays so I decided to reread it too. Prior to this I couldn’t bear it after having to keep editing it and all the problems. I enjoyed it but was annoyed to still find some errors. I decided that I would edit the whole document and ask Jase to help me upload it again. During this time our friend, Monica, from Italy texted me to say she has just started reading it and was excited and loving it already. She offered to translate it into Italian for me. Although pleased that she is reading it I was also filled with misgivings. There are several Italian phrases in the book some of which I translated from Google Translate which often gets things incorrect.
She immediately came back with three things that were wrong. Firstly I had spelt Mamma which is the Italian way as Mama and Riccardo with only one c. The funniest one was how I spelt Papa because, Monica told me, apparently Papa means Pope! Who knew? In Italian it’s written Papá, so I had to work out how to put an accent on and go through the whole thing again correcting these three words which are written loads and loads of times. It took me a couple of weeks edit it properly and last Sunday when I was happy I’d finished it I sent it to Jase to upload and it wouldn’t work. It was an absolute nightmare. So there was no book available to buy because it had been replaced by this one that was all wrong! We had to go through all these processes and alter things and it still wouldn’t fit on the page properly without cutting words off. We had a massive row – Jase was fuming that we were spending hours on a precious weekend wrangling with Amazon and its stupid parameters. After four long and frosty hours he eventually managed to do it although we’re not really sure how; but at last I’m happy with the words but we still can’t get the layout right. Once it uploads it moves it about. I’m going to have to put it down to this book being a huge learning curve and next time get more help but right now I just want some closure.
Since publishing my book I’ve lost count of the people who have said to me ‘I’d like to write a book, maybe I could publish it myself.’ Although it’s quite tricky if I can do it anyone can.
Things I’ve learnt
- There is always a solution
- Stay calm and keep smiling
- If people offer you help take it
- Google anything you can’t do
- Believe in yourself
- Listen to advice from people who love you
- Get advice from professionals re marketing and technology
- Enjoy the writing process
- Don’t rush to publish
- Proof read several times
- Buy yourself a copy and proof read before telling anyone you’ve published
- Celebrate once it’s finished
Love, Life and Lemons was a labour of love but, as is shown throughout this blog, I couldn’t have done it without the help of my family and friends who have been amazing. To everyone who has listened to me going on about it for years and supported me by buying my book and reading my blogs – thank you.
Love, Life and Lemons 