Author Transformations – Battling Through the Hard Times to Find Success
By Ken Preston
On a Thursday morning in June 2013 I walked into my doctor’s office and sat down. The doctor smiled, and said, “Good morning, what can I do for you?”
I burst into tears.
To be honest, this moment had been a long time coming, maybe my whole life. I had been travelling a slow but inexorable path downward into a pit of self-loathing and depression. For the most part, except for one or two brief blips, I had managed to hide it.
People suffering with depression can be good at that. And now here I was, ready to admit that I needed help, and at rock bottom. Actually, I only thought I had hit rock bottom. I hadn’t.
But I would soon.
Wait, let’s backtrack a little.
I’ve been writing stories all my life, or at least for as long as I can remember, anyway. You’re probably the same. Short stories, lots of abandoned novels, some poetry.
It was 1996 when I decided to have a serious go at writing a full-length novel. I chose to follow Harry Crews’ model for a first time book: take a favourite novel (Harry Crews: The End of the Affair by Graham Greene, Ken Preston: On the Beach by Nevil Shute) and reduce it to facts and figures, to numbers and statistics. How many scenes? How many characters? How many chapters, words, paragraphs? How many scenes set outside? How many in hotel rooms? How many major characters?
You get the picture.
Then, taking the template you now have, you rebuild it with your own story. By Harry Crews’ own admission what you end up with is a terrible novel, but you will have had an invaluable lesson in how to write one.
So that’s what I did, and by the time I had finished I had a novel. And it wasn’t very good. But it was a novel, damn it. And it was mine. Encouraged, I wrote a second one. And that one wasn’t very good either.
[Note from Nick: This is EXACTLY what I did for my first novel. And, yeah, it sucked. But the second, third, and fourth ones got a lot better. For more on “how to write a novel the right way, first time” check out our ultimate guide right here]
But it was better.
By the time I had finished my third novel (it’s 2003 now and my wife and I have a little baby boy and life is full of nappies and feeds and sterilising bottles and sleeplessness) I felt it was time to approach an agent.
The first agent I sent it out to kept it for a long time, but they were making encouraging noises, so that was good. Finally they got back to me with a rejection, but possibly the nicest rejection in the world, and certainly the nicest rejection I have ever had. They said it wasn’t right for them but, amongst other nice things, they said it deserves to be published.
Wow. You can probably guess what happened next. I was convinced I would find an agent very soon, probably the very next one I approached, and I would be published and famous and rich in no time at all.
Well, approximately twenty rejection slips later, many of them a badly photocopied pro forma with Dear Author hand scribbled at the top, I’d had that idea knocked out of me for good.
Anyway, let’s fast forward a few years to the arrival of the Kindle and the revolution in publishing that accompanied it. I had continued writing and submitting work and even dabbled in a bit of self-publishing in paperback form. But now, with this new way of publishing, it seemed success might finally be mine. So I signed up to KDP and published a couple of books and stories and waited for the royalties to start flooding in.
Which, of course, they didn’t.
Late in 2012 I decided to try my hand at writing a romantic thriller for the My Weekly range of Pocket Novels. Printed small they are designed to fit into women’s handbags and are published every two weeks.
Now, I normally write horror, supernatural thrillers and YA. I’m not a natural fit for writing a romance. Or so I thought.
Turns out you can write pretty much anything you want if you work hard enough at it.
January 2013 I received an acceptance email, and I was paid a modest fee for the first publication rights. It wasn’t exactly how I had imagined it, but I was a published author at last! I should have been happy.
I wasn’t.
By this point my mental and emotional deterioration was accelerating. I was still managing to hide it, even from myself to a certain extent, but I was in a bad way.
Let’s flash forward to that doctor’s office again. He asked questions, and he listened. He gently persuaded me to go on antidepressants, registered me for counselling sessions and signed me off work for two weeks.
Two weeks turned into six months.
Six months in which I could barely function, and I couldn’t write a shopping list let alone a novel. That’s when I hit rock bottom.
I spent my days lying in bed, or sitting in the lounge with my head in my hands, wondering if the multi-story car park in town was high enough to kill me if I stepped off it. I even ran away from my family, booking myself into a youth hostel in Cornwall, believing they would be better off without me.
But, after those first few months when I plummeted so low and deep I thought I would never find my way back again, I started my counselling sessions.
And I started digging into my family history. Turns out it is full of mental illness, drug abuse, suicide, and violence. I’m not going to go into all that here. That’s a post (or even a book) for another day.
What I want to focus on is this: All my childhood I had been raised to believe that ‘people like us’ would never amount to much. That creativity in any form was ‘strange’. That I should simply do my best to fit in, do nothing to stand out, to be noticed, do everything in my power to hide.
And those instructions followed me, even when I became an adult and moved over a hundred miles away from family and started my own life, met a wonderful girl and got married, and had two amazing boys.
This shit stays with you.
All those rules I had been taught as a child were the exact opposite of what I should be doing. That ‘people like us’ can achieve whatever we put our minds to. That creativity is not ‘strange’ but the norm, and should be encouraged, that in fact it is a vital part of living. And that I should do my best to NOT fit in, that I should do everything I can to stand out, to be noticed, do everything in my power to not hide.
Recovery from depression is a slow, difficult process. It is a rocky path through a land of mountains and valleys, of standing on high peaks bathed in sunshine and the most spectacular view in the world laid out before you, of knowing, really knowing, that everything now makes sense, that you got this.
And then it is days, weeks and months of fighting through stinking swamps in dark valleys with monsters lurking in the shadows, waiting for you to fall so they can pounce and devour you.
And these monsters, they whisper at you, You’re not good enough, You’re a waste of space, Why are you even bothering, you will only fail and embarrass yourself and everybody will laugh at you.
But if you keep going, keep doing the right things, you start frequenting those valleys less, and the higher ground more.
Living with depression and low self-esteem in a creative industry is hard. If you’re going to succeed, you need to be out there, getting noticed, saying this, this is my work and I believe it has value. But for someone with low self-esteem in particular, having the courage to stand up and say ‘Hey, look at me!’ is difficult, if not impossible. And then dealing with the inevitable rejection and whilst creating more work, which will also most likely be rejected, can be one more mountain too many to climb.
It’s far easier to give up at this point than to carry on.
So how do I do it?
How do I keep going? Well, before I talk about that, the first and most important thing I need to say is this: If you suspect you may be depressed, if you are going through tough emotional times and have been for a while, if life has lost any joy it once had and you are dealing with mental and emotional issues that are affecting your life and your relationships, you need to see a professional. Go to your doctor, talk to someone, someone you trust. Get help.
You are not alone. And you will get better.
Having done that, how do you deal with the day-to-day business of being a writer, of having the confidence to stand up and be noticed, to put yourself in the best place possible to making that dream of a full time writing career possible?
You say ‘Yes.’
You say ‘Yes’ to that idea for a novel you’ve been meaning to work on for the last couple of years. You say ‘Yes’ to doing the work that matters. You say ‘Yes’ to the possibility of failure.
And you will fail. That’s fine. That’s more than fine, it’s good. Failure is to be embraced like a dear friend. Because it is only by failing at something that we will learn how to get back up and try again, but this time do it better.
In the five years since I walked into my doctor’s consulting room and burst into tears, finally ready to ask for help I should have asked for years before, I have written and published fourteen books.
Some of them even sell.
I have become a regular on the local open mic circuit and co-host one in Birmingham city centre (TILT Cafe/Bar on the first Wednesday of every month, 6:30 start, it would be lovely to see you there!).
I have been into schools and run sessions on creative writing.
I have spoken at a black tie charity dinner on the same bill as Sunday Times best-selling thriller author Gillian McAllister.
I am employed by Writing West Midlands to lead one of their Spark Young Writers’ groups, delivering creative writing sessions once a month to teenagers.
Writing West Midlands also asked me to go on an expense’s paid trip to Italy for a conference, and they paid me a fee for going too.
I lead an after school creative writing club for years five and six at a local primary school every Tuesday during term time.
I have a second creative writing club at a high school starting in September. I have a meeting scheduled this month to talk about leading creative writing groups in a prison.
And on 7th September I will be walking out of my place of work for the final time and earning a living as a full-time writer.
And all this because I continued, and will continue, to say ‘Yes.’
I’ll admit to you now, it’s not easy sometimes, saying ‘Yes.’ Especially at first. It’s scary. Let me tell you something.
Scary is good.
Those fluttering of nerves mean you’re stepping into deeper water. David Bowie’s advice for making art was, you need to get into the water and keep going until you get to the point where your feet are not quite touching the ground. That’s the point at which you will do the work that matters.
That’s where you learn to swim. Say ‘Yes’ to the things you can’t do yet. That’s the only way you will learn how to do them.
And you will meet people too, online and offline. And as you meet more people, your world will expand and more opportunities will come your way, and you will get to say ‘Yes’ more and more.
Professor Richard Wiseman in his book, The Luck Factor, talks about the science behind being lucky, and how you can increase your own good luck.
It basically boils down to this: People who get out there and create a wide network of friends and contacts are far luckier than people who spend all their time in their own home and know very few people.
[Note from Nick: Building a professional network of authors is one of the most powerful things you can do to build your experience, confidence, and exposure – find out how to build your own “dream team” right here]
Yes, I know, we’re writers. We’re never happier than when we’re inside, on our own, right?
Another book I recommend you check out is Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway, by Susan Jeffers. This is where I first truly learnt the concept of the value in saying ‘Yes.’
It’s natural to be scared of the unknown, of taking a risk. All those successful authors you look up to? They had to feel the fear and do it anyway.
Turns out they are ‘people like us’ too.
I’m going to let you into a secret here. Some days when I wake up my natural response is to say ‘No,’ and pull the bed sheets over my head and hide.
Just as I was taught, all those years ago. Like I said, this shit stays with you. But I don’t do that anymore. Instead, I get up and I say ‘Yes.’
And I’m having the time of my life.
Ken Preston is an author, creative writing teacher, speaker and blogger. He is the author of fourteen novels and many short stories, and has been published by DC Thompson and Ulverscroft, two of the biggest publishers in the UK. Ken regularly runs writing workshops for both adults and children, and is employed by Writing West Midlands to run one of their Spark Young Writers’ groups for school years 7 to 12. He is also a creative writing workshop leader at HM Prison Birmingham.
Ken co-hosts a monthly open mic session at TILT Café/Bar in Birmingham and is a regular himself on the open mic scene, and speaks at charity dinners and universities. Ken Preston lives in the West Midlands with his wife, two sons, and their two cats.
For more information on Ken and his books visit – kenpreston.co.uk
For information on Ken’s creative writing workshops, visit – kenprestonpublishing.com
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