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It was 2011, and my first novel, The Radio was as complete as it could be. I’d worked for thirty-eight months in total on it. It had been drafted and redrafted and drafted again. It became my pride and my joy. I had also realised quite early on that if I wanted to make it as an author, I needed to act like an author. I needed to be professional.

To this end, and as our first lesson today, I blanked out times that I would write in my dairy. Late in the evenings, after a long day at work. Early at the weekends, before the kids woke up. Three hour blocks at a time. I planned two full months ahead and each time a social offer came up that clashed with my planned writing, then my writing would always take precedent. I missed weddings, parties, family celebrations and gigs. Even if I didn’t feel like writing (let’s face it we can all get distracted by TV, or finding some other reason not to sit down at our keyboard) then I forced myself, and even if I only got a sentence down I still sat through the whole three hours. Lesson Nine. Make a plan to write and barring nothing but the most calamitous of calamities, stick to it. Treat your craft seriously.

Throughout the process of writing, something much bigger had happened in the meantime. My view on life was different. What began as something to leave as a legacy when my suicidal ideations were becoming too strong had morphed into something I was truly proud of. In the years it had taken to write, my mental health had flourished. I’d found a way, totally by accident, of getting out the dark thoughts which were locked away inside me. They were things that I could never have said to a friend, less so a family member. I’d convinced myself that nobody understood me or what had happened to me. But, in front of me on four hundred pieces of A4 paper were all the thoughts that had been trapped inside for so long. Sure, it was a novel, but there were so many parts of the story that were really just a depiction of me and my thoughts. Some were obvious, others hidden – but I had laid down on page after page words about me, written just for me. At last, through the power of writing I’d been able to explain me.

Whilst I wrote The Radio (and not so long after some dude invented the worldwide web) I discovered Authonomy. This was a website set up by Harper Collins, I believe, which created a community of authors. People shared ideas, tips and their own writing with other wannabe authors. I learned about the importance of cadence in writing, how every sentence should sing and each chapter move in a rhythmic way (Lesson Ten). It’s amazing how much writing a novel has in common with writing a song. I watched and read posts for a while, trying to suck up as much information as I could. I made a few friends and over time I plucked up the courage to share my own writing with my peers. I posted a part of The Radio, and people read it. They were enthused, but also offered tweaks and constructive criticism to help with my writing. It gave me hope, perhaps I could write after all? The website itself worked by upvoting work by others which pushed their manuscript higher up the chart. If you finished in the top three in any given month your work would be read by editors at Harper Collins. This seemed to be a chance in. I began to use Authonomy daily, reading other people’s work and commenting and pushing forward my own work. I began to grow in confidence and although I never managed to make the top three, I now knew I could write. Lesson Eleven, share your work. Join like-minded communities. Book groups. Writing Groups. And Lesson Twelve: always accept criticism; always be prepared to make changes. Although Authonomy was short-lived (for some reason, HarperCollins pulled it perhaps because reputationally it was no more than a cheap way to try and cream talent before any other publisher got their sticky paws on it) but it certainly helped me, and I have friends for life from my time using it.

I was so proud of my manuscript, that I was now obsessed by the thought of publication. All my feedback had been good. And so, the next step was easy. I just send it off to a host of publishers, they’d fight over the advance they’ll pay me and I’ll sign on the dotted line. Next stop, international bestseller, right? I scoured the bookshelves of Waterstones looking at the publishing houses of authors I respected - Nick Hornby, Christopher Brookmyre, Iain Banks, Alex Garland. I collected ten names (ahem, Hachette, Penguin, HarperCollins, Bloomsbury etc.). I wrote to them all. They all wrote back. Nobody wanted it. Of course they didn’t. It was raw and unpolished. I’d spent so long working on it that I no longer saw the flaws. Chronology didn’t work, characters acted, well, out-of-character. I was way too close to the story, and when I read it, I read what I thought it said, rather than what it actually said. I could see the whole of it playing out in front of me as if I was watching it as a play. Because I’d lived it. But, to anyone else in the world it was really a not-very-clear-at-all story. Lesson Thirteen. Find a good editor.

I spent three months finding an editor. It needed to be someone who understood what I was trying to achieve. Despite the subject matter, The Radio had evolved into a pseudo-black comedy. I sent the first three chapters off to eight editors and spoke to each of them over the phone or by email. I needed someone to share my vision. And that’s when I met Charlie Wilson. She was the last of the eight, and from the moment we first spoke I could tell she just got it. We instantly agreed to work together. At first it was difficult to swallow. Every week or so, I’d send off a few chapters which she would return marked unmercifully in bold red ink – tens of amendments and corrections on each and every page. She seemed to be literally tearing my baby to pieces. My stomach literally flipped when her name appeared in my inbox. It was hard at first not to take her edits as a personal attack. For some time I began to doubt again whether I could actually write. What criticism was coming next? How would my feelings be hurt this time around? It was actually a fellow author who reminded me that the process was there to help. There is no point to an editor if they don’t add value, if they don’t point out weaknesses in your story or suggest positive changes. If they don’t help you to learn and develop. Lesson Fourteen: embrace the process. She was trying to improve my work; she taught me little tricks, taught me the correct grammar depending on the type of material you are writing. She directed me to Strunk and White and Stephen King’s On Writing (both of these texts are utterly essential if you want to learn the craft: Lesson Fifteen).

Around this time, and having been married to The Radio for such a long time, my private life was evolving. I thought that I was on top of all the dark feelings, after all I’d laid them all out on the page, hadn’t I? Surely there was nothing left to deal with now. I embarked on a new relationship. Someone who had a child in the same year as my now eight-year-old twins; and a child in the year below my step-daughter. She and her kids came over at weekends, and when they didn’t my kids begged for them to come.

All seemed okay.

Seemed being more than the appropriate word.

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Note from the author:

If anyone wants any clarity on anything written in this series please don’t hesitate to make contact. By arrangement, Richard can pass on my email address.

Jonathan