Confessions of a self-help author (Part Three)

On surviving the rollercoaster of putting your work out in the world

This is part of a series. Find more confessions here: Part One | Part Two | Part Four

(1)  Disappointment is a gift (but sometimes I forget this)

Today I learnt that my new book KOKORO missed being a Sunday Times Top Ten Bestseller by just 25 hardback copies in its first week of sales.

My immediate emotion was, as you can imagine, deep disappointment, and also frustration because I know that more than 25 books were sent out early by bookshops who did not respect the publication date embargo. I allowed myself to be completely and utterly disappointed for about ten minutes, and then reminded myself that to be 25 books away from a Sunday Times Bestseller means that a lot of people are reading a book I poured so much of myself into, a book that has resonated so much people have already sent me essay-length emails describing it as ‘life-changing’ and ‘more profound than I could ever have imagined’. One woman told me that she has not been so captivated by a book since she read The Alchemist 25 years ago. To know this is enough. And it’s good to remember that all of this was nothing but a distant dream back when I hadn’t written any books. I guess that makes it a good problem to have…

I wrote Kokoro for every single one of you who has suffered loss, is navigating grief, grappling with the truth of impermanence or lost in the fog of midlife or any other major life transition, and wanting to think carefully about what it really means to have a life well lived. I hope you will read and love Kokoro, if you haven’t already.

But my point here is actually that disappointment is a gift when it is related to a milestone that was just a distant dream many years before. If your book narrowly misses a bestseller list, it means it has sold a lot. If a project gets rejected, it means that you are at a point where you have created something that is finished enough to be rejected, instead of being one of those people who only talks about creating something, and never suffers rejection simply because they never take the risk of putting something out there.

(As an aside, I believe that often rejection is simply a signpost, telling you that this direction is not a good fit so it’s time to change course. This agent didn’t sign you? That’s because they aren’t a good fit. That publisher turned your book down? Good. You only want to partner with someone who completely gets your book vision. And so on…)

So what do we do with disappointment? We use it. As a reminder of how far we have come, or as motivation to try again, or simply to keep going.

Of course sometimes I forget this, and something like narrowly missing the bestseller list means I feel the disappointment acutely (and I am sure the number ‘25’ will haunt me for a long time), but I let myself feel it, and the remind myself of the context, and the bigger picture that none of it really matters as much as we think it does. I remind myself that in writing Kokoro I learnt something very important about ‘success’, which was that it has nothing to do with your outer life and what other people think of you, or any of the metrics that we cling so tightly to. Rather, it’s about the richness of your inner life, and the way you show up in the world with genuine consideration for others. And it’s about the joy, beauty and wonder that you find in the world, and how you share that through the way that you live.

→ (This also reminds me of an essay I wrote here some time ago, called ‘When living the dream looks like a tracksuit and a warmed-up fish pie from Tesco.’ You might like it.)

(2) Books are like secret doors (but that makes me feel vulnerable, and vulnerability is uncomfortable)

What is most astonishing to me about the fact that Kokoro was very nearly a Sunday Times Bestseller is the fact that due to some recent difficult life circumstances, I haven’t yet done any spoken interviews about it at all. I have a number lined up for May and June, but I am nervous in a way I haven’t been before, because of the nature of what I talk about in Kokoro.

As one reader said this week, “OMG what a book. I read it from cover to cover in five hours and could not put it down. I knew it would mean something to me as I feel that when someone feels deep unexpected loss of a loved one, it changes them forever. A little piece of what makes us who we are is lost and gone. Healing the broken pieces happens, I know, but we are put back together in a different way. Kokoro spoke to my heart and soul. Thank you for being pure and raw. Your different self is most welcome in the world.” And another,  “I am so lost in it… (Kokoro) is so full of raw wisdom.”

Thinking about this has made me reflect on how there is something of a contract between author and reader. If you pay for a book, it’s like you are buying a ticket to step through a secret door, beyond which things will be revealed to you in an intimate way that otherwise would stay hidden. I find I can say things in a book that I would not say live on Instagram, for example, particularly around the topics I talk about in Kokoro – loss, grief, and the realization of all I have been wrong about for most of my life. It’s strange because of course anyone can go and buy a book, but there is something in the action that they take, spending money to buy that ticket into the story, that makes it okay to share such personal things, as if they have skin in the game, just like you do.

(3)  You never know what your work will inspire (but you know for sure it won’t inspire anything if you don’t put it out in the world)

A couple of days ago I heard that someone had read Kokoro and taken up pole dancing. Now that was not a response I was expecting. She said, “I’ve always fancied it but never been brave enough… As I continued to journal deeper (in response to the questions in Kokoro), I thought f*ck it and booked.” I never intended Kokoro to be a book about courage, but it turns out that it is absolutely about that, because it takes great courage to admit all is not well and we need to change something, or to face the brutality of loss and find beauty hiding there, or to stop living the way society wants you to, and to choose how to live based on what really matters to you.

So you have been warned – reading it might make you take up pole dancing, or something else you have always wanted but been too afraid to do. (Be sure to let me know!)

(4)  I don’t know what’s next

I shared on Substack Notes this week how I realised that for the first time in seven years, I am waking up from the haze of launch week without another book idea in my head. In the past, the first thing I have done the day after I have finished one book is to start the next. It has been something of a publication day ritual to take some time to work on whatever is coming. But not this time, and it is the strangest thing.

I know that it is because I poured everything I have right now into Kokoro, but then as I came to write the note, a comment flashed up in my Notes feed, the ghost of one of my earliest essays here on Substack restacked by someone just now, quoting me saying this: “I don’t write books because I have all the answers. I write books because I have so many questions.”

For a moment I panicked. “Wait, does not working on a book mean I don’t have any questions left??”

And then another voice, “No love, it just means you are tired.”😂

This reminded me of the importance of resting between creative endeavours, something I often forget to do in all the excitement of a new idea. It is a time for composting all that we have previously ideated but didn’t use, readying ourselves to bring forth a new something else. It is the place from which all creations arise.

(5)  I used to think that writing a book was the pinnacle of a writing life. I was wrong.

When your first book comes out it often feels like the culmination of everything that has gone before. An end point. While it is certainly something to be celebrated, it is not an end at all, but rather, of course, the beginning of everything that will come next (even if we have no idea what will come next). Six books in I have come to see that the writing life is more like a double helix than a straight line. One spiral represents our growth as a writer, and the other our growth as a human being. I imagine a thread running up through the centre of the double helix, representing the theme of our life. It’s the thing we keep being drawn back to whatever we write. For me this thread is about making the most of this precious life. You might like to take some time to think about what your theme might be.

Every book we write takes us a little further up the writer spiral, and the living, healing and growing we have to do to get it written takes us a little further up the human spiral. (Boy did I travel up that spiral in writing Kokoro…) There is a sculptural relationship between how we live and how we write. We see the central thread from all directions each time we travel around it. Getting that first book, poetry collection or screenplay out in the world is a fantastic achievement, but it is not the end, neither is it the only thing that matters. It is simply one loop of this beautiful, miraculous helix that intertwines writing and life in a constant dance.

In time we see how stories, ideas and inspiration live in everything around us, and how our lives are intimately intertwined with everything we ever write.

(6)  There is no way to avoid the rollercoaster, but you can step off it. When the rollercoaster gets too much, I simply go back to the writing.

When you put your work out into the world, you invite responses which are delightful or terrifying for your ego. But remember this: Your ego has nothing to do with the work. Not the real work of spilling what is in your heart on paper. So anytime the rollercoaster gets too much I simply step away, light a candle, open my notebook and write, reminding myself that there is joy and meaning enough in writing simply to become more awake.

This is part of a series. Find more confessions here: Part One | Part Two | Part Four

Photos: Holly Bobbins Photography