Renegade A to Z: L is for…

… Liminal, as in, The Liminal, an event that I'll be reading at on the 18th of June in Weston-Super-Mare. You can find out all the details on the website,  but it's been summarised as

Sci-Fi. Fairy Stories for Adults. Dark Fiction. Set in carboniferous limestone.

Cool!

L is also for launches, and I am soon to have the last one for From Dark Places in Oxford on Wednesday (25th May).

I've had launch events in Manchester, Sunderland, London, Shepton Mallet and Bristol now, and I thought it would get easier. It hasn't. Don't get me wrong, I've learnt a huge amount, especially about the nuts and bolts of organising them, and that will feed into the events I organise for 20 Years Later. It's the anxiety I'm talking about.

L is also for lizard brain

It seems my stupid lizard brain needs to experience something many, many times to stop reacting to it as a threat. Actually, I worked out that after I'd written about 150 press releases for clients it stopped being a scary task in and of itself, so maybe I need to do 150 book launches to chill out about them.

Hmm.

Usually I calm down once I get started, though I never exactly relax. However, at the London launch, I felt horrifically anxious throughout, and then that evening, once I was back at my best friend's house, I was a wreck. It took a little while to figure out what happened, but now I have, I need to write it out to help process this. I want to try and repair this before the next one and the London launch for 20 Years Later!

Why the London launch?

At each of the launches I've had, there have been members of my family, old and new friends, and people who I met for the first time in the real world after becoming friends online. But what was special about the London launch in particular was that some old friends from my university days were there, and it brought up some old demons that were so deep down – and so long ago – that I'd forgotten about them.

A profound belief

I studied at Oxford. I was the first person on both sides of my family to go to university, and, quite frankly, very few people believed I would get in. Apparently 400 or so people applied for the very few places available on the course I wanted to study, and I never once believed I got one of those because I was good enough.

I need to give you some background to understand why I believed – and still believe that. My childhood was pretty disrupted by various family shenanigans and I went to four different secondary schools (11-18 years of age for my US friends). At the penultimate one I made a pact with my best friend that we would both apply to Oxford. I wasn't that fussed about the place, but she was. Then I was moved to another school (that's a long and not very happy story in and of itself) and we still kept the pact.

At the fourth school, all my teachers said I would never get into Oxford. My education had been disrupted too much, I hadn't received a good enough education, blah, blah, blah. Well, all I was worried about was keeping loyalty to my pact, so I dug my heels in and insisted on applying. They said I didn't have a hope in hell at passing the entrance exam, so I should try the alternative route; send in two pieces of work and hope they give me an interview. They added that they thought if I could get an interview, I'd talk my way into Oxford.

So that's what I did. I wrote about what happened next in a very old post, you can read it here but if you're in a hurry, this is the skinny:

I wrote a sci-fi short story and submitted it for coursework
My English teacher said it should be one the samples to send to Oxford
After arguing I did what she said and got an interview
The admissions tutor told me that story had got me my place (not my interview, my place)

Of course, I still went through 3 agonising days of interviews and nerves, but true, I got a conditional offer of AAB – if I got those three grades in my final exams, I could go to Oxford.

And I worked like hell, and I got 3 A's. And I went to Oxford.

So what on earth does this have to do with the London launch?

Well, the whole time I was in Oxford, I truly believed I was only there because some crusty academics were amused by the fact they'd received a short story about time-travel instead of one of the hundreds of Shakespeare essays they must get. I felt like I was making up the freak quota, I imagined meetings after the interviews saying "And what about this Emma girl? Not really up to scratch is she, but she's quirky and it would be good to have someone odd in the year group. Let's see how she does in her exams, and if she gets the A grades we'll let her in out of pity."

I made friends there that I will have for the rest of my life. I discovered a group of friends with amazing minds, with creativity oozing out of every pore, brilliant sparkling gems of people, and all the time I thought I was just a rough pebble that had been tumbled enough by life to pass off as something shiny in the right light. I felt privileged to have the opportunity to know and study and have fun with them because of some bizarre quirk of fate.

Not because I was good enough to be there.

Fast forward a fair few years, and I'm standing up in front of some of them after similar twists of fate and happy luck conspired to bring me into contact with my editor and publisher, and bring me a contract. Was I really good enough to be published? Was From Dark Places really enough to merit a book launch?

Would they see for the first time that I wasn't good enough to stand there in front of them and say "look what I've done!"

The sad thing is that these friends are amongst those who I love most in the world. And they love me. They are wonderful, funny, tender, kind people, and yet I feel like they are mountains and I am a crappy little molehill next to them.

How do I deal with this?

I don't know, in all honesty. This is a basic assumption, a deep assumption about myself and my time at university and a deep assumption about them.

And it goes to show that even getting published doesn't make all of those insecurities go away. Sorry.

So L is for the Liminal, London launches, lizard brains and low self-esteem.