Let’s Start at the Very Beginning

What do you do when your motivation, your very reason to create, disappears? When your drive and excitement just dries up overnight, because there’s nothing pushing you onwards?

You stop.

In 2018, that’s exactly what happened for me. I lost my reason to write. But to explain what my reason was, I need to go back to the start.

I distinctly remember, in my early teens, when I had already read hundreds of books, and had been writing short stories and poetry of my own, the moment when I decided I wanted to be an author.

And why that was what I wanted to be.

I wanted to be an author and sell millions of books, so that I earned enough money so that my dad could pursue his passions, his dreams. As an artist, or a musician, or a photographer. Because back then, he worked in corporate jobs that meant we never saw him, and he didn’t appear to enjoy them very much. He was miserable, quite honestly, and I somehow thought that it was my responsibility to make him happy.

So that was my reason, to free him from the prison of exchanging his time for money. So he could be happy.

Of course, my writing was also one of the only things we connected over. And though he was fairly critical of my writing, he was encouraging enough that I didn’t give up. And I clearly remember, at 15, when I had given him my novella, Heaven dot com, that he was away in Italy, working, but he called me one evening. On my mobile phone (which would have been a stupidly expensive thing to do at that time). He called me to say that while reading my story in a restaurant in Italy, it had made him cry.

We weren’t close, and that kind of feedback was enough to carry me for many years, and even when my parents split up in my early 20s, by which time I’d no relationship with him at all for a few years, I still sent him the very first printed copy of that novella. Because I wanted to make him proud. Because although I had told him I didn’t need it, I still wanted his approval. I still wrote for him. To try and give him a better life than he had.

When he got the copy, he called me. It was the first time we had spoken in a long time, and it sparked a new chapter, whereby we got on enough to see each other once a year or so. He met someone, and I went to meet her, and stayed with them. She told me that he was proud of me, and this second-hand praise was enough to keep me going.

Then in 2010, I met someone who encouraged my writing, and encouraged me to publish. I had written my first novel just before we met, and I published it two years later, having decided to take the Indie route, right at the dawn of the Kindle, and print on demand publishing. The very first copy, however, I printed on my home printer, and hand bound it in leather, and gave it to my dad. I have no idea if he read the whole thing, but the only feedback he gave on that one was, ‘the doors disappear and reappear too much.’

Still, he read it.

And so, over the years, I accepted that he wasn’t likely to read them, but he was proud of my books. And now I had someone else to write for, my partner. Again, much like my dad, he didn’t read them all, but there was one that was his favourite, and that praise was enough to bolster me, to keep me motivated. I had dreams of selling millions of copies, so I could help him pay off the mortgage, or help him to realise his dreams.

Sounds familiar, huh?

Of course, that never happened, but I gave him all my love and attention and support, to try and make up for my lack of financial success. But we parted in 2017, just as things were starting to take off.

By this time, my dad and I still had a distant relationship, and I found that he was weirdly competing with me. He was making something of his music, which was great, but any time I managed some success with my writing, he would say he had to up his game, so he could win. Because it was all about who got famous first. I went along with it, all the while hating it, still hoping for just one, simple, straightforward – ‘well done’.

At the end of 2017, Where’s My F**king Unicorn? was published by a traditional publisher. I hadn’t gone out to seek the deal, it had pretty much landed in my lap, but it was still a big moment for me. It had taken a year to publish the book and to celebrate the release, I held a small party at a local art gallery. It started in the morning, and finished at 3, and at ten minutes to 3, my dad and his partner came in the door, exclaiming loudly –

“Where is everyone? Where are the posters and the balloons? Why aren’t you out in the street telling people to come in?”

Up until that point, I’d had an amazing time, so many friends and family had come to support me, some had driven a fair way to do so. And yet in that last part of the party, my dad and his partner ruined it. They talked about themselves, my dad bragging about how many musical instruments he had (over 400) and his partner about her marketing skills, and how I had done everything wrong.

My friend did ask them, well, if you’re so good at it, why didn’t you offer to help Michelle?

To which they had no reply.

I walked my other friend back to her car, leaving them to gab about themselves (not once did they ask to look at the book, to buy a copy or to congratulate me on it) and she turned to me and said – “What the actual fuck was that?” (I might be paraphrasing here, but it was along those lines)

What the fuck, indeed. But still, they had come to my launch, and that was just enough to make me believe that they were proud.

Then in 2018, after being on national TV, releasing the tenth book in my series, and sales were doubling year on year, I was feeling like I was actually getting somewhere, when I finally received it.

I can’t remember what it was in relation to now, but on the phone to my dad, I got that elusive, straightforward, unprompted, ‘Well done.’

And I felt nothing. That was it? That was what I had been waiting for? Somewhere around that time, I had been working on starting Not From This Planet with my best friend, and when I told my dad and his partner about it, all they did was tell me what a bad idea it was, and that I was making a mistake. His partner was particularly good at backhanded compliments that confused me. She told me that my writing was so good, that I should get an agent, not start a business with my best friend.

So somewhere in 2018, I stopped wanting to make my dad proud. I stopped craving his approval. I stopped wanting to make him happy. And I definitely did not want to compete with him on who got famous first.

So I stopped writing.

Of course, if you read my books, you will know that I have written a few since. But up until then, I was writing and publishing two a year, and since then, in 6 years, I have only released five, and those were a struggle. Of course, in the last six years I have also discovered I have ADHD and have entered perimenopause, so those things have also impacted my ability to focus and get things done. (Along with the continuing saga of the on again/off again relationship, which I gave another 5.5 years to)

But it’s not just the writing that stopped. I stopped everything related to my books. I stopped blogging. I stopped doing FB lives. I stopped posting. I had a fan club that I ran, where I made handmade things sent to readers who subscribed. That stopped and never restarted. I stopped trying to sell my books altogether, which of course, meant that sales have steadily declined, because they are no longer visible. You have to consistently post stuff, or you just disappear into the abyss. I stopped doing events and workshops and talks. I just, stopped.

So that brings us to where I am now. A writer who barely writes, in search of a new motivation to write. I love my readers, many have become cherished friends over the years, and I want to write for them. But they don’t really need me, they could easily find other reading material. I would like to write for myself, but I find that when it comes to things that are for myself, they will always be at the bottom of the to-do list. I’m much better at prioritising others over my own needs or wants. I have told my dog I will write for her, to keep her well-fed and always surrounded by toys and treats. She just farted, so I think that means she loves this idea.

But anyway, that’s where I am in this moment. I won’t promise that my next book is coming soon (though I really do hope I will finish it soon) and I won’t promise to blog all the time (although I hope to do so more often), to start going live again or post consistently, because those will all likely be promises I cannot keep, as just keeping afloat at the moment is taking up all of my bandwidth.

But I can promise that I am working on things. That I am trying to get back to what I love. That I am reprogramming a lifetime’s worth of bad thoughts and beliefs. That I am trying to become the best version of myself. That I am trying to figure out who I really am, when you strip back all the bullshit.

And I hope that’s enough. I hope you will stick around to see what happens. To see what I create next.

If it’s not enough, then thanks for sticking around til the end of this post. It feels both liberating and terrifying, to lay all this out there for everyone to read. But it is time.

Because the thing is, I have been trying so hard, for so long, and now I am done with that. The mask is fully off, I can no longer pretend to be okay when people treat me badly. Because I’m not. I deserve to be loved and supported by those closest to me, not criticised, ridiculed or shamed. (That job is surely for the reviewers?)

I wasn’t going to add any photos to this post, but I found this one of the cupcakes from my Unicorn party. Just to add a bit of joy to this otherwise quite serious and slightly depressing post.