Courage, courage, courage!

Yesterday I was interviewed by a wonderful women who asked me about my journey to publication. As I told her, I remembered all sorts of funny things I’d forgotten. Like how I went from bookshop to bookshop, asking them to sell my self-published books. How I baked chocolate flapjacks as bribes for them to put the books in their windows. How I had rejection after rejection. How I had breakthroughs, in the form of a gorgeous Border’s bookseller who loved Men, Money & Chocolate so much she sold a copy to virtually every customer she served. The years to publication, and beyond, have been full of delights and disappointments, successes and rejections, and many, many moments when I just wanted to give it all up and crawl under a rock. And so, when she asked what trait an unpublished writer needs to become a published one, I said courage. Courage above style, courage above substance, courage above talent. Which is why there is plenty of published silliness out there and plenty of unpublished brilliance. So, I say, if you want to be a writer – or anything else for that matter – courage is what you need, above all!

Pic: enjoying an enormous and extremely delicious ice cream in Funchal this afternoon