Imagine if you became a famous writer

Adventures in book signing

My latest novel Careering is published by Sphere and out now in paperback

‘Imagine if you became a famous writer!’ said the woman, as I gripped my pen. ‘Then I’d have a signed first edition!’

My ego was stammering out a response. ‘Look, I’m certainly not famous but I’m not…wholly unknown. I’ve written quite a few books, now. I’m trying. I was quite pleased with how this was going, but now I’m not so sure.’ Just keep smiling, said my brain. Keep your mouth shut. It’s best not to speak, now.

The woman sighed. ‘I suppose that now you’ve written my name in it, I can’t give it away, or donate it.’

‘Shall we have a little cry?’ said my ego.

Hush! said my brain. Focus on the possibilities! Imagine if you became a famous writer!

I suspect that for most of us, when we say we want to be writers, what we probably mean is that we want to be famous writers.

Perhaps there are two ways of looking at it. The first is that writing is my job, and I am always hoping for a promotion. It’s an insecure and rackety business. To keep doing it, you need to write things that other people would like to read and spend their money on. Winning awards, and having your work adapted for stage or screen, can help. These successes are straps that can make you feel secure, held in place. The fewer straps you have, the more likely it is that you will get bumped off the wagon. And it sometimes feels as though there is very little room on this wagon.

The second is this. Being a ‘famous writer’ is only useful for me if it gives me more opportunities to write the sort of stories I am interested in writing. There’s no point in me becoming famous, successful, and popular if there is only demand for my 17th century science fiction. A fine genre, but not one I enjoy or feel passionate about.

Of course, there are many writers who are much more popular, successful, and talented than me. They create the kind of stories I’d love to write, and love to read. I can only do my best, and that’s not the best. That’s a harsh toke, but I can relax a little if I learn to sit with it, and really breathe it in.

I suspect that a lot of people resent authors. Every author I know has a story about how this resentment has manifested. Millions of us don’t feel loved, or understood, or listened to (and I certainly don’t exclude authors from this group.) I get it. There is something deeply self-indulgent about writing. Hoping that people might be captivated by something we created by spending hours and hours alone, making things up, when we could have been buying groceries or bleeding radiators. We write in the hope that someone might pay attention. I write to serve a reader, and the story itself, but then I think the only way I can write is to try to make up stories that I would enjoy reading. It’s selfish of me, and I can understand why it might be a source of resentment.

Sometimes, I wonder whether there’s a small group of aspiring novelists who don’t, or can’t read novels, because that resentment makes the experience so painful. They assume someone else’s story is going to be three hundred pages of me-me-me. And everyone writes, now more than ever. Of course, people resent singers, and models, and influencers too. People look at contemporary art and sniff ‘I could do that’ and ‘How much?’ Our attention has never been more sought after, our fought over. It’s not unnatural to resent anything that lays a claim to it. But we don’t sing our emails. There isn’t an app to have conversations in oils or made from clay. Anyone can write. Everyone does write. And there goes the novelist, taking something ordinary and everyday and having the audacity to sit behind a little table at Waterstones behind a great steaming pile of something everyone does all the time. Who do they think they are, Andy Warhol?

Making any art is radical because it requires a seed of confidence and self-belief. A seed that many of us are discouraged from planting. But that seed can be so, so small. And it doesn’t grow if our ground is dry with me-me-me. It’s you-you-you that’s fertile. We need to get curious, vulnerable, tender. Human.

Anyway, imagine if I became a famous writer! What would my life be like?

I would probably live in a big pink house with chandeliers. I’d do yoga and pilates all day long, wearing tasteful athleisure clothes in grey marl. At about six o’clock in the evening, someone would run me a bath. Then, I’d be zipped into a jewel encrusted frock, and sent to spend the evening with the other famous writers. Maybe I’d be honoured with an award, for being so famous and successful and popular. Occasionally I would take a break from this exhausting routine and go and lie on a yacht for a few days.

I would drink a lot of green juice. I would sleep deeply and peacefully. I would be slow to anger and rich in mercy, like the Lord Jesus Christ Himself. I’d never feel insecure, or irritated, or itchy, or ashamed, or tired. I’d never run out of frozen blueberries. I wouldn’t get up, put on my gym clothes, and then fail to go to the gym. I would not stand in front of my kitchen cupboard, feeling upset about something someone had said on Twitter, while mindlessly eating Lindor balls. I would not spend 45 minutes a day looking at dresses I can’t really afford on the Reformation website. I would not sit bolt upright in bed at 3AM with a very clear sense that three specific things will probably go wrong, and I will have to live under a bridge.

What I want — and what I don’t feel that I have — fame, success, money, popularity, whatever — I only want because I assume it will protect me from shame, pain, and being human. But then, I’m not sure I want to write about people who are happy, peaceful and garlanded with awards. I write about what it is to feel itchy and awkward. How it feels to yearn. So yeah — my novels are 300 pages of me-me-me. But maybe 300 pages of you-you-you too. 300 pages of human.

If we crave fame, I don’t think it’s because we believe we deserve to be recognised as the best. It’s because we think fame will neutralise the constant acid sting of always worrying we are the worst. We believe it’s proof of value. We assume, incorrectly, that fame must feel the way it looks.

Any author will tell you that a book signing can be a joy and a delight, a tiny communion when a reader and a writer can share the experience of being moved, together. It can also be an hour of strangers making it their business to take you down a peg or two, asking you why you think you’re so great, sitting at that table. To these people, an author might be living, breathing evidence of a risk they have been afraid to take. A painful reminder of an ambition that was not met with encouragement or kindness. When in this situation, I try my hardest to remember that if someone is not kind to me, it is probably especially important to be kind to them. It’s a tax, a duty, on getting to do something selfish. Writing the sort of stories that I want to read. It’s fair. It’s my honour to pay it.

Still, imagine if I became a famous author! I’m pretty sure I’d meet even more people who wanted to take me down a peg or two at book signings. I don’t think I’d spend more time writing. I’m sure I’d spend even more time worrying. I reckon I’d still try to recover my sense of equilibrium by browsing the Reformation sale, with a mouthful of Lindor balls. See, says my brain. You’re already living the dream.