By Stig Abell

I was walking along outside my house the other day, laden with shopping. A woman stopped me to say how much she loved my Jake Jackson books, how she had shared them with her elderly father, who recently died, and how she thinks of him anew when she is reading the latest in the series.  

It was moving, and magnificent: living proof of that wonderful connection that can occur between two strangers, simply because they can experience the same words on the same page at a different time. Reading as the most perfect act of human empathy. Hooray.

I picked up my bags, puffed out my chest, and went on with my day.

The problem is that such chance, validating encounters don’t happen very often. Almost never, really. In fact, most of the time as an author, nobody notices you much at all. Which got me thinking: in all the parts of the publishing process, on how many occasions do you actually get to feel great as an author?

The actual writing is probably the best bit. And that can still be painful, awkward, frustrating, a process of hacking and hewing away at something whose final shape remains ever elusive. The nagging sense of being moments away from irredeemable failure.  

Even then it is almost certainly better than not-writing. If I am not mid-novel, mid-wrestle with a text, I feel lost, useless, even worthless. There is something undoubtedly satisfying about the daily routine of dreaming, imagining and finding the best words in the best order. It’s what happens next that can be so soul-sapping.

First, you have the fear of rejection, and from the very beginning. Maybe your editor will read it and hate it. Maybe you’ve finally been found out as a fraud. For my second novel, Death in a Lonely Place, I was told that the publishers liked the first half, and they liked the second half; they just thought the two halves didn’t work together in one book. With a heavy heart, I selected the final 40,000 words, deleted them and had another go.

Even when you get an overall note of approval, it can never be enough. Authors are needy, pathetic individuals who crave a level of enthusiasm no professional editor could ever plausibly muster. It’s easy to read reluctance in every word of acceptance, to think they suspect what you feel in your heart: that you’re losing it as a writer.

You blunder on. The editing process works, you make changes, you take notes, you whittle and recraft, you improve. By this point, you’ve lost all confidence in your own original judgement, you revile what you quietly once revered. You argue about a title, then realise you have no idea what works when it comes to titles anyway.  (I wanted to call my latest “The Sullen God” after a line from TS Eliot about a river; the publishers settled on the better, clearer, far more commercial A Twist in the River).

At this point, you are now nervously reading the competition. Books that are successful but abysmally-written make you envious and angrily sad; books that are magnificent make you feel even more like a fraud. Meanwhile, fellow authors on social media are crowing about TV adaptations, mass signings, wallowing in the adulation that is apparently their due. You hate them, and yourself.

Publication day is approaching and all you can think about is how little a splash your book is going to make. You read early reviews, automatically discounting praise and focussing maniacally on the critical barbs. You linger, like some literary stalker, on Goodreads, as your average score rises and (inevitably) ebbs. (The best piece of advice I got before my first novel, Death Under a Little Sky, was published was to think of the greatest work of fiction ever, then go read its score on Goodreads. Realising that The Great Gatsby can only muster 3.9 stars is a chastening and important experience).

Your book arrives. You attempt some desultory video on social media of you opening the box of first copies. Nobody clicks or likes. And why would they? Who wants to watch someone open a box and humblebrag about its contents?

You used to love bookshops, those cathedrals of modern civilisation, those bountiful stores of future pleasure. Now you can’t walk into one, because you will either see your book there but not being bought, or (worse) not there, not even available for sale at all.

By this point, you have lost all self-confidence, you snarl at any family member who dares to raise a voice in positive reinforcement, your body has become twisted and hunched. Invitations to book events are accepted, then dreaded: will anyone show up, will anyone care? Or you take part alongside other authors, and fear the prospect of sitting, lonely, beside a more successful, more brilliant charmer, confronted by a snaking line of fans, their copies outstretched in breathless zeal for autograph. Your own inadequacy literally measured in the metre-length of the signing queue.

I’ll ask the obvious question: much fun are you having with all this? Answer: not that much. But here’s the thing: you write because you can’t not write, you want people to care because you care too much. And when you meet someone who feels a connection with you, whose life you have accidentally touched, for a second in your day you feel elated.  

And then you start sadly thinking about what will go wrong with the next book…