TEN BASIC BUT IMPORTANT RULES FOR BEING AN AUTHOR
Never expect anyone to read your book, even if you sent it to them for free. Do all you can to keep yourself in a non-presumptive state that will lead to a feeling of pleasant surprise if a fellow human reads your book.
Don’t let people whose job it is to think about the numbers that books sell influence your artistic decisions. If making artistic decisions was their strong point they’d probably not have a job centred around sales figures.
DO listen to good, harsh editors. And if they make you cry, go for a long walk, then come back and look at their suggestions with fresh wind-dried eyes.
If you are struggling with motivation, train your brain with treats, as you might train a puppy. (“Just one more paragraph without barking and you are permitted to eat this attractive cocktail onion on top of a small wedge of cheddar!”)
Get a good chair. Books are worth sacrificing nearly everything for, but the successful functioning of your body is hugely dependent on the health of your spine, which holds everything together, and nothing - not even books - is worth sacrificing that for.
Keep notebooks - real, physical notebooks - and never shy away from jotting down the weirdest thought that pops into your head. Prioritise physical notes over digital ones, always. Take your notebook everywhere and treat it like a valuable that is more important than your wallet or phone, because it is.
Research can be whatever the fuck you decide it is. If it’s contributing positively to your book, it’s research.
Don’t read books that sound, on the surface of things, like they’re going to be a bit like yours.
Do read books that sound, on the surface of things, like they’re going to be an entire planet away from yours.
Never pay any attention to ‘10 BASIC BUT IMPORTANT RULES FOR BEING AN AUTHOR’ lists on the internet.
Some other things, while I remember:
In case you missed it, I’ve now recorded - and added - an audio version to this piece I wrote about my house obsession. I think it might be my favourite thing I’ve written on Substack this year. Also, the comments that you have left on it are some of the most interesting and entertaining I’ve read.
The Golden Cap, in Dorset (above), is the highest point on the south coast of the United Kingdom; it’s also one of the most stunningly beautiful. On a clear day you get a spectacular view of the crumbling honeyed cliffs stretching east and west below it, many of which have been subject to dramatic landslips in recent years. It’s also where the two central characters in the novel I’ve just finished live: a novel about the shifting, swallowing, regenerating nature of the land… about the shifting, swallowing, regenerating nature of everything. Well, they don’t live on it - nobody lives on the Cap, apart from numerous insects, badgers, foxes, gulls, crows and meadow pipits - but in a little off-white cottage directly behind it. When I write about a particular landscape, I make my best effort to get to know its DNA, but also get to know it like it’s an exciting new friend. For this reason, over the last year, I have walked pretty much every public footpath - and several non-public ones - within an eight or nine mile radius of the Cap, while creating a little fictional universe around it. But this Saturday just gone was different. Having handed in my final edit of the novel - the biggest, most ambitious project of my life - at the beginning of the week, on Saturday I was just a walker, not a researcher. It’s a measure of just how invested I’ve become in the characters in the novel that, at times, on my route, I half-expected to see them. Back when I was writing different kinds of book, before I found the courage to commit to novels, I would never have suspected just how emotionally invested it’s possible to become in your characters when you write fiction. You hurt with them when they are sad, cheer them on in their little triumphs, and miss them when the story is over. The book is called Everything Will Swallow You, and it’s published in March, 2025. It takes place in a world half-real, half-not. But it’s felt extremely vivid to me over the last year. Tramping its psychic and physical terrain yesterday, one more time, until the sea ate the sun and I could barely see more than a yard in front of my face, was my way of saying goodbye.
It’s had been a while since I’ve had a special charity shop find, but this Katharine Briggs book (nerdily I already own the hardback) was one hell of a score yesterday: £1.75. Cheapest copies online are all just over £100…
- There are over 18,000 types of lichen in existence. My personal favourite is ‘village bench lichen’, which devotes its entire existence selflessly to gradually making communal public seating more furry and comfortable. You get a lot of it on Dartmoor…
- You discover after a while that, when you write in a digital space, there’s a strong populist bias towards writing about digital concerns. I’ve done it a little bit, and I’ve not done it a lot, and I’ve seen the contrast and injustice of the metrics. You write something with a headline like “WHY YOUR GREAT GRANDMA’S APPLEWATCH IS MAKING HER A WORSE PERSON” and shitloads of people read it, even if it’s nowhere near as good as a piece you wrote about frogs or bridleways or why drinking two gallons of rainwater a day can be good for your knees. It’s just the way things work. Ranting about it isn’t going to change things. But my awareness of the situation is not going to make me write more about the internet on the internet. I’m not going to choose subjects to write about based on how big they will potentially hit. I’m going to to choose subjects to write about based on whatever the fuck I feel an aching need to write about at any given time.
- Following a few requests, I’m planning a post here in the near future where I answer questions about my recent books. If there’s anything you’d like to ask about my writing, please pop it in the comments below. I’ll then choose the eight best questions and post my answers in a week or two (possibly including audio or video). Each of the top eight will win one of these psychedelic original meadow hare linoprints by my mum, Jo (originally featured in my best non-fiction book Ring The Hill).
- Speaking of Jo, she has just sent me this beautiful selection of bookmarks. Everyone who takes out a full annual subscription to my page before midnight on September 30th will receive one of these, plus signed and personalised hardbacks of Notebook, Villager and 1983, wherever they happen to be on the planet.
