Ten lessons I’ve learnt (so far) from writing my second book
Philosophical and practical reflections from the pre-launch side of the fence
I finished writing Weathering some time ago now; way back in early 2023 I think, though I can’t be entirely sure without looking through my emails. Book writing has an ontology all of its own, you see. It is both black-hole and edgeland. It sucks things in, it throws things out. You write it in the gaps, it writes you out of them, constantly. It’s an orderly mess that never ends and is over too soon.
Then after writing, there are the edits, then the proof checking, and finally the snag-list that only becomes evident once you have seen your words formatted, bound into rough-proof and put in your own hands. That’s when you really see. Not everyone gets this chance, I was lucky. You can read a bit more above the cover reveal here.
A book’s origin story has broadly three sections. In the first, you write alone in private and live the writerly life of your choosing in blissful ignorance of what’s to come. It is a heady time pre-review, and you can convince yourself of all manner of things, to your hearts (dis)content. On a good day you are writing an enchanting best-seller, on the worst, drivel. In some ways these are the best days. Your book is never as good as it is in lofty bullet points.
In the second, you take the giant leap of letting your editor see your work. Perhaps they have wanted to see it as you go, or perhaps they have trusted you to show them at the end. Either way, you think the exposure might kill you. If it doesn’t, their discovery that you’re an imposter who cannot write, might. This is a scary time, but if you’re lucky like me, a fruitful one. The edits were relatively minor but essential. No major restructures, just useful stuff that made it all flow and sound better. At the end of this stage, copy editors, proof readers, early reviewers and endorsers all get an eye on your work. If you’re lucky they love it and you can bank their praise in case it’s the last you get. I have printed an email I unexpectedly received from the head of publishing at Ebury who loved it so much he insisted on getting it into Gabor Mate’s hands. I know Gabor Mate has far more important things to do, but it was a nice thought.
The final stage of your origin story is publication. When your book makes it out into the world proper and you no longer have any control over it. You have to both let go and hold on for the ride. It will bring its own small-time madness. Weathering won’t get here until March 28th 2024, so I am in the liminal stage for now. A time that is best for rest and reflection. So, I thought it would be useful for me (and maybe other interested parties) to consider some of the things I have learned along the way.
Here are 10 headlines:
The Philosophical
Book writing really doesn’t have to be arduous - There is a lot of mythology about book writing. About how hard it is. How intense. How draining. How tortured you must be as a writer. This is all nonsense in my experience. Book writing is as hard and onerous as you want it to be, but if you start everyday with gratitude for the opportunity then it mitigates against the harder moments. Yes, writing a book is a big project. Yes, it will colonise your mind for months and years. Yes, it isn’t for most people the most financially rewarding endeavour. But, it is also an honour to be given a space in a publisher’s catalogue. It is exhilarating to see your words in print. It is incredibly fun too. I had wondered if it was a fluke that I enjoyed writing my first book, but to say the same at the end of this much different and intense book of narrative non-fiction, then I can say that it’s not coincidence, it’s attitude. It’s setting up your working life as best as is possible so that it won’t be arduous. It’s not being hard on yourself on the days you don’t write, and being engaged and present to the page on the days that you do. Writing books is the best thing in the world. I can’t wait to do it again.
Writing narrative non-fiction, requires you to write compellingly but honestly about things that happen; things that are true - There were times writing Weathering where it would have been easier to make something up because, for example, the weather was too bad to actually go and do a walk for the tenth time. But being an embodied writer, it is important to me to write from the lived moment-to-moment experience, as well as to honour this philosophical integrity in my work. I honestly believe that if we don’t walk the walk as nature and place writers that it will be revealed in our work, either through lack of believability or lack of substance. To write about nature and place we must commit to both. As a writer of narrative non-fiction, your promise to the reader is, I believe, to be truthful, and also to write up true experience into a worthy story. This means you may omit details, you may amplify others, but at the core is truth of experience that you lived in your own body. I don’t know if I have achieved this – only the reader will decide – but I know I did my best to honour this process. For me, there is no other way and it is now the only way I would want to write.
Writing what is true isn’t the same as confessional writing - It is a mistake to imagine that writing what is honest and true, has to also be confessional - that you will be forced to write more than you want to grab attention. Or that to write something with memoir-elements has to be exposing. It doesn’t. Authenticity isn’t the same as transparency. And transparency isn’t the same as honesty. As writers, we write in a time where we might believe that the only way for a woman in particular to be published is to over-expose themselves for shock-value. But truth can be real and wrought and measured, with plenty kept back for yourself.
Write from your own heart, or wherever you feel truth lives – In all aspects of life, we connect with people best when we connect through what is vulnerable or true. Through passion. Through wound. Through genuine care. If you want to write words that connect to others, then you have to write from your ever-evolving truth. You will know where this resides (and perhaps it isn’t in your heart, but your legs, or chest, or back…) because it will light up the inside of you as feeling or sensation, when you touch it. Even if you only lightly brush past your idea or passion in passing conversation or thought, you will know it by the shift in feeling that awakens in your body. It can be an exciting, lurching, vomitous thing. This is the place we write from as embodied writers (if you want to know more about that join us here). What is on your heart and in your body will likely change of course, with time and new information (and so it should) but still we keep following that impulse, which is ultimately what will lead us to a rich and fruitful writing life from the inner grounds.
Don’t be afraid of what you love - for years I was told that rocks weren’t ‘a thing’, which is to say, a publishing zeitgeist. Who would be interested in a whole book about rocks? This was a response I simply couldn’t compute, but I took it to heart and waited. And waited. And waited in such a way that looked more like giving up than patience. My love was not commercial and it wasn’t sexy, best keep it for myself then. Until one day. When a few books popped up here and there about rocks, and the world got interested in a nature connection, and I wrote a popular book about the latter which gave me a leverage of sorts. All of a sudden rocks were seen as zeitgesity after all, and Ebury/PRH were ready to take a gamble on me. Not just a gamble but a confident bet. They paid me a decent-enough advance and chose my book as one to ‘hand sell’ in 2024. They have made proofs, which few books get, and Weathering has a whole team behind it. It’s all rather mystifying and magical and none of it would have been possible if I had given up on what I love. Sometimes what you love is now, but sometimes it will be tomorrow. Or next year. I thought geology was over for me 15 years ago. Suffice to say, you can’t afford to lose heart. Stick with it, nurture it, keep telling people why what you love matters.
The Practical
Editing is not to be feared – I have said before that I enjoyed the editing process, and this remained true to the end. If you have a talented and respectful editor then they will work with you to make amendments, showing you where they have an issue, but ultimately encouraging you to resolve it. This was my experience with Robyn at Ebury. In this way, editing is an instructive process that you learn from for next time. Before editing, I worried that by the time it reached the end of editing I wouldn’t recognise my own voice in the writing (as I have experienced in some editorial commissions where they want the ‘house style’ - this being one of the reasons I am very choosy about commissions) but this couldn’t be further from the truth. Editing does not seek to correct your voice or your style of writing. They chose you because they liked your style of writing. Editing just seeks to make things clearer for the reader. This was especially useful for me as a writer seeking to translate big, often scientific, ideas into language and story for the general reader. I am already excited to take what I have learnt into Book 3.
We all have writing quirks that might need to be ironed out, and that’s OK – Mine is the overuse of italics. I put this down to being a therapist because I write as I speak, literally hearing my own voice in my head, and this means I put in a lot of italicised emphasis where my changes in intonation would be. Some italics are fine of course, and there are still many in my book for legit reasons. But I also cut out over 100 incidences of unnecessary italicisation that slowed the pace down or just felt plain old clumsy. The weird thing is, I didn’t need this pointing out to me: I saw it as soon as the book was in my hand, and asked my editor to revise the manuscript for me. Often time, things like this are personal preference and not necessarily picked up by a proof reader, because they aren’t technically wrong. They are just annoying. We all have writing tics and phrases that we favour, but too many on the page can be a nuisance.
Don’t bother with too many epigraphs – This is a niche one. But let me put it bluntly: these lovely little quotes at the beginning of chapters are classy, but a pain in the arse. Not knowing how the world of rights worked until this book, I spent an inordinate amount of time selecting beautiful quotes for each of my chapters, which would sit alongside my field doodles. What I didn’t know until last month was that each one needs separate permission for use, because they are not part of the fair trade that is assumed for quotes within the body of text. Seeking permission is a bureaucratic headache and it can be surprisingly hard to track down the original right holders. I had 9 to chase up, and because I didn’t know it was my job to seek permissions then I only started the process last month. Gulp. Currently, I have permission to use just one (my second favourite, luckily) but I am awaiting permission for 8 others – which will come too late if they come at all. My favourite had a price attached that was far too steep even for my supportive publisher, and too short a usage period. In short, be aware that it is you as the author who needs to seek permission so if you want them start early. If not, bin them. At this point, I’m telling myself they are overused anyway!
A good book doesn’t have to be choked with references – Every book process brings with it it’s own emotional struggle, I believe. With Weathering I finally put to bed any notion that a good book must show off my smarts. I have always enjoyed writing for a general reader, despite being very research oriented in my approach to all my work - I’m an academic at heart - but I also left academia for a reason, and I have given up on many a book that felt more like a dissertation than a compelling story. Nevertheless, it took me a good few months of reassurance-seeking from my editor to ensure it was really OK to write the way I write. She was a patient coach in this regard, but also matched her reassurance with a new offering for me to consider: what she and others on the team loved about my book was that it prioritised the voices of real people in real situations, calling on the community to assist me in my thinking. She calls this being a peer-expert. She recognised the soul in the work, rather than only the ego of many a (dare I say it) male smart-thinking author, or self-help writers who are keen to show you everything they know. You may read it and disagree of course – I could be an egoic nightmare – but I believe she was fundamentally right, and she caught an intention that runs through my work, even if it’s not always articulated. If you are worried about not seeming academic enough – it’s time to let that go. Let it go quicker than I did. Scholarly books are fantastic, they have their place, but there are so many ways to write a good book that you can find your own way.
I learnt a lot more about the industry - My first book showed me that I could write a book. It also showed me what it’s like to write and launch a book in a pandemic, with a publisher that didn’t care as much as they should have done (my first publisher collapsed shortly before publishing and Grounded was acquired by a publisher I hadn’t chosen). The experience I had this time round was completely different. I have been treated better, the book has been honoured, and I have been involved in decisions at every step of the way. With every book you learn a bit more about the nature of the publishing industry, it’s commercial imperative, and thus the requirement to play a certain type of game. The more you learn, the less romantic the whole thing feels. But what you are left with is a much more realistic and pragmatic view of things. Still aspirational, but demystified. Yes, you’ll sometimes have to sacrifice some of the art or esoterica for the business of wider appeal but for me that’s felt like a fair exchange (and a creative challenge) and has inspired me to express the art in my approach elsewhere. I now see writing as part of my life’s work, rather than just a #goal to fulfil. I am professionalising.
I’m sure there will be many more lessons to spill forth in due course, but for now I hope some of these are useful to the writers in this readership. If you are interested in exploring my approach to embodied writing or cultivating a more embodied writing practice then there are a couple of final places left in my online mentoring group beginning in January. If you want something shorter and more seasonal I have an online, weekend creative writing lab ‘The Winter Body’ running 13-14th January that is registering now! I would love to welcome you there.
I will be reading and re-reading this many times. Thank you for your honesty about this mystical process Ruth. Sounds like on the whole it’s worth bothering?! Xx