I'm not an overnight success. My early publishing history, through my first five books, was unfortunate in many respects, typified by a couple of short anecdotes.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
How lucky am I? Quite often I speak at book festivals, and people ask me how I got published. There's people who have been working on a book for as long as ten years, and I feel like such a cow.
I write slowly by hand. Publishing is effectively bankrupt for you unless you are Danielle Steele. It takes a year to write book and advances are going down or disappearing.
My first novel was rejected by some of the most eminent publishers in the world. Starting again was a real wrench.
From the very beginning, I envisioned success as selling enough books so I could keep getting published and continue to write what I wanted to without compromising.
I was never confident about finishing a book, but friends encouraged me. When I finished my first book, it was accepted by a publisher right away and became an instant bestseller. One male critic called it the most shocking book he ever read.
I was incredibly lucky that my first book found a large and loyal readership. It changed my life - from being a very withdrawn adult to living in Paris as a full-time writer. It has also given me enormous confidence.
My first novel was turned down by half a dozen publishers. And even after having published five or six books, I wasn't making enough money to live on, and was beginning to think I'd have to give up the dream of being a full-time writer.
I wanted to highlight that whole dreadful process in book publishing that 'nothing succeeds like success.'
For me, just being published feels like success.
Some say I'm an overnight success. Well, that was a very long night that lasted about 10 years. But while I do, of course, now feel the pressure having had books that have been very successful, I just know I have to concentrate on writing for myself. I can't worry about genres or markets or what might be commercial or not. That never works.