The most successful book I never published

The book in my bottom drawer is a reminder to rethink the idea of failure

Back in 2006 I was a frustrated, unpublished novelist, working as a freelance book editor to earn my living. I had written about 20,000 words of two stand-alone suspense novels, but I was always getting stuck: writing myself into corners, losing the impetus of the plot, and spending a long time constructing beautifully crafted sentences that didn’t fit anywhere. During my twenties I’d been certain that somehow I’d pursue a career in writing fiction, but by the time I turned thirty I hadn’t got very far at all, and I was going through some major doubt. I was also recently married and thinking about starting a family, so I had a feeling that if I didn’t at least get a book finished before then, it might never happen.

Around the same time, there seemed to be a lot of fiction coming out with titles like Thirty Something and the Clock is Ticking (this Kasey Edwards novel is my favourite title of all). The theme really spoke to my generation of women, as we’d been encouraged to prioritise our careers and leave having babies until we were at least in our thirties, but then we’d also been told that if we waited until after thirty-five our biology would fail us, and our chances of having a baby at all would plummet. Awesome. Therefore, many women who had built very successful careers for themselves were now facing the looming question of whether and when to have a baby and what it might mean for their professional lives. This was obviously an important issue, but as I saw book after book along similar lines, I began to feel frustrated. I wondered if this preoccupation with just one female concern, and the way it was represented, was labelling all of us women in our thirties as anxiety-ridden mothers-in-waiting? What about the women who didn’t want children, and were perfectly happy about their decision?

The character of Melanie Lovely came to me fully formed. She was a well-rounded, fun-loving woman in her thirties who didn’t want kids, full stop. The plot dynamics therefore had to come from those around her, particularly her mother, who couldn’t believe that her decision to be childless could be so simple. I called it Maternally Challenged: The Childbirth Conundrum of Melanie Lovely and I wrote it with fervour. It was meant to be a comedy that also – hopefully – packed an emotional punch because of the more serious underlying themes. I was so passionate about this story that I set my life aside and finished the entire 100,000-word novel in three weeks! I then edited it for another three weeks, found a list of prospective agents, and sent it off with great excitement and fingers firmly crossed.

What followed were a series of rejection letters, most standardised, one or two taking the time to personalise their replies, and a couple even saying kind things about my writing. However, I then had a call with Tara Wynne at Curtis Brown, whom I already knew from my work in the industry. She also rejected the story, but she felt there was potential in my writing, and asked if I was working on anything else. I told her I had been trying to write a psychological suspense called Come Back to Me. She encouraged me to finish it, and then send it to her.

The rest, as they say, is history. Tara and I worked on the story for another year before she sent it out to publishers, and Come Back to Me became my first published novel, released by Random House in 2010, when my first baby was ten months old. Releasing a book and having a baby in the same year is a story for another day, but I can tell you from experience it’s a head-wreck, and I applaud anyone who goes through it and comes out the other side with a small amount of sanity!

Tara and I have been an agent-author team for the last seventeen years, and the story of Melanie Lovely was consigned to be the proverbial book in my bottom drawer. However, I’m forever grateful for that novel. The enthusiasm I had for the idea taught me that, with perseverance and momentum, I could finish a book. The rejection letters showed me that I could hear ‘no’ and cope with it, and it didn’t mean the end of my dreams. And because I plucked up the courage to submit the story for consideration, I ended up with a brilliant agent and the career I’d always longed for, which continues to this day.

Ten years after I wrote Maternally Challenged, I found those early rejection letters again when I was preparing to release All That is Lost Between Us, and realised the extent of the lesson for me in that experience. The book that didn’t work - and that no one wanted - turned out to be crucial to my future stories and writing success.