Blinded by the Light - April 2019
‘Hi, nice to meet you. What is it you do?’ ‘I’m a writer.’ ‘Ah, very good. Have you had anything published?’ I think most writers have experienced some version of this conversation. So far I have managed to resist the obvious reply— ‘Why would I tell you I was a writer if I hadn’t had anything published?’ —because I think they’re trying to be polite and, to be fair, everyone knows that for every published writer there are dozens more tapping away on their keyboards in garrets and garden sheds and cafés, all of them desperate to see their work in print. I was one of those people once, and I want to explore how the lure of seeing one’s name on the cover of a real book, a proper, published book, means that authors like me have no idea what they are getting into. I was a teacher. When I sat down one summer holiday in the early 1990s to write a children’s book I knew almost nothing about the business...