LOOKING BACK

Recently, on the RNA forum, Sarah asked if we look back at our books did we feel proud or surprised that it was published? (I must say Sarah does ask interesting questions which always get me thinking.) The answers have been surprising since most people said they were proud of their first book.

Many years ago I heard an author – can’t remember who – say that authors were invariably embarrassed by their first novel. At the time I thought it was a silly comment for how could anyone be ashamed of a book which they had written and someone had published? Now I understand for I agree with that unknown writer.

Of course a lot depends on whether or not it was your first novel. I was once told that often it’s the second. third or even fourth one you’ve written that gets published. There’s a logic to it for you learn so much in the writing of a novel that inevitably what follows is better.

That was what happened with me, number one written was Love; the Bright Foreigner. But the first published was Distinctions of Class.
However, in my case BOTH embarrass me. Love: the BF was my attempt at writing for Mills and Boon and like most who attempt this I was a total failure; I knew it was, so I never submitted it. It’s a love story and an improbable one at that. There’s too much sex in it to the point where my son can’t read it, and I will always be mystified that it ever saw the light of day.

And Distinctions of Class? There are bits I like and bits that I cringe over even after nearly 25 years. Part of the problem is that the beginning and the end were grafted on later at the publishers suggestion. I did not like it then and I still don’t. It is artificial and I think totally out of place. Why did I do it? I had been rejected by virtually every publishing house in London and was on the point of giving up and I had reached that dangerous point where I would have paid the publishers and not the other way around. In other words I’d have done anything to see it for sale in a bookshop.

I never re-read them, once finished I’ve done with them. What would be the point? I know the end! I had to read Advances and Exiles for the sequel I’m writing now. I’d been quite pleased with them, but upon reading them after so long there was so much I wish I could have done to make them better.

I’ve only one I really like – Clare’s War and I don’t dare read that one in case I don’t like that one anymore either.

Now the one I’m working on I adore, but I’ve been here before, and I wonder how long the love affair will last before, like a lover when the lust has disappeared, and you can’t imagine what you ever saw in him.