Playing for AC Milan by Sam Blake

Getting published can take longer than you think.

I’ve been doing lots of interviews around the launch of my debut thriller Little Bones, and one question that recurs is “how long did it take you to write it?” In fact it took about two or three years, on and off, and a bit longer to find the perfect publishing house in Bonnier’s exciting new Twenty7 imprint. But that’s not the whole story. Little Bones is actually the fifth book that I’ve written (I have many partials too), and it took me at least three books to find my voice.

On the way to Waterford Writers Weekend a few weeks ago I was chatting to ER Murray about paths to publication and she had a great analogy about landing that publishing deal: we all play football in the back garden and watch the Premiership on TV, but none of us expect to go out and play for AC Milan in the morning. Writing is just like football, but a lot of people (me included) start off thinking that they are heading out with that striped Milan jersey on.

It takes hours of doing anything, as Malcolm Gladwell suggests in Outliers, to reach that tipping point for success, hours of writing to find your voice – the key element that publishers are looking for.

Way back in 1999 when my husband went sailing across the Atlantic for eight weeks with the Atlantic Rally Cruise race, and I was sitting at home on my own (no children then and it was November), I started scribbling a story. It was called The Poison Tree and was based loosely on the poem of the same name by William Blake, one of my favourite poets and coincidentally my namesake. At the time I wrote long hand, and I didn’t have a computer, so I went into the office in the evenings and at the weekends – at Corporate Events where I was working – to transfer it to the screen. I was completely convinced it would be a bestseller.

As with many first books I can see now that I felt I had to prove I could write, so the prologue was crammed with words of four syllables…I've since discovered there's a thing called the fog index in journalism that relates to clarity of message – let's just say the fog was very thick. I was expecting to be leading the team on to the pitch, but I was still in the back garden and not even getting the ball in the goal.

I sent The Poison Tree out and it was rejected everywhere, with good reason. I wrote another book – crime again, but this time about a detective called Charlie McShane, and set in Ireland (The Poison Tree had been set in London). By the time I got to book three, Dead Reckoning, I’d got the hang of the writing thing. I’d met Sarah Webb, who gave me the best advice ever: “just keep writing” – that and “the worst words you write today are better than the words you didn’t write” are pinned to my noticeboard – and I’d set up Inkwell, a publishing consultancy.

While book three had several very near misses with publishers, it didn't stick. But, after sitting through many Inkwell workshops, facilitated by amazing authors, I had learned loads and I had found my voice – I no longer worried about the words on the page, but focused on character and story. Gladwell talks about the tipping point for success coming after 10,000 hours of practise. I was nearing the 10,000 hours.

I wrote The Dressmaker, the book that was to become Little Bones, next and then, to lighten things a bit, a romance called True Colours. It wasn’t pure romance, it had twists and turns and a bit of mystery thrown in. I’d been shortlisted in two major short story competitions, and had written a story for Sarah Webb’s Mums the Word collection that caught the eye of an agent but, as it turned out, I still had a way to go.

True Colours got rave rejections – I know now that this was principally because it wasn’t a breakout book: the story wasn’t big enough to launch a new author – everyone loved it but no one wanted to buy it. The Dressmaker needed more work, so I kept going, developing the story, cutting characters (Tony’s mother was in an early draft, I loved her, but she had no place in the plot), and giving a feisty 24-year-old detective called Cat Connolly her voice. With every word I wrote I was understanding Cat more, and loving her.

I decided to self-publish True Colours (it did very well) just after setting up Writing.ie and then I got busy building the consultancy side of Inkwell. I’d known my current agent, Simon Trewin, for about three years before it came up accidentally over coffee that I wrote. I’d obviously failed to communicate the most important part of the whole Inkwell/Writing.ie picture – it all started because I knew I needed to learn more about writing.

So roll forwards to the sunny spring afternoon when I got a call on my mobile from Simon. I was on the landline with a new writer discussing their chapters and I couldn’t talk, so I answered quickly and said I’d call him back. The texts started then – Hurry up/ Are you going to be long?/ Tell him you’ve gone into a tunnel. I finished the call and phoned back to hear the best news ever: “I’ve had an offer for your book”. Simon had had lunch with Mark Smith on Thursday – Mark had originally set up Quercus, but was now spear heading the Bonnier operation in London. He made an offer for the Cat Connolly trilogy on Friday.

So now I’m in the stadium – I’ve been training hard with the premier league players, but I still feel like I’m on the reserve bench. When we know what readers think of Little Bones, I’ll know whether I’ve made the team.

Little Bones is published by Twenty7, priced £12.99