Write a novel & get published: Kerry Fisher tells how

How many of us have the dream of writing a novel and getting it published? How many of us would like to get it done this year? Kerry Fisher had that dream and she did it, what’s more she’s written us a guest post telling us how she did it. Read her story and discover her tips but most of all be inspired and best of luck from BritMums.

I’m going to write a novel…

Four years ago. Decide don’t want to be old woman with white whiskers saying, ‘Coulda, woulda, shoulda written a book.’ Give up job as a journalist to write said novel. Tell everyone that I’ve given up job to write novel. Deal with envy and disbelief in equal measures. Spend next two years diving under tables at parties at the question ‘Are you published yet?’ then last two fielding comments ‘You’re not still writing that book, are you?’ Mutter something about needing to find an agent. Chance of finding an agent roughly equivalent to being reunited with teenage son’s lost rugby shirt/art overall.

Go to writing festivals. Hear Meg Rosoff speak. Her top tip: ‘Can’t get published? Write a better book!’ Go away and write a better book. Carry on going to writing festivals. Hang around behind pillars, spying on agents, trying to squiggle up the courage to speak about ‘the better book’. Drink lots of terrible red wine, make friends with the lady who serves the breakfast, the student pulling pints behind the bar, the bouncer on the door but manage not to get within ten yards of an agent.

Win first prize at York Festival of Writing for my opening line, ‘I was wearing the wrong bra for sitting in a police station’. Think maybe, just maybe, I might be able to do this. Have bright idea of paying for manuscript review. Receive results of manuscript review. Throw self onto sofa and shout at the dog. Son tells teacher, ‘My mother sort of works. She’s an unsuccessful author.’ Daughter says, ‘But you tell us not to give up at the first hurdle.’ Husband suggests becoming a shepherd for National Trust. Feel vaguely insulted when friends say they could imagine me doing that. They can’t imagine me as hugely successful novelist, huh? Grump for a couple of weeks. Peer at occasional page of manuscript review. Glare at husband and sheep on hill outside my house in equal measures. Accept that manuscript editor might have a few teeny valid points. Make changes. Send off three chapters to several agents.

Begin to think that the big novel dream might be over as rejections ping into inbox. Wonder about going back to journalism. Go to Romantic Novelists’ Association Christmas party feeling loserish and fraud-like. See Talli Roland, successful self-publisher. Have epiphany moment of ‘Why not? Worse that can happen is no one buys it.’ While talking to ‘proper’ author friend, her agent comes over and asks me what I am writing. Burble incomprehensibly about women’s commercial fiction and forget to push book but talk about blog instead. She asks to see chapters anyway. Pop them in the post as I have done countless times before and go back to proof-reading The Class Ceiling until my eyeballs bleed. Just before The Class Ceiling finally makes its way onto Amazon Kindle – ugly baby in a pram being pushed out into the world for everyone to peer in and recoil in horror – agent phones and offers to represent latest book.

Moral of story. Keep going. Keep going. If you get close to giving up, take a risk. Then watch the universe rush to keep up.

The Class Ceiling is out on Amazon Kindle. It’s the story of a cleaner who receives an unexpected inheritance. She finds herself catapulted into an alien environment where no woman can survive without pedicures and Pilates and no child can contemplate a week without Kumon maths and organic apricots…

The other book, represented by gorgeous agent, will be out when I’ve cried in the understairs cupboard over edits, nearly applied to become a shepherd and decided I don’t like the look of the rams so better get back to the keyboard…

Kerry Fisher is a fiction and non-fiction author, mum to a teenage boy and ten-year-old girl, wife to a very tolerant man, owner of a very disobedient lab/schnauzer cross. Just self-published women’s contemporary fiction novel, The Class Ceiling, with an agent for the next one. She blogs at Kerry Fisher and find her on Twitter

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