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The short answer is that I wrote a book.
The longer one goes something like this; I wanted to be an author from the age of seven and it took me almost thirty years to become one. When people said it was difficult to write a book, and practically impossible to get published, I listened. I worried, (and not without reason) that I didn't know how to write a novel. Where would I start? How would I spin it out? How would I end? Once university was over, I had the idea for a novel and put it to one side. I needed to earn money and then I wanted a career. Before I knew it, I had children, a fat mortgage and a full time job. I had no time whatsoever. And what if I wrote the damn thing, entirely in my own sweat, only to realise that not even my mother - a woman who still had my GCSE art framed on her wall - could bring herself to read it? So I didn't write. I read voraciously, marvelled at brilliance of other novels, thought that maybe one day... but I didn't write.
My luck changed when I changed. I decided to stop boring myself (and others) with my unrealised ambition and just do it. I got a place on the Faber Academy Writing a novel course. I wanted guidance and discipline. I reasoned that after forking out thousands of pounds - paid for on credit card - I HAD to write. I had a great tutor who helped me see what was and wasn't working and why. But perhaps the biggest thing the course did for me was deconstruct the process. It became less terrifying. I wasn't so dwarfed by the scale of the task. I took each day at a time and concentrated on writing a little as often as I could.
I wrote the book and my fears were realised. It was rubbish. Even on a wet afternoon in Newcastle my mother would have struggled with it. But happily, I realised that I could polish rubbish. I could take it apart and put it back together again and again, making it better each time. You can't do that with an empty page. At the end of my creative writing course I read an extract of my 'novel' to a roomful of agents. A handful asked to see more. I said no, because it still wasn't good enough. But I thanked them and kept in touch. Six months later, I finally sent it out. I got an agent, worked on the book all summer, lived it, breathed it, almost went mand with it. In early October it was sent out to the world. A week later I had a book deal.
How did you get published?
You can ask any author the same question and the long answer will always be different, but the sort one, I can say with 100pc certainty, will always be the same. I got published because I wrote a book.
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Former BBC correspondent Colette McBeth is the author of Precious Thing, and this year's The Life I Left Behind, as well as a member of Killer Women.
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'I'm the only one who knows the secrets her friends have hidden,
the mistakes the police have made.
I'm the only one who can warn her she's still in danger.
I know exactly who attacked her.
He's the same man who killed me.'
More about Colette: @ColetteMcBeth | www.colettemcbeth.com
Find my review here..
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