'I don't have a book in me'
How I wrote my first book, despite believing this for years. And how it even came to be.
Prior to October 2024, my debut book didn’t exist in any form.
I had no intention to even write a book, at least not now. Pathways had not been conceived, had never been talked about and wasn’t even a kernel of an idea in the depths of my psyche.
The book was not a thing in my life in any sense of the word.
A few months before, in April 2024, my friend and bestselling author
sent me a WhatsApp. It went something like this:‘My friend JP who runs The Pound Project is asking me to recommend people who might want to do a book with them…
They are a gorgeous indy publisher…
I’ve got one coming out with them soon…
You retain your IP…
It’s a really nourishing way to publish new words with less pressure…
Let me know if I can put your name forward?’
‘Sure!’, I replied. Because that’s what you say when you don’t think anything will come of a thing. I had been writing this newsletter, A Day Well Spent, for less than a year at this point.
This is just a place where I put down thoughts and some people respond to it in a really nice way, I thought. I’m hardly an actual writer. A person who writes actual books.
How sweet of Emma to think of me in that way. But obviously, JP won’t get in touch.
I even remember chortling to my husband later that day, ‘What would I even write a book about anyway?! hahaha’. And then I didn’t think about The Pound Project again for six months.
Fast forward to October and JP sends me an email — it’s a surprise
He wants to have a Zoom call. I’m not a fan of having Zooms with people I haven’t spoken to before. And is this really going to be about writing a book?
I don’t think I have a book in me. What would I write a book about?
This has been my go to response when publishers – and my agent – have asked me, for a number of years now, when I might be writing a book.
We had the Zoom. I liked JP. I think he liked me. Things I learnt about this small but disruptive Birmingham-based publishing company on that call:
I would be free to pursue any idea I want – they celebrate creative people engaging in their passions
They don’t want to dilute what the writer is trying to say and so only make edits as per house style
The writer is paid as an equal partner for the project: 50% of net profit
The writer owns the copyright to the content of the book
The more I learnt about how The Pound Project operated, the more I wanted to work with them.
‘This is the book.’
‘I don’t know what I would write about,’ I told JP on the call.
We floated some ideas that didn’t land. Then I had a thought.
‘There is this quite huge life change I’ve got coming up that’s been occupying most of my waking hours for the best part of the past three years,’ I said.
‘Maybe I could write about that?’
I relayed to JP that my husband and I were soon to uproot our entire lives from urban London to rural Portugal, to answer a calling to the land.
I told him why we were doing this and all the pathways that had converged in that time, leading me to this point. About societal conditioning, my bullshit job, my existential crisis, the experience I had at an eco-village in the wilds of Scotland, how batshit crazy modern life is, what our plans were in Portugal…
Once I started talking, I couldn’t stop. I had no idea I had so much to say.
‘This is the book,’ JP said.
And so, on 21st October 2024 (the day of this Zoom), the idea for Pathways was born.
How does one write a book?
What are the nuts and bolts – the on the ground practicalities – of writing thousands and thousands of words that somehow thread together to tell a story in the form of a book?
There are workshops, courses, retreats and endless material that aims to answer this question. I haven’t consumed any of these, because quite simply, writing a book any time soon had not been on my radar.
Pathways was to go on sale for just three weeks in May 2025 and I had to submit my final copy by the end of April. I had six months to write it and no blueprint to follow. I was also going to be in South America for two of those months.
Facing the task of writing a book from zero is daunting.
So, I did what I usually do in unfamiliar situations – I planned the hell out of it.
