I am officially putting down the chalk on 52 Writing Tips (for now!) because I have something very exciting to announce, and my most important writing tip of all to share with you.
Today, I’m going to share the story of how I went from writing sentences stuffed full of adverbs, to being able to tell you that my debut novel, The Lamplighter’s Bookshop, will be published by HarperFiction in 2025!
Let’s begin, shall we?
When I joined my Master’s programme back in 2017, one of the modules included a published author coming in to talk to us about the process of publishing.
I was incredibly excited.
A published author! I’d never met a published author before, or at least – not one that wanted to talk specifically about the process of being published. I remember sitting across a table from a very normal looking person (they don’t glow, apparently, published authors?) and being very disheartened that the first words from his mouth were:
“Don’t bother trying to get traditionally published. In this day and age? It’s not worth it.”
Now, I’m likely paraphrasing a bit seeing as this happened at least four years ago at this point, but the point of it was the same. Here was this published author – this person that had achieved something I’d only dared dream of – sitting in front of me and telling me not to bother!
It’s hard, they’d explained. The publishing industry is a lot about being in the right place, at the right time, and hasn’t always got an awful lot to do with talent. Sometimes you can write something absolutely amazing, and no-one will want it. So what’s the point? What’s the point of trying? What’s the point of writing at all? Best not to bother.
Well. That was the wrong thing to say to me!
It lit a fire inside me that has never cooled. Not from the moment I sat in that room, quietly seething that someone could come in and try and douse water all over my dreams like that. Could pour things like realism and cynicism over them all and leave half the class annoyed and the other half in the throes of an existential criss.
But the fire that that day instilled in me something that has gotten me past those five intervening years, into a job where all I do is writing, and to the point where I get to make the most incredible announcement: I am going to be a non-glowing, published author. I am going to have a book out! And it’s coming out in 2025.
Because do you know what it taught me?
It taught me to never give up. Which, perhaps, is what that published author wanted to instil in all of us that day, after all. Perhaps they just had a tougher method of doing it than me – because I am simply going to pass this message forward to you, my writing-loving friends.
Don’t give up. Even when someone tells you to. Especially if someone tells you to. Don’t give up. Keep writing. Just keep writing. Do it for yourself. Do it because you’d hate not to get up and put your words down on a piece of paper. Do it when you want to. Do it even when you don’t want to.
But whatever you do – don’t give up.
The Lamplighter’s Bookshop – coming Spring 2025!
Scheduled for spring 2025, The Lamplighter’s Bookshop is a historical romance set in 1899 telling the story of Evelyn Seaton, the aristocratic daughter of a gambling father. The synopsis reads: “After she and her mother are made destitute, Evelyn secretly answers an advertisement for a bookshop assistant at the shambling yet captivating Lamplighter’s Bookshop in York, but she is not the only candidate … competition comes in the person of William, a charming yet enigmatic writer hiding secrets of his own.”
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Sophie Writes 