Keeping Going
Like so many writers, my journey to publication was long and winding. I love telling the story because it’s the kind of story that would have given me hope back then, in my trying-to-get-published years. It started with an MA in Creative Writing in 2004. Of course, it started long before that, really, with an insatiable love of reading and writing and a hidden flame of hope inside that I could do something so incredible as write a book. The MA was a scary step, because what if I couldn’t? What if the dream was futile? I’m so grateful that that intense year of writing and exploration and learning took that hidden flame and turned it into a raging fire.
But all too soon, it was over, and I had to go back to work. There followed a number of years, through most of my twenties, when I was working and socialising and telling anyone who would listen that I was writing a novel. The trouble was, I was talking about it more than I was doing it. But by 2009, I had something. Something I was ready to send out. It was called Nobody’s Wife. I was living in New York at the time, and a lot of publishers still wanted hard copies, so I spent a fortune printing and posting this novel, and starting clocking up the rejections.
In 2010, shortly after I’d moved back to London, one of the agents I’d sent it to called me. She liked it. We met. She asked what I was working on, and I told her about the novel I’d just started, the novel which ended up being called Missing Pieces. She liked the sound of that more than the one I’d sent her, so she signed me and I got to work. I finished that one much more quickly, because I had a focus, and I redrafted with my agent’s input. And then, she sent it out to a handful of publishers, and despite great feedback, no-one bought it. Shortly after, my agent and I went our separate ways.
I was crushed. It was 2013 by then, and I’d just had my first child. Motherhood hit me like a train and I didn’t write for a while. I had two novels that I felt had failed. A year or so later, I half-heartedly started writing something that only ever reached 30,000 words. And then, in 2016, while pregnant for the second time, I was diagnosed with breast cancer. I found my way back to writing through blogging, and just after finishing treatment, I took part in NaNoWriMo and completed the first draft of a novel about a young mum with breast cancer, called I Wanted You To Know.
Having cancer changed me in a lot of ways, and one was that it made me more determined than ever to make this lifelong dream of mine happen, whatever it took. When an academic friend asked if I’d tried submitting direct to smaller publishers, rather than to agents, I looked into this option, which I hadn’t been aware of. I chose two such publishers and sent off Missing Pieces, the novel I felt was in the best shape. And I waited.
You get so used to rejections in this business that when someone says they want to publish your book, it’s really hard to believe them. But in 2017, Agora Books said just that. I went to London to meet them and they gushed about how much they loved my book, and I walked out of their offices feeling like I was in a dream. They’d asked whether I had anything else, in case we could make it a two-book deal, and I sent them Nobody’s Wife and that rough first draft of I Wanted You To Know. And a couple of months later, we were signing a three-book deal.
Things have moved really fast since then. Missing Pieces didn’t need a huge amount of work, so that one was published first, in June 2018. The response was incredible. I achieved all kinds of things I’d never thought possible, including getting into the Kindle top 100 and recieving quotes from authors I’d long admired. Nobody’s Wife came next, in March 2019. I felt like that novel was a bit of an underdog, but by the time we’d finished editing it and Agora had created a beautiful cover, it was like a new book.
And my third, I Wanted You To Know, really was a new book, because I wrote it from scratch a couple of times before Agora released it in October 2019, to coincide with Breast Cancer Awareness Month. I’m so incredibly proud of how all three books turned out, and my experience with Agora Books has been a dream. Now, I’m entering a new phase. I’ve written my fourth novel and I don’t know who will publish it. I’m hoping someone will, as it’s based on an idea I’ve been carrying around for over a decade, that originally came to me in a dream, and getting it down has been a battle. I’m hoping it might be my best yet. We all hope that, of course, about every book. That’s what keeps us going.
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Laura Pearson is the bestselling author of Missing Pieces and Nobody’s Wife. Her third book, I Wanted You To Know, was inspired by a letter she wrote to her children after being diagnosed with breast cancer while pregnant. She lives in Leicestershire with her husband and two children, and spends her time writing novels, running The Motherload Book Club, and doing the school run in the rain.
Follow her on Twitter @LauraPAuthor
Find out more about her on her website https://www.laurapearsonauthor.com/
Dear Edie, I wanted you to know so many things. I wanted to tell you them in person, as you grew. But it wasn’t to be.
Jess never imagined she’d be navigating single motherhood, let alone while facing breast cancer. A life that should be just beginning is interrupted by worried looks, heavy conversations, and the possibility of leaving her daughter to grow up without her.
Propelled by a ticking clock, Jess knows what she has to do: tell her daughter everything. How to love, how to lose, how to forgive, and, most importantly, how to live when you never know how long you have.
From best-selling author Laura Pearson comes her most devastating book yet. Honest, heart-wrenching, and emotionally raw, I Wanted You To Know is a true love letter to life: to all its heartache and beauty, to the people we have and lose, to the memories and moments that define us.
I Wanted You To Know is Laura Pearson’s third novel.
PRAISE FOR I WANTED YOU TO KNOW
‘poignant‘ — Glamour UK
‘Laura Pearson is one of our most gifted writers‘ — Clare Empson, author of Him
‘one of my books of the year‘ — Louise Beech, author of The Lion Tamer Who Lost and Call Me Star Girl
of Bitter
Category: Contemporary Women Writers, How To and Tips
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