Silence, Mostly, And A Trickling Of Form Rejections

There were nine children sitting down to eat at our table that day. Six of them were moaning: I don’t like broccoli; I don’t like potatoes; I don’t like quiche. One of the babies picked up a carrot and squeezed it so that lumps of the orange vegetable fell all over the high chair and onto the floor.

I sat down opposite my husband, next to my eight-year-old son who was sitting on his hands, his face a picture of stubborn resentment.
‘I’m not eating it,’ he said.

‘I don’t care if you eat it or not,’ I said. ‘I just sold my book.’
All eyes turned towards me. For a second there was silence. Then, my daughter said, ‘can I still have pudding if I eat ten bites?’

Like many writers, I knew I was one from an early age. The idea formed somehow as I read my way through the bookshelves of my childhood home, picking up my older brother’s Stephen Kings, James Herberts and Terry Pratchetts, finding the things that moved me in stacks of my mother’s Alice Walkers, Jeanette Wintersons and Toni Morrisons. I clearly remember thinking: one day I will write novels, but for now I am too young, so there’s really no point trying. Novels were an artform produced, as far as I could tell, exclusively by Proper Adults. Music, on the other hand, I perceived as being written and produced exclusively by young people. I began to write songs. I was twelve.

Through my teens and early twenties, I wrote and recorded several albums of music, but despite repeated attempts I never got a record deal. Then, I trained as a music teacher: a sure-fire way to show a person precisely how old and out of touch they are. I gave up failing at being a pop star and started writing the novels I’d always planned to write. I was twenty-five.

For a few years I wrote regularly, but without a real sense of purpose, always thinking there was plenty of time. No real hurry. I read books on plot, on police procedure, on the craft of writing. Then I got pregnant, and the world snapped into sharp focus. All of that free time I wasted, bumming about on the weekends looking at vases in National Trust houses? All of that rich silence, my uninterrupted thoughts, my untroubled sleep? Gone, gone, gone. I wrote through both pregnancies, and when the babies came I wrote at nap time, and in the evenings.

It was an act of desperation, of last-chance-saloon, of do-it-now-before-it’s-too-late.

It wasn’t just becoming a parent that spurred me on. If it were only that, the exhaustion might have put a stop to it eventually, as it does for so many people, and understandably so. But when my first was six months old, a dear friend, who happened to be married to my brother, was diagnosed with terminal cancer. She fought it, but the disease took her down fast.

After she’d gone I felt like every breath I took was a bonus. I couldn’t waste another second of what I’d been given, not when her time was up, so unexpectedly, so unfairly. We were both thirty-three.

I joined the ranks of the early risers, crawling in darkness from my bed to my computer and writing until the children woke up. After a couple of years of this I had a novel, a 150k-word monster with three main storylines intertwining in exactly the way, I thought, Kate Atkinson did that sort of thing, tying up all the loose threads at the end, very cleverly indeed. It was wry and dangerous and exciting and moving. I had a sneaking suspicion it was total garbage. What’s more, I had no idea how to make it better.

Nevertheless, what do you do with a finished novel? Send it to agents, of course. After a few months there was silence, mostly, and a trickling of form rejections. I deserved every one.

Looking back, there are serendipitous moments upon which I dwell, sometimes feeling a rush, the fear of the close call; if I hadn’t been in that place, at that time, with that person, then I might never have been published.

If I hadn’t had a conversation with a friend in which I told her about my finished, rejected novel sitting stodgily in my computer, and she hadn’t suggested the Bath Spa MA. If I hadn’t been working from home as a childminder with my husband, who could take on the bulk of the work while I studied. If I hadn’t had breakfast, on the first day of the MA course, with one of the tutors, and asked her advice on a short story I was trying to write for a local competition. If she hadn’t told me it was, in fact, not a short story but a novel. If hadn’t ditched my other idea and decided, right then, that this was the novel I ought to write.

Other moments come back to me, a montage of scenes from a movie I can’t quite believe I’m part of: I am sitting in my PJs just before 8am on a Sunday morning when my phone lights up with an email from my dream agent, Madeleine Milburn. She loves the first three chapters, and asks to see the whole manuscript. I send it off, too quickly (camera close up on my horrified face): there’s a spelling mistake in the email. I send it again, with many apologies, sure that I’ve ruined everything.

Two hours later, I am walking alone in the valley near my home, trying to shake off the feeling despondency, of having blown my only chance with one dumb typo (sad music plays). At the top of the hill, there is the sound of an email arriving on my phone. I see Maddy’s name and almost can’t look. She is on chapter 10. She loves it. She wants to meet me.

My friends will tell you I am not a demonstrative person. I don’t really hug a lot. I prefer to play things down. But that day, right there on the footpath, I fell to my knees and I cried. I was thirty-seven.

The book went out on submission to publishers on a Friday in November. I spent the weekend jangling with dread and excitement, knowing that I could be waiting months for any response, for the inevitable trickle of polite rejections.

The following Monday at about 4pm I was cooking a meal that I knew would be a battle: too many vegetables, potatoes instead of chips. Nine children ran around my feet or wheeled themselves up and down the kitchen on little trikes. There was screaming, and arguing, and shrieks of laughter. The smell of a freshly-filled nappy. The deep chime of an email arriving.

I need to ring you, said Maddy, we’ve had a pre-emptive offer.

The kitchen is calm now, during school time at least, in a way it wasn’t for nine years. There are no nappies to change. The little trikes have gone to a charity shop. Most days, for a few hours, once again there is rich silence, and uninterrupted thoughts (I’m still working on the return of the untroubled sleep). I’m quite sure I will never again have time to stare at antique vases in the way I would like, but that’s fine. I’m so grateful for what I have. I’m trying not to waste a single second of it.

—

Melanie Golding is a recent graduate of the MA in creative writing program at Bath Spa University, with distinction. She has been employed in many occupations including farm hand, factory worker, childminder and music teacher. Throughout all this, because and in spite of it, there was always the writing. In recent years she has won and been shortlisted in several local and national short story competitions. Little Darlings is her first novel, and has been optioned for screen by Free Range Films, the team behind the adaptation of My Cousin Rachel.

Little Darlings comes out in ebook, hardback and audiobook in the UK on 2nd May 2019, published by HQ, In the US on April 30th published by Crooked Lane books, and in Canada with HarperCollins Canada.

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About LITTLE DARLINGS

SOON TO BE A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE

“Mother knows best” takes on a sinister new meaning in this unsettling thriller perfect for fans of Neil Gaiman, Grimms’ Fairy Tales, and Aimee Molloy’s The Perfect Mother.

Everyone says Lauren Tranter is exhausted, that she needs rest. And they’re right; with newborn twins, Morgan and Riley, she’s never been more tired in her life. But she knows what she saw: that night, in her hospital room, a woman tried to take her babies and replace them with her own…creatures. Yet when the police arrived, they saw no one. Everyone, from her doctor to her husband, thinks she’s imagining things.

A month passes. And one bright summer morning, the babies disappear from Lauren’s side in a park. But when they’re found, something is different about them. The infants look like Morgan and Riley―to everyone else. But to Lauren, something is off. As everyone around her celebrates their return, Lauren begins to scream, These are not my babies.

Determined to bring her true infant sons home, Lauren will risk the unthinkable. But if she’s wrong about what she saw…she’ll be making the biggest mistake of her life.

Compulsive, creepy, and inspired by some our darkest fairy tales, Little Darlings will have you checking―and rechecking―your own little ones. Just to be sure. Just to be safe.

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Category: Contemporary Women Writers, How To and Tips