The ‘Unintentional Medium’ Who Switched from Memoir to Fiction

 ‘Unintentional Medium’ who switched from memoir to fiction. 

Perceived wisdom tells us that everyone has a book in them, and I do believe this is true.  The question is what separates a rather ordinary story from a great book?  

Well, my guess is belief; belief in yourself and belief in your book.

My own path to becoming an author was slightly unusual. I came to writing late in life having worked as a translator and teacher and also as a psychic medium for about thirty years. I never for a moment thought of myself as a writer but the world moves in mysterious ways. Let me explain.

I lived in England with my Australian husband who, little known to me, had a cunning plan.  He hated the cold winters and secretly wanted to move back home, so he decided to bring me over on a couple of ‘softening up’ holidays to show me his country and hope I would be persuaded to move here.  

I had a rather precious friend who gave me a posh pink leather notebook embossed with Travel Notes in gold and so when I first arrived, I dutifully made notes of all the strange and wonderful things I came across.  After a week or so, I began to think that maybe I could write a book about my Australian adventures, and I got quite excited by the idea.

When I got back to England, I got a bit of a shock as I was diagnosed with breast cancer. It was small and removable, but I had to have radio therapy and while I was lying on the slab, I rehearsed the first lines of the book in my head.  However, as I was going over the opening, a voice like Moses descending from the Mount said so clearly, “Wrong book. Write about what you know.”  And so, The Unintentional Medium was born.

I started to write. I really had no idea what I was doing, I just knew I had to get my story down. I wrote in episodes, printed them off and spread them all over the dining room table, shuffling them around to try and get them in some semblance of order.  And then we moved to Sydney and the poor old book was put on hold.  

However, I wasn’t going to give up and as soon as we were settled, I got back to it.  Thinking I was the next Hilary Mantel, I sent it off to an agent – and got rejected.  I couldn’t believe it.  This was such a brilliant book, why didn’t they want to represent me?  I almost gave up, but the gods were on my side.  My friend Valerie had a hair dressing buddy called Katherine who was a publisher.  Katherine loved the book and suddenly I was in print.

My second book An Unintentional Journey had the gestation period of half a dozen elephants.  It started off as about three separate books. I would write a chunk of one and then get stuck.  Same thing with the next one. I’d suddenly come to a grinding halt.  

After a while it struck me that perhaps I hadn’t found the right book and so I looked over all the stuff I’d already written and realised that with a bit of moving chapters around and writing a bit of additional material, I had a complete book.  This is a memoir of my life up until the time I became a medium, something I really hadn’t thought of writing.

Now this book was all ready to go to the printers, but on the day we were going to send it, I finished my next book, The Dark at the Threshold, and we took the decision that we would leapfrog this one over the Journey.

This was a huge change for me because I’d jumped from non-fiction to fiction, a completely different way of writing.  But it had come into being in a rather strange way. I kept getting this number in my head. 1468.  Why was I getting this?  It’s not a number we would recognise like 1066 or 1939 and so I looked it up, and the only thing of importance that happened that year was that the then Pope made witchcraft a criminal offence.  And so, The Dark was born.  It is a supernatural thriller set in France and moves between 1468 and the present day.

At first, I was very nervous about writing fiction.  Memoirs are easy.  You have your memories to refer to and facts at your fingertips.  All I had to do really, as far as I was concerned, was transfer my stories to paper.  But now suddenly I had to create characters and plots and story lines.  I had to write dialogue and description.  I had to create a whole life for my characters.  It didn’t help at first that I kept forgetting details about them, but I quickly learnt to write little cameos that I could refer to whenever necessary.  I also set my story in places I knew well so I could describe villages and indeed journeys. I did have to do quite a bit of research about witchcraft and demonology in the 15th Century but luckily I could draw on my knowledge of that time to write about the period.

And so, what advice can I give you, the next best-selling author?  What have I learned throughout this amazing journey?

The first thing I would say is if you are writing fiction, I’d advise you to make copious notes about your characters and provide them with life stories, so they aren’t one-dimensional.  Also incorporate what you know into the story.  I set my book in France Profonde because I’d spent so much time there and therefore, I knew the area and the language.  Get to know your characters.  After two or three chapters, I found myself awake in the night thinking “What would Claire say to that?  How would Robert react to this?”  And suddenly they discovered their own voices.

The second thing I would say is don’t agonise over every word.  Don’t be like Flaubert who spent most of his life – when he wasn’t be sporting himself in the bath houses of Marrakesh, refining and rewriting Madame Bovary.  I had a bit of a glitch about what to put in and what I should leave out, but Katherine gave me a great bit of advice.  Just write and then sort it out later.  If you have a terrific story or theme for your book, go with the flow.  Write what you feel and worry about the editing later.

The third bit of advice is ‘get a really good editor’.  I have been lucky to have worked with two of the best, Bernadette Foley and Kate Stevens.  Do not accept anyone who just wants to change your book until you don’t recognise it, work with someone who gives you ideas about how to refine the content and gives you the chance to rewrite it yourself.   

I have recently revised and rewritten The Unintentional Medium.  I didn’t work with a structural editor on the first edition and as I learned a bit more about writing, realised that it had to be altered chronologically.  Luckily, I’d learned a lot from both Bernadette and Kate, and I think I managed to improve it myself – but I’ll let the readers be the judge of that.

My last bit of advice is, don’t give up.  If you believe in your book, fight for it.  Remember J.K Rowling and William Golding both carted their books around every agent in London getting rejected by nearly all of them until they found the perfect fit.  Stay with it.  Believe in it.  Believe that you can do this.

I wish you so much luck and I really look forward to reading your book.

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Suzi Samuel is the author of The Unintentional Medium and The Dark at the Threshold

Tags: featured, women writers

Category: On Writing