When One Door Closes…

I’ve always been a fan of possibility. I’m with Emily Dickinson on this (no relation!): ‘I dwell in possibility’ is one of my favourite quotes. In my own life I’ve found that it often arrives when you least expect it, when your attention is summoned elsewhere. In fact, I owe my career as a bestselling novelist to a possibility that arrived during one of the darkest times of my life.

I’d been working as a copywriter for a political party for two and a half years, when I was called into a meeting at work with an HR manager we’d never seen before. This, I was to learn, was a bad sign. The harbinger of doom confirmed our worst fear: redundancies, imminently. Twenty-six people were to lose their jobs just before Christmas – and I was one of them.

I was terrified. How was I going to pay my rent? Where was I going to find work so close to the Christmas break? What happened if I lost my flat, my car, my livelihood?

To be honest, news of my impending job loss wasn’t entirely a surprise. Work had been gradually dwindling, and while nobody addressed it out loud, my colleagues and I were all aware that something was wrong. To escape the inevitable conspiracy theories and endless worried conversations about what was happening, I retreated to my secret passion: writing. I’d been working on a story that had grown into a novel for the past few years and being able to escape into a world I had created was just what I needed.

My boss, aware of the rumbles of concern, told us to find something to do: ‘I don’t care what you work on as long as you look busy.’ So, while my colleagues online-shopped and surfed the Internet, I wrote. I had just joined an online writers’ forum and was sharing bits of my work-in-progress. And as it turned out, my boss’ plan to keep us looking busy was about to open the biggest door.

I heard about Authonomy, a new website being launched by the publisher HarperCollins, where unpublished authors could upload their books and receive industry feedback. Needing something positive in the middle of the death throes of my job, I uploaded what I had of my New York-set rom-com. The comments I received from other authors were a real boost and I started to believe in my writing again.

Then, on my last day – as I was walking out of my workplace for the last time, carrying my pathetic-looking cardboard box with its potted plant and stolen office stapler – my phone buzzed. Outside I checked the just-arrived email. It was from an editor at Avon, an imprint of HarperCollins, asking to read the whole manuscript of my book.

I couldn’t believe it. On the hardest day, with all the worries for the future and every fear of not being able to make ends meet, a tiny ray of hope had appeared. Of course, I didn’t think anything would happen. I just thought it was one of those lovely serendipities life sparkles up at you when you need them most.

Nevertheless, I sat up for three days and nights in my week of garden leave, writing the 20,000 words needed to finish my story. I sent it off and thought nothing more about it.

But possibility wasn’t done with me yet. Two weeks later, I received an email from the Publishing Director at Avon, asking me to call her. I did – and after a long conversation where I mistakenly assumed she was just being incredibly kind about my writing, she offered me a three-book-deal. I was flabbergasted.

My secret dream had suddenly come true and my words were going to be published!

I’ve thought about that moment a lot in the last nine years. I’m now a full-time author and my books have sold one million copies worldwide. If could have known back then, when I was losing my job and life looked like it was over, I think I would have embraced it more. I will never take what I have for granted again.

My new novel, Somewhere Beyond the Sea, is another proof of possibility. I’d just started writing my St Ives-set love story, with a protagonist who has just lost her father, when my own lovely Dad was diagnosed with late-stage cancer. Five and a half weeks later, he passed away.
Writing a book with grief as a central theme when you are in the midst of your own was the biggest challenge of my life. But from that dark moment came a story of hope, of life and of possibility. I might not have chosen what happened to me, but what I learned about possibility while writing the book will stay with me for a lifetime.

I think the greatest attitude we can cultivate is a belief in possibility. All of my novels have had this as a central theme – never on purpose, but I think my experience has informed it.

Darkest moments can be precursors to the brightest things and you have to believe that better is coming. In Somewhere Beyond the Sea, Seren remembers her dad saying: “magic is everywhere, if you let it be.” Possibility is the magic we need to believe in. Because you never know what a closing door might unlock next…

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Miranda Dickinson has always had a head full of stories. From an early age she dreamed of writing a book that would make the heady heights of Kingswinford Library and today she is a bestselling author. She began to write in earnest when a friend gave her ‘The World’s Slowest PC’, and has subsequently written the bestselling novels Fairytale of New York, Welcome to My World, It Started With a Kiss, When I Fall in Love, Take A Look At Me Now, I’ll Take New York, A Parcel for Anna Browne and Searching for a Silver Lining. Her Christmas novella Christmas in St Ives is a prequel to Somewhere Beyond the Sea. Miranda lives with her husband Bob and daughter Flo in Dudley, but says Cornwall is her ‘happy place’.

You can follow Miranda on Twitter @wurdsmyth, and Facebook  https://www.facebook.com/MirandaDickinsonAuthor/

You can find her website at https://miranda-dickinson.com/

About SOMEWHERE BEYOND THE SEA

Can you fall in love with someone before you’ve even met?

Seren MacArthur is living a life she never intended. Trying to save the Cornish seaside business her late father built – while grieving for his loss – she has put her own dreams on hold and is struggling. Until she discovers a half-finished seaglass star on her favourite beach during an early morning walk. When she completes the star, she sets into motion a chain of events that will steal her heart and challenge everything she believes.

Jack Dixon is trying to secure a better life for daughter Nessie and himself. Left a widower and homeless when his wife died, he’s just about keeping their heads above water. Finding seaglass stars completed on Gwithian beach is a bright spark that slowly rekindles his hope.

Seren and Jack are searching for their missing pieces. But when they meet in real life, it’s on the opposing sides of a battle. Jack is managing the redevelopment of a local landmark, and Seren is leading the community campaign to save it.

Both have reason to fight – Seren for the cause her father believed in, Jack for his livelihood. But only one can win. With so much at stake, will they ever find what they are really looking for?

Miranda Dickinson’s Somewhere Beyond the Sea is a sparkling tale of love, life and finding magic where you least expect it.

Somewhere Beyond the Sea is out now, published by Pan Macmillan and available in paperback, eBook and audiobook

Tags: . women writers, featured

Category: On Writing