A Year In Moons

On being published

Radio 4. Loved it

I’m veering away from my usual brand of educational activism spliced with glowing beaches and the reality of life as a single parent-carer to four wild daughters. Today I want to talk to you about what it really feels like to write a memoir and have it published.

This time last year I was feeling a bit sick and trying to remember to breathe. When I look back at videos I recorded for Instagram in the lead up to the publication of my debut memoir, Twelve Moons, my eyes are a little wild and there’s an air of disbelief hovering over me. There is also a lot of joy, and maybe a bit of pride too. I suppose what I’m trying to tell you is that having a book published, particularly a book about ‘what it means to be broken and to fight to piece yourself back together’, that is frequently described as ‘fiercely honest’, ‘raw’ and ‘intimate’, evokes a lot of feelings.

One year on, I am currently promoting the paperback, published on Thursday, which in many ways is no less overwhelming. But this time the overwhelm is supported by a year of good will, knowledge and generous endorsements from press, readers and other writers - confirmation that the rollercoaster has been worth it. Yesterday evening I sat on my bed with my laptop creating pretty slides with quotes on about my book. It was good for this girl’s self-esteem, although I’m still not very good at using Canva and thank you

Nicola Washington

for the templates... I even managed to find a pearl amongst the grit that was my first ever review (Mail on Sunday), whose reviewer described the book as repetitive and having a ‘tarot-and-incense energy’ that definitely wasn’t there last time I looked. The day the Mail review landed was a sharp lesson in toughening up, one where I had to remember that just because someone says something doesn’t make it true.

And that experience pretty much sums up what it is like to pour your heart onto 280 pages and ask people to buy them. You are effectively putting yourself up for grabs and you have to suck up the consequences. Aside from the nauseating stress of waiting for press reviews, which are notoriously hard to come by (I remember spending a frantic day trying to get a proof of my book couriered across London to a New Statesman journalist so that she could include it in an article before a looming deadline. Reader, we made the cut! And thank you

India Bourke

), and wondering whether anyone will buy it, writing a memoir also requires you to listen to the responses of people who actually know you.

I was saying to a friend only yesterday that Twelve Moons is all true, it all happened, but the woman in the book is only a version of me (a pretty intense and stripped back version). So when I meet new people now and go on to know them IN REAL LIFE, there is something very discombobulating about them being aware of, for example, a period of horrible OCD I experienced, or fantasising about a lover in a rock pool. It goes a bit beyond ‘where did you grow up?’, or ‘who’s your favourite writer?’ - we’re straight into the big stuff.

I was most nervous about the responses of my family and friends, as well as people who had fallen away since my divorce, in the way that they do, in the way that it’s hard not to pick sides and that’s one of the saddest things about getting divorced. I remembered too late that I had written about a drink and drug-fuelled party back in the 1990s and what would my mum think? And I had an awkward moment at an autism support group where someone started reading aloud from chapter 3, Lenten Moon, which starts with me recalling a dream where a man kisses my neck and I really enjoy it. It really wasn’t the time or place. I was also worried that people who knew me might feel compelled to say they enjoyed reading the book, when secretly they thought it was overindulgent rubbish. I mean that might be what they really think, but if so they’ve disguised it well…

Thank you lovely readers x

But I’d like to dispel the myth that when you get a book published everything falls into place. This is not the case, personally or professionally. As you will know from my writing since, life has a tricky way of staying pretty messy - unfortunately I didn’t manage to contain all of our family’s challenges inside the pages of my book. And a book that is widely declared ‘beautiful’ and ‘heart-wrenching’ does not automatically sell 20,000 copies, hence the amount of time I spend promoting it and trying to get it into people’s hands. Don’t get me wrong, being offered a book deal was the dream, the nerve-racking, stomach-clenching dream, but sustaining a career as an emergent author is extremely hard. Especially if you are a full-time carer. Especially if you live in the far north of England. And especially if your first book is not an automatic bestseller. Getting a second book published isn’t an automatic assumption.

But I wouldn’t trade the challenges of trying to keep my head above water in the publishing industry for anything. Over the last twelve moons I have tried to squeeze every ounce of joy and opportunity out of each moment. Childcare has been almost nil, illness and appointments have ramped up once more, assessments and tribunal loom. Time for me to work has been at an absolute premium. But despite that I have done numerous events (thanks for babysitting Mum), a million podcasts (thanks Zoom), and met countless readers who have been generous enough to share some of their own stories with me. And that is the real prize - connection with other humans. That is one of the reasons I wrote Twelve Moons, beyond an attempt to reclaim myself and a desire to achieve something bigger creatively. The times someone has come up to me at a signing (writing that phrase makes my heart skip a bit) and told me about their own sadness, their own strength, their own hopes and dreams, have been the icing on a very lopsided and messy cake.

Book signing in Cambridge, my city of dreams

And the solidarity of other writers is the gift that keeps on giving. The way other creatives give so generously of their time in varying acts of support has been truly joyful. If you don’t belong to a writing group - join one, or start one. It will change your life. Especially if you are writing memoir and what you are writing onto feels like the actual beating of your heart. I feel like the

Substack

community could have a big part to play here. Let’s keep cheering each other.

Thank you

Kerri ní Dochartaigh

for this response to an early reading.

I hope these ramblings will be helpful and insightful to anyone currently writing a memoir, or thinking of writing a memoir. Honestly it’s the ride of a lifetime, and I’m such a sucker for it that I’m writing another one.