When Does the Laughing Start?

You may have heard the old Alain de Botton line, that writing a book is like telling a joke and having to wait two years to know whether or not it was funny. It’s an allusion, of course, to the fact that after spending sooooooo long thinking about and researching and planning and then writing, then re-writing, then editing and re-writing your book, you then send it out to agents and publicists and publishers.

And then comes the excruciating wait.

Will any of them like it? Hell, will any of them even read it? Sometimes, as the weeks pass, even receiving the fifteenth rejection letter can be exciting, can be fulfilling because at least you know somebody has taken the time to read at least some of it.

And very occasionally, for the lucky few who managed to have their manuscript read by the right person at the right time – since it does seem that, most times, one person will find no quality in the thing at all, while another will really enjoy it - you might get enough interest to see your work actually accepted for publication.

It’s a scintillating, amazing moment, a fantastic feeling. That thing, those thousands and thousands of words you worked and re-worked, cut and replaced, or cut completely, then rethought it, putting them back but just in a different order, eventually wondering if your creation actually makes any sense at all… after the page blindness, the second and thirty-second thoughts… after leaving it to one side for a while, hoping to gain a fresh perspective… It’s just astounding that someone out there actually thought enough of it, liked it enough to take a punt on it, to spend their own time preparing it, editing and marketing and arranging the artwork and organising its production.

That is an unbelievable, momentous thing.

And then, once again, comes another quiet zone.

You breathe, you feel as though you are worthy, that you can put words into the right order with enough acuity for other people to enjoy reading them. No doubt you’ve already began writing other things, short stories or flash fiction, maybe even another full-length manuscript. Still, at the back of your mind, lurking like a parcel left in a thunderstorm, are the questions of when it will actually come out, what it will look like, how it will feel to hold it in your hands, to be a published author.

Then, months and months later, just when you think they’ve forgotten about you, that perhaps it was all just a dream and that they didn’t actually agree to releasing it at all, you finally get the green light, the publication date, the proofs and the marketing material… and the thrill and excitement kicks in all over again.

Of course, these things do take time, and you knew that already. You knew that there are a thousand more things that need to be done, arrangements to be made, once your book is accepted. You knew that. You probably already understood all the different things that needed to be done first. You might have even known there were a lot of other authors in exactly the same boat as you, patiently waiting in line. And you remembered Mr Botton.

So, finally, you have the date. You might even have the Kindle pre-order link. You gaze at the promo material, at the cover art. You wonder if the story is as good as you’d hoped, since you probably hadn’t read it in months. And then, of course, comes the paranoia, the anxiety. Will the people whose opinion matters to you actually like it? Will they think less of you if they don’t? Will they wonder what all the fuss was about in the first place? And that’s before you even give a moment’s consideration to whether anyone else, all those bazillion people who have no idea who you are – and why should they? You ain’t no one – will have even the slightest inclination to read it. And if, by some improbable twist of fate, they find it and they do read it, how much will they hate it? Will they tell their friends how bad a writer you are? That your story is boring and your plot points are ludicrous? Will they find it so repugnant that they take their distaste online, tweeting and facebooking and blogging about what a wretched piece of trash it is? What a loser you are? And it goes on and on and on and…

Hey, can someone remind me why the dickens we put ourselves through all this in the first place?