It's World Book Day, so I've been to a school to claim I am a professional writer and to promote my book. A book that I'm very proud of, in the sense that I don't hate the words I wrote, or the order that I wrote them.
I wrote it because I felt I had a useful message for teenage girls that I could share in a cute and funny way. I hoped they’d find it relatable. I hoped it would make them laugh. I thought maybe they’d screenshot their favourite lines and send them to their friends, who might write them in biro on banana skins. Maybe they'd put them onto t-shirts and form a little gang, and meet up to wear the t-shirts together, while they jogged around the block like the characters in the book and say things like 'you're definitely the [name of character from my book] of the group!’ and then they'd burst into song and fall about laughing before snuggling down to watch the Netflix adaptation of my book XOXO laughing face emoji crying face emoji heart emoji
Anyway,
Here's what I thought about when I got ready to go to the event, which was yesterday, because World Book Day is actually a week.
This is going to be great. You wished authors like you had come to your school when you were however old these kids are, and inspired you to become a writer.
Even though that didn't happen, and you became one anyway, the difference will be that these kids will be able to imagine themselves to be a not-famous writer, a not-rich writer, a not-glamorous writer, and that's actually better.
You’re going to wear jeans, because that shows you are not a teacher, but is more professional than the fleece-lined trackies that you actually wear when you are writing. You’ll wear a nice jumper that has no toothpaste on it. You’re going to dry your hair properly with The Thing1 because you’ve accidentally not had it cut for about six months, because you never go anywhere or see anyone.
Non-dog walking shoes and sparkly eyeliner2 will complete your transformation from laptop goblin to human adult in the world; maybe if the kids are not interested in your book they will still think you are slightly cool because you have tiny hearts painted on your nails.
But they're not here to judge your clothes. They're here to hear your brain! To see your words! To smell your wit! You’re here to inspire them to Dream Medium Dreams and to remind them that the awkward pain of being a teenager is eventually quashed by the numbing tedium of being an adult. Look at You! You barely even remember what it was like to be them, you are so over the mind-contorting pretzel of teenage friendships that you were able to healthily process them into this book that only took you twenty years to write.
Anyway, you’re pretty sure you’ve gauged your PowerPoint display right for the allotted time. It’s either 45 minutes too short or two hours too long. You’ll make it work. You really hope someone puts their hand up when you say ‘are there any questions?’. You hope the questions are actually just things you’ve already talked about and you can fill the time by rephrasing your material until the bell goes.
You hope no one asks you what your favourite book is, you’ll sound like such a dick when you explain that you couldn’t possibly pick a single favourite without some sort of narrowing criteria first. Just pick one. Just pick one! They don’t need to know that you’ll lose sleep over the ones you didn’t say. They can’t know that.
They don’t know you didn’t sleep very well last night either, because you consciously dreamed a scenario in which the PowerPoint display didn’t work, even though you packed two separate USB sticks and emailed it to yourself on all three accounts.
They don’t know you were lying awake in the dark thinking about awkward parking spaces, or no parking spaces, or parking in the wrong space and then having to perform a tight manoeuvre in front of the person, waiting to get into the space that you’d parked in, wrongly.
No, you’ll be average-confident and more fun than maths. They will be impressed by your down-to-earth-ness and that will show them that being a writer is something they could do too. You will make it clear that it isn’t not your actual income job, and you’ll make a good joke about no one ever writing a book to get rich. When they provide you with several examples of the only actual writers to get rich from writing books, you’ll make another good joke about that actually being very rare and that you live in ho-ho-hope. You’ll deliver it in a way that will make you sound the opposite of bitter, and they’ll be really convinced that you are not actually just the only published writer they’ve never heard of…
By the end of your talk, they might be embarrassed that you suddenly went a bit too actor-y when you read from your own book, and maybe they’ll be glad to get back to double chemistry, where no one ever says “it’s ok to fancy someone in a book” but you’re sure they’ll be very polite, and when you get home you can vow to never do any school events ever again, and also to never write another book.
But on the real day, it was lovely, wasn’t it? The pupils were lovely, and they did ask questions and they smiled and chatted to you like you were both a special guest and an entirely ordinary person. They said they’d never met an author in real life before. Someone wanted you to sign their autograph book. A real autograph book.
The headteacher and the deputy head came to express their thanks. Thank you for taking the time to come to our school. The security man on the gate knew to expect you. “The Author!” You signed books in the library. They gave you a nice lunch and a bunch of flowers. They asked if you’d want to come back again in the future because the session had gone so well. You sold all the books you took. They want some more. They took a photograph for their Twitter account. You were a real author. You are a real author. When you got home your daughter said how pretty you looked with your special sparkly eyeliner on.
This week I’ve been reading A Different Sound. A collection of short stories by Mid-Century Writers, selected by extremely cool book lady, Lucy Scholes.
I think the pleasure of a short-story collection is the excitement of the unexpected, and the capacity for surprise, so while I won’t detail the stories within, what I will say is that one of them made me so stressed3 I actually had to flick forward to the end to check there was a resolution, just so I could steady my heart-rate and read the rest at a normal pace. Something I’ve never done before, ever.
I honestly can’t think of a more perfect present for Mother’s Day than this chocolate-box of a book, this bouquet of voices that won’t wilt all over the windowsill. It’s a treat.
You can buy A Different Sound here.
You can buy my book, Three Girls, here.
You can buy all the titles previously reviewed on my newsletter via my shop, here.
It’s a Dyson Airwrap and I’m sorry to say I love it.
Victoria Beckham Satin Kajal if you’re into that sort of thing.
In a good way?
I’m so glad it went well. I was scared for you from the jump.
Ooh the short story collection looks fab! I teach university but I’m weirdly intimidated by kids / teenagers.