Sometimes I feel like success, for me, lies in the past. Occasionally, a photo will pop up of when I was signing my first book deal, for The Freelance Mum, in The News Building, with my editor at 4th Estate, high up with an amazing view of London.
I’m wearing pink. My hair looks so blonde and glossy. My skin is clear. It looks like I’m happy - I was - and life is good. That period was before things got hard. It was the motherhood chapter that I’d always dreamed of. Career-wise, I felt like I was flying.
It was when I was pitching for my second book that I realised I wasn’t actually flying. I was on the first rung of the freelance writer ladder. If I wanted to climb up another rung, I’d have to work even harder, because my book wasn’t an instant bestseller.
I worked harder.
Wrote a book that made more sense, to me, than the first. Shy. I loved writing that book. I was lifting the lid on something that had felt shameful about my past and offering others the chance to reframe their own - or their children’s - shyness.
With that book, I got even better press. I spoke at Cheltenham Literary Festival in a packed out room, hundreds of people in the audience. There were more questions than at any other talk that year. A snaking queue of people wanting a book signed.
But then there was Henley Festival. A (literary) disaster.
