This post was originally published at Novelicious.com and is now at WritingTipsOasis.com. WritingTipsOasis.com acquired Novelicious.com in June 2022.
My mother is a writer. She wrote children’s books at the kitchen table when I was growing up and I always had a secret desire to write too. But it wasn’t until I turned thirty that I had the confidence to finally try to write a novel. I was living in London, working as a journalist and so, in my spare time, I began to write.
My first novel took about eight months to finish. I sent it out full of hope and optimism – that didn’t last long! It was rejected by everyone. Editors, publishers and agents around the world all said NO.
So I wrote another book and sent that out to the four corners of the world – same outcome. Nobody wanted to publish my book.
After two years of spending a fortune on stamps and being constantly rejected, I began to wonder if I should give up. I could have wallpapered my apartment with ‘no thank you’ letters. It was very demoralizing. So I sat down and thought long and hard about why I was writing. I realized that I loved it and it was my passion and I was going to stick with it.
I decided that I needed help. I was really private about my writing and told no one about it. So I joined a creative writing group. It was such a relief to be with people who felt as passionately about writing as I did. The tutor gave me some great tips that I still use to this day. She told me to plot the book out. She said I should always do a chapter breakdown before starting a novel so that I didn’t end up going off on tangents and wasting thousands of words going down dead ends.
During the course I wrote my third novel, The Baby Trail. It was inspired by my own struggles with infertility so I felt very passionately about the subject matter. It’s a black comedy about the crazy lengths women go to when they are trying to get pregnant.I sent it out to agents and editors and Penguin were the first people to come back to me.
By a strange coincidence, I ended up meeting the editor from Penguin on my 33rd birthday. The meeting had been changed three times and it finally fell on my birthday. I saw it as a good omen, and it was! She offered me a deal. I had no agent so I rushed out to get one and thus began this wonderful writing life.
Sinead's latest novel, Mad About You, is out now.