by Anna Maxted
Until my father died, I don’t think I felt strongly enough about any one subject to write a book about it but this was something that I couldn’t get out of my system. Eventually, I resigned from Cosmo and started to freelance. This gave me time to delay a bit longer. I wrote one or two more features about grief but I realized it wasn’t enough. I wanted to write a novel for the person I was when I lost my dad—a 27 year-old who had other things on her mind that Monday morning, when she turned around from her desk, to see her fiancee with this terrible look on his face and hear him say “Your father’s had a stroke.” That one moment changed my whole life. Now, a year later, I had some distance from the acute bitterness and rage, and knew I wanted to communicate something. I think this is the next step—you have to want to write your book enough to stop lollygagging about and actually do it.
Being a freelance makes that easier, but I still don’t think I would have written it if not for the friends who encouraged me. I was very fortunate in that I had several friends who knew people in publishing. One, who worked for National Magazines (the company that publishes UK Cosmopolitan) had seen the manuscript I’d written for a lighthearted Cosmo book entitled “How To Seduce your Dream Man.” She kept badgering me to write a proper book. She kept saying “Oh, soon you’ll be a bestselling novelist la la la.” Unless you possess a monstrous ego that needs no outside input, this kind of thing is just what you need—people who convince you that your dream is achievable. I’m sure this is page three of the Ladybird book of Psychology, but you have to reach the stage where you believe you can do it before you can actually do it. Avoid people who don’t believe in you, who, for some warped reasons of their own, would rather you didn’t write a book and get it published.
In the end, my friend told a publisher about me, who called and invited me to come and see him. This guy’s last name was Lancaster, but I was so excited I misheard it on my answering machine as Van Castor. I had nothing to show him so I rang back, arranged an appointment for seven days’ time and started writing. There was a book inside me but alas, at this stage it was rubbish. It was, as my husband said, just a lot of typing. However I think Lord Van Castor was feeling charitable that day—he later said he thought there was a kernel of something there—because he offered me a two-book deal. I was tempted to accept it but I felt it might be wise to speak to some authors first. I spoke to two; both said not to go straight to a publisher, but to find an agent first. One said that her current bigshot agent didn’t speak to “the little people” but she did put me in touch with the agent who’d negotiated her first deal. After reading my manuscript this agent wrote me back a very nice letter saying “Go away.”
Fortunately a friend of a friend knew a literary agent named Johnny G and he suggested I send him my work. I got excited again, and ignored my husband who had read the typing and told me I hadn’t got a plot. I saw this new agent who was very kind and gave me five minutes of great advice. He told me I didn’t have a plot. He also told me that a novel has to kick off with a dramatic event. Somehow, I’d missed that. In the gobledygook version I had the father die halfway through the book, which was—I now see—the decision of an idiot. Johnny suggested that the book began with the father dying. My heroine was also a tabloid journalist. Johnny said that readers didn’t tend to be very sympathetic to tabloid journalists. He told me to go away and come back when I had something proper.
So I called the publisher and told him that I wanted to do a bit more work on the book before selling it. I also wanted to say that I couldn’t really afford to take his offer, but I was slightly ashamed; after all the main goal here was to be published…so what was I doing quibbling about money? Didn’t that make me a hypocrite? Probably. But. You have to know what you want in order to get it—if I was going to be a novelist I wanted to be a full-time novelist. I wanted to give up the day job. I didn’t want to start my novel feeling hard done by and cross. And this story was very personal to me, it was like being told your baby is quite ugly so he’s not worth much. Also, the publisher had sent me a contract which I’d read to Johnny. One of the phrases on it entitled them to world rights and use of my kidneys on days ending in Y. When I read this to Johnny he made a noise like this: phhhhhh!
I sulked. At this point I’d also made the gross error of telling quite a few people that I was writing a novel. Never tell anyone that you’re writing a novel until you’ve written it and sold it, because it’s like a waitress who tells you she’s really an actor. Everyone constantly asks “How’s it going? Have you written it yet?? and you feel like a fool before anyone’s even turned you down. I decided to abandon the meager residue of pride I had, and to buy a book on novel writing. It was entitled Bestseller. I felt like a fraud and was mortified beyond belief at the cash register. I couldn’t even bring myself to open it for three weeks. But finally I did, and I recommend it. After all, if you want to become a judge, you don’t just barge into court wearing a black robe.
Bestseller, by Celia Brayfield. It’s very good on the structure of a novel. It really helped me to order my thoughts. It also convinced me of the paramount importance of plot. So I took a month off to devise a proper plot. Please note: it had taken me 18 months to actually commit to spending time and losing money on this thing.
I managed the plot, but still couldn’t quite start the writing. It took a chance meeting with Johnny G at someone’s engagement party to goad me that bit further. He asked how the novel was going, and I when I told him I hadn’t started yet, he replied “Ah well,” as in “Ah well, you deadbeat, you smell of whiskey.” It worked. I almost started writing.
Until I found another excuse. I hadn’t done enough research. I had enough distance from my own experience by then to have created characters and a story that weren’t completely based on me or my family. A lot of the emotions were based on mine, but the people and events were mostly made up—and this is important from a “Sorry but you’re being sued for libel and we’re pulping your book and can we have our advance back?” point of view. So, I’d decided that the fictional dad would die of a heart attack in chapter two, and the heroine would have to organize his funeral in chapter three. I found I couldn’t write because I sure as hell didn’t know what happened when you had a heart attack—I haven’t had one—and I didn’t know how to organize a funeral. Horror. This meant leaving the comfort of my sofa and ugh—speaking to people.
After a few more months of stalling, I found a doctor who showed me around the local hospital, talked me through symptoms, hospital hierarchy, etc. He was brilliant. Knowing the facts makes it much easier to write fiction. You can be cleverer, funnier, wiser—you can build the fancy house because you have strong foundations. It’s important though, to check what you’ve written. Probably through laziness, I made my heroine work at a magazine…and one little scene I particularly liked was the one where the heroine sees her father, lying in hospital, attached to a drip, and is appalled at the sight of his full catheter. To her, it’s a gross symbol of that stripping of dignity to see powerful person so weak. I wrote this cute paragraph about my heroine being horrified by an “orange wee bag…” And yet, despite her shock, her women’s magazine instinct wonders why the bag has to be transparent. After all, couldn’t the state commission Gucci or Prada to design a more upmarket wee bag? Anyway, my doctor read this juvenile piece of wit and said, “After a heart attack, the kidneys malfunction…he wouldn’t be producing urine!”
I think what goes onto the page is not the work, it is the culmination of a great deal of invisible work. You might sit down and work for five hours at the typewriter, but you should be working on your novel 18 hours a day…thinking about how to make that confrontation more dramatic, choosing the best word to describe something. Sure, you have a workable word, but you could do better. Of course, before you can write your story, you have to concentrate on finding your tone. For that, I think you have to know who your reader is. I was lucky because I had a fairly exact reader in mind. I wanted to write for wo
men. Maybe it sounds cynical to say you have to know your market, but you do, especially because it’s the first thing that publishers think about. If they can’t see the market, then they’ll hesitate to buy your book, no matter how good the writing. And there’s no crime in wanting to be commercial. That’s a dirty word to some people, but it doesn’t mean you have to compromise your integrity or write badly. All it means is that you want to communicate to a lot of people rather than a few.
I write in first person, because I write emotional books, and first person means you are as close to your characters as it’s possible to get. With my third book, Behaving Like Adults, I had to chuck three months work. This was because I tried to write in the third person. It was rubbish. It was stiff, forced, and it distanced me from the characters. I hated it. But for other writers, it suits. You’ll know when you’ve found your voice because the words will flow.
The final dilemma is whether you should write about what you know. I met with a couple of male authors who both swore that nothing from their personal lives leaked into their books. One of them turned to me and said “Do you leak?” And the answer is yes. Sometimes. And one famous female author recently said that she felt her first two books weren’t proper as they were really about her. There is a school of thought that believes you have to get rid of your own hang-ups before you can be a real writer, which to me sounds like the literary equivalent of running the tap until all the rust and gunk is out and you have clear water. But I disagree. I think you work through your hang-ups in the course of writing the book; the protagonist goes on a journey and so do you; you learn and grow with your characters—don’t think there’s any special merit in having a lofty distance from them. Your books will always be about you to some degree. They will always reflect your view of the world in some way. In the end it doesn’t matter where your creativity comes from—whether it’s research, imagination, or real life—in the end you always write about what you know and wherever your knowledge has come from. Your main concern should be: can you translate what you know into entertainment? Do you have empathy for your characters?
After two years of procrastination, and I finally had a plot, a synopsis, and my first three chapters. I remember sending it off to Johnny, ringing him to expect it, and thinking, “That’s my best effort. If he doesn’t like it, then I’m back to writing pieces on the cabbage soup diet for the Daily Express and being grateful.” He did like it, and he sent it out to four British publishers who also, thank goodness again, liked it, and bid for it. Nine days later, I had a two book deal with Random House, and insomnia, from excitement. A few weeks after that, Johnny sold the American rights to HarperCollins. The slight problem is that after you’ve got your deal, you actually have to continue writing. The advance isn’t a wager—3 to 2 she writes us a book! It’s frightening, because the potential for public humiliation is so vast, but once you panic for a bit, then you can calm down and actually start to enjoy it. Because forget the parties, the ponies, and the rave reviews: once you actually start writing a novel you realize that is the best part. And by the way, I don’t own a pony.
Acknowledgments
I couldn’t have written Running in Heels without the help of a lot of very kind, patient, generous people. So huge kissy thanks to: Phil, for your love, support, jokes, and genius (sorry, but Cheryl and I are allowed to say that); Mary, for withstanding yet another fictional nightmare mother; Leonie, for dutifully reporting every “He wears slippers, yes, but he’s not from London” anecdote; Jonny Geller, occasional luncher and best agent in the world; Lynne Drew, for her brilliant precision editing; Tia “this will hurt but you’ll thank me” Maggini for being clever and right; Sharyn Rosenblum, that sensational one-woman PR miracle; Judith Regan, for publishing me so beautifully and letting me yap on her show; Carl Raymond, you star; Cassie Jones and Deborah Schneider (I demand another tea!) for all their hard work and support; and all the talented people at ReganBooks who contributed to the success of Getting Over It.
I had great fun (some might say, too much fun) researching Running in Heels, and I am enormously grateful to all the following people for their time and expertise; gorgeous Jim, I adore you!; Anne Sacks, a wonderful loyal friend; Jo, the Queen of Hearts (you’re so glamorous!); Elizabeth Ferguson and Jane Devine, you were great; Jane Paris, so were you; John “is this restaurant swanky?” Perry, to think that once I didn’t like you; Paul Byrne, forgive the dyslexia; Steve from Contempo; Judith, Ray, Wendi, Sophie, Martin, Pier, John Nathan (I made it all up, honest); Jason Rackham (Tony couldn’t have done it without you); Gina Short, in the nicest possible way Frannie owes you; Harry Selby, the fixer; Emma Beattie, for being inspirational—and letting me ride in the fire engine; the men on her watch (frankly, you’d set your own house on fire); Steve Vassell, you hero; Maurizio of Amici Deli, any mistakes are mine!; Uncle Ken, Phil and I think you’re great; Eleanor Bailey, my fellow mother at toddler group; Trevor Blount, Pilates guru; Anna Cheevley, you’re mad!; Sam Neville, for talking and talking…; Frank Tallis, you clever man; Lucy, for knowing Italian; Elizabeth Davies of the National Osteoporosis Society, thank you thank you thank you.
Last, this is a book about friendship and—except for the slaps—a tribute to Leah Hardy, Alicia Drake-Reece, Jo Kessel, Sarah Maldese, Wendy Bristow, Sasha Slater, Laura Dubiner, Emma Dally, Anna Moore, and Caren Gestetner, all of whom helped me with Getting Over It and much, much more.
About the Author
Anna Maxted is a freelance writer and the author of the smash international bestsellers Getting Over It, Running in Heels, and Behaving Like Adults. She lives in London with her husband, author Phil Robinson, and their son.
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Credits
Cover design by Ron de la Peña
Cover illustration by Todd James
Illustrations by Todd James
Copyright
A hardcover edition of this book was published by ReganBooks, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers, in 2001.
RUNNING IN HEELS. Copyright © 2001 by Anna Maxted. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
ePub Edition © JULY 2004 ISBN: 9780061862793
First paperback edition published 2002.
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