Writing one book is hard enough. You breathe life into your characters, and then they follow you around willy nilly: pinching you and prodding you and generally making a racket when you're trying to eat breakfast or put your washing on the line. They have no respect for you as their mother, and you have no control over them whatsoever; no control over how much you love them, or how scared you are for them, or how much you desperately need to protect them from the outside world at the same time as you want them to see as much of it as possible. Like children, once characters are created they breathe entirely on their own: existing simply to leave the toothpaste lid off and demand lifts to and from parties now and then.
Having two books, I've just discovered, is even harder. I've got one, finished book, and another - entirely different - very incomplete book, but - instead of having more creative freedom - now it just means that I've got two sets of characters, running around and sticking their tongues out at each other and at me when I get caught in the cross-fire. Worse: because I'm unpublished, they keep sidling up to me, pulling on my skirts, looking up at me with big eyes and saying "me? Am I your favourite? Am I the one you're going to talk about when you're hammered and trying to impress people at a party? Am I the one you're going to send to agents?" And I tell them both yes, because I don't know how to tell them I rarely discuss either because it bores people and have only sent them out a couple of times because I'm scared somebody will be horrible about them.
Unfortunately, the two books have also created their own little support networks within my family, because I subconsciously picked different people to read each of them. My grandad and my mum read and love Missed Connections - the adult, more thoughtful book - while my dad and sister read the comedy Harriet Manners. Two weeks ago I sent out both manuscripts at exactly the same time, and anyone would have thought I'd just shot a pistol into the air and given my parents little flags to wave.
"Have you heard anything about Missed Connections?" my mum asked a few days ago.
"No," I said. "Still waiting."
There was a pause.
"Somebody likes Harriet, though," my dad said a little smugly from his position on the sofa. "She got a letter from an agent and everything."
Mum glowered at dad.
"Missed Connections is just more subtle," she pointed out. "It's less in your face. It'll take more time, is all."
"Oh, so laughing isn't what people want from books?" dad snapped. "What's wrong with a book you like straight away?"
Mum stood up with dignity and pointed herself in the direction of the toaster.
"You wait," she muttered under her breath, wandering off to make herself a bit of tea. "It'll be Missed Connections that wins the Booker. And then you'll be laughing on the other side of your face, mister: nobody called Harriet ever wins anything, and everbody knows it. Just look at that Harman woman."
Unfortunately, now I'm torn. An agent rang me this morning because she loves Harriet and wants to meet me on Monday. And I'm ecstatic - I really am - but at the same time I feel incredibly guilty. All of my MC characters now have quivering bottom lips and too-shiny eyes, and it doesn't matter how many times I tell them not to take it personally: they do. They keep asking me why nobody loves them too; they keep asking me what's wrong with them. "I can be funny," Mike keeps saying in a small voice; "I just need to have a bit of warning first". And then they all look at me slightly resentfully, as if I didn't do my job properly and should have tried harder to make them wittier, prettier, more sellable. Worse: Harriet's feeling awful about it too. "I'd rather they have it," she keeps protesting to me. "You spent a year on them: you gave up everything for them. You wrote me in 10 days during the Christmas holidays. It doesn't seem very fair."
To me, they're all beautiful. Not because they are beautiful - all of my characters are, without exception, losers in one way or another - but because I know them completely and love them despite their vast flaws and inconsistencies. But, as much as it hurts me, I can't protect them forever, and I can't force other people to love them, and I can't do anything about how the world sees them. I can't make everybody think that they're beautiful. All I can do is keep believing in them, keep loving them equally, and keep trying to make them clean up after themselves when they've finished making a mess. Keep sending them out there to find out what they can do for themselves. And - most importantly - keep asking them to be quiet now and then, so that I get a little bit of peace and quiet. So that I can grab a few moments, just so - for a couple of precious seconds - I can't hear myself think.
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