“I had been overthinking everything…all the pressure was coming from myself”
Novelist Rebecca Thornton on how she learned to stop panicking and let her ideas flow.
It was a sunny Thursday when Nelle, my agent, rang to tell me I had been offered a two-book deal. I wept; it was a dream come true. I was pregnant at the time, so celebrated with a quiet night and a phone call to my parents and my nearest and dearest.
Nelle and I had already been collaborating closely on my debut manuscript, THE EXCLUSIVES. We’d done lots of revisions and it was in pretty good shape. One of my immediate thoughts was – brilliant – once I’ve finished editing, I’ll start on my next novel. I felt some sort of stability, which as an author, is hard to come by. How very naïve I was and little did I know what was to come.
When I’d done my last line-edits on THE EXCLUSIVES and waited for publication, my mind wandered to book two. I didn’t have any deadlines but had a meeting scheduled with Nelle to discuss ideas. Except, the days passed, and I had no inspiration. I searched high and low in newspapers for prompts. I asked people if they had any brainwaves. Nothing stuck and as the meeting with Nelle drew closer, I started to panic. Which – as everyone knows – is the death knell of creativity.
During the meeting, in which Nelle could not have been more supportive, we bounced around thoughts and ideas. She told me not to worry at all and that it would come. I went home and realised I was trying desperately to find some big hook I could hang the novel on. I had not thought once about the type of character that I might find interesting to write about. I was too focused on plot. I had been overthinking everything and that all the pressure was coming from myself. Once I stripped it all back, I read a story in the paper that triggered an idea. And I thought about what would happen if I used a celebrity as the main character, and how I could frame their thoughts and actions on both celebrity and ego. A plot started to emerge. Except when I sat down to write, I couldn’t find the voice. Once again, I’d been overthinking and trying too hard. The more I wrote, the more panicked I felt.
I wrote one draft. It was turned down by my then publisher. I wrote another. There were seeds of something but ultimately it wasn’t up to scratch. I wrote another draft. Realised it was dreadful. I started again without even bothering to show it to anyone. I must have hit the half a million word mark – all of it confined to the virtual dustbin.
At this point, I nearly gave up. I wrote to my best mate: ‘I’m not doing this anymore. I’m going to tell them I can’t do this.’ When I’d made this decision, the pressure was off. And it was only then that the writing started getting easier and I ended up with my second novel, YOUR GUILTY SECRET.
For my third novel, THE FALLOUT, (out April 2nd) about a group of West London Mums, the characters came when I was least expecting it. I started to think about each of their motivations and I mercifully wrote my first draft in about three months (compared to the previous book – around two years.) It’s now time to start to dive into book four. I’m trying to learn from my previous experience and take the pressure off. To think more about the characters and their motivations. And of course now I know where I previously went wrong, it should be easy, right? Here’s hoping!
Until then, stay safe everyone.
Rebecca Thornton is an alumna of the Faber Academy Writing A Novel course, where she was tutored by Esther Freud and Tim Lott. Her writing has been published in The Guardian, You Magazine, Daily Mail, Prospect Magazine and The Sunday People amongst others. She has reported from the Middle East, Kosovo and the UK. She now lives in West London with her husband and two children.
THE FALLOUT is her third novel and is out on April 2nd 2020.
How to become Unstoppable: author Rebecca Thornton