A few years back, after I had sold my first novel but before it had been published, I remember laughing at a tweet which said something to the effect of “We need to talk about how traumatising it is to publish a book”. Come on, I thought. Is the definition of “trauma” now so meaninglessly broad that it applies to one of the most coveted experiences available to a creative person? Publication may be stressful – but grow up. Actual suffering, actual trauma, does not apply to this privileged realm.
Then my book came out, and I went crazy. I’ll be honest: I’d been crazy before – fairly regularly in fact, and I still think it is insufferable to describe the publication process as “traumatising”. And yet the extremity of what I felt was chastening. I was embarrassed by my panic and pain. My first novel was published during the final Covid lockdown – I lived alone and spent what should have been the first unqualified success of my adult life, the fulfilment of a lifelong ambition, in total isolation. My talents as a socialite were not useful on Zoom. I learned that at least half of my gift for conversation is to do with body language and tactility. Reduced to a talking digital image, I felt the charisma and vitality drain out of me. I did dozens and dozens of promotional interviews for the book in this way, as my grin took aching root in my clenched jaw.
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