Ooops! I seem to have left rather a long gap since writing my last blog post here. Time really flies when you’re having fun/ editing a book/ writing another book/ educating a child at GCSE level!
When I wrote my last anthology-related post back in April (! again – oops!), I shared about the new journey I was taking, of editing the work of others…
As with most authors, writing and publishing my first book had taken me far out of my comfort zone. But where most people might then then take the time to write a second book and consolidate their learning/ growth, here I was branching out at speed, moving into compiling and editing the work of others. It felt unreasonable, brazen, and somewhat premature. And yet that is what I found myself doing. To begin with, even though there were challenging steps to take, it had mostly been so straightforward to organise that it felt like it had its own momentum. I only really stopped to draw breath in April, when I suddenly realised I was now responsible for suggesting changes to the work of authors who I really respect (and who had been writing for far longer than me)!
Happily for me, the writers involved in the anthology are a beautiful bunch of people, all of whom took my suggested edits with good grace. Where issues arose, often because I hadn’t communicated the vision clearly enough, we kept at it until we reached mutual understanding. Only one author (two if you count the one who dropped out right at the start) felt the need to withdraw through the process, but there is no bad blood between us as a result, which is most valuable to me. I am so grateful for the patience and good will of all those involved!
Once the author contributions were in, I added the questions and optional prayer suggestions that provide a sense of continuity throughout, and then I reached the part that I had been subconsciously avoiding since the very start: how to illustrate it. I knew the book needed illustrations if it was going to reach its full potential. But here I was stuck, because it was completely new territory: how do you find an illustrator, and how do you decide what do pay them? Do they take their fee up front, or as a percentage of the sales? Either way was a problem, really: I had no money to pay anyone up front, and couldn’t bear the responsibility of ‘what if I don’t sell enough books to make it worth their time?’ But neither could I bear the thought of asking a stranger to do the illustrations for nothing but ‘exposure’. Asking the authors to provide a single short piece of writing had felt audacious enough – I couldn’t bring myself to ask someone to do multiple pieces of art for free! Eventually I came to the place of realising what I had been subconsciously wrestling with the whole time: I was going to have to do it myself!
This was not just leaving a comfort zone: this was leaving it so far behind me that it was completely out of view! I am NOT an artist! Every step of the way I argued with myself, questioned what I thought I was doing, and repeatedly decided I couldn’t do it. But once I had seen the vision of how I wanted it to look, I couldn’t settle for anything less, so that vision persistently wore away at my arguments and daily irritated me enough to just keep trying. It has taken me all summer. But yesterday, I finally finished. The illustrations are not fine-art: they are very simple, as per my vision. And I’m still not an artist – I doubt I’ll ever do anything like this again – but it’s done.
The comfort zone I used to love, of never trying anything that might fail – or if I did, I did it in secret so no-one would know – has been obliterated. In the course of a year I have become a published author, and am about to become (watch this space) a published compiler, editor and illustrator too! Unbelievable! So resisting the temptation to make this into a preach about the growth-zapping dangers of comfort-zones, I just want to encourage anyone considering trying something new today: give it a go! You might surprise yourself with what you can do…
Rachel Yarworth, Writer 