... And then a friend said they were fed up with my giant idea and hadn't I got fed up and why didn't I write about the divorce? Following their lead, instead of my intuition, I did. I spent three long years, all week-ends and spare moments devoted to belting out a rabelaisian humoristic version of how a marriage fell apart and the husband went off with the wife next door and her three kids. It was funny and a leading publisher was very interested. But- a day before going to see that person I trusted- my computer broke down and when the computer company repaired it, the back-up failed. No manuscript on computer and no back-up...only a typed up copy. I am pretty superstitious so when I saw this same person I asked him: 'shall I type it up again onto the computer?' I knew his answer before he said it: 'Don't bother'....I hadn't really needed telling. I knew the motivation was slightly suspect with the wish still to prove the adulterers were the 'baddies'...not so helpful....
He insisted: ' Fiction and comedy', 'But I'm so good at tragedy' I argued...
Back to the drawing board or desk.
By now I realised that i could never be fully fulfilled until I had accomplished my calling: to get Rabelaise published...So even more stringently, I sat and wrote at every spare moment, teenagers still disturbing me and now able to criticise my every chapter. But this book flowed out of me: wherever I went, the inspiration and next chapter being dictated to me. It was so EASY! And I can genuinely say that I had never ever known so much happiness as when the pen flowed.
One Friday I decided to get an agent because I couldn't bear to do all the hard work of chasing publishers without one. I rang around and emailed and got about six rejections in one day. In the twelve years that had elapsed, gone were the monthly recognisable plops as the rejected manuscript crashed through the letterbox to the floor. A heavy manuscript returned meant no publishing contract. With email, it happened instantaneously.
I felt quite low...
On the Monday morning I got up and thought- 'This is meant to be simple. It doesn't have to be so hard'. I invoked my ‘high power’ or whatever you want to call it and opened the Writers and Artists Yearbook at random and looked down. There was 'John Hunt- O Books'. It caught my eye because John Hunt was the manager of a local independent bookstore in the city in which I live and I knew him.
And then I saw ' spiritual publishing at a global level' and emailed them.... Emails went to and fro and by the end of the week, a contract was signed.
NEVER had something been so easy and flowing and I believe this book was meant to be. It can't actually be otherwise.
So, dear readers, hang onto your dreams and follow your heart and instinct. If I can do it, so can you!
The next part of the dream is that the motivation behind the book has always been to build a retreat centre in the Kent/Sussex area. 80% of the film rights are devoted to this. If you could help me by buying a copy and ‘paying it forward’, as in buying two or three copies and asking the people you give it to, to do the same, you would enable a lot of people to benefit.
Please help. I know you cannot help but laugh uproariously over Gargantua’s parody of the world today.
Thank you,
Rabelaise
