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Rage remains a vital tool in changing publishing’s status quo.
In 2019 I was at the Southbank Literature Festival performing my solo show "To Helen Highwater". It was due to tour in 2020, but as we all know, 2020 was not the year to go on tour.
Life turned upside down, having to shield at my mum’s house, hours away from my old life, and far too close to the teenage version of myself, I needed to switch it up, big time.
I started drafting a novel about a girl, like me, in her twenties, trying to navigate life, love, friendships and… ableism. Because at that point, I was exhausted, and I was angry. I was in my late twenties and diagnosed with a disability at two years old. That’s a lot of ableism to deal with, and then came a pandemic where far too many people seemed relieved when news reports said most people who died had "underlying health conditions". Oh good. Glad you’re glad disabled people are dying. Sorry it’s annoying to wear a mask.
Alter Ego isn’t a rant. It’s also not about the pandemic, don’t worry. It’s actually uplifting and portrays a realistic disabled main character who isn’t an inspiration or figure of pity. It’s funny too. I promise.
But my driving force when I was stuck at 35,000 words and it all felt futile? Anger. "Eat out to help out"? My god. Let’s get this done.
Book finished and five agents were properly interested. Incredible. I met Hayley Steed and couldn’t quite believe my luck. Once the editing process was done, we were excited to get it out to publishers.
I was very prepared for rejections. I just wasn’t quite prepared for total rejection, across the board. I am not saying that every rejection was ableist, far from it. But there was a lot of "I can’t think of any suggestions for improvement, it’s just not for me" and I wondered if they were daunted at the idea of backing a book like Alter Ego, when disabled main characters are so rarely seen.
We all try not to ’rant-tweet’. We’re all told it’s not the way to do things. But without this tweet, I would have never got the publisher I have now
Months after going out on submission, all I had was the promise from publishers that they’d be "cheering from the sidelines". I get it, that’s nice. But if we want change, we do need to have someone prepared to run the race.
Then came the email from the publisher who was only a few chapters in, but had decided to stop reading. It’s okay to stop reading, obviously, but it’s not okay to then start making guesses about where the story goes and telling me all sorts of things about how it’d be received. There was a lot of assumptions in that email that were really upsetting. If they had read it all, the publisher would have seen the character’s journey. But they didn’t. They stopped reading, and started talking, loudly, at me, without properly taking my lived experience into account. I felt so silenced.
What a kick when I was already down. All that work and nothing to show for it but more ableism.
So Hayley, my amazing agent, wrote a tweet: "Having a book on submission about a young woman with a disability is really opening my eyes to the amount of ableism that’s still rife in this industry. I really try not to rant-tweet about things like this, but there is SO much work to do."
We all try not to "rant-tweet". We’re all told it’s not the way to do things. But without this tweet, I would have never got the publisher I have now. Christina, who was about to set up Renegade as a commercial imprint of Dialogue, saw the tweet and messaged Hayley. She hadn’t started Renegade quite yet, but she read the manuscript and loved it. As soon as Renegade was cooking, I got a two-book deal.
Both my agent and publisher were drawn, in part, to Alter Ego as they have chronic illnesses and are also angry about the lack of representation. Anger pushed the book into being, and then pushed it into publication. Far too many people dismiss it, but it’s an energy we shouldn’t ignore – in ourselves and in others. It’s far too easily to categorise anger as someone "losing it", but I think it’s actually someone holding, very tightly, to what needs to be seen. It’s a shout against the murmured voices of the status quo. The call-out is still a vital tool we have, and if we don’t talk about it for fear of looking "ranty", no-one is going to know it’s happening. And if people don’t know it’s happening, then we’ll never get the change we deserve.
I’m so proud of Alter Ego and it would never have existed if it wasn’t for that hot crackle, the energetic flame that anger brings.