From a chair in the middle of the Edinburgh International Book Festival:
There is no “they”. There is no club. No one is keeping me from doing this. In fact, we’re all doing the same thing.
Looking at the various publishers’ shelves, I felt a pang seeing names of houses that rejected my book. But what they were selling — histories of Scottish life, memoirs, crime fiction, Scottish interest books, gritty dramas — my book isn’t any of those. It wouldn’t fit with what they sell. Nothing wrong with that. No one to blame.
I’ve gone to the locus of that sinking-stomach feeling about publishing. The feeling dissipates. It’s fine. I still have work to do, but this event doesn’t diminish me.
But of all the people here, the one I find most compelling is the man with the ice cream cart. He’s wiping it down for the end of the day while people around me sit and talk about the famous authors they’ve seen and their books. He pulls large metal panels out — for cooling? Insulation? This work is simple and straightforward, and the value of it is evident in the faces of the people I’ve seen licking the scoops of frozen, sweetened cream. Of all the people here, the one I most want to be like as a writer is him.
