How a Book Came to Be
…from credit card debt to stage show to published book.
A couple weeks back, my debut memoir ‘The Ex-Boyfriend Yard Sale’ hit the shelves in book stores all across the UK. So, let’s talk about how I ended up being a person who has published a book!
The idea that incited all of this came to me while I was on the phone with my credit card company. I’d racked up about $20k of debt and found myself bartering with the Visa agent. When they told me, they’d waive my interest fees for a month if I could prove I was taking steps towards paying down my debt, I blurted out “I’m going to have a yard sale!”
Then I looked around my apartment and realised, the only things I could sell had all been given to me by my different ex-boyfriends.
But when I thought about pricing my goods, I got stuck. Surely all the pain, suffering and sentimental value should be reflected in the prices… I wondered if putting my goods on Craigslist (or Gumtree) would be a better bet, that way I could include my emotional, anecdotes to influence the perceived value of my items.
Shortly thereafter, the title ‘The Ex-Boyfriend Yard Sale’ popped into my head.
I told a theatre-making friend my plan to title each post ‘The Ex-Boyfriend Yard Sale’, to which she said, “Why would you do an art project online? You’re a performer. Make a show.”
Having only ever played characters on stage, I was keen to make something about my own life and play myself. All the touring I’d done had me itching to embrace new modes of performance – smashing together stand up, storytelling and live-art to make a show for my peers.
Needless to say, I decided to forgo the yard sale and play the long game.
I pitched the show idea to Brian Logan at Camden Peoples' Theatre – the only AD in London to take a meeting with me when I moved here in 2016 – and he invited me to develop the piece on CPT’s 2017 Starting Blocks – a development scheme for emerging artists.
After 10 weeks I had 20 minutes of the show created. I’d interviewed some of my exes, done some market research and was hunting for a mathematician to create a working formula that would take into account all the ways we invest in our romantic relationships and spit out an accurate price for the materials things we’re left with when a romance dies – a formula for the cost of love.
Over the next year I continued to beaver away at ‘The Ex-Boyfriend Yard Sale’ alongside many other projects (too many!). I had the chance to perform excerpts at The Wilderness Festival and Pulse Festival and do R&D (research and development weeks) at CPT, Battersea Arts Centre and Albany, along with several full-length work-in-progress performances for paying audiences.
Still mathematician-less, at one of those performances I made a plea to the audience, to hook me up with a math whiz if they knew one. And that’s how mathematician Melanie Frances entered my life! She came on board and worked with me to create a formula for the cost of love that includes 87 data points and works.
During this time, I was also trying to FINISH THE SCRIPT. I was really struggling to find an ending for the show and that same theatre-maker friend told me to push out all the edges and “write everything”. I did. I wrote 60k words – a six-hour show. My friend said, “You wrote a book. It’s a book.”
And so, as I winnowed my 6 hours down to a 90-minute show, I started to fantasise about writing a book one day.
Sidenote: When I was really little, I wanted to be a writer. And I’ve always written in journals, almost compulsively. But once I started pursuing a life in the theatre, I didn’t think about writing books – being an author became a dream I didn’t let myself dream.
By November 2018 I’d assembled a production team, got an arts council grant (on my second try – first one was rejected), fundraised, rehearsed the show with my wonderful director, Mitchell Cushman and it was opening night in London.
I had never worked so hard and assiduously on something. I made the kind of show I wished existed and not only was it a hoot to perform, and I have to admit, it was well-received.
I had big dreams for the future of the show too. Hopes that it would turn into TV series, a podcast and … a book. I even had a post-it note on my dressing room mirror that outlined my wishes for the future, which I’d look at before every performance. (Manifesting – because WHY NOT?)
It felt so good to be performing something that genuinely resonated with audiences and the fact that it was getting good reviews was icing on the cake. A write-up in The Guardian resulted in a literary agent, named Kirsty, reaching out to me. She thought my story would make a great book.
After the show closed, Kirsty helped me put together a non-fiction book proposal, something I was planning on doing on my own using Jen Sincero’s program if this hadn’t happened. Kirsty shopped the proposal around and after a couple months I landed a publisher in the UK (Hodder and Stoughton) and another one in Canada (Penguin Random House).
I actually got to meet with a few publishers and choose mine – which was a fascinating experience and so interesting to think how the editor you work with will shape your book. I went with gut instinct above all other considerations, and I stand by it!
I was meant to start writing my first draft on 1 July 2019, but that’s the day I was diagnosed with hyper-thyroidism and so I didn’t really get going till early August and my final changes to the book went in in early January 2021.
In my next blog, I’ll share how I actually got the work done – what the nitty gritty process was of getting words on the page and then how I handled the editing process.
Holy cow it was a marathon!
Thank you for being on this journey with me.
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