Keep Going: Hannah Kaner on Writing Resilience

As writers and creatives, we’ve all heard the words ‘keep going,’ but it’s nice to know there is often light at the end of the tunnel.

Godkiller wasn’t the first book Hannah Kaner wrote, nor was it her first manuscript that went out on submission to publishers. It was, however, the first book Hannah got published. Godkiller went on to become a Sunday Times number 1 bestseller in the U.K., an international bestseller, and a USA Today bestselling book. Its sequel, Sunbringer, is out now, and also hit number 1 on the Sunday Times bestseller list in hardback. Wow!

In this wonderfully generous, kind and inspiring article for The Novelry, the internationally bestselling author Hannah Kaner shares her tenets for writing resilience, and how to keep going if your first book doesn’t get published.

Hannah Kaner on being an ‘overnight success’

Bernadine Evaristo wrote that she ‘became an “overnight success” after 40 years working professionally in the arts.’ Her extraordinary journey of resilience and persistence is a testament to the qualities that truly make a writer.

We speak sometimes about the iceberg of writing, the great weight of research beneath the waves of your world and only the smallest piece visible at the surface. But what about the iceberg of a writer? The shine and glitter that has broken through at the surface is only the smallest fragment of the work, the belief, the hope and the resilience that makes us what we are.

My own journey

I try to be candid about my own experience. That it took me seven books, fifteen years of querying and eight years with a literary agent before any of my novels saw print.

Of course, this isn’t always encouraging to a new writer, that it might not be their first, second or even third work that breaks through to publication.

Nor can I share that it was one final formula, one neat trick that I finally cracked that broke through. It was luck, persistence and resilience. Creating enough opportunities that something stuck the landing. Right time, right place, right book.

I think the best lesson I learned as a writer is that resilience isn’t hanging onto one piece of work, one version of yourself. Resilience is growth, learning and chance. Resilience is a practice of writing, and of life.

Here are some of my tenets:

1. Take chances

That old adage: you miss 100 per cent of the shots you don’t take.

Writing to be published is more like taking shots, blindfolded, against moving targets. Or to use a gentler example, it’s like scattering seeds in a barren garden on a cold spring morning and hoping the weather turns enough for them to germinate and green.

The only way to succeed is to take more chances. Write new things, new stories, novels, novellas. Some writers find social media to be a source of success, creativity and community, others find other outlets, such as poetry, fan fiction, art. Scatter the seeds again.

The act of creation and communication is what makes writing a thing of value in and of itself. It’s what makes you a writer. It is difficult, and messy, and embarrassing and exhausting but this is always what you must come back to when you are turned away, turned down, or nothing grows.

Create, and that creates opportunity.

2. Be curious

What I lament most as a writer is a sense of snobbishness or superiority; that writing a certain genre or rejecting another makes you better or more original. We all write in conversation with the world around us, we do not thrive in isolation.

So read. Read as widely as you can. As voraciously as you can. Read works that have achieved success, read works that haven’t. Read works in translation, works in experimentation. Read diversely: authors of colour, queer authors, classic authors, new authors. If books and audiobooks are not, for whatever reason, accessible to you, try mediums of art, science, gaming, television and music that are. All the world is a stage, and it’s full of things to play with.

Personally, I like to challenge myself outside of the genres in which I write. History, economics, psychology and politics is full of inspiration and strange detail. I love to read about writing, screenwriting, theatre writing, biographical tales of the survival of writing. The more I know about the world and its workings, the better I can reflect, challenge or twist it anew.

I know most people see writing as art, which it is, but I see it as engineering.

Putting pieces inside an engine, giving it the spark of life and seeing if it moves, and how far. So, if something you’ve tried as a writer hasn’t worked, take it all apart, observe each piece, learn more about it, and remake it as something new.

3. Let go

Sometimes, no matter what you do to a piece of work, it just won’t take. If a book hasn’t succeeded on a few rounds of submission to an agent or publisher, editing and resubmitting the same piece of work over and over may not benefit you or reach success.

Knowing when it’s time to change, begin again, take a break, replenish, is an essential part of being a writer.

It is heartbreaking to let go of work into which you’ve poured so much of your time, love and soul. I’ve been there. It is alright to grieve, to wallow for a bit, to find another way to pay the bills, keep the lights on, but as with all grief, there is growth in letting go.

Guard your heart, take your rest, and begin again.

4. Cannibalise

This takes me to my next point of resilience, which is that nothing is ever truly lost. The old drafts, the rejected manuscripts, the ideas that just couldn’t quite take shape into words. The shadow demons in Godkiller took their form in part from a first book I wrote over 15 years ago. The beginnings of research I did into PTSD and war was from one of the previous books that went on sub with no offers.

Don’t see the work you have done before just as a missed shot, a failure or a waste. Use it as a foundation on which you build your future.

More than that, if you manage to hit one of those sunny seasons where all your seeding suddenly takes root, you can go back to the years before to see what might have a new chance to thrive.

5. Persevere

When so much that you see online can be either sparkling success or navel-gazing negativity, it’s difficult to maintain your resilience as a writer. When you peek over your own parapet and see the wild and riotous growth of someone else’s garden, it’s easy to feel small, and foolish, and alone.

Remember in those moments when you’re picking up the pieces for the hundredth time, when you’ve done everything right and it’s still gone wrong, that it takes great courage to try. That it takes even more to keep trying when it feels like failure.

And remember that, no matter what we see on the surface of someone’s life, the roots of the garden, the depth of the iceberg, reach far further than we will know. And just because they’ve made something beautiful or successful first, doesn’t change whether you are also capable of that beauty and success.

In those moments, when I felt bitter and small, and foolish and inadequate, I kept asking myself if I would still write if my work was never published. I kept asking myself if it was worth it. It would have been easier if the answer was no; I would have been a different person. Not less, nor diminished, just different.

But the answer, to my own annoyance, was always yes. Yes, I would still squeeze in a half hour on a bus to somewhere. Yes, I’d still type one-handed while eating a sandwich on my lunch break. Yes, I’d still be up till 3am if I hit that strange fugue state where the work begins to flow.

I always returned to writing as an act, not a goal. A practice, not a target.

To write is the thing and the whole of the thing. To express something with the insight and the humour and curiosity and cadence that is yours and yours alone. To see the forest grow from the kernel you planted.

One day, the work you put into the world will take root. Maybe differently to how you expect, maybe not as soon as you hope, but the roots will go deep, and you will delight in what you have created.

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Members of The Novelry can enjoy a live writing class with Hannah Kaner in Catch Up TV. For more insights into literary techniques, coaching and a supportive writing community, join us on a creative writing course at The Novelry—the world’s top-rated writing school.