Living Inside Raindrops: Luke Butler on his path to publication

Luke Butler’s debut novel Living Inside Raindrops

Luke Butler’s debut novel Living Inside Raindrops

When Luke Butler chose to work with The Book Edit, we were thrilled. Passionate about his subject and a born storyteller, it was clear he had huge potential. We were very happy to hear news of his publishing deal and delighted when he agreed to tell us more about his path to publication.

Living Inside Raindrops: On the Road to Publication by Luke Butler

“Writing can often be the easy part, it’s just you and your subjective assessment of your own work. It is what follows that can be all so difficult. 

I started writing as a form of therapy. I lost my dad suddenly at a young age and subsequently, and somewhat subconsciously, this event threaded its way into my debut novel: Living Inside Raindrops. 

Spanning four years; a proposal, a marriage, a house move and the birth of my first child, the book was ready for the world. Or so I thought.

At completion, I believed I had created a great paean for generations of readers and scholars to dissect and debate, the apotheosis of my life thus far. Then I opened the door. Knowing very few avid readers, I discovered The Book Edit.

Feedback is as essential to the process as having ink in your pen. It shone light on my novel as readable art, not just a journey in my head. After receiving my developmental edit from The Book Edit, I was challenged and I adapted my work dramatically. Yet another year passed, but this time I was actually ready for the world to have my book. 

The romanticism to be published always outweighed my inclination to self-publish. Partly due to a fantastical belief someone else could share a passion in my novel, and partly because having a printed paperback copy in a dusty bookshop, one that could live on beyond my own lifetime, was an ideal too great to forgo. It also somewhat naively puts you amongst titles created by your great idols and predecessors.

So, with self-publishing on the back burner, I purchased the latest edition of the Writers' and Artists' Yearbook and spent nights making a shortlist spreadsheet of all those with an interest in Historical Fiction, as well as those willing to take unsolicited material. Given my book was set during WW1 I thought up the notion of emailing my shortlisted publishers and agents as the clock chimed 11:11.

Having prepared my individually personalised query letters, along with the first three chapters (where requested) I sent the emails out in unison, subtly referencing in each one that 11:11 had been a constant haunting reminder for me over the years to complete my manuscript!

Another naïve belief I had at the time was that given I am a filmmaker (I run my own company; Nirvana Studios), I could awe publishers with the book trailer I had created, blinding over my writing faults. I must have sent fifty or more selective emails across the course of that week, prepared for the rejection and often templated denunciations that I would soon receive. 

  

Days, weeks and months past and my spreadsheet was mostly covered in red rows of rejection and amber rows glinting with promise (those who had responded and requested my full manuscript). I gave thanks for every returned email because I imagined the sheer number of they must sieve through each and every day. 

Standing out from the noise is tough but it only takes a subjective receiver to be hooked, just like the reason you started writing in the first place. 

The day finally came when three of those amber rows were turned green and I had an interest from direct publishers. They were not the household names writers fantasise about, plastering their book cover across platform billboards, nevertheless they were three publishers with an interest in printing copies of my book. 

I received the necessary paperwork and opted for the publisher I felt most passionate and best suited to settle my marketing and distribution requirements – they had specified all the major bookshops, and this immediately turned my eyes rosy! 

During this time, I joined the Society of Authors who helped dissect my contract and ease my rights of screenplay concerns. Coming from a background in video and largely writing my manuscript with a cinematic head, this was an important factor for me.

I couldn’t yawp from higher rooftops how accommodating and flexible The Book Guild were throughout the publication process. They were true to every word, from allowing me to submit my own cover artwork, to distributing my title across Waterstones, Foyles, Amazon, WHSmiths, and many more independent bookshops around the country! 

I still have to pinch myself most mornings, when I receive messages from friends and family members who are physically holding copies of my book. My Book, usually read against rain mizzled windows or sun soaked poolsides, far removed from the therapy sessions of five years ago when I administered myself a daily dose of writing!”

Interview with Rebecca Ley, author of debut novel, For When I'm Gone.

We were delighted when Rebecca Ley’s debut novel, For When I’m Gone, came out earlier this month. A heartbreaking story of love and loss, the novel is cleverly narrated through the handbook a young mother writes for her husband, to guide him after she’s gone.

Rebecca is not just a novelist but a successful journalist and mother of three, so we were thrilled when she found time to answer our questions about her writing journey.

Emily Pedder: ‘When did you first realise you wanted to be a writer’?

Rebecca Ley: ‘The day I realised that it was something you could do. I loved reading more than anything. I hope this doesn’t sound too pretentious but no other art form has ever reliably afforded me the same glimpse of transcendence as reading good writing - for me, it’s like plugging into the matrix. I find it harder to get that from music or visual art. So I always saw attempting it myself as the absolute ideal. But as I grew up, I understood how hard it was (and is!) to make a living from writing fiction, so I deliberately went into journalism, which has mostly proven a very varied and interesting career. They are very different disciplines, but I love them both.’ 

EP: ‘Is For When I’m Gone your first attempt at a novel?’

RL: ‘No. I did the Faber Academy course in 2012 and wrote the first draft of a novel about a newspaper, based on my experience of working on one. I got to 80,000 words but it wasn’t right, I knew it, so I bottom drawered it and got swept up in mothering infants. It’s unbelievably easy to let life get in the way.’

EP: ‘How was the process of writing the novel? Did it come easily or did it take time to find your voice and flow?’ 

RL: ‘In 2017 I sat down again and started what was to become For When I’m Gone. Part of the issue with my first book had been not feeling like it was in my authentic voice. So I was very deliberate about creating something that was. Not that my main protagonist is anything like me, just that the tone of the book felt right. I kept the sphere closer too, which felt truer to my own tastes. With those things in mind, it flowed much more naturally. I still had doubts - I don’t think any writer is ever completely sure about something they are working on. But it felt like ‘me’ and I realised how crucial that was.’ 

EP: ‘Who were your favourite authors as a child?’

RL: ‘Margaret Mahy and Dianna Wynne Jones. The thought of their books still gives me a kind of yearning feeling. I love a bit of magical realism, especially in an otherwise mundane situation. I wrote an entire dissertation about Iris Murdoch’s use of it!’

EP: ‘If you could give your younger writing self some advice, what would it be?’

Book cover of Rebecca Ley's For When I'm Gone

RL: ‘Not to worry so much about narrative perspective. I was so hung up on whether I should use an omniscient narrator, or a closed third or first person. Obviously it’s an important decision, but not one that should let you get in the way of actually making a start. You can always change your mind at a later date and mix it up within a novel. As you write, the right form becomes clearer.’

EP: ‘What would you have done if you hadn’t become a writer?’ 

RL: ‘If I wasn’t doing any form of writing - so I wasn’t a journalist either - I may well have gone into law. More through a lack of imagination than anything else - it’s the kind of respectable professional choice open to you as an English graduate. But I think it’s for the best that I didn’t. I’d almost certainly be richer, but I’m pretty sure corporate office life would make me profoundly unhappy.’

Rebecca Ley, author of For When I’m Gone

Rebecca Ley, author of For When I’m Gone

EP: ‘How have you found combining motherhood with writing?’

RL: ‘Until you have childcare, I think it’s pretty impossible to write regularly. Or at least, it was for me personally. Your days are just so absorbed with looking after these tiny beings, your nights are so fractured. But once I found childcare, I have actually found motherhood quite an inspiration in terms of subject matter and motivation. That said, it can feel like there are too many browser tabs open in your mind at all times. And I find it very difficult to do any writing at all if they’re in the house. If they’re near, even if someone else is looking after them, they have the pull of my attention. The only time I can manage it if I start writing first thing, with a cup of tea, before engaging. Sometimes I can fool myself that they don't exist for an hour or two.’

EP: ‘What inspired you to come up with a narrator who’s already dead in For When I’m Gone?’

RL: ‘For When I’m Gone started as a ghost story. Haunting presented itself as a metaphor for motherhood. I used to trudge around my house, picking up discarded sippy cups and toys, feeling almost like I was haunting my own life. Which isn’t to say that I was unhappy, because I wasn’t - or not predominantly - but just that mothering involves absenting yourself, in a sense. Your desires and ambitions are no longer centre stage. Which is a weird transition, particularly in our society perhaps, but also has tremendous upsides. It can be a lovely relief not to think about yourself all the time.'

Over time, the ghost story element of Sylvia’s life was largely curtailed (although there is still a hint if you look for it!) but the sense of a narrator who is already dead remained. It was important to me that those parts are written in the present tense, in that manual form. She’s dead, you know she is - but she’s right there. 

Dying is so weird - how can someone, with all their aspirations and joys and petty jealousies, cease to exist? I wanted to look at that. I was writing obituaries for my day job at the time, so the incomprehensible inevitability of non-existence was very much to the forefront of my mind!’

EP: ‘What’s the most important lesson you’ve learned as a writer?’

RL: ‘In terms of writing a novel, it’s crucial to get words on the page. You can go back and rework, but you have to get them out first. Don’t judge what you’re producing harshly - that’s for later. But there’s a caveat and that’s that you also have to try and articulate the mood of your book, even if the early stages. It can just be a feeling, an ache in your chest, that you are trying to write towards. 

The other lesson has been how much of writing happens in your subconscious. Things you don’t expect will intrude and you should let them.’

EP: ‘What are you working on now?’

RL: ‘I’m ghosting the memoir of a remarkable man called Hassan Akkad. He’s a Syrian refugee and Bafta-winning filmmaker who volunteered to work as a hospital cleaner when the pandemic hit. He then persuaded Boris Johnson to extend the bereavement scheme to cleaners, porters and healthcare assistants after they were initially excluded. He’s so inspiring; it’s a complete privilege to help him tell his story.

I’m also working on my second novel for Orion.’

Thank you so much, Rebecca! We wish For When I’m Gone all the luck in the world.


Writers' Studio Full Mentoring and Editing Package

WEDNESDAY 7th OCTOBER is the deadline for the next round of applications to The Writers’ Studio Full Mentoring & Editing scheme, a collaboration between The Ruppin Agency and The Book Edit.

If you've made good progress with your book, fiction or non-fiction, and are now looking for that breakthrough that will make your writing stand out to agents and publishers, this is the ideal next step.

The Ruppin Agency Writers' Studio

The package consists of six monthly sessions with a mentor, full developmental edit from  The Book Edit, and an additional session with a literary agent.

You can choose from our team of over 30 mentors, all published writers and experienced creative writing teachers, based across the UK, meeting up via videocall.

For more information about the scheme contact: studio@ruppinagency.com

Key Dates:

  • Deadline for receipt of applications: 9am October 7th, 2020

  • Shortlisted candidates selected: October 9th, 2020

  • Interviews held via Zoom during week commencing October 12th, 2020

  • Mentoring begins in November 2020 and will finish by end of May 2021

  • Writers must submit their manuscript to The Book Edit by December 1st 2021.

Contact studio@ruppinagency.com for more details.