Finding new purpose (and acting on it), on a rainy Thursday in August

"History doesn't repeat itself, but it often rhymes." — Anon

I was deeply gratified by the response to my first blog post earlier this week. Thank you so much to everyone who reached out, and as for those of you who have already signed up for the paid subscription – well, when I saw those notifications come through I could have passed out in the middle of the street. That news, along with an especially jolly day trip with my six-year-old and some great friends, helped make Wednesday one of the best days of my year so far. I was beaming from sunrise to sunset, not put off in the slightest by the constant torrential rain during that same period. (There are far worse weather fates, as we’ve all seen in recent weeks.)

I’ve since realised that, in my haste to write the first post, I had overlooked a neat coincidence that ties the birth of this blog to the birth (or perhaps conception) of Valley Press itself, fifteen years ago this week. I don’t think I’ve told this story before, so let’s give it a go – it’ll be good blogging practice, if nothing else.

Back then, I was working on behalf of my university, giving campus tours during “clearing”, the process in which unplaced students are matched to available courses. The role involved sitting at reception, with all the computers turned off, from 10-4 each day, being disturbed once or twice a day by a visiting family – who received the most gently-paced, in-depth campus tour I could manage. The rest of the time I was simply sat staring out of the window and thinking, an activity I never seem to get tired of. (If anyone hears of another part-time job doing this, sign me up.) Then, as now, it seemed to rain all week without pause.

I had recently ended an unsuccessful stint as a trainee teacher, and in the autumn would be studying English Literature and Culture instead. As such, I had gone from having a crystal-clear path through life to absolutely none. I was full of ideas for things I might do, but they whirled around me that summer like flakes in a snowglobe, or bits of foil at the end of The Crystal Maze.

At the start of the week, I had voiced these concerns to the Head of Student Outreach, Kathryn, just by way of casual conversation. To my surprise, this easy-going acquaintance launched into a stunning, improvised, three-minute lecture on the value of picking something and “just doing it”, a distillation of the concept so effective it would make Nike’s marketing department blush. That unexpected speech then echoed in my head as I sat at reception from Monday through to Thursday, staring out of the window at the rain – pondering the art of “just doing it”, whilst simultaneously doing absolutely nothing. (I had brought a notebook and pen with me, as always, but it remained untouched for three-and-a-half shifts.)

Halfway through Thursday afternoon, the idea for Valley Press suddenly arrived in my head, fully-formed, like a flash of lightning. Within twenty minutes, I had filled my notebook with a step-by-step, two-year plan of how I would start my own publishing house, putting into action all of the book-related skills I’d picked up over the years. I even had some draft logos and a cover design for the first book, which I realised would need to be my own teenage novel The Waiting Game; forty copies, just enough to convince the first “real” author that I could actually do this. I had even noted that I would need catalogue numbers in the format “VP0001”, which persists to this day; our next signed title will be VP0230.

I then rushed home and started putting the plan into action as fast as possible, before I could change my mind – a course of action I’ve fallen in and out of love with over the years. Case in point, returning to 2023: I had actually registered this Substack account at the start of July, and had everything set up, ready to go, by July 9th. I then spent the rest of the month second-guessing myself, opening the site each day, then closing it without writing anything. “What a terrible idea,” I thought. “I should just be quietly focused on finishing the autumn titles, or cleaning out the fridge, or…”

I was finally given a push on the 29th by a long-serving Valley Press author, who (echoing Kathryn in 2008) spoke wisely about the perils of second-guessing a passion project into oblivion – though this time, the pep-talk arrived in the midst of a totally unrelated conversation, in which I hadn’t mentioned the potential new blog at all. (I suppose it was hanging around in my subconscious, which always keeps one hand on the conversational steering wheel.)

Inspiration suddenly renewed, I took the quickest action I could, adding to a short column I was writing for Mslexia magazine how excited I was “about the new Substack project I’ve just launched” – and sent that email – which in turn drove me to pound out the words for the first post on this blog, finishing at 11.45pm on Tuesday. “You should send it in the morning, at a more civilised hour,” I thought, but then, remembering both what Kathryn and the veteran author had said, fifteen years apart, I winced and hit “send now”. In that spirit, a blog was born.

This may not be quite what you imagined when I said the Substack would feature “in-depth data from behind-the-scenes”, but there’ll be plenty of time for that. For now, thanks for humouring me, and I look forward to writing about our 2023 books soon.