The Terror of Self-Publishing a Novel Written by an Author with a Split Self

I self‑published my second novel, The Locked Door. The year was 2008, the early days of self-publishing. My novel climbed the charts, up and up. There it climbed into the realms of the big names, like Cole and Patterson. I couldn’t believe it. A character born from my secret world was out there. Readers from around the world were downloading his story.

I continued to teach part‑time, did the school run, and pushed a trolley around the supermarket. But inside, my exhilaration lit me up. Every sale brought a surge of excitement that shielded me from my difficult past and the dour present. No one knew about my novel except my twin, Eve. And even with her, I sometimes closed up.

Key scene in my second novel, The Locked Door. A captive peeks through a hole in the floorboards.

Author with a Fractured Identity

With The Locked Door free, I decided to retrieve my first novel, The Lessons from the attic. I tore open the old brown envelope to find a mediocre manuscript. How could this novel consume so many years of my life? The Eighties had become the Nineties; technology had changed, along with the lingo. But the story remained the same. Overworked scenes trapped in a single bedroom appeared thin. Dialogue clattered around in staccato. A plot with no tension. My fantasy world had failed to transmute onto paper.

I gave it a brutal revamp.

I reacquainted myself with Aidan, my teen-hood secret ‘boyfriend’. God, that name made me feel horrible. I tried changing it to Josh, but he remained Aidan in my head. As I revised the manuscript, old memories flooded back: my dark teens, my tortured paintings at City Poly, my troubled marriage. I was back in the Eighties.

I restored the prologue about a psychopath’s uncle descent into psychosis — a character based on Dad when he was mentally ill. Then I cut scenes, spliced others, rewrote sections. I had begun The Lessons with the belief that I had something profound to say. Pride, jealousy and shame had convinced me for years. But now, with a fresh eye, I could see this novel wasn’t ‘normal’.

The novel became two in one: a split plotline with a shadow meaning.

I kept thinking of the Dreyfuss character in Spielberg’s film, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, obsessively sculpting a knoll in the living room, trying to make it match a shape in his subconscious. The Lessons had become my own ‘knoll’ — the blueprint in my head. The shape materialised. New scenes poured out. I added characters, settings, and a horrific theme park that made me shout internally: Yes! Why didn’t I think of this before?

A subplot involving art assignments, Aidan’s sister, and a death gave the story weight and meaning. The derelict house — the psychopath’s lair came into focus. I had spent hundreds of hours in that creepy upstairs room: the cluttered mattresses, the mottled window overlooking a copse. I hadn’t visited it in years.

My analysis book of my first novel, The Lessons.

I got closer to the knoll of my imagination. Publishing The Lessons excited — but also terrified me for the feverish teenager who had toiled for years over a thudding old typewriter. What was she trying to say?

The Fragile Ego of a Fractured Author

My ego has always been fragile. Yes. Many writers feel this, but for me it cut deep. Mixed reviews stung. Some readers didn’t ‘get’ my novels. Why didn’t they understand? I became protective of my inner identities that drove my novels. I wanted readers to know them as I did. Why did I care so much? They were only fiction… weren’t they?

During counselling in the Nineties, I learned that children of warring parents often fracture. They split themselves to satisfy conflicting standpoints, not out of deceit, but survival. In severe cases, the fracturing creates a confused identity — a child trying to please everyone, internalising the broken home.

For years, I accepted my counsellor’s logic. This is ‘me’. (So, I'd thought)

But did the typical child of a broken home live with a separate identity? Did they picture this other self clearly? Know his name? Draw him? Paint him? Write novels around him? Know his background, his clothes, his hang‑ups? Did they keep a constant companion in their head?

Writer with a Confused Identity

My split-self did not come from warring parents at all. It came from a hidden past.

One day, I let slip to a sibling that a man lived inside my head. Her bemused expression made me close up. Another time, drunk, I told Mark I lived a double life with an imaginary man. He laughed it off as daft. The next morning, sober, regret pinched so hard, I winced.

My closing‑up eventually included Eve. In secret, I took my reveries to new levels and new storylines.

The Lessons did not sell as well as The Locked Door, but every upload began to agitate me. My characters had become more than a figment of my imagination. They seemed real. And my preocupation with these novels began to take over.

With two novels behind me, I began a third.

Yes — a third.

I am feverishly writing. Again. Just like my teenaged self. My pencils wore down to nibs in my little notebooks that I took everywhere with me. Nasty thoughts begin to crowd into my head. My dreams grow vivid.

What sort of author am I?

The answer is: an author with a split self.

I would call my third novel, North Window.

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