The second time is easier, like heartbreak. I’m no longer sure that my novel The Golden Illusion, which I’m pitching now, is good enough.  Two years ago I went through this with my book A Prize of Sovereigns. I had loved writing it, the characters whispering their stories in my ear. Friends had offered critiques, and I’d revised and revised. At last I was ready for the book to make its way in the world.

I sent it to a dozen agents, and a couple of publishers – they rejected it. Yeah, you’re supposed to believe in yourself and really, really want it. I’ve read all the stories about best-selling authors being rejected over and over again. Including the hapless publisher who rejected J.K. Rowling twice, once as J.K Rowling and then again as R Galbraith. But the thing is, I’m an evidence-based kind of guy, even where the evidence quality isn’t that great. And it’s not enough to believe in yourself, you actually have to have some talent too. Maybe I lacked ability.

No matter how many of my writer friends told me the book was good, I discounted their views. Only a positive response from someone in the industry was going to work for me. I reckoned I had two choices – to press ahead pretending I had faith in the book, or to junk the thing and start on another one. I took the first option, and about a year ago it was accepted for serialisation by Big World Network. And my short stories started to get accepted by literary magazines. These magazines are useful because you can measure yourself against their acceptance rates, published in Duotrope.

So there was the evidence I needed that I had some talent and the book was okay. Two years out from writing it, as I record the weekly audio versions of each chapter, I have enough distance to read objectively – it seems pretty good.

The trick is to tread the high wire between on the one hand being open to criticism, and on the other retaining belief in your work. This doesn’t always work, and I wobble off the line in one direction or the other.

When the dreaded writer’s doubt has struck again, I realised instantly what to do – ask a professional. I sent it, and Prize of Sovereigns, to a literary consultancy and asked them to tell me which one I should major on. Personally I feel Prize is the better book, but harder to do an elevator pitch for. But what do I know? I’m just the author.

Know your reader, they say. What makes him or her read? How do you take their biggest problem and fashion a book around it? You have to understand more than the demographic your readers fit into, and what genre they read. That’s how the advice goes. Don’t just write, communicate – adapt your writing to your audience.

Am I the only one who stands helpless in the face of this advice? Is it even true?

The truth is, I have no clue who my readers are.  I guess they’re the people who like what I write. My book, A Prize of Sovereigns. which is still being serialised, has had around 1,100 reads. But I didn’t write it for them – I wrote a book I’d want to read. The way power works, and what its limits are, was what interested me at the time. I set it in a fictionalised Medieval Europe. Any comparison with Game of Thrones was conscious. I wanted to see if I could manage a story told, like Game of Thrones, through multiple characters. But it was the book I would like to have read. One in which ordinary folk are protagonists along with the nobles, and where the high folk devise cunning strategies to bend events to their will.

I don’t mean I wasn’t interested in my readers. Quite the reverse.  The first draft is always written for me alone, but all subsequent drafts are for the readers, with errors removed, words honed, and storyline engineered. It’s just that those readers are unknown. And I see no way to find out unless I get lucky enough to be famous enough to have fans who communicate with me.

I guess you could pick a genre, look at what’s selling in it, and try to copy that formula. But that would be to break another fundamental rule of writing – write what you enjoy, because if you don’t enjoy it why would anyone else? If you write experimental literary fiction, then of course you must settle for fewer readers. I’ve read of writers who share early drafts of chapters with their fans and rewrite in response to the comments they get. Oh to be in such a position! To some extent, joining online writing communities, like Friday Fictioneers gives me a little of this feedback.

For now, all I can do is write what I care about at the time, and write it the best I’m able.  I share drafts with the one or two readers and other writers who like my work. Writing with those couple of people in mind is the closest I can get.

If you’re one of my readers, and I guess you are if you’re reading this, I’d love to hear from you. Tell me what you like to read, and what you don’t like, also any comments about my writing.  Derek, Paula, Sue, Toni, and a few others, I know you, so I’ll be able to spot if you’re fibbing. Please leave your comments here.