TICK TOCK, TICK TOCK

How do I quiet the tiny Gwen Stefani in my brain?

Mar 29, 2026

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Greetings, failures.

These days, I am thinking a lot about time.

As I begin to wind down my querying journey for this book (more on that shortly I’m sure), I am facing the prospect of at least a couple of years before the next one is ready. And then editing, beta reading, potentially months of querying. And it still might not be picked up by an agent. I am feeling the panic start to tighten my chest.

I am obsessively checking the ages of famous people when they became famous (generally much younger than me). Did you know the average age of a debut novelist is 36? I do! It’s fast approaching for me, especially with the length of time it would take from book deal to publication. Every morning I check my hair for greys and pull at the first fine lines on my face, worrying constantly, and yes, I know slightly ridiculously, that I am becoming too old to ever make my mark on the world.

I call this part of my brain my Tiny Gwen Stefani— named, of course for the singer’s 2004 pop banger, What You Waiting For? If you haven’t encountered this joyous mess before, this is the one where she gives voice to all her negative self-talk around potentially missing her shot, floating around a trippy Alice in Wonderland inspired video and belting out very stressful encouragement to herself while tick tock, tick tock, repeats again and again in the background.

It’s like if someone mixed up series of motivational quotes with a bit of good-natured abuse, and threw a sprinkle of truly jaw-dropping cultural exploitation into the mix (I’m not getting too much into it now, but look up ‘Gwen Stefani Harajuku girls’ to find out more).

And in case you’re wondering: yes, it did feature on the Millennial Cringe Playlist, mostly for the excuse to scream ‘TAKE A CHANCE YOU STUPID HO’ over and over. Though I have regretfully let her go for now because of the aforementioned racist ridiculousness.

Anyway, the point is: if it sounds kind of hellish to have a culturally insensitive pop diva stomping around your head, trilling and screaming ‘LIFE IS SHORT, YOU’RE CAPABLE’ …you’re right, it is a living nightmare.

I am, Gwen! I am! The trouble is, a lot of this stuff is out of your control. Sometimes you are never going to get what you want. No matter how hard you work.

All my beloved readers over the age of 36 are probably smiling indulgently right now at my silliness, or perhaps dearly wishing they could thump me round the head. But think we all feel this way way sometimes, whatever age we’re at, and whatever stage in our careers.

In almost every writing event I’ve been to, someone has put their hand up and asked the question: can someone who is x age still get published? Have I left it too late?

So I think it’s important we talk about it.

Granted, I’m not sure I’m the best person to give any answers, given that I’m the kind of gibbering wreck who watched Logan’s Run on repeat after she turned 31, but…

A conventional response to this sort of anxiety is to list all of the authors who only achieved success later in life. Bonnie Garmus! Raymond Chandler! Philip Pullman!You can even look up lists online of when various authors published their first books, and find out that this happens at all stages of life (yes, I have done this. multiple times).

And I think to an extent that can be helpful, but I also think that this can be a way of displacing that anxiety, where you internalise all the other authors’ dates and obsess over them: ‘Oh shit, I’ve missed the Terry Pratchett cut off! If I don’t finish this book by the end of the year I’m not going to publish before J.R.R. Tolkien did!’

There’s a reality here that we are mortal, we don’t know when our time will be up, and looking for certainty can be a fools errand when the landscape is always shifting and so much is out of your control.

Instead what I tell myself is that something that you create in a rush, with panic nipping at your heels, is unlikely to be work that you are proud of, or enjoy creating. More haste, less speed, as the saying goes. You’re going to waste more time churning out a dozen half-baked things than slowing down and giving one project the attention it deserves.

So, deep breaths and trust the process. If it’s worth doing, it’s worth doing properly. You owe your work that.

And if time runs out before you’ve finished….well, that’s above your pay grade. It’s fate or destiny, or whatever. But your book needs the time it needs, and if you fight that, you’re only going to make things worse.

There was a long time where I beat myself up for spending over a decade writing my first book, but these days, I’m so so grateful for it. I took the ‘I have not failed. I have found 1000 ways that did not work’ approach to writing a novel, and now it’s paying dividends. Spending so long tinkering with one thing has given me an intimate, under-the-hood knowledge of how a book is constructed, with the result that my second book is coming out so much easier, and I have a confidence in my craft that a younger me couldn’t have imagined.

Genuinely, the time I invested has given me such a solid base to query from. Not to mention a deep, instinctive knowledge of my characters, and so much joy over the years. And while it’s looking like this won’t be the book that breaks through for me, I don’t regret it one bit. It has brought friends into my orbit. It has inspired artworks. I think, maybe, it has entertained a handful of people. And it has taught me everything I know. I don’t think you can ask much more from a project, even if it hasn’t brought money or widespread recognition (yet! if this book and the one I am writing don’t make it in trad pub, I will have Plans).

When it comes to the Gwen Stefanis (Gwens Stefani? Gwen Stefanii?) in all our heads— I get it, their songs are catchy and somewhat unavoidable, but I think we do need sometimes to sing a different song and drown them out a little. Otherwise, we will miss out on what is right in front of us…and the time will pass anyway. And really, isn’t that the worst of all worlds?

But honestly, I’m still figuring out how to do that. Any thoughts, please let me know!

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Rejection is Homophobia

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