I saw a therapist around the time I was writing my first cookbook. Reasons were questions: Why couldn’t I sustain relationships? What was it about me that made them all flee? And why did I want to write so much but couldn’t?
I can’t remember much of what the therapist said to me anymore, (I still go around the treadmill like a hamster). Elliot, shall we say, was his name, was an elderly, wise looking man. Although he sat most of the times with this long legs crossed around the other, it was obvious that he was tall, elongated and boney. Possibly grumpy and kind on rare occasions. He dressed in shades of beige and brown with an off white shirt unbuttoned to one level, sometimes with a knitted tank top over it. He’d lean onto the palm of his hand, fingers spidering across his face, elbow rested on the rest.
As you do, I wondered what he wrote with his long fingers at a very slant angle onto his notepad inclined on his knee. Was he was doodling a to do list which carried him through a fifty minute session of self pity, angst and emotional turmoil, ticking at the Freudian points on his list?
One day, I said, I won’t be coming anymore although I very much enjoyed our sessions. The cycle to the old Victorian building somewhere in the city and treading onto the narrow wooden stair case all the way to the top floor was a routine of self care and discovery. Thats fine. He said. I had the feeling it was time that I spared him. I put all my things neatly back into my suitcase and went forth.
Twelve plus years on, I now know or realise or can finally hear (I only ever heard what I wanted to hear) why I can’t write when I have the absolute urge to write. After enjoying a good dose of my subscription on Masterclass from Amy Tan (The Joy Luck Club was one of the first books I read where I said, I want to write like this) and Margaret Atwood (only read 1/4 of The Handmaid’s Tale, not watched the series because of it). I came to realise that when I don’t write, it was simply because I wasn’t writing. Writers write, I hear the writers say. I think they are right.
Write anything they tell us. Fill the page despite thinking your words are “full of garbage” just write. “The trash can is your friend”, giggles Margaret Atwood, “Go and write.”
I can procrastinate a lot and further blame myself for laziness, for being inadequate and for not being good enough. The real reason behind that is not knowing how to calm my mind of all the possibilities in writing, creating language and importantly, my voice; the characters and events that can occur on a page are limitless. It is hard to focus when there are so many routes and paths ahead, decisions and commitments to make.
I found it incredibly difficult writing my first cookbook, My Vietnamese Kitchen. I was new to recipe writing (which is an art form of its own) but also new to writing anything. I can’t even keep a journal. The last journals written before I was 15 years old got tossed into the recycling bins when the council first introduced recycling (by me). I was so ashamed of my thoughts, my writing, my fears, my loves and practically everything. Binning it gave me much satisfaction. Now of course, I wish I had held onto them. How precious those pages must have been to me now.
My literary agent at the time must have really had a hard time. Looking back on the manuscript, I am in utter horror! Knowing zilch about publishing when I first started, I was rejected by the majority of the well known publishers. I didn’t have a big enough following or people did not know what Vietnamese food was, ingredients are inaccessible outside London and so on, were the mainstream excuses for me to exit that opened door which firmly shut behind me. I blamed my incompetent writing and my socially awkward self for everything.
Then came along a publisher who was looking to do a generic Vietnamese book because they (too) had spotted a gap in the market and gave me a book deal which I told was as good as I was ever going to ever get. I accepted with great delight and immense joy, I mean, come on, a book deal when you’re just imagining that you are a writer? Someone gave me a chance for which I am eternally grateful.
I wrote it with great anxiety and (compared to now) full of inexperience. Did the pictures, the book launch, waxed my ego and that was that.
Getting a book published bought me small successes and gave me an endorsement in all sorts of ways in the years that followed. Just like dropping that you went to Central St Martins when talking about art at a drinks party. I liked seeing the one copy of the book hiding in the deep depths of bookshops sandwiched between the Hairy Biker’s Asian Adventure and Rick Stein’s Far Eastern Odyessey. (Asian recipes sounded so unachievable back then). But actually it was no big deal in the ocean of books displayed on the forefront of Foyles and Waterstones. You’d have to swim across the ponds to get to my book.
This was not good enough, I thought, I needed more. I needed to do more writing, I needed to do better, get better. I needed to write even though I didn’t know how to start.
Then I got a new agent and she told me she really liked my voice. The voice that spoke in my pages. This gave me a boost and confidence. Then I wrote more and more and then she told me my writing was utter rubbish and I shouldn’t write if I was going to write like that. We parted ways. The “trash can” was my best friend.
I fell into a dark hole full of blank pages and cursor blinkers. Destroyed.
Looking back, that was one of the most important lessons, despite my death by a thousand paper cuts (Amy Tan would kill me for that cliche). I wrote so much bullshit, trying to be clever, trying to use too many words, trying to be something I am not. No wonder, I thought. Another pile of things to dismay myself about.
The niggle to write continued under my skin. I read and read tonnes of books. I persisted, without an agent. I secured a decent book deal from another publisher. My second book got published and it was no longer hidden in between old books but on window displays and sat on tables alongside brilliant current books.
However I only felt like a writer once I wrote my third book, Vietnamese Vegetarian which hardly anyone bought compared to Vietnamese. I’ve got another book coming out this year but I am still not writing what I am needing to write, its still buried under my skin, in my blood vessels, bursting to set free. I am writing this to remind myself that I’ve gone far. I must not stop, I am not an imposter, don’t be too hard, I am filling two pages here with words, (yes!) and I won’t bin it. I’m sending it to you, in case, you need to do what you need to do too. Writers Write! Said Atwood.
Today they republished my first book, Recipes From My Vietnamese Kitchen.
Do keep going. I like the stories in this substack very much, and yes, the voice, too.