Proper English.

Which football player (soccer player to those of you currently wearing Stetsons and/or a shoestring necktie) has never started an international knockout match but has twice scored the decisive goal in the finals?

If you’re Welsh or Scottish, you probably know the answer and wished you didn’t.

If you’re English – well, it’s Chloe Kelly, isn’t it? She didn’t just score the decisive penalty against Spain in this year’s Euros, she also scored the decisive goal against Germany in the 2021/22 edition. She also set up Russo’s equaliser in last weekend’s final, scored a 119^th minute equaliser against Italy, set up both goals against Sweden … and yes, scored a penalty there too.

That’s a never-say-die record to put it mildly, but Chloe Kelly doesn’t even take the record for most never-say-die in the English team.

That accolade surely has to go to Lucy Bronze who played a full part in every game in the tournament – which is a FOOTBALL tournament, which involves a game that requires people to (a) run and (b) kick and also, if we’re honest, (c) be kicked – and Bronze did so while having a fractured tibia. Now yes, the fracture was a stress-fracture, so it’s not like the bottom part of her leg was just flopping around like a broken chair leg. But stress fractures are very painful and the recommended treatment does not involve playing constant high-level football.

The unofficial motto of the team has come to be Proper England, or Proper English.

What does that mean? Well, it means be more Kelly. It means, be more Bronze.

By most football metrics, Spain had the better of Sunday’s final.

They had more of the ball. Had silkier players. Connected more passes. Showed those little dabs of skill.

But resistance is a skill too. If Spain were masters of control, England were masters of chaos – and sheer bloody-mindedness. Was there somewhere in the multiverse, some spinning galaxy somewhere in which Chloe Kelly did not set up that equalising goal? Did not lash that final ball through the net and into the stands beyond? I doubt it.

And all this is a homily about writing.

Writing is a Really Hard Job.

It’s hard to write a book.

It’s hard to get an agent.

It’s uncertain, having once got an agent, that you get a publisher.

And when you get a publisher – well, guess what? Most books fail and publishers are absolutely experts at brushing you ever so politely and ever so decisively out of their lives.

So, OK, damn publishers. Why not self-publish? Well, sure thing. Except now you need to write a lot of books. And they need to be good books. And the covers need to be as good as books commercially published by billion-dollar corporations, because they’re competing nose to nose against those books. And you’re going to have set up mailing lists. And Facebook ads. And probably Amazon ads. And you’re going to have to layer those things up and be as professional about those things as you are about everything else. And all that, honestly, won’t work unless your books compel the reader, which, as we know, ain’t the simplest.

So?

Either give up, which is a perfectly sensible solution. Accountancy is easier and it’s definitely better paid.

Or – be Proper English. (Or, proper Welsh / Scottish / Irish / American or whatever descriptor pleases you.)

Just refuse to be beaten.

In the Italian semi-final, England scored the equalising goal in the fifth minute of second-half injury time. They scored the winning goal in the penultimate minute of extra time.

Book’s rejected by agents? Write it better.

Still rejected? Write a new book. Use all the learnings from the last one.

Taken one course? Take another.

Tried five agents? Try five more.

Your rom-coms didn’t work? Write crime.

Trad publishing stopped feeling right? Self-publish.

Unsure about Facebook ads? Learn about Facebook ads.

There definitely are authors whose first book just bounces to the upper reaches of the bestseller charts, there to establish a nesting place for all its future sisters, but those authors are desperately rare: exceptions among exceptions.

One of my favourite keynote talks at our Festival of Writing was given by a bestselling author, who was also a senior commissioning editor at a Big 5 publishing house. She knew everybody. She was crazily well-connected. Her first book became a #1 bestseller. And (I was worried) that our audience just wouldn’t relate. Just like it wouldn’t relate to Jeff Bezos moaning about the price of fuel for his yacht.

But the speaker turned it around.

She corrected me. “Harry, when you introduced me just now, you said that my first novel went straight to the top of the charts. And it didn’t. What you meant was, my first published novel …”

And this glittering writer, this gifted person who sat at the heart of London’s publishing industry, had written an earlier book. Which she spent ages on. Which was never published. Which an agent-friend/colleague told her was too bad even to market.

Every the glitterati have tough times. This is a tough game.

Get back on that fractured tibia – and be more Bronze. Be more Kelly. The game ain’t over till it’s over.

FEEDBACK FRIDAY / Explanations

No Feedback Friday this week, because Townhouse is on holiday. (Or actually, so hungover after its personal Euros celebrations that it has a headache that stretches from here to Paris. It also has straw in its hair, sand on its bum, what seems to be a Russian sailor in the bedroom, and a quite extraordinary new tattoo. Townhouse promises to sober up – and get rid of the sailor – in time for next week.)

Til soon.

Harry