THE SECRETS OF THEIR SUCCESS

Fast Facts:

Pursuit: Best-selling author.

Definition of success: “Finishing a book that I’m happy with.”

“Have a back up plan,” Ben Hatch replies when I ask what advice he would offer to someone about to embark on the pursuit of their life-goal.

Some of my guests, authors in particular, are appealingly voluble when it comes to offering guidance, giving up whole paragraphs of valuable counsel on the subject of achievement. You could spend a fortune on self-help books and never come across the goldmine carved out by these people who’ve given so readily of their time and wisdom, candidly relating the trips and spills leading to their ultimate successes.

And yet Ben’s scant five word reply (four, even, were I to hyphenate ‘back up’) is the true iceberg in a fertile ocean of guidance –

– did someone say cheesy metaphor? Okay, guilty. But it’s an accurate one, honestly. In any case there’s nothing wrong with a bit of cheese, as Ben’s Twitter bio attests. Back to icebergs though: if you’re an aspiring author, or even an aspired one, you’ll know all about rejection. It’s the first thing you learn about when embarking upon a career as a writer: You will get turned down. A lot. This is something all would-be authors trade stories about on a multitude of writing forums and blog posts, and it’s their way of dealing with rejection, by adopting the mantra of acceptance and progression. But just imagine you have the book deal. You’ve a publisher, a string of advance quotes from the likes of Terry Wogan and John Cleese, serial rights with a major tabloid. And that fabled concept: A release date. And still, with all that in place, it goes wrong.

Because that’s what happened when Ben Hatch’s now wildly successful travel memoir Are We Nearly There Yet? was released in 2011. The book was published, to much pre-release acclaim, alongside its serialisation in The Express. And due to its concurrent release in that tabloid a publicity embargo was put in place. And therein lay the problem, because just as The Express was due to run Are We Nearly There Yet? the summer riots broke out across England. Not surprisingly the paper elected not to print a witty travel memoir within the same pages as it was covering equally real-life looting, arson and on-the-streets violence. And crucially for Are We Nearly There Yet? the book missed its vital review window. All the newspaper review columns were devoted to new releases, and without a good write-up or two, these days, a book goes nowhere.

So Ben took to his fledgling Twitter account and spread the word. And the word grew. Bloggers loved the book and reviews started to come in from prolific corners. Marie Claire and The Daily Mail published write-ups. John Cleese tweeted about it. Ultimately the book was featured by Simon Mayo on BBC Radio 2 and named Breakout Title of The Year.

I’ve cut a very long story short, but you see the significance now, I think, of “Have a back up plan.” Those five words are the pinnacle of a vast body of wisdom and experience floating just below the surface. With that in mind we have in our midsts someone who can truly educate us in the endeavours of success. I must ask Ben where it all started.

“I wanted to be a writer from the age of 20 when I read Catcher in the Rye,” he responds. “But I didn’t do anything about it until 1997. My mum died that year. It gave me a massive kick up the arse. I’d failed at maybe 20 jobs before this and now I wanted to do something that would have made her proud of me. I quit my job in journalism and took a year out and wrote my first book, The P45 Diaries.”

As I transcribe this I wonder if the twenty job failures is an exaggeration, but in any case it’s clear that the author’s life is the one for Ben. Even so, there’s been the odd occasion when Ben has found himself envious of those in pursuit of the routine grind.

“Yes, I remember for a long time, lost in the middle of a novel that I never finished and wasted years of my life on, looking out of my study window day after day and seeing commuters heading for the train station and wishing I was one of them. They would actually talk to colleagues during the course of their day.”

I should qualify the terminology here. By ‘routine’ I mean a regular job. Call it office work, call it nine-to-five – I’m talking about the kind of vocation most people labour over and wish they didn’t. Just because you follow your dreams doesn’t mean you should abandon any semblance of routine. Take a typical day in the life of Ben Hatch, for example:

“I get up at 5am, write until 7. I make the kids’ breakfasts and walk them to school. I’m back at my desk at 9.30 and until school pick up at 3.30pm. I often manage to slot in another hour’s work sometime between this and 6 (if the kids are behaving themselves and don’t have clubs) when my wife returns from work. We all then watch the Simpsons together followed by tea, bath, bed and stories for the kids. An episode of Call Saul or House of Cards later and I’m asleep on the sofa. Upstairs, a bit of reading in bed, then sleep before it all starts again. Somewhere amongst this I do the odd bit of promotion and often have quite a lot of cheese.”

You see – I wasn’t lying about the cheese.

I like to ask my guests how many hours a week they devote to their vocation and usually I’m rewarded with the expected response of ‘All of them’, or ‘Every waking moment.’ Just occasionally one of them comes up with something a little more specific though. Like Ben.

“Probably about 49 in total.”

And of the fruits of those 49 hours a week – what is Ben’s proudest achievement?

“Kids aside, I would say sealing my first book deal. My dad was so proud and I never thought it would happen. It was a surreal moment of utter baffled joy.”

And the Ben Hatch definition of success?

“In terms of writing it’s finishing a book that I’m happy with, that I think had I stumbled upon it would make me laugh. Anything else – good reviews, sales – is an unpredictable bonus. But it’s never the aim.”

My thanks to Ben Hatch for allocating a portion of his 49 hours to me and for sharing the insights into his life and career as an author. If you want to know the secrets of effective Tweeting, you can follow Ben @benhatch. Ben’s Amazon Author Page is here and if you’re quick his best-selling book Are We Nearly There Yet?: A Family’s 8,000-Mile Car Journey Around Britain is available for just 99p until April 21^st. Just click the book cover below: