Daphne Kapsali took a big risk. She left her job, gave up her flat, escaped London and flew to the remote Greek island of Sifnos. Kapsali had it in her head to write a novel in 100 days. When that failed to materialise she started writing a blog to help her get started. That blog attracted followers who then responded positively to her Kickstarter appeal to raise funds to self publish her book 100 Days of Solitude.
Not only did she publish the book, she was shortlisted as one of 10 writers to be part of CompletelyNovel’s One Big Book Launch 2015. Still living in Greece, Kapsali explains to Joy Francis why despite having an MA in creative writing, she avoided writing for 10 years, how taking the risk opened up her eyes to the reality that maybe she wasn’t cut out to be a novelist, and why she urges writers to take a risk to find the authentic writing for them.
You have said that you wrote 100 Days of Solitude after spending too many years living as a writer who didn’t write. What did you mean by that?
My identity has always been connected to writing. I did an MA in creative writing over 10 years ago. I always wrote and did odd jobs. My excuse was that I wasn’t going to be too deeply involved with a job because I needed the head space to write, but it didn’t work out that way. After my MA I wrote a huge novel and put it in a drawer where it spent 10 years.
Over those 10 years of not writing, would you say you were writing in your head?
I was writing in my head. I did bits of writing here and there, but nothing which felt like I was really writing. I never did it as serious occupation. This is down to a combination of many things. One is the very deep insecurity that we writers have. If you put off the writing, you can’t fail. So you always have the dream that one day I will do this and I will be great. There is also the impact of people you come across who make you even more insecure about your writing. I had an experience where my writing was undermined. It’s our responsibility not to pay attention to what other people think. Then there is the question of survival. You need money to pay your rent and bills. This doesn’t really leave much time for being creative. Some people can come home from working full time and write. I admire those people. Maybe I needed to get to a point where I had to mature and have something to say. I like looking at it that way.
How did it feel giving up your London life and home to spend 100 days on a remote Greek island to test out if you were really a writer? Wasn’t that risky?
It was terrifying, but I think it got to a point where I didn’t really have a choice. I had one of those moments when I made a decision there and then, and when I did it was just a relief to do it. In the first few weeks I would look back on my life, which was a really nice life, and say, what were you doing? It was difficult, but it was easier than I thought it would be. There are many things that I miss, but there are many things that I thought I would miss and don’t. The fact that I’m still here goes to show I did something right.
Your book, 100 Days of Solitude, is part memoir, fiction, philosophy and travel writing, with 100 hundred entries made over 100 days. Why did you take this approach and what did it unlock for you creatively?
I decided I was going to be in Greece, on my own, to write. In my head I wanted to write a novel, but I didn’t know how to start. I thought – if I don’t have some kind of measure of accountability I don’t know if I can pull this off. I could have spent three months sitting around being more depressed. I decided to set up a blog for an imaginary audience and post something daily. That way I would write every day. That developed into the book. On the second day I actually realised there was an audience. That it wasn’t imaginary. People were reading what I was writing, and were sending me messages of support. Having readers was motivating and kept me going. Also the blog format helped me because it was manageable. I could write a piece each day and then let it go, rather than facing this daunting novel stretching out ahead of me. There were some days when I got up and thought I had nothing to say. One hundred entries is quite a lot, but it was amazing as it taught me there is always something to say.
Where did the crowdfunding come in, as I believe you took this approach to raise the funds to write 100 Days of Solitude?
It was bit of a mad idea. I had given up my job four months earlier and was about to start the 100 Days project. I had no income, so I thought of crowdfunding and it worked. I was quite vague. I said, this is what I’m trying to do. I’m here in Greece and I have no resources or funds. Would you like to help me? Whatever I produce you will receive and it will be something you would have helped me to create. In the end I raised £3,200, which was more than I expected as my target was £2,000. I still can’t believe people gave me money to write.
How did dk press come to light, and how did you find the self publishing process?
My backers on Kickstarter had pledged for printed copies of the book, so I decided to self publish and get the book out there. This is limited as you can only reach a certain number of people through your own social networks, but I’m really glad I did it as I was in involved in the whole publishing process. It’s all mine. Promoting the book is the hard part. What did I learn? Unless you are actually experienced in marketing and promotion, it is a lot to learn. It takes a lot of time and takes you away from what you need to be doing. I’m feeling that now. I am still tentatively looking for an agent to start with. It’s something to bear in mind if you are thinking about self publishing, but it was a very rewarding process for me.
You were one of 10 writers selected to be part of CompletelyNovel’s One Big Book Launch 2015. How were you selected?
I came across an advert to enter a competition. I submitted my entry and was selected to be part of it. I was really shocked, though I kind of had a feeling that I would be selected. Things had worked out that way for me since I started this whole crazy process. When I found myself at the event, and saw the other authors and the quality of their work, it was very moving and gratifying. It was also terrifying as I’m not very good with attention.
What next for you? Will you stay in Greece?
Greece is not my future base. My home and base is, and was, London. Obviously I have given up my flat and I have to do that whole process again. I want to spend time in London and also spend some time on this island [Sifnos] a few times a year, but there is no specific plan. I’m hoping this will continue to work out as it has done in the past year. The plan is to keep writing and to find a way make a living from it and not have to find another irrelevant job.
What advice would you give to any aspirant but resistant writers?
Find a way that works for you so that you can write. An interesting thing that came up for me is that I’ve always thought of myself as a novelist, but this process has made me question that idea because a blog and a book came out of it. The lesson from that is to not limit ourselves. Maybe I couldn’t produce anything because I’m not a novelist. I’ve written a novel. Its okay, but I don’t think that is where my talents lie. We need to be less strict with ourselves about what we are meant to write as there may be a different way.
100 Days of Solitude is available on Amazon in paperback and on Kindle.
Read an extract from Kapsali’s 100 Days of Solitude.
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Day 71
Today I found enlightenment on the road between Apollonia and Kamares, and it didn’t look like much. It looked like orchards and cabbage fields and rock faces covered in moss. It looked like a cat killed by a car. It looked like a girl walking to the beach, a girl dancing in the middle of the road. It looked a little crazy. It felt like freedom, and joy. And that was all. That was the grand revelation that you won’t find in books or silence or discipline. It doesn’t sound like much but if you listen carefully, you’ll always hear a song that makes you want to dance.
Dancing on the street’s not crazy. What’s crazy is trying to capture freedom with rules, and how we make our lives so small that there’s no room for dancing. That we’re too scared to look, too scared to move, that we have so little faith in joy that we stifle it with stillness. We are capable of so much more joy than we know, and we kill it with fear and stillness. I mean, fuck: when you suddenly find yourself dancing in the middle of the road, how can you ever go back to sitting stiff and straight backed with your eyes closed, summoning a revelation that you’ve already had?
We are alive, but that isn’t a condition that defines how we live. You can be a cat lying in the grass or a lifeless thing on the side of the road; from a distance, they look exactly the same. You can get up and leap over the safety railings and run through the fields and roll around on the ground, or you can lie there, stiff and still, and wait for the flies to come. What’s crazy is how often we choose the latter.
©Copyright Daphne Kaspali 2015. Published by dk press. [/toggle]