Banishing the fear of being seen

I've never feared anything like I used to fear the possibility of somebody finding my notebook. The thought of another person reading my shy scrawlings of ideas, descriptions, and characters (that I'd rushed down when no one was looking) made me rigid with anxiety. I come from a rural-industrial working-class environment which, in my experience, brought up its boys to believe that expressing their feelings was to express their weakness, and there were a lot of people around me who attacked these 'weaknesses' when they saw them.

Writing felt like a strange and risky activity that had to be done secretly. I was working on a novel about a nature reserve warden with a criminal past, his son trying to impress him and the wildlife and folklore that reflected their family dynamics. I took my inspiration from my relationship with my dad and my experiences of masculinity, grief and living rurally. The exploration of these ideas and feelings was so important to me that I thought there might just be a chance that other people would find them important too.

The thing is, to write well you have to make yourself vulnerable, and my survival strategy up to that point was to never do that. I needed to take a daunting next step and send my work to be read.

It was very encouraging to someone like me to see that Bloomsbury and Writers and Artists were showing interest in working-class writers from regional areas that are not typically heard from in literature. Their Working-Class Writers' Prize was free to enter, which was crucial, and the judge was one of my literary heroes, Lisa McInerney. Her piece in the anthology of working-class writing, Common People, was hugely inspirational to me.

The ultimate step for me in becoming vulnerable was to enter my secret writings into a national competition. I sent in the first chunk of what would become my novel, Fledgling.

I'm aware that I shouldn't need external validation to do things that I'm passionate about, but at that stage in my journey I did need it. When I was shortlisted, and Lisa provided a lovely quote about my piece, my terror of being read evaporated. It was now official that my writing was valuable and worthy of sharing. I was given the confidence to own up to it and focus on it. I exponentially increased the time that I spent on writing, because I no longer had to find a hidden place to hunch above my notebook in order to get any done. Of course, there were still plenty of people I knew who thought men shouldn't be writing stories about feelings. However, I discovered that many of the people who I feared would judge me negatively were polite and supportive, if not impressed, and some even admitted to their own closeted desires for literary expression.

Writing a book is very hard, as well as very fun. There were still times I doubted my ability to do it, even after being shortlisted. But because of the encouragement and support from W&A, I always went back to my manuscript after each time I threw it down in frustration and despair. Thanks to them, and the confidence they gave me to share and improve my work, I dedicated myself to finishing Fledgling, which will be released on September 17th by Conduit Books, and is already available for pre-order.

Pre-order your copy of Fledgling here!

Josh Holton grew up on a Cumbrian nature reserve and now lives in Scotland. He has experienced many day jobs including care work, shepherding and casino floor supervising. He placed in the Writers and Artists Working Class Writers’ Prize. His debut novel, Fledgling, will be released on 17th September 2026 through Conduit Books. Find him on Instagram @joshholton.writer and Substack @joshholton.