Sam Mills: Perseverance Is Key

Sam Mills is the author of The Quiddity of Will Self, along with three young adult novels, including the award-winning Blackout. Her memoir about being a carer, The Fragments of My Father, was published in 2020.

Mills has written for a number of publications, including the Guardian, Independent, 3 AM and London Magazine. She is the co-founder of the independent press Dodo Ink and travels between London and Paris, where her partner resides. Follow her on X (Twitter) and Instagram.

Photo by Andrew Gallix

In this interview, Sam Mills discusses the love it or loathe it reader experience with her new metafiction, The Watermark, the importance of perseverance in both the writing and publishing process, and more.

Name: Sam Mills
Literary agent: Cathryn Summerhayes, Curtis Brown (U.K.) / Dan Milaschewski, United Talent (U.S.)
Book title: The Watermark
Publisher: Melville House
Release date: February 11, 2025
Genre/category: Weird metafiction
Previous titles: The Quiddity of Will Self
Elevator pitch: The Watermark is a philosophical, epic love story which explores free will versus fate. A frustrated author, Augustus Fate, traps two lovers in his Victorian narrative in order to heal his writer’s block; they escape and booksurf through various narratives, ranging from Oxford 1860, Manchester 2014, an alternate Russian state in the 1920s involving magic and folklore, and a futuristic section set in 2047.

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What prompted you to write this book?

For my own creative pleasure—I like writing fiction that pushes at the boundaries of form; I like the challenge of taking a bold, bizarre conceit and seeing if I can make it cohere. And I do write with my reader in mind too: I think of Calvino, who declared that “I consider that entertaining readers, or at least, not boring them, is my first and binding social duty.”

I have a notebook with a long list of ideas for books and people laugh when I say that The Watermark was the most conventional on the list. The challenge for me as a writer is how far I can let my imagination run riot and still produce a publishable book in this very risk-averse climate. I wanted to anchor the time-hopping, manic energy of the plot with a love story and two characters you care about.

How long did it take to go from idea to publication? And did the idea change during the process?

The idea first came to me in the summer of 2010 and I finished the book in early 2021, in the pandemic. I didn’t work on it continuously for a decade—it was a book I kept circling back to. I produce my best writing when I obsess over a book for six months and then drop it and work on something else, allowing it to simmer in my subconscious. The biggest challenge of each section was the tension between the characters and the narrator—how much would they control the plot, or be the victims of the omniscient godlike narrator? I also wanted each section to signal a shift in the kaleidoscopic patterning of the plot: We’re in a new setting, but the characters behavior, good or bad, romantic or self-destructive, repeats over and over.

Were there any surprises or learning moments in the publishing process for this title?

That the editorial process went smoothly was a pleasant surprise. Given how long I’d worked on the book, I felt nervous about the edits, especially as my original British editor at Granta (Anne Meadows) left just a few months after buying the book. Sometimes when an editor inherits you, it can be disastrous for your project—they didn’t buy your book, they’re not invested in you, and you can end up neglected. So, it was a relief when Dan Bird took over and published the book with such care and passion. Working with the great Mike Lindgren at Melville has been equally inspiring.

Were there any surprises in the writing process for this book?

There’s a graphic novel in the middle section where my two lovers align their consciousness with birds, specifically Russian waxwings. (In earlier drafts they mutated through various animal incarnations). Seeing my amateur sketches translated into artwork by Christiana Spens was a surprise and a delight—seeing how she envisioned the process of avian metamorphosis.

I hadn’t planned an ending for the book, so I wasn’t sure if my lovers would ever escape the books they find themselves trapped in or break free and return to the real world. When I penned the epilogue (in the pandemic), I enjoyed the surprise of discovering where my characters finally ended up.

What do you hope readers will get out of your book?

The Watermark is, I think, a Marmite book: Readers either seem to love it or loathe it. It is both a playful book and a challenging book. I hope that readers will find that imbibing The Watermark is like taking a drug that fills your mind with colors and bizarre ideas and takes you on a wild and entertaining adventure that zigzags across time and space. And for a cerebral reader, there are plenty of ideas in the book to feast on—the ethics of AI and robot crime, the interplay of free will and fate, reality versus illusion, Vedic philosophy, Darwinism, and so on.

If you could share one piece of advice with other writers, what would it be?

I’d say read widely and persevere (apologies—that’s two pieces, I know, and by the end of this answer I’ll probably have given more!). No creative writing course can ever teach you as much as reading and studying by yourself. The self-taught method is a more slow-burn, solitary approach but it will bring the greatest rewards in the long term. Courses can also encourage conformity, crafting your writing in tune with the prevailing prose fashion of the time. And perseverance is key. I began The Watermark after another novel that I had written was rejected by publishers and never found a home. The Watermark was written in the wilderness, having lost my confidence, uncertain whether I’d ever get my fiction published again. The stamina that is involved in getting published should not be underestimated—the exhausting process of seeking agents, of picking yourself up after each rejection, and I feel for every writer going through that process. And once you do get published, staying published is even harder challenge, so it’s only worth being in this industry if you love writing.