Diana Gabaldon's best-selling novel Outlander almost never hit the shelves as she thought of the book as a practise exercise.
The American writer didn't start working on her first book until she was 35 after having lifelong dreams of being a novelist. When she first set out writing her now award-winning book, her intention was to keep the story as a 'straight historical novel' but after introducing the character of Claire, things didn't stay that way.
She explained the process on her website, writing: “Dougal asked her who she was, and without my stopping to think who she should be, she drew herself up, stared belligerently at him and said ‘Claire Elizabeth Beauchamp. And who the hell are you?’ She promptly took over the story and began telling it herself, making smart-ass modern remarks about everything."
Diana added: “At which point I shrugged and said, ‘Fine. Nobody’s ever going to see this book, so it doesn’t matter what bizarre thing I do–go ahead and be modern, and I’ll figure out how you got there later.’ So the time travel was all her fault.”
The Arizona native wanted to teach herself how to write a novel, without the pressure of having others read and feedback on the project. She told ClanFraser.org: “So I decided to write a novel, in order to learn how. I didn’t intend to try to publish this novel (I had no reason to think it would be any good, for one thing), nor did I mean to tell anyone what I was doing."
It wasn't until the 72-year-old got into an argument about pregnancy online that she published excerpts of Outlander. She said: “I posted a piece of the book in the CompuServe Literary Forum in order to win an argument I was having with a man about how it feels to be pregnant.
"A lot of people who’d been following the argument read the piece (it’s the bit from Outlander, where Jenny explains to Jamie what it feels like), and they all said, ‘Hey, this is good! What is it and where’s some more?'”
Following this online argument, Diana continued to upload excerpts from her book until an author named John Stith introduced her to his agent and the rest was history.
“The agent took me on, on the basis of an unfinished manuscript, and once I did finish it, sent it to five editors whom he thought might like it. Four days later, three of them had called back wanting to buy it, and we were kind of off to the races,” she added.
Diana is now working on her tenth book in the Outlander franchise, and is a consultant to the TV show. Outlander will return for a seventh season later this year, and will continue with the eighth and final season.
Outlander series 1-6 are available to stream on LIONSGATE+ in the UK.
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