I’m finally free. Or should I say ‘we’re’ finally free. It’s been a long time coming, so it feels good to be able to sit and relish the sentiment for just a few minutes.

This week, after two and a half of years of effort which involved having to resort to the law, my book series and I are back in the land of liberty. We can do what we want, when we want, and it feels fantastic. Like any mother, if you try to take away my babies, I will fight for them. And that’s exactly what I did for The Little Helpers. Because they are my creation. Mine and my amazing partner in creativity, Emma’s. And there is no way I was going to let anyone try and kidnap and hold them to ransom.

At the start of 2020, after seven years of self-publishing, I was fortunate to receive interest from a London publisher. They had lots of other authors on their books, they had been operating for a long time, and they were incredibly kind and pleasant when I went down to London to meet them. We spent a number of months negotiating the legal contract for them to take on the rights to my book series – a legal contract which in retrospect I am so grateful I understood and took advice over to ensure it was watertight. I was overjoyed at the prospect that they would be able to help me do what it was getting increasingly harder to do as a writer on my own – to get the books out there to even more children.

By 2021, owing to changing world events, all of us were in a slightly different situation from the one we expected. I’m a creative problem-solver and an optimist, however. And my publisher reassured me they were as well. So we delayed the release of a few books, but we decided we were going to keep going come what may. Resilience, persistence and determination are some of the things that The Little Helpers series and I are all about, so I loved that strategy. At least I loved it until…I didn’t receive payment for something I had been promised under our contract. And then I didn’t receive payment for royalty statements on time. And then my excitement at the team I had enthusiastically joined forces with turned into a battle. A battle to get back my rights to my books, as my publisher showed me that they were prepared to fight to keep hold of them, despite not paying me what was due for the sales of them.

Thanks to an incredible team of legal advisors at The Society of Authors, after two and half years, we have won that battle. And I am grateful, so very, very grateful. I have never and will never need the external validation of others to make me feel as though I’m a competent writer. I write because I love it. I create stories because that is what I adore doing. So I didn’t, and I don’t, need any outside recognition for it. Consequently, I am able to step away from anyone who attempts to exploit me for my creativity, my talent or my skill.

That’s why I stepped away from the opportunity to write in Hollywood circles as well, just as that particular door opened itself up to me a year or two before I signed my book deal. At the same time the door opened, I realised that the person holding it ajar for me was also trying to exploit my creative talent financially and would gladly have slammed it in my face if need be. So I left them behind as well. Because no ambition is worth selling your soul for. My self-respect and sense of the treatment I am worthy of means that I don’t stick around anywhere where either are in jeopardy. It’s an approach I would advocate to any creative out there. Create because you are passionate about it and you couldn’t not. Don’t ever do it because you think people liking what you do, or selling more of it, will in some way make you more of a success at what you do. The minute you create something you have already achieved. The act of creation is success in itself.

And so, a few weeks ago, when the Hollywood door-opener returned to visit me – for some reason I still cannot fathom – I was able to tell them that I had made peace with everything.  I suggested they may want to do the same. For I am a creative. I invent. I innovate. I produce the new, and what hasn’t gone before. I do not grasp on to the old. I hold on to nothing. I surrender and let everything go, exactly as the universe intends. My creations are not anyone else’s, and not even really my own. My art belongs to the world. As soon as it is out there, it belongs to the ever-disappearing winds of time that blow all around us every day. Present for a period, only to be replaced forever after by new creations, new innovations, new art.

To every artist, to every creator out there – and I direct this particularly to younger creatives who I have a heartfelt desire to nurture and protect – please know and trust in the value of what you do. And that value really doesn’t have a price. Because what every single artist creates is so unique that it is priceless. If it serves to light up people’s lives, or to educate them, and some people want to show their appreciation for that with money, how wonderful. But when that becomes anyone’s main goal for your art and your creative talent, then do please be careful that you don’t compromise your creative expression, your freedom or your self-respect in the process.

Love, Claire X