I’ve been writing one way and another since Miss Lowe told me off for using ‘again and again’ repetitively in my story about a man climbing a mountain circa 1978. I don’t think I’ve ever really thought of myself as ‘a writer’ or an ‘author’. It was always something I was going to become in my future.
I’m fifty-one now and my first book was published about four years ago with JMS Books. I now have a dozen books and short stories out in the wild. The future is here… but I still don’t really feel like a ‘proper’ writer. It’s a strange sort of disconnection. I’m published, people bough the first book and presumably quite liked it because they went on to buy more. But I still don’t feel like a real author. Not that being published or not published is a distinction, at all- if you write, you are a writer. But for me it’s a confidence issue.
It’s not that I expected to lay on a chaise in a negligee a la Barbara Cartland and have a crowd of beautiful persons of all genders peel grapes to hand-feed me whilst I dictated to my pug. But somehow, I expected that by this point I would feel more at ease with the idea that people like my work.
I didn’t expect to spend so much of the time writing-but-not-writing. My non-family time is carved out with a pickaxe around medical and education appointments and the care of a severely disabled child. My own health limitations compound that. So sometimes I have three hours in the day to work, sometimes I have none.
The thing that has really amazed me, naively probably, is that I spend as much time on social media, marketing and networking as I do writing. I blog and I have Facebook, Instagram and Twitter presences that need keeping fresh. I don’t think there’s much point having them if you’re set on transmit the whole time and don’t interact. And I like interacting. I make graphics using Canva for my social media. I write my newsletter. I’ve just started experimenting with tiktok. I use Facebook mostly to chat with other genre authors rather than reader groups and I use Twitter to ramble about life in general rather than having a closely curated online personality.
Sometimes I feel spread very thin. On the other hand, if I don’t have enough head space for writing or for research, still being able to write and schedule a blog post feels like I have achieved something, even if it’s not another thousand words of my work in progress. For example, I’m writing this with a child sat beside me attempting to deconstruct my glasses and get me to watch Mr Tumble on her iPad. It’s unlikely I’ll manage many actual words, but a post like this I can pick up and put down as required.
A lot of my support network is online, particularly in these COVID-times. That was something I expected- I’ve had an online presence one way or another since the mid-nineties and as far as I’m concerned there’s not much difference between online friends and real friends. But sometimes it’s nice to sit in a room with actual warm bodies and kick ideas around.
I perhaps didn’t expect there to be such a community feel to writing. The first group I ever joined was a Goodreads writer group and I got such a lot of support from there that it really did give me the confidence to submit for publication. I don’t think I would have if they hadn’t been so supportive. (Thank you, if any of you read this). I think QRI and groups like it are a fantastic resource for authors to support each other.
We are essentially lone wolves, but it’s nice to have a pack when you need one.
