I can’t believe we’re nearly a quarter of the way through the year already. I always find March a reflective month because the 31st of the month is my financial year end. So although we’re only a quarter of the way through the calendar year, it’s another opportunity to reflect on what I’ve achieved over the last financial year.
Like many, Covid affected me in many ways, including financially. When part of your income is derived from writing travel pieces, the lockdowns were always going to have an impact. But looking back, I can see I’ve been out and about for quite a few pieces over the past twelve months. One of my clients has a few travel pieces in abeyance, but at least they pay me on delivery, which most magazines don’t.
Editing Uses My Creative Brain
I’ve also been doing some editing/proofreading and author coaching for an American company, which I’ve found fascinating. However, while that’s had a positive impact on my finances, it has had a negative impact on my writing. I began this calendar year with about 26,000 words of the next novel, and I managed to slip back into a daily routine of adding to the novel, getting it up to just over 70,000 words. (I’m heading for 90,000, but typically write 100,000+ and then cut during the editing process.)
But when I have a book to edit, I find that takes a toll on my creativity and I can’t work on my novel having spent the morning editing someone else’s work, and that’s despite the book I’m editing being non-fiction. While that can be frustrating, it’s all part of understanding how I work. I know I have a couple of weeks before I get the next book to edit, so I’m getting back into the novel writing while I have that editing gap.
How We Work
Half the battle of becoming a writer is learning how we best operate. We’re all individuals, so not every writer works in the same way. This became apparent during one of the author coaching sessions I had a few months ago. My client was struggling to write every day. Regularly, she heard the advice that writers need to sit down at the same time every day to write, and that’s what she tried. But the words wouldn’t flow.
She understood the principle: sit down to write for half an hour every day and if you can get 500 words done, that 3500 words a week. Slow and steady wins the race. But, for her, it wasn’t working.
As we discussed this, she realised she’d got a long weekend coming up with no plans, so I suggested she try blocking out the entire weekend and throwing herself into her writing then. She had nobody else to worry about. She could just do what she wanted.
The following week, she logged on for our usual session, and there was a huge smile on her face. She’d written thousands of words over that weekend. But that wasn’t what she was smiling about. Her smile was because she’d worked out how she best wrote. She’s not a daily writer, she’s a multi-day writer. She works best when she can block out several days to write and then focus on her work. And since then, that’s what she’s been doing—blocking out two or three days a week and devoting them to her writing. She’s now over 30,000 words into her book.
There’s no right and wrong way to be a writer—it’s simply about discovering which is the right and wrong way for you to write. Once you have that worked out, then you can plan your time accordingly.
Planning Ahead
Being able to plan is important. For my new Ask The Agent column in Writing Magazine, I was chatting with Joanna Moult of Skylark Literary about tips she could offer writers looking for agents and she said this:
’Take your time to craft a submission tailored to the agent you are approaching. Read the submission guidelines and follow them. Perhaps make a shortlist of your absolute favourite agents and submit to them, with a long list in reserve. Then, if you receive feedback that seems consistent or you want to take on board, you can make changes before approaching new agents. Also, if you don’t hear good news from someone, you can go back to your long list and start afresh. It’s a bruising process, so try to stay busy while you are submitting, to save the miserable refreshing of the inbox. Better still, immerse yourself in writing something new. That way, if you are successful, you already have something new in the tank and, if not, you can take the lessons you learned forward to the new project. And do remember, all those best-selling authors had to start somewhere, so stay positive!’
I love the idea of having a long-list of agents to approach, and I know this is how my agent approaches publishers with my work. It’s all about preparing for the next stage should the work be rejected. Planning ahead like this keeps the possibility of acceptance alive.
Being rejected can be gut-wrenching, but if you’ve still got a list of agents to try, then it means this rejection is not the end of the world. There’s still hope. There’s still a possibility that you could be successful in the future.
I always think back to my first book, One Hundred Ways For A Dog To Train Its Human, which was rejected four times before I found the right publisher.
Upcoming Workshops
This August, I’m tutoring again at The Writers Summer School in Swanwick, and I’m running a short course (that’s two one-hour workshops) on travel writing one morning, followed by a one-hour workshop on Photography for Writers.
There’s a varied programme of events taking place this year, so if you fancy checking out what’s on offer, take a look at their website here.
Before that, though, I’m appearing at the Evesham Festival of Words on Sunday 2nd July 2023 (10.30 am to 12.30 pm at the Hampton Community Hall) where we’ll be exploring Creative Non-Fiction. (That’s about being creative with how you convey the truth. It’s not about making facts up!)
Perhaps I might see you at one of those events.
Until next month, keeeeeep writing!