Author
So it was my birthday this week, and not just any old birthday, the big 40.
I’m not upset about it in the way I thought I might be, instead I keep wandering through my house and catching a glimpse of my cards stood proudly on the window sill with Happy 40th Birthday shouting out at me in big shiny numbers of varying colours and sizes, and I find myself thinking; [Read more…]
Ok so the last few months have been tough, which has meant that I’ve not kept up my accountability as often as I would have liked to.
However, what it has meant is that I’ve got lots of work done.
Anna’s Home FrontSo, Anna’s Home Front is now with beta readers and I’ve been getting some fairly positive feedback from these reads – which is great because if it all goes well I’ll be sending it for a final proof read really soon. And, I have to admit I now can’t wait to have this project off my plate. It’s the drawing together of a long drawn out process.
This book is the first full length work I’ve ever written and is coming in at over 100,000 words. It’s taken me a long, long time to write. I first started it back in 2010 and slowly worked on it for the next few years. In the beginning I completely swallowed that whole, ‘you must take your time if you want to write well’ rubbish. I know differently now.
At the beginning of 2015 I had a first draft – a terrible draft but a draft nonetheless. So, I sent it to an editor who gave me some pointers on what to do next.
To save time on all the boring details, let’s just say I virtually did a full rewrite of the whole thing following this. So, in some ways, I’ve only been working on this book for a year.
The other five years were really only training, I was learning how to write, how to plot, how to structure and how to mess it all up.
So, after such a long hard struggle with this one book, I am more than ready to move on and start book two. This has been the longest learning curve and an exercise in how not to write your first book, but never mind.
Part of the reason I’ve been quiet online is that I’ve been busy helping some companies get their online presence sorted. It’s nice to work in these larger companies now and again within marketing departments, but I do like working at home for myself.
So for next week I’ve got to go through some of the bits highlighted by my betas within Anna’s Home Front and fix them. I need to get back into my content and copywriting book and get this project off my desk and ready for launch, and I need to get stuck into some prospecting letters.
Fancy being in with a chance of winning a signed copy of my upcoming release? Get in the early bird club to enter.
This week has been tough; I’ve been pretty tired and have found things more difficult to get done.
Non-Fiction Book: Content and Copywriting for Start-up’s
I’ve put this project aside this week due to being so busy with other work and being really tired.
I’ve been examining how difficult it is to keep multiple projects going at one time and have had to put this aside for copywriting projects from companies.
This week has involved a bit more balancing of a number of projects, but I think I’ve managed it successfully.
Novel: Anna’s Home Front
This is still with the Editor, so I’m taking the time away from this to allow me to then go back to it with fresh eyes and spot things I couldn’t when I was too close to the project.
Non-Fiction Book: Content and Copywriting for Start-up’s:
I’m about half way through a first rough draft of this now. And although the week started well with this project – I was actually ahead on my word goals at the beginning; the end of this week has seen me fall down again on this.
I’ve had a really good week this week. Writing has been going great, and despite tiredness, I feel like I’ve achieved a lot.
Novel: Anna’s Home Front:
Well late Friday night of last week I sent through all of the novel manuscript to my Editor, all except the final chapter. I spent Saturday and Sunday working on this final chapter and then sent this straggler through Sunday afternoon.
So, that’s one thing off my plate for a few weeks while he goes through it. This is a massive achievement to finally get through the second draft edit of the book, as I virtually rewrote the entire plot following the first edit. So, I’m trying not to worry about what he’s going to think of this new narrative structure.