As many of you will be aware, I’m moving towards the final
stages of self-publishing a novella of mine –
Lost Tunnels. If you missed the update I wrote about it a little
while ago, you can find it
here.
I’m still trying to set a final
release date, which is contingent on a few different factors – not the least of
which is me properly getting to grips with Kindle Direct Publishing. I want to
make sure it’s a quality product that you – and other readers – get, not
something that I have to go in and make a ton of edits to after launch. Watch
this space!
But in the meantime, I thought I’d write a little bit about
writing itself – to provide a bit of encouragement to anyone else thinking of
giving it a go. If you’re thinking of writing a book, a short story or even
just a blog yourself, I would really encourage you to do it. Pretty much
everyone has at least one book in them, and the rise of digital self-publishing
has meant far greater democratisation in publishing. But here are some things
you might find helpful to know first, before you launch in head-first.
You’re going to have
to give something up
Many people think that they need to “find the time” to
write. True, many of us could use our time more efficiently, but having been a
professional writer to varying degrees since I was eighteen, much of my best work
tends to happens by deliberately excluding
activities from my schedule.
For me, writing in recent years has tended to come at the
cost of video games. Now I appreciate that for many people reading, this would
not necessarily be a huge sacrifice. But I love
video games – to the extent that I actually worked for a prominent video
games retailer for many years. Gaming while I worked there was not just a fun
pastime; it was actually a necessity. You needed to keep up to speed on which
titles were coming out, and you wanted to be able to give customers accurate
information. You can fake it till you make it for many forms of retail, but
it’s harder with gaming than most.
Now that I don’t work there any longer, I barely play games
at all. My wife does; she’s obsessed with The
Elder Scrolls Online. But I just get in the odd round of Mortal Kombat X or the occasional
session on the SNES Classic.
My larger point is that unless you are
exceptionally disciplined with your time, you are probably going to need to
give up one or more things that you like in order to write. Choose wisely; part
of the reason I chose gaming was because I knew I could afford to lose it. I love writing more than I love video games, and
completing Lost Tunnels was much more
important to me than completing whatever Call
of Duty came out that year. Your own mileage will vary. You don’t want to
exclude yourself from something vital to your being in order to do something
that will just cause you resentment.
Put your phone away
Years ago, my mother-in-law met the one and only Sir Terry
Pratchett while on holiday. At the time I was working on some fantasy novel or
other, and she asked him if she had any advice for me. I don’t remember the
exact wording of what he said, but it was to effect of “Place ass on seat. Begin writing. Remove ass when writing is
complete.”
Rarely have truer words been spoken. I am a natural
procrastinator and can quite easily chew up my designated writing time with
social media, finding a new band to listen to (to help my writing, of course),
looking for new t-shirts online, deciding to have something to eat or just
simply getting anxious about what I’m about to write. None of this is made
easier with a phone by my side. So put it the FUCK away if you’re serious about
giving writing a go. NB: I am not always
very good at following this advice.
Why are you doing it?
I don’t write to be rich and famous. It would be amazing if
that’s what happens after I release Lost
Tunnels, but I am actually working with fairly modest expectations. Of
course, I plan to write more – and am working on more already, actually – but I
would be a terrible fool if I thought that success was going to be overnight.
So why do I write? It’s because I have to. Ever since I found out what a novelist was as a little
kid, I wanted to be one. Writing is one of the only things I’m good at. I’ve been writing stories since I was a
little kid, and though there have been interruptions along the way, I’ve never
really stopped. Even if no-one ever reads Lost
Tunnels – and of course, I hope you do – I will still know that I’ve done
it, and that’s enough for me. I needed to get it out of my system in one way or
another.
Similarly, I slogged away at this blog for years before
anyone really paid attention. This was partially because I didn’t have a good a
grip on how to promote it, and partially because it’s a niche blog which in
turn means you attract a niche audience. Either way, it didn’t matter; I wrote
because it made me happy and it was therapeutic. And it turns out, Field of Dreams was right: if you build
it, they will come.
I am always pleasantly surprised (if not a little jealous)
when I see relatively new writers/bloggers going gangbusters, hitting
milestones far beyond anything I have done. I turn 33 this year, and I’ve see
authors significantly younger than me
hit heights of (material) success that are daunting by comparison. But with that
said, I’m also in a position some might envy. I’ve written for Reader’s Digest, I’ve helped other
people write their novels, I have a blog with a loyal readership and I’ve
managed to make it all the way through a first draft of my own. You would be
surprised at how many aspiring writers cannot. Perhaps most significantly, I
make my living writing; it is my day
job.
With that said, the comparison trap is easy to fall into and
rarely helpful; you don’t know people’s individual circumstances, how hard they’ve
worked or what opportunities they’ve been gifted. Not to mention your own circumstances; poor health, failed
relationships, work and the other vagaries of day-to-day life can literally
steal years away from you – years you might have spent writing. So if you’re
not where you want to be, don’t worry.
You do
need to work hard, but it’s as much down to chance as it is anything else.
This can terrify and overwhelm you, but it can also spur you on to greater
heights. I suppose I’m an existentialist, so it does both for me on different
days of the week.
I’ve rambled enough, and everything I’ve said above has
already been said by others with far more experience than me. Get out there and
write – because your idea sure as shit isn’t going to write itself.
Sadly, the final product is not quite what it could be. 
Finally, a word about the paint. The teeth are incredibly
sloppy, and there’s a big mark across the tongue – neither of which was visible
while in the box. This time it’s annoyed me enough that I am actually going to
take steps to fix it. I know I say this a lot in my POP reviews, but I think
this one is bad enough that it’s actually warranted. 
