Hello,
Being an author is a strange business. It wasn't that long ago I was a struggling writer with no publisher, no agent and everything I wanted felt so far away. The dream back then was to get an agent and my book published. That felt not only impossible but the pinnacle of my dreams. It was the promised land. Surely, if I achieved that, the worrying would stop.The endless nights lying in bed thinking about it would be over.
But now I've achieved that - and the excitement and disbelief has worn off a bit - I feel like I still have the longest way to go. When I look at the writers ahead of me - the writers I have long since admired and wanted to emulate - it feels like I'll never get anywhere near them. And this is what being a writer is like.
I'm sure J.K.Rowling doesn't feel this way because when she looks at her peers, they're all behind her. I'm sure she has other worries though; little snags in the pattern of her creative life that cause her to have the occasional sleepless night. But for writers like me, just setting out, barely registering their mark on the literary world, scrambling and trying to fight my way to the top, it feels like an impossible struggle.
However, I wouldn't swap what I do for anything. I love writing. It's the only thing I've ever wanted to do and I'm so thankful I get to do it for a living. And it wasn't that long ago that where I am now seemed impossible. Maybe one day I'll be looking over my shoulder at more and more writers while the number in front gets a little bit smaller and a smidgen closer. Maybe.
Until next time.
Hugs,
Jon X
Tuesday, April 30, 2013
Wednesday, April 24, 2013
PAPERBACK PUBLICATION DAY!
Hello,
Thursday April 25th 2013 is a very special day for me. It's the day the paperback version of my debut novel, This Thirtysomething Life is released. The eBook has been out for a while now and I know most of you have read it, but now it will be available in shops across the country!
This is the culmination of years of hard work - I would say blood, sweat and tears, but it's writing and doesn't involve much blood or sweat, but tears yes. If you see my novel in a book shop, please take a photo and send it to me. It will literally make my day. I hope a few of you will buy the paperback too. My publisher, Hodder and Stoughton, have done a really incredible job with the book and it looks super cool.
That's it for today. I'm going to have a few drinks and bask in the glow of success for one day, before I crack on with my next novel. Thank you again to everyone who has bought and read the book.
Until next time.
Hugs,
Jon X
Thursday April 25th 2013 is a very special day for me. It's the day the paperback version of my debut novel, This Thirtysomething Life is released. The eBook has been out for a while now and I know most of you have read it, but now it will be available in shops across the country!
This is the culmination of years of hard work - I would say blood, sweat and tears, but it's writing and doesn't involve much blood or sweat, but tears yes. If you see my novel in a book shop, please take a photo and send it to me. It will literally make my day. I hope a few of you will buy the paperback too. My publisher, Hodder and Stoughton, have done a really incredible job with the book and it looks super cool.
That's it for today. I'm going to have a few drinks and bask in the glow of success for one day, before I crack on with my next novel. Thank you again to everyone who has bought and read the book.
Until next time.
Hugs,
Jon X
Sunday, April 14, 2013
ON A BREAK - SORT OF
Hello,
I thought I'd write a quick blog about what I'm up to at the moment. I'm technically on a two week sabbatical from writing so I can catch up with things like cleaning, gardening and all the boring, mundane things I don't get done when I'm writing. I have also have a few books to read as I never read when I'm writing. I'm excited about the reading.
Firstly, I just handed over the final draft of Happy Endings to my publisher! I started writing Happy Endings last January so it's taken just over a year from beginning to end. I'm so proud of the book. It's the first time I've worked with professional editors and I think they've managed to take my book from being just good to brilliant - not that I'm blowing my own trumpet, of course. They manged to squeeze more out of me than I ever could on my own. I think working with editors is like going to the gym on my own or going to a personal trainer. A trainer will push you far harder than you can on your own and in the end you get far better results. I'm so excited for it to be released in August.
Something else that happened this week was that I sold the Italian rights for This Thirtysomething Life. For those of you who don't know, but the way it works is that my publisher has the rights to my book and they sell them off one country at a time. So far we have Serbia, China and Italy and hopefully the list grows once the paperback is actually out.
That's it for now. I have some reading to do and then I'm going to start writing This Family Life, which I'm super excited about. Until then I'll just leave you with these little adverts I did for Thirtysomething. I like to doodle around on Photoshop.
Until next time.
Hugs,
Jon X
I thought I'd write a quick blog about what I'm up to at the moment. I'm technically on a two week sabbatical from writing so I can catch up with things like cleaning, gardening and all the boring, mundane things I don't get done when I'm writing. I have also have a few books to read as I never read when I'm writing. I'm excited about the reading.
Firstly, I just handed over the final draft of Happy Endings to my publisher! I started writing Happy Endings last January so it's taken just over a year from beginning to end. I'm so proud of the book. It's the first time I've worked with professional editors and I think they've managed to take my book from being just good to brilliant - not that I'm blowing my own trumpet, of course. They manged to squeeze more out of me than I ever could on my own. I think working with editors is like going to the gym on my own or going to a personal trainer. A trainer will push you far harder than you can on your own and in the end you get far better results. I'm so excited for it to be released in August.
Something else that happened this week was that I sold the Italian rights for This Thirtysomething Life. For those of you who don't know, but the way it works is that my publisher has the rights to my book and they sell them off one country at a time. So far we have Serbia, China and Italy and hopefully the list grows once the paperback is actually out.
That's it for now. I have some reading to do and then I'm going to start writing This Family Life, which I'm super excited about. Until then I'll just leave you with these little adverts I did for Thirtysomething. I like to doodle around on Photoshop.
 | |||
| OUT APRIL 25TH - MAKE SURE YOU GET YOUR COPY! |
Until next time.
Hugs,
Jon X
Wednesday, April 3, 2013
POPPY DOLAN
Hello,
Another week and another lovely guest blogger. This week the wonderful Poppy Dolan, self-published author of The Bad Boyfriends Bootcamp. Much like me Poppy has climbed the Kindle chart with her funny, fresh take on men and relationships. You can get her novel for just 77p at the moment and I urge you to do before she gets snapped up by an agent and publisher. I'll be back next week with my own blog, but until then I give you Poppy Dolan.
Like probably 99% of writers out there, I have a nine to five job. A full time, full on, occasional hair-pulling-from-stress job which I absolutely love. But I also absolutely love writing; the thing that doesn’t pay the bills (sadly). So I work at the office 9 to 5 and then at the wip 5 to 9. Not every day; I’m not a robot (again, sadly). But if I’ve still got the mental energy and enough motivation to ignore The Great British Menu, I power up the laptop and try and bash out a few thousand words.
Then on a weekend I get to play at Full Time Writer: I head to my local coffee shop (or Terence, as I like to call him, like it’s a rather weird secret affair) order just one pot of tea – and a flapjack, if they’re lucky – and sit myself down for a three or four hour session. I know this isn’t what a full time writer probably does, but I have the ticking clock towards the Sunday night deadline in the back of my mind. If I don’t make the most of my weekend time, Sunday night will roll in again oh so quickly and it’ll be another 5 days before I have the luxury of daylight writing time.
But I love these weekend sessions – in my sleepy little village, I think someone tapping away at a red laptop in a cafĂ© is a bit of an interesting diversion from the norm so I have a smidge of notoriety (but then so does the manager of the Sainsbury’s Local). It’s also a lovely long stretch of time to get completely lost in the small universe I’m creating in my novel, throw my characters a few clangers to deal with, write a scene between my heroine and Paul Hollywood (I have actually done this), go misty-eyed over a romantic scene and generally play about. Writing is hard, but it’s also completely fun. Like trying to stay upright on a trampoline.
I tend to get my ideas from things in my own life. The Bad Boyfriends Bootcamp was inspired by, well, bad boyfriends but also by my own tendency to just be a teeny tiny bit controlling. So not only did I put right the wrongs of boyfriends past through my characters but I also gave myself a sneaky telling off for being an occasional nag and a constant know-it-all with a heroine who learns her lessons about having these traits. Writing lets you even out the score in a perfect world (though I bet my other half would still say I’m working on my flaws. Well, he still leaves ALL the cupboard doors open) and I love writing those bits of flirty or funny or angry dialogue that you never actually get perfectly right in the moment, but that come to you in the car or on an escalator. So I save those up from my real life and let my characters say everything they want to, in a way I probably never will.
I definitely believe in writing what you know. But, more than that, I believe that you should write what you would love to read. I struggled for a while in trying to write what I thought would sell, in a time when people were very down on commercial women’s fiction. But after a few embarrassingly bad attempts at thrillers, I came back to the truth: I love rom coms. Watching, reading and writing. So that's what I intend to do.
Another week and another lovely guest blogger. This week the wonderful Poppy Dolan, self-published author of The Bad Boyfriends Bootcamp. Much like me Poppy has climbed the Kindle chart with her funny, fresh take on men and relationships. You can get her novel for just 77p at the moment and I urge you to do before she gets snapped up by an agent and publisher. I'll be back next week with my own blog, but until then I give you Poppy Dolan.
 |
| Poppy hard at work! |
Working 5 to 9
Like probably 99% of writers out there, I have a nine to five job. A full time, full on, occasional hair-pulling-from-stress job which I absolutely love. But I also absolutely love writing; the thing that doesn’t pay the bills (sadly). So I work at the office 9 to 5 and then at the wip 5 to 9. Not every day; I’m not a robot (again, sadly). But if I’ve still got the mental energy and enough motivation to ignore The Great British Menu, I power up the laptop and try and bash out a few thousand words.
Then on a weekend I get to play at Full Time Writer: I head to my local coffee shop (or Terence, as I like to call him, like it’s a rather weird secret affair) order just one pot of tea – and a flapjack, if they’re lucky – and sit myself down for a three or four hour session. I know this isn’t what a full time writer probably does, but I have the ticking clock towards the Sunday night deadline in the back of my mind. If I don’t make the most of my weekend time, Sunday night will roll in again oh so quickly and it’ll be another 5 days before I have the luxury of daylight writing time.
But I love these weekend sessions – in my sleepy little village, I think someone tapping away at a red laptop in a cafĂ© is a bit of an interesting diversion from the norm so I have a smidge of notoriety (but then so does the manager of the Sainsbury’s Local). It’s also a lovely long stretch of time to get completely lost in the small universe I’m creating in my novel, throw my characters a few clangers to deal with, write a scene between my heroine and Paul Hollywood (I have actually done this), go misty-eyed over a romantic scene and generally play about. Writing is hard, but it’s also completely fun. Like trying to stay upright on a trampoline.
I tend to get my ideas from things in my own life. The Bad Boyfriends Bootcamp was inspired by, well, bad boyfriends but also by my own tendency to just be a teeny tiny bit controlling. So not only did I put right the wrongs of boyfriends past through my characters but I also gave myself a sneaky telling off for being an occasional nag and a constant know-it-all with a heroine who learns her lessons about having these traits. Writing lets you even out the score in a perfect world (though I bet my other half would still say I’m working on my flaws. Well, he still leaves ALL the cupboard doors open) and I love writing those bits of flirty or funny or angry dialogue that you never actually get perfectly right in the moment, but that come to you in the car or on an escalator. So I save those up from my real life and let my characters say everything they want to, in a way I probably never will.
I definitely believe in writing what you know. But, more than that, I believe that you should write what you would love to read. I struggled for a while in trying to write what I thought would sell, in a time when people were very down on commercial women’s fiction. But after a few embarrassingly bad attempts at thrillers, I came back to the truth: I love rom coms. Watching, reading and writing. So that's what I intend to do.
 | ||||
| Her hilarious debut novel available now |
You can say hello to Poppy and share bad boyfriend stories at @poppydwriter and at her Facebook Page, Poppy Dolan Books.
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)