Off the treadmill

I’ve learned in the past few days that being constantly attached to the laptop (or desktop) and hence the Internet is a tyranny all of its own.

Unlike many, I don’t have a smartphone or an iPad (although I definitely yearn for one of the latter!), but even so I seem to be umbilically attached to one computer or another for most of the day. This, I’ve decided, has to end. For one, when I’m not writing I am on my personal treadmill, which consists of a round of sites, including Amazon in the UK and the US, Goodreads, Facebook and WordPress, all of which I check obsessively for book-related changes (although in the case of Facebook, also stuff other people might have posted, of course!). I also have my gaze dragged constantly to Twitter, where my fellow writers often inform the world that they have written 10,000 words today and cause me to shrivel in shame at my mere 500 (or whatever it might be).

The Internet has become a time-wasting tyrant. It reminds me constantly of all the great writers that are out there and how tough it all is in the world of writing and how we’re all jostling for readers. It informs me coldly that I am losing this battle for readers every time I look at my null stats on the various Amazons, that I don’t have enough reviews or books shelved when I check out Goodreads, that I don’t get any blog views when I check WordPress. Facebook groups inform me of all the marketing tools I should be using that I have already used (or tried to use, at least) to no effect.

So what could I be doing instead of clicking through this soul-destroying treadmill every day? Proper walking, out in the fresh air; cycling, ditto; gardening (spring is almost here!);  more reading; taking photos; maybe going to the nearby swimming pool. I’m sure there are lots more. I had a computer-free day yesterday and actually cleaned the car. It’s a start!

A few thoughts on promotion

When I imagined becoming a writer, the word ‘promotion’ never entered my mind. As far as I was concerned people wrote books and then I found them in bookshops, heard about them from friends or in magazines or, later, read about them in online forums related to my favourite genres. I did not particularly care about the writer of the book. I read, I enjoyed, I discussed with friends and family, I looked out for more books by that author (or, indeed, on that theme).

This, to me, is how it should be. I write, I’m (lucky to be!) published, people read, I earn money.

This, of course, appears to be a completely false equation. The current equation seems to go: I write, I’m published, I have to faff about on various social media to try and get people interested in something, apparently me, and then by some magic they might eventually deign to read my books, and maybe in ten years’ time I might earn some money.

I’m just not convinced that this is an accurate equation, no matter how many people propound it. I’m traditionally published but by a small publisher, which means little to no promotion. I am therefore in the same boat as the self-published, all of us seemingly rowing frantically for a shore of book sales, our keyboards our oars as we try to create something, anything, besides the actual books we’d prefer to be writing, to pique the interest of our potential readers.

Does this really make sense? How many people can write genuinely fascinating blogs, or pen fabulously witty tweets? I don’t think I’m among them, and I don’t think I’ll be arriving at that nirvana any time soon. I’ve expended many hours on a special blog for my latest book, only to be rewarded with almost no interest and hardly any views. I could have better spent that time on writing.

All I know is what draws me as a reader. It’s not blogs, it’s not tweets, it’s not Facebook pages, and it’s not the author’s great persona. It’s the damn book! The author can be any kind of a ratbag and if he or she writes a good book I’m not going to care. My reading is still almost exclusively based on what I see in a shop or on Amazon based on my genre interests. Is it really just me?

It’s hard to blog when…

It’s hard to blog when things are going badly. I won’t bore you with the details, but let’s just say financial difficulties and I think you’ll get the picture. As I’ve known it so far, writing is about a lot of effort for very, very little reward. I love writing and it’s how I want (and need) to earn my living, but so far it hasn’t even earned me enough to pay more than a couple of months’ electricity bills. After five years of work.

So it’s hard to blog and try to sound cheerful and upbeat when you’re in this situation, and even the publication of my second book has failed to lift my spirits by very much, although it is great to hold it in my hands (and I still love the cover!) and to know it’s finally ‘out there’. It should also be available on Kindle soon.

I’m currently working on both my third novel and a novella that I plan to put up on Kindle. Unlike A Christmas Gift, the novella is a new story. It does involve time travel and it has my youngest protagonist yet, aged fifteen. I haven’t written YA intentionally, it’s just that when I started writing it the story came to me that way! It’s been fun to write from that perspective though, and it’s given me a different set of themes to explore.

I hope to get that uploaded for Kindle within the month, so look out for it!