2 Months, 2 Days

In 2 months and 2 days, (19th of March for any of those struggling... :P) I turn twenty, and that's making me look at everything going on in my life and wonder what on Earth I'm doing. 

I just managed to punch my ceiling and skin my knuckles (thankfully it was my left hand again so not the world's biggest catastrophe really, in fact, something of a regular event) while dancing on my bed. I know, stupid, right? I need a trampoline to get rid of my energy...

I wish that was the most silly thing though, because it's really not. 

Each time I get into writing or editing, something else in my life seems to pop up and scream at me that it is meant to be higher up the priority list, and while I am good at putting the novel down and getting on with whatever else is required of me, it's a pain!! All I want to do is focus on what I love, and when I have time, I can't focus and when I can focus, I have no time. I'd call it a catch-22, but it's just life really, but I don't want to be only able to produce a novel every November. I want to do more than that. Even if everything I write is romantic-y trash written from the same perspective, I DON'T CARE!! 

What would be really nice would be getting other people, as in people other than my friends, to read my stuff. I don't even want there to be a lot of them, just a few would be really nice!! After writing that I decided to see the results of having put Fairies on the Kindle FREE for a day and have subsequently found out that roughly 183 people took advantage of that offer. THAT IS SO COOL TO ME!! Seriously, thank you all so much.

 That has actually cheered me up quite a lot. 

What I had been planning to write was something along the lines of how daring I think some people are to just jump into things when they know what they want. I have so much respect for people who didn't choose to follow a path they were sort of channelled to, who went off and carved their own damn path. For now, I'm happy to be living in London, thankful I have my job and supportive parents and sort of mildly entertained and motivated by my degree (although not motivated enough to actually spend an indecent amount of time studying to ensure I leave uni with a First. New things have become important now.) 

Anyway, the way forward is going to come in pulling my head out of my ass and actually paying attention to whatever is going on in the world around me, and maybe even going back to having COFFEE SHOP TRIPS with all that beautiful people watching and writing and editing and lattés and ahhh, it's going to be soooooo good. 

I guess I should also divulge that I am also planning a couple more days of the FREE download promotions for both the novels which are currently residing on the Kindle, and also getting them both redone into paperbacks asap. I can't decide whether that should come first, or editing Yours,

It's a bit of a chicken and egg situation, but then I would first concern myself deciding which one is in fact the egg....

Whatever.

Night-y night my currently pyjama clad readers!

Charlie x 

:) 

FREE Stuff!

I think that the end of NaNo is a little bit devious. It sort of hides itself in this idea of long hours in bed doing nothing and the idea that your novel will - if you so wish - be published in some form with no other amount of work from yourself. Sit back, relax, it's over and it's done. 

THAT IS NOT HOW IT WORKS, unfortunately.

Of course it's not. There's editing and formatting and more editing and then design work for the cover and then a whole lot of online forms to get even access to the proof. After that you get the joys of it arriving in the mail all bright and shinny and telling you it loves you because you created it!!, then you go through it with a fine tooth come because you want it to be just PERFECT, or as close to as possible. So the proof gets passed on to a friend or a colleague or a general waster with some time to kill (otherwise known as other students :P - kidding) and it comes back a big dog eared and with post it notes all over it where people have suggested changes. I can guarantee that people will tell you to change the same bit in at least four different ways before you're done. 

Well, when you're through with all that, and the new baby arrives in the post and you think yeah, this is it, this is as close as it gets, you put it forward for sale - is now time to chum up with your pillows and have a long, well deserved hibernate? Not quite my lovely,or at least not if you want to actually sell some of them. 

Here's the part where you post it all over Twitter, Facebook and blogs. You might ask your friends to cover it on similar channels just to spread to a larger base. If you've got a spare fifty quid in your pocket (first off, share, I'm a poor student) you can pay to get a few printed and send free copies to the local newspapers and pray someone gets the runs and that they take it into the bathroom with them. (Bathroom reading material can say a lot about a person). 

This here is the part where people are going to get sick of you, because for people to know about something, you have to tell them, and tell them a few times over. You need to email them links, plug it into their news feeds and throw business cards around like you're a flower girl sprinkling confetti. Your job now is to get your novel out of it's little corner of the massive online book store, because the chances of someone falling over it and picking it up are VERY VERY SLIM!

You're going to have to give it your time, maybe throw some money at it and you're definitely going to need to think. If you wrote a kids book, offer to go into a couple of schools and do a few free readings or something. Donate copies to your local library. Whatever you do just find your book a place in the world, because it's an inanimate object. It only moves when you move it, it only speaks when you turn the pages. You are the game master, you are in control. Put ass in gear and get this thing GOING. Whatever you do, don't just curl up into a ball and let your genius be forgotten - you wrote a novel for Christ's sake. 

So in the spirit of putting ass into gear, Yours, is going to be edited for the first time in the next few days. This makes me both really nervous and ridiculously excited. Also, the Kindle version of Fairies is available FREE tomorrow, so download it and have a click through it if you've got a spare few hours.

Anyway, since sleep is being evasive (one hour sleep in the last forty eight - healthy) again, I'm going to finish my mug of Sunshine Grey tea (Earl Grey with lemon, no milk) and get on editing. 

Charlie x 

:D