Making the leap
It’s January. New Year.
I’m not really into resolutions; they’re too easy to break, and as a writer, I feel ‘failure’ too frequently to want to create extra opportunities to fail. But the turn of the year is also a time for reflection, and 2024 certainly marked a major shift in my writing world: it was the year I left teaching after 27 years, a career I thought I'd be in forever, to become a ‘full time writer’, whatever that means.
It has been a scary time: sacrificing a salary and a secure profession for the uncertain world of the author.
So, it’s a nice pause point to look back. Not to ‘brag’ (the bank balance alone prevents that) but in the space of six months, I published my tenth ghost-written book in the Thrown Away Children series, Willow’s Story, and finished another one, Milo’s Story, due for publication in April 2025. I signed a 3-book deal for a new ghostwriting series, Slave Girls, and wrote the first 70,000 of Slave Girls 1: The Cutting Girl.
I put together first poetry pamphlet, Silence & Selvedge, and created a publishing company in order to launch it. I sold enough copies to be in profit and (and it goes without saying that poetry isn’t the most lucrative branch of the publishing industry). I even sold some to strangers…
Other writing projects included a play for the Brighton fringe, written in collaboration with my friend and fellow writer, Lexy Medwell. Another collaboration was the script for the Billingshurst Walking Nativity which I co-produced with Nick Thorogood, a performance that was watched by an audience of more than 1600 people.
I worked with the HIV Story Trust and adapted 25 true-life stories for the HIV Story Trust.
Another highlight was performing with Louis de Bernières at the Shelley Memorial Project Celebration of Poetry event in October. I have also planned an event for International Women's Day 2025, Step Forward in Solidarity, where I shall perform alongside some of my favourite poets.
There was time to enter a few competitions. I won a historical fiction competition (at West Sussex Writers), a poetry prize (the Ernest Sheppard prize at Horsham Writers’ Circle) and a non-fiction prize (again at West Sussex Writers).
Not directly ‘writing’ but writing-related - and requiring working with lots of writers and publishers - I have organised two literary festivals (Farnham Literary Festival and BilliLIt), both of which will take place in the spring. I also did a research project in conjunction with a local National Trust property, the results of which will be released in February 2025.
The long and the short is that I’m managing to make a living, just about, with my writing projects, supplemented with a little bit of English tutoring. The nature of the industry means that I have no idea quite what lies ahead, nor whether I’ll be able to keep going through 2025. Living the dream? Perhaps not. But I’m doing it on my own terms, and the signs are good.