The thought of seeing your novel flying off the bookshop shelves may fill the dreams of every new author, but there can also be several good things that come along as you develop your writing career that you never envisaged.
One thing I’m sure all writers discover is the value of making a whole host of new friends who share your passion. I vividly remember my first residential writing conference. It was an exhilarating experience – inspirational talks by established speakers including several famous names and wonderful workshops. I came back full of enthusiasm to get back to my writing. However, one of the things I valued most was spending a whole long weekend with likeminded people a few of whom have become close writing buddies. My circle of friends continued to increase over the next twenty years or so as I charge my writing batteries at one of the short residential events for writers held all over the country right up until the pandemic.
It’s no surprise that I love travel and writing travel mysteries is a great excuse to do a great deal of it as part of my research. In recent years I’ve spent a great deal of time at sea. I’m lucky enough to be a cruise lecturer. This wonderful perk came about because I’m a writer. It all started when as a passenger on a cruise with a great many sea days, I volunteered to run a writers’ workshop. Things went well and the cruise director suggested I should join an agency for cruise speakers. I began by giving workshops which led to presenting talks about writing and my novels. These days, I confess that most of my presentations are on the history of the area included on our itinerary. As an added bonus, I get to sell my books!
Preparing a cruise lecture is a time-consuming activity. So much so that taking three or four trips a year leaves little time to write. I’ve had two cruises already this year – one in January and a second over Easter. It means that it wasn’t until last month that I was able to start writing this year’s novel.
Three weeks ago I had an op on my foot. Nothing major. but it does mean that I’m housebound with my legs up for four weeks. I’ve been told that it will be six weeks before I can start to get back to normal activities. On the plus side, it’s given me lots of time to write. I lead a very busy life – yoga on Mondays, Tai-Chi Tuesdays, line-dancing Wednesdays and Thursdays and writers’ group on the third Friday of the month. Now my husband is doing the cooking, washing and cleaning etc, my daily routine has gone from all go to stop. I am not good at doing nothing! As I was halfway through writing this blog, I suddenly realised that being a writer has one perk I would never have imagined. How on earth would I get through my waking hours just sitting here without writing? There is only so much time you can spend reading (though I have done a lot of that), doing sudokus and codewords and – heaven forbid – watching daytime TV! I’m a slow writer (I aim for 500 words a day) but after only two and a half weeks, I’m already 15,500 words into Journey to Casablanca which follows the same itinerary as our January cruise.
Leave a Reply