Two Sides to the Author Life

Glamorous parties, book unboxing videos and not quite making £4 an hour as a writer

What a whirlwind week or two. The last time I spoke to you I was just getting ready to head to London for the Harper Collins Author Party at the V&A. It did not disappoint. It was beautiful, full of light and cocktails and speeches and writers, so many authors gathered to celebrate. I met my agent for the first time in person, and my team at Borough Press who have brought The Ghost Lake into the world. These are the moments that MUST be celebrated, the moments of making it, when all the lonely hours and isolation and compromise finally pay off.

On my return, a box had arrived. The books themselves. I placed them on my kitchen table and left them there, wondering how to approach the anxiety. Then a photo came up on my iPhone that showed me, four years ago, tentatively setting out and up to Seamer Beacon, and a bronze age cemetery complex near my home, finding my connection points and the idea for The Ghost Lake forming, the idea for the pilgrimage to self, forming.

Here it is then, the next journey marker, the next gateway through which the book has passed. Next stop: launch day.

In stark contrast to the excitement and glamour of the last couple of weeks, this has been my worst month work wise as I’ve needed to devote time to work I won’t be paid for for a while. The eternal circle of being freelance, of being an author is that some months you will get paid for two or three jobs at once, and some months you will get paid for none. I made less than £4 an hour this month. I’m hoping that as an average it will work out a little better, but I’m not sure I’m quite making minimum wage this year.

I am continuing with my career-spring-clean, my jump start for my facilitation work. I’m currently reworking my mentoring services ready to relaunch, and taking a hard look at some of the smaller, but time consuming, courses and workshops I run. I’m starting with the ones that often (not always) leave me exhausted. Surprisingly, these are the hardest ones to break away from because there is a reason I’ve kept doing them, and it’s because I know that the people who come to them, enjoy them.

I’m now actively steering my facilitator work away from its central position in my work life, and into a position in which the writing is central and the facilitation is an extension of that writing. I’ve been working towards this point in my career for years, and whilst it feels good to be moving the Tetris of my freelance life around to accommodate a slightly successful writing career, I’m finding it quite tough on an emotional level because of the voice in my head which is always telling me that I’m better off sticking to what I know and not letting people down. That voice does tend to place my own dreams, needs and value below other people though, so being aware of it is always going to be a good thing.

It’s a risky business, being self employed, and to take chances on your livelihood is always going to be scary. But sometimes you have to pull a house down to build a new one, and the only person who can visualise the new house is the one with the plans.

Someone, not a writer, said to me recently ‘When does the money start coming in for everything’ meaning, when does all the hard work and managing between payments, and scraping by start paying off? The truth is, if you are a writer, then your aim is generally not to be be rich, or well off, it’s to have enough money to work.

It’s a balancing act between making enough from non writing in order to fund the writing and the temptation of having the non writing stuff push the writing stuff out of the frame completely, but being able to comfortably go on holiday and fix your car. This is the world we live in right now. Perhaps in the future there will be different ways of funding the arts and more in the pot to provide platforms for writers and artists. I hope so. If you’ve not got a nest egg to use or someone who can afford to support you, you are at a disadvantage in the arts world. But it’s not an impossible situation. It just takes longer to get to where you’re going.

And it’s why, I think, there needs to be a little magic sometimes, a little sparkle, a celebration. We need to celebrate creativity, to celebrate completion of projects. Sometimes there needs to be a red velvet jump suit and too many cocktails.

Photo by Olena Bohovyk on Unsplash

Next week I’ll have some tour dates for The Ghost Lake and something special for my substack paid tier. Watch this space!

Five weeks today The Ghost lake will begin flying out to bookshops and buyers and this phase of the journey will be over and a new one will begin. I can’t wait to share that with you.

Here’s what Polly Atkin had to say about it:

You can pre order your copy here:

Until next time

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