Whenyou own 0.01 BTC, and you tell your family that your financial portfolio grew by 175% in the last 3 years...
I'm thankful for the Covid summer. Yes, there were nonsensical rule changes, paranoid neighbours, death, sadness, and constant media updates, but when you have to stay put and work on yourself, good things can happen.
Summer 2020 in southern England was beautiful. No cliché weather for once.
I ticked off all the lockdown cliches — daily Yoga, fitness, and writing a book — all while revelling in the online education boom.
Many of my stories and books begin with a desire to master a topic.
- A story about a Country singer.
- Trying my hand at Horror.
- A book about ‘time’.
The trigger for my book was how our experience of time was turned on its head during Covid. Days were suddenly hard to track; time was malleable.
With no idea for the story in mind, I began to research what time actually comprised: biology, philosophy, physics, language, narrative, chemistry, astronomy, and more. I listened to podcasts, discovered Carlo Rovelli’s book, read Einstein's Dreams, and went down the rabbit hole of how time itself is a mere construct.
Short stories are a way to explore themes without investing years in a fully blown book project. With time, I thought to expose the fractal: eighteen approaches to time with brief character narratives, all connected by one place.
I researched, I wrote, I edited, I paid for professional feedback, I submitted, I got a ‘maybe’, I waited, I queried again, got a ‘yes’, celebrated, edited again, and eventually, my book was scheduled for 2022 publication.
Here are the terms the independent publisher offered me to put my first traditionally published book into the world:
Production costs: paid by publisher
Other rights: publisher takes a percentage
Marketing: some tweets by the publisher
Distribution: a ropey website with 25-dollar worldwide shipping and no Amazon version
Print: black & white pamphlet with no eBook.
Author copies: bought at discount
Royalties: 0%
While the terms seem laughable, independent publishing is a rough business. The publisher was a one-woman operation, probably making a significant loss. Her model supports excellent literary works that would not be published elsewhere. She put real effort and care into editing.
Going through the process, doing an online launch, sending copies around the world (to reduce the silly shipping cost), and being able to call myself an author without the self-publishing caveat was life-changing. The book is with another publisher now, but I’m grateful to the first person who took a chance on me.
Fifteen Shades of Time is a book I'm proud of. I think it contributes to the canon of narratives on the subject. So does David Eagleman, the author of a best-selling book on afterlives with a similar structure. I was thrilled he read my book and gave a cover quote.
After the Covid summer, I moved to a place where time runs slower: The Canary Islands.
#unphiltered
Pro writers never stop learning. Even accomplished novelists and those who teach Master's students keep improving their vocabulary, their technique, their knowledge.
That’s one of the things I like about writing. The line between student and teacher is fluid; it is not defined by qualifications, awards, or book sales. Teachers must learn to collate and impart useful techniques, then give considered and honest feedback.
I began helping others online with their writing in 2019.
Back then, it was often PhD theses, university applications, and business texts.
But as I helped language students online, I honed my own knowledge of the English language. I learned how to critique texts so students would improve next time. And I developed frameworks to explain best practices for style, voice, and technique (depending on the context).
Teaching is perhaps the best base for becoming a pro writer.
You develop efficient research skills.
You can appreciate your strengths and blind spots.
You become a concise explainer.
In addition to teaching, I built profiles on sites like Substack and Medium. While I continued with my creative outlet of writing short stories, I needed to make sense of the materials and techniques I was producing for students. My columns on Substack were mostly on literature and short stories, while I wrote more about language and technique on Medium.
When you start out writing, it’s more about creating something from within; as you move forward in your writing career, you feel the need to reach more readers.
Publishing on sites where you must build an audience from the millions of readers already on the platform turns you from blogger to writer. It’s not all about algorithms and clickbait titles, though. Both sites are ‘semi-professional’ in that they are open for all to publish, but editors and readers expect a certain level of quality.
When regularly publishing on ‘semi-pro’ platforms, writers develop good habits — understanding the structures that resonate, going deeper with research and evidence, formatting for readability, and proofreading thoroughly.
The days of building your writing chops from shadowing a wizened editor at a local newspaper are over. Writers need to find their own reasons to develop and share their skills. They need a semi-pro stepping stone before launching a business. And they need to keep learning.
I suppose that’s what I did in 2019/20. More short online courses and workshops, analyzing (not just consuming) top blogs and articles, and reading the odd book on writing craft.
This was all done while I travelled in Asia, searching for possible ‘digital nomad’ bases.
And just as I found one, Covid struck, and I returned to the UK for lockdown.
#unphiltered
