© Sanja Gjenero

I just visited the site of a company offering ‘book promotion services’. They had a big glossy advert in one of the UK’s leading writing magazines, and I thought they might be able to provide some useful advice to EssentialWriters.com’s visitors.

I’m glad I explored their website before getting in touch – it was rife with typos, oddly constructed sentences, random punctuation and unhelpful comments (apparently, according to this website, it takes between one and two years to write a book – I had no idea the process was so precise!).

The upshot is I wouldn’t trust them to deliver a postcard, let alone a PR package, and I won’t be asking them for advice. In fact, I’m tempted to offer them some!

© Sanja Gjenero

I’m feeling very creative today. It’s a fabulous feeling. I feel happy and positive – possibly because we’ve been enjoying some marginally warmer weather that almost makes me think Spring is here.

In addition to that, it’s my husband’s birthday this week, and mine next week, so this fortnight, as it is every year, is a whirl of good things – presents, parties and lots of cake.

There’s also the fact that I have some money coming in at the moment, so the immediate concerns of rent and bills are taken care of.

I have commissions from three publications, plus I’m in the middle of a six-week booking sub-editing a magazine, and it’s just been extended by another week, so hurrah!

All these pockets of joy are adding up to a fertile imagination, and I think I’ve finally sussed a few of the problems with my novel that may have prompted the agent to turn it down.

So today I’m knitting – working my way through the text and weaving in scenes and conversations that will hopefully bring to light the elusive ‘core’. I think it was there all along, but just not overtly enough for people other than me to notice.

And the problem with yearning to be published is that you need to take those people, those potential readers, into account with every word, every description, and every line of dialogue. Otherwise you’re just writing for yourself, and as pure and beautiful as that sounds I don’t think that’s enough for me.

© Elke Oerter

I’ve just sent out my first press release about EssentialWriters.com.

I’m used receiving and press releases – and yet sending out my own was surprisingly nerve-wracking. Every week or so I send out a handful of feature proposals or, more rarely, the precious synopsis of a book, and I’ve never managed to get to the point where I can do it without feeling a twinge of anxiety.

There’s something about sending my creations out into the world that makes me want to shake my head and shout No!

It’s lucky I don’t have children – I’d be too afraid to leave them at the school gates.

But what use is there in creating (hopefully) beautiful things if you don’t go on to share them with the world?

I suppose part of it lies in the fear that perhaps the world won’t want a share. Everything I write is a tiny part of me – a memory, opinion, reaction or idea. Each submission is an act of faith – trusting that the recipient won’t ridicule, destroy or, worse, ignore my words.

And yet, each day I start again, sending things out and cheerily waving them off in the hope they’ll come back, bolstered by other peoples words, by their approval, or simply by provoking an opinion, reaction or idea.

© Steve Woods

I was invited to go for a job interview today, and turned it down. The role, deputy editor of a website about accountancy, caught my attention because the office is within walking distance of my house, the position pays a steady wage, and one of my friends works for the company and recommended them.

But when I received the email inviting me to meet with them, a small, fluttering sense of panic gripped me. Accountancy doesn’t excite me in the slightest, and I suddenly had an image of myself, thirty years on, reduced to a withered husk by chronic boredom.

Security is important, especially in these uncertain times, but is it more important than enjoying life? Though I’ll write and edit on pretty much any subject on a freelance basis, the thought of sentencing myself indefinitely to something that doesn’t excite me fills me with dread. I don’t want to spend my days clock-watching!

As the media market fills with an influx of newly redundant journalists, freelance posts may become harder to come by, but for the time being, I’m willing to continue to give it my best.

I just hope that six months down the line I don’t find myself looking back on this day and regretting my foolish optimism.

© Pasqualantonio Pingue

These are scary times. I just read a news report on Yahoo that stated that the number of unemployed people in the UK is expected to top two million soon.

Yikes!

It hit home when a company I used to work for went into liquidation last week. To be honest, I’d been expecting it for a while, but that didn’t lessen the blow when I realised how many old colleagues and friends are now job-hunting and facing the fear of an empty bank account.

It makes me sad to consider that many of the travel publications I used to write for no longer exist. These included the magazine I first wrote for in a professional capacity, which is a horrible thought. It’s like learning that the first house you lived in has been bulldozed – an important part of your history gone forever.

I’m hoping some foolhardy company will buy the magazines, dust them off, dress their wounds and make them great again. I loved those magazines – working on them was like taking a mini-break every day, even when I was stuck in the office in Bath. Effectively I was paid to travel to daydream about foreign countries, and for a couple of years it was the best job I’d ever had.

But then the company decided to cut budgets and focus on advertising rather than editorial. The trips disappeared and we were told to cut every corner we could. Every issue was thinner and less substantial than the last, until we were producing the equivalent of a very glossy, very pretty, aspirational pamphlet.

It was awful to see the mag transformed, but worse to think that now it doesn’t exist at all. Given the right editorial team and a decent budget I fully believe it, along with all of its sister mags, could be returned to its former glory.

If only I had the money, I’d do it myself. With my economy and the global economy continuing to struggle, I have a feeling that these magazines will have a long wait for a fairy god-publisher. But at least if it does happen the proprietor will have no shortage of excellent editorial staff to choose from.

© Marcus Österberg

With Twitter and Facebook giving us the means to provide up to the minute reports of our activities, we’ve become our own paparazzi, our own unseemly version of the gossip rags. And the sad fact is that I don’t think I want to know every thought that pops into your head, anymore than I care whether Posh Spice has been spotted eating a ham sandwich.

When did we all become so obsessed with ourselves, convinced that everything we do is fascinating beyond compare? The reason why Twitter has been so successful is that it constantly asks us our favourite question: What are you doing?

And yet, at the same time, paranoia about so-called Big Brother is at an all-time high in the UK. We protest about store loyalty cards tracking our buying habits and shriek incoherently whenever a politician raises the idea of identity cards, despite the fact that we’re one of the few Euro-zone countries without them. Well, we can’t have our privacy invaded, can we?

It’s such a hypocritical merry-go-round. In fact, it reminds me of the celebs who court the press one minute and declare their outrage at being having a sweaty armpit caught in by Heat magazine’s circle of shame the next.

It all makes me wonder what we’re lacking in our personal lives to make us desire the attention of the masses. Yet we seem to oscillate between wanting to stand out from the crowd to wanting to copy what everyone else does and blend in.

Or is it simply that reality TV has shown us how easy it is for even untalented, unglamorous, uncharismatic individuals to become famous. If you asked someone which actor they would like to play them in the movie of their life they would probably say “Forget the actor – I’ll do it!”

With i-Pods and other MP3 players providing most of us with our own personal soundtracks, I wouldn’t be surprised if some of the people I pass in the street each already think they’re in the movie of life. I just hope they’re ready for the reviews.

© Jyn Meyer

I’m naturally quite a restless person, so being told to rest to allow my right foot’s Morton’s Neuroma to heal wasn’t advice I heard with joy. After several days of carrying on as normal (i.e. round trips into town involving an hour’s walk), I discovered I’d exceeded what the doctor described, very scientifically as “walking too much.”

When my limping resulted in a back problem, I promised to be a good girl and spend a few days stuck indoors.

But staying in isn’t a thing that comes easily to me. When I’m working from home I’m frequently to be found in nearby parks, having a think. Being trapped in the house seems to make my creativity stagnate, and the only way to fix that is to de-stagnate my body and head out for a quick jaunt.

But I was willing to put up with it for the sake being pain-free, and woke yesterday feeling masses better. Hurrah! I decided to reward myself with a brisk walk with a coffee shop as the destination.

I’m a huge fan of coffee shops. Despite the fact that most of them serve over-priced black water in lieu of actual coffee, I like nothing better than settling at a table to inhale the delicious aromas they pump out to convince us that they actually serve a ‘proper’ brew. That smell, coupled with a backdrop of gentle chatter and perhaps some over-processed jazz, an bundle of newspapers to choose from, or, even better, a free book-swap service, all adds up to a kind of heaven for me.

I think it has something to do with playing at being a grown up. I’ve never quite accepted that I’m more than ten years old, so perhaps the act of ordering and drinking coffee fills me with pleasure because it feels like a game, as I assume the character of a grown up, if only for a moment.

Funny how paying bills doesn’t have the same effect, any more than the experience of my first bad back does. It’s a shame we can’t pick and choose the parts of adulthood we want to emulate, and disregard the rest.

Lake Geneva

Last Wednesday I experienced one of my more glamorous freelance assignments. A magazine I often write for asked me to represent them on a day-trip being organised by an airline intent on getting to know the region’s journalists.

We had to be at Bristol Airport at 5.45am, ready to be whisked off to Geneva for a morning of sampling Swiss delights. No too shabby. A boat ride on Lake Geneva was followed by a stroll through the city’s cute cobbled streets and a three-course feast at one of the poshest lakeside eateries, then it was back to the airport for the flight home.

But, ironically, the one thing I’d been hoping to see was some authentic Swiss snow, and there wasn’t a single flake in the air. Yet as I type this, the view outside my window shows Bristol streets covered in whiteness, rooftops, tree and lamp-posts each wearing a fat layer of snow. Quite frankly, it’s beautiful (though I’m glad I don’t have to try to get a train anywhere today!).

It makes me realise how much my home-town has to offer, and I didn’t even have to get up at 5am to enjoy it.