SUMMER HOLIDAYS GUILT TRIP

The summer holidays are almost upon us. Six long, hopefully hot, weeks without the pressure of extra-curricular schedules and nagging about homework and uniform laundry. The kids sprawling on a blanket under a tree reading books for pleasure and contemplating the shapes of clouds. Games involving water, perfect ice cream cones, camp outs.

And now back to reality. Six weeks of trying to do what I have to do with four, slightly smaller people getting in my way. Six weeks of cajoling them away from their screens and then, when that doesn’t work, banning screens entirely. Six weeks of trying to get them to leave the house because I’m bored and them flatly refusing because they want downtime. Six weeks of them eating whatever they can forage because frankly, with so much extra tidying up to do, who can be bothered to cook?

No. For me, the summer holidays seem to start and finish with one thing - parental guilt.

It’s ridiculous really. My children are perfectly content to lounge around inside, playing, chatting, listening to music and doing things on screens. They don’t mind what they eat as long as there’s a plentiful supply of it and if I didn’t suggest a single outing all holiday then that would be completely fine by them. All this perfect summer outside rot is entirely the product of my imagination, formed partly from my own childhood, from books I’ve read and The Waltons.

So why do I feel so guilty when the real summer doesn’t match the imaginary one?

I think it’s because I see how they choose to spend their time as a waste. If I had endless free days, I wouldn’t spend them inside, building invented worlds out of cubes or watching American sitcoms on repeat. But what about when I  was 12-19? What would I have chosen then? 

That’s the trouble. I didn’t really get a choice because there were rules about what was acceptable. No-one offered me a smorgasbord of relaxation options and said - pick one. I played out because I wasn’t allowed in. There was barely any TV and I had no you tube. I was bored so I had to make my own fun. And this is what I want to impose on my own children because that’s how it ‘should’ be.

It’s not like they are wasting their lives. In term time, every available moment is filled with something worthy and two of them have activities that don’t stop even for the summer. So surely I should just chill and let them do whatever they fancy, no matter how pointless?

Well, one things’s for sure. If I try to impose my idea of summer on them, then we will all have a much more confrontational holiday than if I don’t. And from a selfish point of view, if I let them ‘chill’ all summer then I will have no problem hitting all my own deadlines. 

But what will I do with the guilt?

Imogen x  

PRACTISE MAKES PERFECT

Apparently there are lots of signs of a misspent youth - an ability to blow perfect smoke rings, previously unexpected skills in beer mat flicking, knowing all the words to Grease.

I may or may not have skills in these areas but one thing I can do is roller skate backwards. I can do this quite well. Well enough to irritate my family anyway who are used to me being the tail-end Charlie of any mildly competitive activity that we undertake. I can spin too and do interesting figure of eight shapes with my feet.

These hidden talents are the result of a couple of long hot summers in the early 80s that I spent on roller-skates. This was the time of Fame and headbands, of Wired for Sound and Sony Walkmans. Everyone was at it and in the absence of any screen-based distractions, there were plenty of spare hours to practise. So every night after homework, I would meet up with my best friend and we'd skate until we could do it. Living in rural Lincolnshire, she was my closest friend geographically too and sometimes I would skate the two miles over to her house so we could practise on her streets rather than mine.

When we got good then there was the roller disco at the Drill Hall  in Lincoln to attend. In dim lights with loud music we would all skate round, anticlockwise, at great speed spotting handsome boys in the melee. There was even a ramp in the middle of the room where the really brave ( and sexy) boys would do tricks.

This has never left me and I am keen for my children to learn too but there is one small difficulty. Time. Skills like these aren't learned overnight. It takes patience and resilience and determination and perseverance. I love my children dearly but these are skills that seem to have been a little lost over the years. In this age of X Factor fame and instant gratification, just plugging away at something until you can do it is less fashionable.

I saw Matthew Syed speak at a conference recently. He talks about the need to keep trying, to be open to failure and to practise to achieve what you want out of life. It doesn't really matter what it is that you want, roller skating, writing a novel, running the world. They all take the same skills.

So I'll be encouraging my kids to learn to skate until they can do it well and then maybe, when they are adults with children of their own, they will be able to skate backwards too!

Imogen

THE PLAN IS MADE.

Ok. Enough Navel gazing on the subject of my literary future. I have made a decision and it really wasn't that hard once I got some perspective.

I asked myself a really simple question. I had asked myself it before but I'm not sure I've always been completely honest, tending to skirt round stuff, and peppering my answer with lots of buts and maybes. I thought I was being realistic but actually it was probably just plain pessimism. So here's the question -

What do I really want?

It's not rocket science is it? The answer isn't either.

To be sitting on a train and see someone nearby reading something that I wrote.

So then came the tricky follow up.

How will I achieve that?

By working really hard to make my books the best they can possibly be and then following the traditional publishing route to get them to the person on the train.

There you go. That wasn't that difficult, was it?

I didn't get there all by myself, mind you. My lovely meditation teacher Melanie Kirkbride had a hand in it. I thought that my head and my heart were pulling me in different directions and I couldn't decide which one knew best. Melanie pointed out that I should allow my intuition (heart) to make the decision and then use my intellect (head) to make it happen. So rather than constantly coming up with barriers as to why I shouldn't try traditional publishing, I should put all that effort into trying to make it work.

Now that I've made that decision, life is a whole lot less complicated. I have Lucinda Fox to have fun with in the self publishing world but when it comes down to my true passion, the books that I write for the love of writing, I am going to try to push them into the deep, dark cave of traditional publishing. There be dragons on that path, and scary rejection letters but I intend to gird my loins and do battle with them both.

So that's it. I promise to torture you no more on this subject and life here at my blog will get back to normal.

Quick update of where things currently stand?

Lucinda's second book will come out this month. I am editing Postcards from a Stranger like a demon and I'm doing some messing about with Facebook platforms so no doubt I'll tell you all about that soon.

Thanks for sticking with me. If you like what you see here then why not subscribe to the blog ( see left ) and please tell other people who you think might like it too.

Imogen

WHICH WAY NOW?

I am struggling with a dilemma about my future as an author.

Basically there are two ways of being published.

THE OLD WAY

1. You write a book.
2. You find an agent to represent you.
3. The agent persuades a publishing house to publish you.
4. You get an advance. Your agent takes a cut.
5. After much rewriting/ time your book is published for you.
6. You may or may not receive any more money depending on sales. Your agent gets a cut.
7. You get the might of the Marketing Department at the publishers for about a week.
8. You market your book yourself.
9. You may or may not get another deal.

THE NEW WAY

1. You write a book.
2. You pay to get it edited, to get a book cover done etc. You make all the decisions.
3. You publish it.
4. You set your own price and can change it to suit your purposes.
5. You are in charge of how it is marketed.
6. You can change anything about it at any time.
7. You can publish another book whenever you like.

Gone are the days the vanity self-publisher. Buying from an Indie Author is like going to a Farmer's market, drinking craft ale, enjoying artisan bread, picking up presents from Not on the High Street. You are dealing direct with the craftsperson. The Indie Author world is massive, complicated and potentially worth a fortune. Indie authors with back catalogues of a handful of books in a popular genre are making a decent living. The Author Earnings Report is hot off the press and makes very interesting reading.

It looks like a no brainer, doesn't it? Publish digitally across the globe, make royalties of 70% on everything you sell and retain complete control.

But today I heard best selling Author Entrepreneur Mark Dawson in a podcast. He was talking about his much hailed course on Facebook advertising. (You may have seen all the publicity about his protege Adam Croft who will clear £1,000,000 this year.) The key, he said, is to keep 'churning out the books'.

And with that sentence he summed up my dilemma. I have read a lot of these highly popular and successful books. Undoubtedly people like to read them and they sell. But they're not very good. They are, as the man said, 'churned out'.

I can do that ( although I'm not saying they would sell). I can write fast and turn things around quickly but do I want to? Deep sigh.

What about a hybrid? Really good books published the new way with author control. Maybe there are some and I just haven't found them yet.

Or maybe I could do both.....

What do you think? All advice gratefully received.

Imogen.

PINNING DOWN NEW BEHAVIOURS

I'm ONE WEEK into my new life as a writer.

Of course, in the way of these things, week one was school half term so establishing a pattern of behaviour proved to be even more challenging than usual. I did my best - although I do have to accept that my best wasn't fab.

Starting new stuff and getting it to stick is hard so I decided I needed some help. I could happily spend several months reading and listening to all the great stuff that is out there on the subject but that's time that I should be spending writing/ learning about publishing so I've tried to sidestep that avenue.

So I've gone back to my comfort zone - paper diaries. I bought one. In fact, I've bought several over the last few months trying to find one that did what I needed it to do. In fact I now have a whole shelf of diaries/journals that just didn't quite work for me!

But this one that does - so far. It has space to fill in what you should be doing all day long with sections for goals, wins, stuff that went really badly and what you've learned that day. I can also tick off all the daily challenges that I have going as well which is great. I like a tick!

And so far so good. If nothing else, I'm learning what works for me, what is slowing me down and what is so excruciating unrealistic that I'm slightly embarrassed to have ever written it down in the first place. Consequently, the picture beneath shows a blank page. I'm not ready to revel the contents to the world just yet. But hey...I have to start somewhere.

This is WEEK TWO, the children are back at school, the house is quiet, I have the full broadband width to myself and the sun is shining. It's looking good.

Imogen.

BOOK LAUNCHES FOR BEGINNERS

So I've been a full time author for less than a week and already I have a book ready to go! Quick work huh?

Actually, that's not true. The second Lucinda Fox book has been written for a couple of months now and I've just been waiting to have the time to spend on promoting it. And now that time is here so I've been doing some research.

Have you ever tried putting 'How to launch your novel?' into google? I wouldn't recommend it. You get 5,200,000 results in 0.51 seconds. It's a little bit overwhelming to be perfectly frank. But fear not. It's not all that complicated. A successful book launch boils down to a few simple principles.

1. Tell your target audience about your great new book.

2. Encourage them to buy it.

There! How hard can that be?

Well, if the sales figures for the first one are anything to go by then it is actually quite tricky. People seem to like the book - the reviews are great and almost all the feedback has been really positive. So it seems that if I can get girls between about 11 and 14 and their purse-wielding parents to find the book then I'm on to a winner.

So for book two, Reality Bites, I'm going to try a bit harder. I'll not tell you all my ideas yet but there are lots of them. It's all very exciting/scary depending on which way out I'm feeling.

I think what I really need to do is a soft launch so that I can get some reviews under my belt before I start pushing it properly. This should ensure that I get Amazon's algorithms on my side -this is important I gather.

Here's where it starts to get tricky. To achieve this, I'm going to need some volunteers from amongst my loyal supporters. (That's you!)  Here's what you'd need to do as part of Team Fox. (Insert cool fox logo as designed by Claire Pickles.)

1. On a prompt from me, download the kindle version of Reality Bites for 99p on the QT. You have to do this so Amazon knows you're a real person and not me just pretending. ( I know that this means that you are basically paying to do me a favour but I'll give it you £1 back when I see you so really you'll be quids in!)

2. Read it - it's less than 300 pages and it's really not hard going at all. You could read it on your phone whilst you queue for your morning latte or on the train on the way to work.

3. Leave a review on Amazon - preferably a nice one but any reviews are better than none and honest criticism is the most valuable.

4. Get that lovely warm feeling that comes from helping someone out.
(Ok that last one is a bit much but you get the idea.)

I'm hoping to launch the book at the start of the summer holidays so I'm looking for reasonably speedy volunteer readers who might have the time at the beginning of July.

So if you think this sounds fun and you fancy helping out then either comment below or send a message on the Facebook page and I'll add your name to my list.

I'm beginning to think that this book launch business might be quite good fun!

Imogen.

MY ADVENTURES IN THE OPEN UNIVERSITY

Six and a half years ago, a course caught my eye. It was called Start Writing Fiction, was run by the Open University and I could pay for it with Tesco vouchers. So I signed up. Little did I know where that would lead me.

Once I'd finished that one I'd caught the bug and I decided to begin on another course which might, maybe, lead to another one. Back then, the six years that it would take to get to the end of a degree course seemed like such a long time. People stretched their eyes and shook their heads when I told them but the way I saw it, in six years my youngest would still only be 12 and my life was not going to change in that time. As it turned out of course things did change but my studying just adapted with them.

And so here I am in 2016 about to press send on the final assignment of the final module of my BA (Hons) in English Literature and so I've decided to mark the occasion with a blog post.

Overall, I can truthfully say that I have enjoyed my study although it hasn't been without its more desperate moments. I very nearly gave up...twice. I have laughed and cried over my course material and there are bits of it that I never really got a handle on. I have read (and complained about) literature that I would never normally have considered and loved a lot of it, despite early reservations.

I'm very grateful to my family who have supported me throughout and encouraged me by shining forth beacons when the path got very dark. I know that I did the whole student thing in the 80s and that this time it was just for fun but somehow that made it more challenging and I certainly think that I have lost more sleep over this degree than the last.

Of course, me being me, I already have plans to fill the 18 hours a week that I've been studying ( well, that's what it says you should spend on it!) with something else. And so as the door closes for the last time on my under graduate career, another opens wide and welcomes me in.

So bye bye OU. It's been a blast!

Imogen.