So now I'm stuck.

eternumhypnosis2021
Feb 18
3 min read

I've written the book. I've rewritten it seven times.

I've persuaded a friend to edit. She loved it - the editing that is, not the book. Every time I meet up with her for coffee or lunch she chucks another criticism at me, mostly through gritted teeth. So each time I dutifully return to the manuscript and have another crack at it. and then she finds another thing.

You might wonder why either of us persists.

The answer is that I buy her lunches to say thank you for the abuse. I'm very grateful. No, I really am. It might cost me thousands to get an actual editor to do the business. This way at least there's a lunch.

The truth is that I am determined to write, come hell or high water - and with the flooding going on all over the place just now this is fairly accurate.

It's taken seven years to write my first adult novel from opening the first word document. It's fair to say the final product bears no resemblance whatever to the book I started all those years ago. There's a very simple reason for that. I have had no training whatsoever as far as writing is concerned, so I had to start from scratch trying to correct as I went without any knowledge or wisdom, or even common sense, and learn by my mistakes, which were many.

I left school at 16, at which point my education stopped dead. But I always wanted to write. Various people did their best to dissuade me, with comments such as:

'But you could use that time to do something useful'.

'But you need a degree for that'.

Or my particular favourite: 'People might laugh'.

And I suppose they might. But I find I can bear it. I'm the mother of five children and six grandchildren. I get laughed at all the time.

But the 'stuck' thing is this: I've completed it. I've edited it. I've even managed to upload it onto Amazon.co.uk.

However, I have absolutely no idea about how to market the thing. I went hunting for advice and discovered that what I should really have done is gone on Google Trends to discover what was, well, trending, before even starting to write. This is so that I could get a head start and discover something that readers are actually interested in. But it was too late. It was too late because I just wanted to write about Cassiobury Park. It's a park in Watford , Hertfordshire where I spent most of my childhood. Hand on heart, it was the place where I was happiest. And when I wrote about it, I felt I was actually there. It gave me great joy.

Unfortunately, when I checked out Cassiobury Park on google trends it just flatlined.

Too late. By that time I'd written the whole darned book. I'm no quitter though, so then I put in 'Watford History'. Yes, you've guessed it. Another flat line. I spent an hour trying out the various themes of the book to see if anyone, anywhere, might be interested in reading it. And finally I hit the jackpot. It turns out that people worldwide are mildly interested in time travel which is the whole point of the book really. Thank heavens.

However that hasn't solved much. I'm on module 2 now in the Marketing course. It's entitled 'Find Your Avatar'. I think that might be you dear reader/listener. So if book sales suddenly erupt I know that's it. Just in case, here's the link. Erm, well not exactly the link. I don't know how to do the link thingy. If any of YOU know, please let me know at: tamarindsmyth@outlook.com

It's a pic, instead.