Update, January 2023

Well hello there, already several weeks into 2023! New Year brought a couple of submissions opportunities, and I spent most of late December working towards those. At the moment, all my recent poems are out being looked at, and now the potential fiction projects are out there too. I used to put novellas and suchlike onto the Ama*** download programme, but the admin hassle wasn’t worth it and I made about £1.37 from this magnificent enterprise. I’ll win no accolade for business acumen at that rate –  and besides, I prefer the real-life interactions of a small press bookfair. Maybe the downloads route is best for writers who also have the time to run professional marketing campaigns, or they’re in a niche non-fiction market where they are the only experts on the block. Anyways, at least I tried –  and now I know it doesn’t work in my case unless a book is already there in hardcopy from an established press.

I’ve discovered that most of my prose is evolutionary rather than cut-and-dried, so while I broadly know the end-point of a poem and which effects I am aiming for, I usually have to keep developing a fiction book beyond the original stopping-point because of the ‘revising up’ method. My head says it is finished when in real life it patently isn’t, and the sequential movement from one thing to the next isn’t quite as workable and well written as I thought. These problems only come to light after about a year, when the continuity errors signal loud and clear. There is a good side to all this effort, such as –  I have 3 or 4 novellas/novel drafts available at any one time, so when one of them grinds to a halt I can pick up another; and providing they are not out-of-date in concept, I have something available for the next advertised publishing scheme without burning the midnight oil.

Meanwhile the day job rages on, taking up vast amounts of time and energy. Ironically, the UK Government is busy agitating for ‘economically inactive’ people in their 50’s to get back into the workplace and make more ££ for the greedy companies and the faltering economy. All you semi-retired poets out there, your country needs you. Throw aside the writing circle and the book group and get back where you belong, associating with incompatible random folks who hate the arts and managers who won’t promote you. I strongly advise the following:  ignore the propaganda machine and stay on that mythical ‘golf course’, otherwise this years’ school leavers won’t be able to get a job.