An Underwhelming 100th Blog Post For You

This is apparently my 100th post on this blog and in celebration, I will keep this short ... and actually mean it too!

I will start off with the sad news that I am experiencing severe Downton Abbey withdrawals after finishing the show on Monday. In a bid to get all of it done before my free trial of Amazon Prime ran out, my mum and I were watching as much as we could and finished just in the nick of time. Watching it every night became our evening ritual after working all day and now it's definitely hands down my favourite show of all time. I am about 1,000 years behind everyone in saying this but what a fantastic show - the writing, the acting, the setting, EVERYTHING! Simply perfect.

It's been an odd week and I have swung between positive and negative emotions at an alarming rate. There are times I have felt so excited about the future and want to do everything in my power to get my book series out there ... then other times where I feel like the old me is creeping in who just wants to give up and forget that she ever wanted to be a writer in the first place. So far, the new me is winning though and think it would take a pretty powerful force to stop me now.

As I've had to work on other things for most of the week, I've struggled to find real time to do much in the way of book marketing, but I still did a bit. On Monday, I worked a lot on my Facebook page but when it was all done, it was almost like, now what? I can't really understand the point of having one to be honest but I'm going to give it time and see what I can do with it. Apart from that, I've done some reseach and a tiny bit of Tweeting and pinning of quotes etc but all that went out of the window as the week progressed. I was pretty successful with the non-fiction book I've been working on for the last couple of weeks and here is my latest batch of word counts:

Monday 20th March 2017 - 1,417 words

Tuesday 21st March 2017 - 1,384 words
Wednesday 22nd March 2017 - 1,232 words
Thursday 23rd March 2017 - 364 words
Friday 24th March 2017 - 0 words
TOTAL FOR THE WEEK = 4,397 words

On Thursday, my hour was taken up more with organising and planning than writing and today/Friday, I just didn't have a single hour to spare to dedicate to it. Next week will be mostly spent sorting out and arranging chapters etc and so far, I'm extremely happy with its progress.

You are probably wondering where the rest of the post is after inflicting on you so many posts in the past that have resembled 300 p-age novel but I promised to keep it short ... and so I have! I shall make it up to you next week though with many unnecessary words - mark my literal words...

Until next time.

People are really nice

Without even trying, the weather this week has elevated my mood to ridiculous levels of excitement. There is nothing more wonderful than when the sun shines and it starts to feel warm outside. It's been a fantastically full and productive week and the hardest part of this post is knowing where to begin...

The non-fiction book I started writing last week about the skin condition I went through *that I talk about (here)* has continued to go well and at this point, I think it's safe to say that it's definitely going to happen. Here are my word counts:

Monday 13th March 2017 - 1,478 words
Tuesday 14th March 2017 - 1,372 words
Wednesday 15th March 2017 - 271 words (lower word count due to organising chapters etc)
Thursday 16th March 2017 - 1,693 words (such a great hour of writing)
Friday 17th Match 2017 - 1,394 words (another fantastic hour of writing)
TOTAL FOR WEEK TWO = 6,208 WORDS

I am still following the hour every weekday rule and it really does take the pressure off doing it like that - my attitude is laid back and by not having a word count goal, I don't stress about it, I just do what I can within that hour. Next week, I will be mostly using my hour a day to organise the chapters a bit and work out some sort of plan as this kind of book needs proper structure. Honestly, I am pretty excited about it and have actually found that by writing it all down and really forcing myself to think about what I went through, I am getting some much-needed closure. It has been nearly four years since I started going through Topical Steroid Withdrawal and I think the time has come to move on from it fully.

Midway through the week, I wrote an article in the hope of it being featured on one of my favourite writing blogs. I've done it mostly for myself and not for self-promotion and I'm happy with how it turned out. I sent them my proposal yesterday and I'm keeping my fingers crossed that they like the idea and ask for the full article. If not, I'll just post it on here at some point.

I've continued to Tweet more this week but I'm finding that all my Tweets have become a little bit samey as I have mostly just been putting up the pictures I made with various quotes from my books on them. I am still getting used to Twitter again and I'm hoping over time I feel more comfortable with it as I used to love Tweeting.

In the last month or so since I added a page in the back of all my eBooks and Paperbacks promoting other books in the series, more people have been buying them. Before, I think a lot of people thought WEIGHTING TO LIVE was a standalone novel, which is a shame as I'm proud of CHANGES and SIXTEEN MONTHS, so it's nice to know that people are aware they exist now.

I think I'll make that do this week and pray that my productivity, along with the English sun, holds out a little longer.

Until next time.

5698 words

It's been a crazy week and I'm going to keep this short as I haven't got much time and will talk about a few other things I wanted to cover in another post early next week. If I had to sum up the week in a sentence I'd say it has been one of the most productive weeks of my life. Monday was dedicated to my other website as I had a lot of issues that needed to be resolved and now they are nearly sorted out (after a few months of confusion and stress), I feel so happy. Things finally feel like they are coming together.

This week I've continued to post pictures of quotes from my books on both Twitter and Pinterest, which I am still enjoying and just like that, most of my time vanished.

Because I apparently haven't got enough on at the moment, I decided to crank the madness up a notch and start a potential new draft of a book that has been a long time coming. It's a non-fiction book about the debilitating skin condition I went through for just over two years. It is a total passion project and it's not intended for any kind of financial gain - more an exorcism of sorts that I have been asked many times to write now by the people who have followed my skin story (under my real name). It will be nice, and almost healing in a way, to have a record of exactly what I went through before I forget it all as even now, parts of it are very hazy. I started writing the draft on Monday and because of a general lack of time and the process working so well with my other draft, I am only going to be writing for a maximum of an hour a day, Monday to Friday. The book might not even work out but so far, so good. If the draft does turn out to be viable, I have a rather strict goal of when I'd like it completed by, which is Tuesday 6th June 2017; the four year anniversary of going through my condition (I am a total sucker for important and meaningful dates). A quick tally of my word counts for the first week:

Monday 6th March 2017 - 1,241 words
Tuesday 7th March 2017 - 1,370 words
Wednesday 8th March 2017 - 1,308 words
Thursday 9th March 2017 - 1,379 words
Friday 10th March 2017 - 400 words
TOTAL FOR WEEK ONE = 5,698 WORDS

Ok, well, this post is much longer than I expected, sorry! I will be back early next week with yet more words, you lucky, lucky thing.

Until next time.

"Because I'm worth it"

This is going up a day earlier than planned as I'm doing something shocking: I'm going out, and to a place that isn't my local supermarket - I'm even getting on a bus and everything. I say it's shocking because my life has been hermit chic for quite a few months now and my days on the whole follow the same pattern: up at 6 a.m. - eat breakfast and work for an hour or two, followed by a power walk that ends in a trip to Sainsbury's before I sit for the rest of the day in front of my laptop. Living the dream basically. I should probably be lamenting the fact I haven't got much of a life at the moment, especially for a woman in her late twenties, but really, more than anything, I just want to get on with the hope that if I keep working hard and don't give up, maybe my life might be a bit different someday soon.

After realising last week that I was going to do book marketing MY way - less businesslike and more creative - I've been very busy. One of the first things I did last weekend (I think it was then anyway) was put up the prices of all my books on Amazon. WEIGHTING TO LIVE went from 99p to £2.39 for the eBook (here) and from £5.99 to £6.99 for the paperback (here). The eBooks for CHANGES and SIXTEEN MONTHS went from 99p to £1.99 and the paperback for CHANGES (here) went from £2.99 to £3.99. There were many reasons for the price increase, one being that potential buyers might have thought a lower price meant my books weren't as good but mostly, I did it because I'm proud of my little book series and a lot of time and love has gone into them and I think they deserve to be a higher price. Surprisingly, with the relatively small amount of marketing I've done so far, I've had a few sales, so it hasn't seem to put anyone off.

I also did something a little cheeky. On my Pinterest page under my real name, one of my boards (called FASHION LUST) has over three thousands followers (no idea why though) and so I decided to pin one of my book trailers for WEIGHTING TO LIVE to the board as I felt the move wasn't IN YOUR FACE marketing and could easily get lost, but there might be a chance that at least one of those three thousand people might watch the video and want to find out more. On Monday, I also posted one of the quote pictures I talked about in my last blog post and plan to put one up on Twitter and Pinterest most days until they run out. I also set up a brand new Facebook page for Lily Divine as for reasons unknown to me, it's apparently imperative I have one and finally, much to my abject shock, I've continued to tweet and really enjoyed myself.

On Tuesday afternoon, I decided to tackle a few books I really wanted to read and after finishing #GirlBoss, I moved onto Writers' & Artists' Yearbook 2017 (here) and had the most wonderful time reading it. With every page I devoured, the more excited I felt about writing. If you are an aspiring writer like me, the book is a MUST - not only is it a directory for all the publishers, literary agents etc out there, but it also includes many wonderful articles from established writers and industry professionals that I found so helpful and gave me a lot of insight. It's the kind of book I'll continue to dip in and out of in the future because I learned so much. Feeling inspired yesterday, I then reread a few of my favourite bits from Stephen King's On Writing which I adore before I had a massive clearout. A perfect couple of days basically.

And so here we are, on a chilly Thursday morning at the start of a new month with the hint of spring in the air and a faint hope that things will work out ok.

Until next time.