Kill your darlings

Here we go again. A million years have passed since my last post, but as I've been doing a lot of writing and book admin recently, and a lot has changed, I thought I'd quickly share a little update. I've said it many times before, but primarily, this blog is a diary of sorts for me to be able to share anything related to my writing. 

After my last post, for the rest of 2025, nothing remotely creative happened, as work and my personal life were so busy. I also travelled to some wonderful places, including New York and Venice, which were even more wonderful than I thought they would be. December was the most social month of my entire life, and by the end of it, I was a husk of a woman. Roll on 2026, I was craving peace and quiet, which also allowed me time to think, and I realised that my life couldn't be further from where I wanted it to be with my writing, which made me feel quite sad. When you have bills to pay (I was working six days a week last year until November), and are also trying desperately to have some kind of social life, finding time to write is borderline impossible. Sorry, that all sounds like an excuse, but it's true.

I started the new year off with a bang. Opposed to trying to get my existing books out there and make enough to leave my day job. Instead, I've been looking at creative ways to make money, so when/if I have enough, I can leave my job and be able to focus on the writing which brings me joy. Short stories are something I am passionate about, but I've been told on multiple occasions they aren't commercially viable, so that requires time I don't currently have to try and market them somehow. I'm getting on well with my little sidelines, and just keeping everything humanly crossed that I can eventually buy one of the most precious commodities available: time. I just never seem to have enough of it, so for now, in order to get some, I've had to say goodbye to a social life... again. At this point, I'm a bit done with making any more sacrifices in my life. I'm 38 and, to be honest, I just don't have much left in my tank. All in all, I'm done in. 

As I said above, I've been doing a lot of thinking recently about my career, life, writing... the whole caboodle, and that has also included my books. By the time each book of mine goes out into the world, so much work and love has gone into it that, until recently, I think made me resistant to making big (and necessary) decisions. I'd been thinking about it for a while, but I finally decided to remove my non-fiction books, Stuff I'll Tell You To Do That I Won't Do Myself and My Date with a Shaver, from sale. I think I removed them in January (this year has been such a blur that I'm not 100% sure when anything actually happened...), and once I'd done it, I knew I'd made the right choice. Recently, I decided to do the same with my entire Weighting to Live series, which I've removed over the last week, so now all that remains is Curing My Incurable Eczema, Thirty-Minute Tales, Fancy That, #BeKind, Just Julia, and Knock Down Ginger. 

I think part of the reason I'd kept the now-removed books up there was to have more to show for all the years of hard work, and not really getting anywhere – can't think of another way of putting it. Taking those books away suddenly made my shelf look quite bare, and I've been left with a strange kind of vulnerability knowing that all that's left are the bare bones – or, to put a more positive spin on it, the foundations to (hopefully) build something better. 

I think it all boils down to the fact that sometimes you have to take risks in order to progress. There's that old quote abut killing your darlings, which feels rather appropriate here. We sometimes cling onto things that we know in our heart of hearts aren't right, for a myriad of reasons, but we've got to be less precious. It's both scary and exciting being in this position at 38 after 13+ years of writing to only have two full-length books and a load of short stories in my back catalogue, but what remains I am really proud of, so here we are. 

On a side note, oh my god there, is so much admin when you do everything yourself – it's taken hours upon hours to update everything, take all mentions of the old books away, and start afresh. With that being said, I've kept all references to the now-deleted books on this blog because I think it's important to be able to share the whole picture and not just fragments. 

I am not saying these decisions will magically offer me a career as a writer, but I do think it's made things clearer and less messy. 

One of my short stories has also had a rebrand. Before, when my Weighting to Live series was available, I put Knock Down Ginger on the same Amazon author page, as it seemed like the best fit at the time. But when I removed the series, it felt silly just having the one short story left on the author page, so I decided to change the cover, to match my other short stories, and move it over to one of my other Amazon author pages, which means I now only have two author pages, thank goodness, making it all feel a bit tidier. I'm really happy with the new cover, and it looks great with the other short stories available on that author page. 

Now that I've done all the painful book admin etc, I'm going to work on the other creative stuff to try and get me some income and time so I can throw myself completely into the books and writing I want to do.

Hopefully my next update will be in a future abundant in time and short stories.

Until next time, 

Cara x