One Hundred
Having reached a hundred posts in this series, I thought I would put down some thoughts to mark this milestone. It’s not my intention to give you history lessons. All I’m doing is outlining a couple of the basic facts as background to the places I visit as you can easily google them and read all the detail you need. Rather I just make observations on whatever comes to mind. Sometimes these relate directly to the topic of that blog piece, and sometimes I go off at tangents. It may appear a bit random and looking back, this has been more about me maintaining some form of online diary, keeping readers up to date on my writing, and pointing out places of interest, mainly in Scotland. None of this is planned out other than I decided not to feature writing every time. I think that’s the last thing anybody needs, so hopefully it’s of some interest.
I have found trying to be more disciplined and taking time over each post is too time consuming. This is blogging after all. I much prefer sitting down and writing whatever comes into my head, based on the next item in my list. This took practice as I was a bit nervous about how little time I was spending on these, but I’ve come to enjoy the spontaneity and it means I have something published online that isn’t taking too much time away from the novel writing. I do think about the next half dozen or so things on my list to write about, but not much more than that.
At the time of writing, according to WordPress, I have 496 subscribers which is an astonishing number in my world. It’s taken a long time. This blog used to look a lot different. It did contain poetry at one time and also featured songs I have written and recorded, along with notes on the lyrics and how I came to write them. The world was probably not ready for any of that, and I suspect still isn’t, so I keep that out of the public domain. The blog itself lay dormant for awhile, as my time management could have been better, but I relaunched it in 2022 and have slowly worked my way into posting once a week. Sometimes I miss a week, sometimes two posts will appear in quick succession. I feel anymore would be too much for folk and certainly would cause me issues in writing them.
Along with the Facts behind the Fiction series on The Kill Chain, this blog is in excess of 60,000 words now. It’s fast approaching the length of an average novel. I like that. I have had the foresight to keep cutting and pasting each post into a file offline so if I did want to tidy them up and put them out as a complete volume, it won’t be much of an effort to do so.
I do this because I enjoy it. Of course, I hope it helps to sell my novels, and if it does, then that’s a bonus. Looking back on these posts, the one thing that does strike me is, they are positive. I can see I’m trying to make the best of things. I’m not going to give you chapter and verse about my problems and worries. I’m not going to bore you with my word count for the day, or complain about social media algorithms, or moan about book sales. You will have your own challenges to overcome, and I feel you don’t need to hear about mine. I sometimes wonder what some of the great writers I admire would have made of social media and this whole marketing thing. Just imagine Jane Austen or F Scott Fitzgerald on X or Instagram! That reminds me, I’m sure many years ago there were a couple of writers posting tweets in the style of famous authors, pretending if they had social media in their day. I found it quite funny and a good send-up of the attitude on line at the time.
During the writing of this blog, I’ve self-published, been traditionally published, and then back to self-publishing. I’ve had five-star, glowing reviews and reached best-seller status. I’ve also had one star no comment reviews. I think of myself as a writer. Today, I can get on and work at my own pace which is a lot faster than publishers can keep up with. My job is to write, put it out and then write the next one. I have readers and I can’t expect anything else than that. This may be an old school attitude, but I’m not apologising for that. It’s what writers traditionally did. It’s what many do today. The body of work is what is important. Any recognition and validation you may perceive is fleeting at best. It’s not going to change your life to any great extent. Being published is exciting but can also be scary. How you define success is key to continuing. If you write, it’s the next project that is your focus. You are on your own, even if in a café or on a station platform. It’s you and your thoughts and the page. One word at a time.
What’s next? I will continue posting here. I think I should blog a bit more on music as it’s central to my life. I need to work through the backlog of posts I’ve lined up and I probably need to update the theme and give the look and feel of this site a makeover. I’ve found myself with a mixture of contemporary cybercrime and science fiction, with my next novel a dystopian view of the world, incorporating elements of both. From a marketing perspective this is possibly not the best, but it’s what I’ve written to date and have been happy writing so I’m not going to change. I’m happy with my writing, knowing I can improve, and looking forward to doing so.
Thanks for taking the time to read. It’s more appreciated than I’ve found the words to say.
The Fiction Factory 