What I’ve Learned After Publishing 73 Books

Is it time to write another?

I first self-published a book in November 2011. It was a 90,000 word chick-lit novel about social media detectives and online affairs. At that point, I was pretty clueless about what kind of writer I was and where I wanted to go with my skills — even more clueless than I feel now. I knew nothing about editing, formatting, cover design or marketing, yet somehow I managed to get this novel to number one in the Amazon UK charts.

And I’ve been dining out on that half hour of success ever since.

For some reason though, despite having written and published 73 fiction books, not to mention quite a few puzzle books, numerous diaries and notebooks and one non-fiction book that I never actually wanted to sell to anyone (but that’s another story), people still talk to me like I’m an absolute beginner.

What is it about me that makes other writers, even people who have never published anything, think I am a newbie? It’s quite puzzling.

So, I guess the first thing I’ve learned is that it doesn’t matter how many books you write and publish. Some of us, as writers, will never be taken seriously for reasons we don’t understand. Perhaps I’m not bookish enough or don’t look or act how they think a writer should look and act.

Then there’s the nay-sayers

Recently, I’ve met someone who is a highly educated professional, but not a writer. I’ll just come out and say it. She’s a mental health nurse and she’s trying to teach me CBT, even though I have had 9 courses of CBT already and it’s never worked for me. I could probably teach it to her at this point. She thinks she will be the messianic figure who will change that. She also thinks, despite being told that my only income is book royalties, that I can’t write a book.

I told her that in the last few months, I’ve been itching to get writing again. Do you know what she said to me?

“That’s maybe a wee bit unrealistic, don’t you think? Writing a novel? I mean, that would be a lot of work and take a long time. Maybe start small?”

My tongue was bitten to shreds. So, because I’m not famous, I’m not a real writer? I disagree. But what she did do was give me the determination to write a new novel. In fact, I sat down at the weekend to brainstorm and came up with 19 separate ideas for novels — one was a cozy mystery and the other 18 were erotic romance. The dirty stuff is always easier to write… no idea why.

I don’t write novels and short stories for the money or attention, which is just as well since even a bestseller can generate very little income and nobody cares about my books as much as I care about my books.

I write fiction because I love the thrill of typing “THE END” on a manuscript.

I write fiction because nothing beats unboxing your own books for the first time.

I write fiction because even if the book is shit, I still wrote a book. I created another world, put my arse on the chair and my fingers on the keys and I made it come to life. I didn’t give up because it was hard. And it is hard! I kept going.

And most importantly, I didn’t let the limiting beliefs of others stop me from doing what I want to do — which is write books.

I think it’s time to write another book! I’ll start tomorrow morning, with the cozy mystery and I’ll diarise my progress here on Medium.