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After The Writing, What’s Next?

carolyncordon
Photo by Karina Zhukovskaya on Pexels.com

Writing is a great therapy, with many people finding solace in writing their own story out, for their further thought, or just to get the words out of their head, and written down. I have found this myself, particularly with my first poetry collection, “damaged children, Precious Gems”, based around sex abuse, particularly, but not only child sexual abuse. And then the memoir I wrote about my new life with Multiple Sclerosis, “Mick Jane and Me, Living Well with MS”.

These certainly helped me when I was having some bad/sad times, but that was then, and now I’m in a better place in my head, and I’m looking at ways to make myself some money with my writing, if and when I can. I’ve read the hype, seen the stories, and detected that that is probably not my way, I’m a far more humble kind of person, and while I can talk up my own abilities, I and a realist, and know the quiet back road is more my way, rather than the busy highway path.

Well done to those who are earning gazillion dollars for every word, with your writing, good on you, but I more looking to earning a good deal less than that! I can write, poetry and prose, my command of the English language is good. So when a writing friend mentioned a site she is now using for her own writing, with a view to spreading her words, and making a little bit of money, perhaps, I listened.

I am currently earning some Educational Lending Rights with one of my books, that come in once a year. And I sell a book every now and then too, which is always nice. I love signing the books I sell to people writing a personal note inside the front cover. That is an on again and off again way to get money though, although I have made enough with my books, that the costs of printing copies are all covered, so every sale is pure profit …

But writing a book is a big thing, and takes a lot of time, I’m interested in ways that I can do once, and go on gathering rewards into the future. The idea of ‘passive income’ without selling my soul is definitely what I’d like to do. So I did the obvious thing, and signed up to this site my friend is now using. It was a relatively simple process, once I got my head around it all, and I know have two pieces on this site.

The site’s name is Medium, and there is a huge range of well written articles there, I’m enjoying looking around, and reading a few pieces over the past couple of days. And of course, I couldn’t help myself, I’ve posted two of my own pieces on Medium. Writers are asked to post original unpublished material, so I can’t track back and regurgitate previously published things, but that’s fine, writing new work is good for me!

The two works I’ve had published are Wondering What To Write and Friends, Some Thoughts … If you’re interested in what I’ve written, why not click and take a look? Now though, I have another writing related thing to do, editing and resubmitting an article, so seeya, folks, I’ve got some editing to do!

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A Poetic Response

carolyncordon

When I see something I read as a challenge, especially if the subject matter, and form are things that I am particularly interested in, I find it hard to step away and just leave it. So when I saw on this website https://bartbarkerpoet.com/2021/04/02/my-apology/
a lovely poem, I left a comment, and indicated I’d write my own poem in a response to the same prompt.

I love writing new poems, and I care about our world, and fear for our future, with climate change bearing down upon us all, because in part of the bad behaviour of mankind. Our species may not survive, but I believe the planet Earth, with a multitude of creatures, with continue on for a great many centuries from now …

So having said that this morning, I’ve done what I said I would, and here is my own poem.

Nature Will Win, Eventually

Not our fault, some proclaim
Always hiding from any blame
To be honest, most are though …
Understand truth of wisdom’s flow
Realise life is a many faceted thing –
Evolution a tool, Nature’s ultimate sting!


An Acrostic poem, a hope for the future for our planet at least if not our species … We don’t deserve what Nature offers to us, the way we degrade so much of what we have had, and continue to keep on doing it. Will we ever learn the error of our destructive ways?



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Be Organised, Keep Track Of Things!

carolyncordon

So many projects, which to do now? If there is one thing worse than having nothing to do, it’s having too much to do! At the moment I can barely remember having nothing to do, and certainly feel I may have headed into too much to do territory!

Of course, being a bit of a procrastinator (many writers are!), having nothing to do and doing nothing when I should be actually working sort of blend into each other, and I end up with projects on hand heading toward that moment when I have to do them right now, the adrenaline kicks in, and I put in a huge effort, and accomplish amazing things.

Hooray to me, yes? No, actually. Boo to me, for all of the time I’ve spent not actually doing much more than fluffing about on Social Media, when I should have been working. I have books to edit, and to write. I have people wanting to read my words, and have I been writing them? Not really, Sometimes another few hundred words get written, for my novel, yes, but a novel? A novel needs many thousands of words, a few hundred every now and then is not good enough!

I feel like I need someone standing over me, cracking a whip, so I stop slacking off the way I’ve been doing lately. What would be the best way to go, I’m wondering … I’ve taken recently to keeping track on two things, physical ones, to help me with two different physical things – my weight, and how many steps I’ve been walking. Practically every day for a few months now, I’ve recorded these two things, and it allows me to see how I’m doing with my weight and my fitness.

My driveway walking track.

This is easy enough to do – every morning, the first thing I do is hop on the scales and then I write down the number, and perhaps a few comments about that result. And during the day, on many days, I switch on the pedometer on my phone, and I go for a brisk walk, at home, inside, outside, or a combination of both. I try to walk 2000 steps, which is one kilometre.

These are good things to do, you can’t hide away from the numbers, they tell the truth. My weight is slowly going down, and the brisk steps are getting easier to do, which indicates the benefit of doing these steps. I can remember a time when walking 50 metres was difficult, without having a walking stick, now I can briskly step out, with no mobility aids required!

So I can keep track of the physical things, is there anything I can do about my writing? Because of course that is what I do, I’m a writer, I write, or I should, anyway … I think the easiest thing to keep track on, would be the word count of the novel I’m writing. Just like my weight, I could regularly write down the word count, on my phone calendar. I don’t think this would work as a daily thing, but I could choose a day, and regularly write it down on that day. Getting the word count is simple, and having to do this, would encourage me to do a better job of putting the various smaller pieces of writing of the novel I do, actually into the novel file …

The other writing projects I currently have going aren’t as simple to keep track on as the novel, they are in more advanced stages of completion … What to do there? I’d say I need to report on how these things are going, perhaps once a week for them too, that would be good. And having a different title for each project, like the name of the book ,would be useful, so making a list of the various such projects needs to happen, there are a few different ones.

I’m going to have to go and make that list now, while I’m thinking about it, and perhaps after that I can think (hard) about which projects is the most important. Prioritising this different work will assist in knowing where to give my attention. It feels like a good way to go, and may I manage to find and prioritise each of these projects in the best way!

OK, that’s sorted out, I’d better get that all organised, so my life will be a place of calm and productive works happening! Haha, as if, I’m addicted to that adrenaline hit! But we’ll see whether I can get something that works better than the current shambles I feel like I’m in!

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Planning is Good, Action is Better

carolyncordon

I had planned to work on my next poetry collection today. I said to myself yesterday, and I was working on it – you can do a whole chunk of that tomorrow, and maybe get it all done, and then you can send it off to see whether the publisher is interested in publishing it. I didn’t say it out loud, just in my head.

But out loud, or in my head, either way, it hasn’t actually happened, not yet. Unfortunately life steps forward far too often and says, hey, you have to do THIS RIGHT NOW! and when you take a look, yes, you do in fact have to do that thing. Today, the thing has been looking at my current financial situation, and talking with organisations about it.

That is all done now, more or less, but the idea of getting back onto working through my poetry collection, though an attractive idea, hasn’t captured me, not yet. I feel like doing something physical right now is more important. I’ve had my bottom firmly planted on the sofa for far too long today. So the plan for the poetry collection is still there, and I now say, I plan to get up, do some walking, exercising type of things, and when I come back, the poetry collection reading/editing action will happen! I hope …

So goodbye, I’m off to see the pond, clean things up there a little bit, do some step ups while I’m there, then keep on with the walking, to see whether I can do 2000 steps or more today! After that, some more water, and yes, back to the poetry collection, to see the lovely words there, and perhaps make them even lovelier!

the pond …

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Writers Write

carolyncordon

Yes, that is what writers, do, they write. But they also edit, fluff around, and procrastinate, as well as thinking about words, editing their work, and various more difficult things regarding marketing of their work …

And they may do a variety of other things, housework, or course, paying bills, and other ‘normal’ things that all of us do at times, when we must. But today I have been a writer-in-residence, sitting with my books at a cafe, chatting to people. And I have connected with others on Social Media, most importantly using 5 random words offered for a five word challenge.

I used those five given words, to write some more of my novel, which I’ve been neglecting far too much lately. And I send that new piece of my novel to a friend, who I’ve been sending bits and pieces of my novel too, since she asked to read it. But the ‘progress’ in terms of story and word count are woefully inadequate …

But another thing I’ve been doing today is going through, and editing my poetry collection I wish to submit to a particular publisher as soon as I can. I went through twenty or so pages today, and hope to get through at least that many pages tomorrow, with the view to send this off before the end of the week, bearing in mind that this will be a shorter week, because of Easter. I’m enjoying my reading, and editing of this book, and hope the publisher will also enjoy reading it, and will accept it for publication.

I’ve also delivered a few more copes of the newsletter I edit, and spoken with one of the advertisers, with good results. I have other writing projects I’m working on, or will be soon, as well as another book I’m thinking about putting together, with a view to self-publishing it. And of course, there is the Covid-19 anthology I am hoping to have out to be launched in late July, at the Adelaide Plains and Gawler Festival of Words …

I’ve seen an early version of the front cover for that book – Plague Invasion – and I like the cover very much, eye catching for sure! This is a very important book, and I am hoping for good things with it, in terms of copies sold. This Covid time has been very trying, and this anthology will show some of the challenges we have all faced, so it can be read about in the future, and hopefully dealt with effectively if we ever need to deal with such a thing in the future, which it seems may well keep on happening. Not happy times, but being forewarned is to be forearmed …

And I have another book idea, a little chapbook, that will include illustrations as well as text. The text is mostly already written, I just need to extract it, and provid the illustrator with the it, so she can provide the pictures … I suspect I will be seeing this illustrator, who is the person who provided illustrations for three of my previous books. This new chapbook will include the same character as the previous three books mentioned.

This will be a fun little project, that may prove to be a winner in terms of sales, who knows? It just seems like a good way to use or more correctly reuse words I wrote for the newsletter mentioned previously. So how many books am I currently working on? I think that was five books, I’ve been busy, and will be even busier! Whew, it’s a good thing I like words, isn’t it?!