It’s been nearly a year since the beginning of this weekly newsletter. In that time, I have learned a lot, and shared a lot. I’ve progressed from having a vague sense of purpose in my writing, to having a fully formed novel draft – that I’ve edited and redrafted countless times. I have many stories to tell, and I’m excited about what the future brings. There are, however, some inevitable facts to face with writing. As rewarding as it is on a personal level, it’s not a particularly profitable world. At least, not yet. Not for me. And not for the vast majority of writers, either. It is also a massively time-consuming world. When I’m not actively writing, I’m thinking about characters, edits, and plots. I’m reading books about writing. Reading books for inspiration. Reading books for fun (yes, I still manage to do that sometimes!).
Despite all that, writing isn’t my entire world. I love to spend time with my family and friends. Many other interests have, admittedly, fallen by the wayside, but my loved ones always take priority. I also have to do paid employment (I know, how very gauche). And with time pressures from all sides, I have to make decisions about how my time is spent. In the last few weeks, I’ve been considering the role that self-promotion takes in my world. I joined Instagram. I explored some other possible social media routes – I’m still mostly found on bluesky, where there’s a lovely, albeit small, community of creatives. And I’ve been spending so much time on all of these disparate areas, that I realised it had been three working days since I last picked up my writing.
Three days. That’s three days that I could have been spending on finishing edits, writing new work, drafting ideas. Instead, I’m jumping from place to place, demand to demand, never getting around to the core writing work. So, I’m paring back a little. Loved ones – don’t worry, you’re not getting dropped! Nor can I step back from paid work. However, there are areas I can reduce my time. As well as spending less time exploring different routes for future promotion, I’m also going to take a temporary pause from these newsletters.
I cannot express how much the support from all you lovely readers has meant over the past year. It really has been a great motivator, so thank you all. I will still be around, and I’ll still post from time to time. I’ll probably aim for monthly, rather than weekly. But I’m not going to commit to the same style of regular insights into whatever has been occupying my thoughts in that week. Instead, I’ll be stopping by with occasional updates on my writing, and perhaps the odd bit of folklore or fantasy-related news.
So, for now, farewell. I shall be in touch anon.
Louise x
You're right both about it not being hugely profitable and also about it being crazily time-consuming. I'm in the end revision stages of book 3 of a trilogy that I started writing in February 2023. And I'm close to worn out. After book 3 goes live in late April, I'm going to take a much-needed break. It's so bad right now that when relatives come to visit, I feel guilty hanging out with them and not spending 3-4 hours on the book.