Not quite a best seller ... yet

So I wrote a novel.

An aside: don't tell people you're writing a novel or they'll query its progress on every meeting and it gets boring shrugging and saying, 'Not a lot.' For you and for them. Alternatively, do tell people you're writing a novel so they can spur you on. (Which is sometimes known as nagging in our house.)

Another aside: I wrote about 300 words for this post, decided I was boring myself and if I'm boring myself - even allowing for the fact that I have a low boredom threshold - I must surely be boring any potential readers so deleted it.

When my novel received more rejections than there are applicants for Britain's Got Talent I metaphorically stuffed the manuscript in a drawer and forgot about it. 

Cue time-speeded-up music.
(I am omitting all the painful details - about how I cried and hoped and held my breath and cried some more - at this point because this blog isn't about me but about writing; all I want to do at this moment is establish my credentials for writing yet another 'helpful writing advice' blog.)

 Finally - because, really, why not? - I took the road more travelled and self-published. (Future article)

Great reviews, invitations to speak at ladies' groups, and lots of 'I loved your book so much I've lent it to my friends,' encouraged me to believe that maybe my writing wasn't as bad as I tended to think on my blackest days but still left me with sales only in the hundreds.

And now I've depressed myself. (A survey has found, and it has been well documented previously, that writers tend to suffer from depression. No surprises there.) (Future article.) And now I'm wondering just how this qualifies me to write a writing-focused blog. 

Maybe because my plan is to be honest, to tell you how it is for me but also how I want it to be for me and how I'm planning on achieving that whether it be publishing a best-seller or just dealing with the latest rejection.

I realise - and this lack of marketing nous is probably why sales are low - that I haven't even mentioned the title of my novel. Let's put that right.

This Time Next Year is available from Amazon in both paperback and kindle formats.