What I learnt this week: 7th February 2018

My second best writing day, ever

There are many ups and downs in the world of writing. The ups:

  • A publisher wants to publish your book!
  • Days when you know exactly when you want to say, and the words jump straight from your head onto the page
  • A good review
  • Your Amazon ranking takes a leap upwards
  • Someone tells you how much they enjoyed your last book
  • Seeing the cover of your next book for the first time
  • Publication day

The downs are there too, just to keep your feet on the ground

  • Rejections from agents and publishers
  • Days when you don’t know what to say, and even if you did, the words are stuck somewhere in your head, in a faulty box which won’t budge open.
  • A bad review
  • Amazon rankings are all down, down, down
  • You tell someone you write romantic fiction and they curl their lip, wondering why you don’t write something more challenging, like crime…
  • The short-lists come out for the Romantic Novelists’ Awards and yet again you’re not on it

But wow, that last bullet…I can now add the opposite, to the up pile. Because I finally know what it feels like to be short-listed – and it’s bloody amazing.

Now just before I get too carried away, I know I’m short-listed for the shorter romantic award, not one of the ‘big’ categories like contemporary romance or popular fiction. But nothing will take away this feeling of – whoop! A Little Christmas Charm, there among the short-listed books. Nestled alongside other authors I so admire.

Here’s the link to the RNA website so you can see the other short-listed books. Perhaps have a read of a few from authors you love but hadn’t realised they had a new book out, or authors you’ve not tried before.

Maybe, if you’ve not read it, you might want to try out that Christmas book in the shorter romantic novel award short-list…

PS In case you were wondering, the best writing day ever? The day I received my first book contract 🙂

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