Diversion ahead. Sidetrack alert.

My writing process has been paused for a short detour.

Something far more important has come up. I’ve come to the painful conclusion that I’m wasting my time, sitting here writing sequels to books that nobody reads. Not only that, I’m setting arbitrary targets for their completion and getting myself into a state when I don’t deliver. As if anyone actually cares, apart from me.

I think I might have found the answer. And I don’t like it.

I can tell that I’m going to have to put myself through the hell of marketing my work. You see, I don’t tell anyone much about my novels, I don’t advertise a lot and I don’t do much self-promotion. It’s a combination of imposter syndrome and introversion, painful to experience but difficult to explain. There are a lot of things that have made me behave in this way, it’s hard to change my habits. I never wanted to market, I only wanted to write and publish one novel, to prove to myself that I could do it.

Somehow things got a little out of hand.

Looking for somewhere to begin and ease myself into the world of marketing, I asked for advice in a Facebook group I belong to but rarely engage with. There were lots of comments, leading to some honest realisation about my novels, a split in opinions over the quality of my covers and a suggestion that made me panic.

But, there was one common theme

People have been looking at my blurbs and they all agree that they need some attention.

Looking at them myself, I realise that I have been guilty of writing them poorly, I’m assuming knowledge and glossing over things, explaining the concepts badly and failing to provide enough incentive for anyone to purchase the book.

The problem is that I’m writing them for me and not for the prospective reader.

In my defence, they have developed in a somewhat haphazard fashion, depending on what various people have said and as I’ve had advice from different quarters. For example, someone told me one of them was too short; after I’d changed it because someone else had said it was too long!

This proves that you need more than one opinion before changing things.

Clearly, I need a consistent approach, it was suggested that I read a few books on the subject.

Which is what I’m doing now. Andorra and the rest of them will just have to wait for a while.

And what was the thing that made me panic? A suggestion was made by several people that I have a different pen name for each genre that I write in. This would involve getting new covers made and setting up separate mailing lists/Facebook accounts etc for each one.

Which is quite daunting as I write in four distinct genres. Although they’re probably right I can’t commit to doing that, it would leave me with even less time to write than I have now, with all the ancillary work that goes on in the background.

Not only that, I can’t afford to get new covers made.

By the way, I wrote around 20,000 words in February.

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