I started writing my new book over a year ago. Unlike the best-selling self published crime writer Mark Dawson, I'm not able to knock out a book every three months. And his books are good too - I love his John Milton series. Not only does he write best selling crime fiction he puts out a constant stream of useful webinairs for other writers and runs courses (if you can afford them) to teach you how to market your book AND there's free talks on You Tube too.
Meanwhile back in my world ... it took me a year to write Writing Memoir. How to Write a Story from Your Life, which has just been published.
My previous book, (A Hippopotamus at the Table) a proper memoir, took me 5+ years.
So maybe I'm getting faster... but I don't think I'll ever be in Mr Dawson's speed league.
Of course (I'm not criticising him, just jealous) he has, I believe, a wife who presumably does his cooking and cleaning and washing. Male writers frequently do. They can lock themselves in their study and their meals are brought to them. They've put on clean clothes that morning - ironed too no doubt by the wives/partners. Or even, if they are in Mr Dawson's best seller league, they can pay others to do their chores.
So I'm looking for a male 'wife' to do all that so I can concentrate entirely on my writing. He must be well off, perhaps early retired too, so he can support me in times of scrabbling around for pennies to fund my writing enterprises. Any takers? I'm putting it out there.
By the way, if anyone is buying my book, perhaps you would like to write a review. This would be immensely helpful. If I can build up 20-50 reviews, I can put my book forward for promotion on BookBub and GoodReads and that would give an enormous boost to book sales and my writing career. Here's a link to the review page Amazon Review page for my book
*****
Moving on ... I'm about half way through writing my second memoir. And I'm floundering somewhat. A proper memoir should be structured something like a novel. It should carry you from chapter to chapter. Each chapter should end in a way that makes you want to turn over the page. I've just written a new chapter and it seems ... well ... somewhat lacklustre. It needs an injection of oomph, it doesn't inspire me to carry on writing into the next chapter, let alone inspire a reader to carry on.
What to do? Should I tear it up and start again. Too drastic. What would lift it from bumping along the silt at the bottom of the pond to being a silver fish, bursting through the water and jumping into the sunlight full of energy. I think I'll read it through and see if I can jazz it up, restructure it, add more colour, sound, smell.
Any comments or suggestions gratefully received - to my website or to anna.meryt@ameryt.com.
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