After that you have to get yourself into a rhythm of writing, perhaps only working on it on the weekends or when it’s sunny might be okay if you are doing it just a spot of fun but if you want to make something of it then you have to be willing to put in an hour or so most days – that’s what I do but I’m fortunate in that I have just finished my last job and have a decent pot of capital to sit on for a while so can write daily.  I like to go to the gym in the morning for a work-out ,head home have a quick shower then straight to writing for maybe two hours in the morning before lunch, using the notes in my black binder so I know where I’m going roughly and for those two hours I work on linking all the scenes that I’ve already had. A good tip is to draw maps or pictures to help you with politically or family issues within your story so family trees can be helpful and maps to show cities and the geography of your story.  Make sure it all fits up nicely so there nothing jarring when you reading your work back, there is nothing worse from a writers perspective, than your story read back to yourself having a giant plot-hole jump out. So that is how I do it you have to find your own rhythm to write that works for you. Luckily, so far, I don’t get writers block maybe that is to do with my inability to write – but that up to other people to judge, so for me it’s quite easy to just set myself up and go for it.

In this section I’m going to talk about the reality of working in writing from the bottom. The big issue here is that you be working on your project for maybe half year or a year with the hope that the project will hit the mark and sell well so you can get on with the next. I suppose it’s like all types of entertainment but with one stark difference –  a song can be written in 10 minutes once it starts flowing whereas a book can’t be. A novel will take an extremely long length of time so you might only b able to work on one or two projects a year and even when writing it takes months to edit –  which to be honest, and I know most of you won’t like to hear this, and it is most likely not to do anything financially – it might only bring a few hundred quid into your pocket but you have to go into it with the belief that there is an audience for it. However, you shouldn’t get too carried away, it is ambitious to believe that you’re going to be the next big thing but it’s unrealistic – for your sanity I recommend that you go in with a cool head and just do it for the love of writing to start off, that sounds corny but it’s true.

The big pitfall for all writers is publishers. The majority sex in publishing is female and for the quickest turn around your books need to be aimed at women lit as more women read, so if you’re working in this genre you already got a tick in the box. However, if you’re writing fiction or action adventure then it is going to be more difficult – not because of your writing ability it’s just because it might is not seen as commercial enough for the publishing houses to take. Indie publishing is hugely over provided with people similar to me just putting things out there, hopeful to be seen alongside established people who just want something to show that they are there, swimming around on Amazon and the other e-books. Just go on e-reader website and you’ll see thousands in the genre you are working on, probably tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of books similar to what you want to write and because of that publishing houses now have the perfect opportunity to sit back and allow the market to work so what they believe to be the best will bleed through the quagmire and float to the top.

next instalment tomorrow same time