Ten years ago this week I signed my first publishing contract. Taking Flight was published nine months later, in September 2010, and thus began the career I had dreamt of ever since I was nine.
In March 2020 my eighth novel will be published. Here are ten things I’ve learned over the last ten years.
1. You will earn less money from your books than you could ever have imagined.
2. You will make a living from writing despite this, by doing all sorts of workshops, school visits, Arvon tutoring, university teaching, etc.
3. Much of this income will come from the Royal Literary Fund, and you will bless the day you first applied to be an RLF Writing Fellow.
4. Being a Northern Irish writer means you can feel cut off from both the Irish and the British literary scene, but if you are prepared to do the running, you will eventually find your place in both.
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| Charney Manor |
5. Children’s writers are a pretty great bunch of people, and through groups like the Scattered Authors Society you will make many friends and hang out with them in wonderful places like Charney Manor.
6. Just because you have been published doesn’t mean you won’t still get rejections. You will, and they will still hurt.
7. You will fall in love with historical fiction, and write books you didn’t expect to write.
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| Of course writers never have favourites. But if I had a favourite it might have been Star by Star. |
8. Your most successful book, Star by Star, will be the one you most loved writing.
9. Bookshops, once beloved, will become fraught places where you fret if they don’t stock your books.
10. You will finish every book thinking you don’t have another one in you. Then you get the throb of a new idea.
3 comments:
What a great ten years, Sheena! (And "Star by Star" is my favourite of your books, too!)
Sums it up beautifully, Sheena!
Lovely collection of things to know now, imo, especially the happy ones!
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