For writers, work doesn’t stop with the final draft
There you are in your garret, writing your heart out, month by month, sometimes year by year, and when your baby finally is born, and the publishers take over, you could be forgiven for thinking you’d done your bit. Not so. After publication the amount of marketing you, as the author, still have to do is staggering. There are articles to write, TV, radio, and newspaper interviews, talks, .. blogs! Of course it’s heady stuff, but not always comfortable.
Over the last few weeks I’ve had some good experiences and some bad ones. Radio highlights were definitely the Jeremy Vine show for the BBC and the Andrew Morton Show in Canada. Very different journalists, but both brilliant, empathetic interviewers who gave you space to speak and made you feel comfortable and relaxed. Unlike the ghastly experience I had with Premier Christian Radio!
You also have no control over head-line writers – especially for the newspapers online – and some of these have been pretty scurrilous!
But the really rewarding aspect of all of this has been the number of strangers who have written saying how much ONE YELLOW DOOR has comforted and encouraged them. Writing about your own life is not comfortable, but their emails and letters have made the whole venture worth while.