Our final post in celebration of our five-year anniversary is the second half of five things we wish we’d know five years ago. This time it’s our five southern-based WRs to share their experiences.
Over to them …
Jessica xx
LYNNE PARDOE:
5 things I wish I’d known:
- How to set up websites, Twitter & Facebook accounts
- How much I’d enjoy using those accounts once I’d done them!
- How to go about self publishing – its quite a learning curve and I still haven’t even tackled paperback books!!
- How easy it is to get distracted by the internet, friends seeking coffee, outings to exciting places etc.
- How much I’d enjoy the whole thing – I’ve made some lovely new friends, learnt things like how to speak at literary events, learnt a lot about a new industry and thoroughly enjoyed the whole process!!!
You can find Lynne’s Author Page on Amazon here.
HELEN J ROLFE:
I’m afraid I can’t give 5 things I wish I’d known. Perhaps the only way I’d answer this is to say that I’ve realised it’s a continuous journey. There’s so much to learn along the way, publishing changes all the time, but the one constant is how much writers support one another. Which stops me from going insane at everything I still don’t know!
You can find Helen’s Author Page on Amazon here.
JACKIE LADBURY:
Things wot I have learned:
- Friends and family don’t really understand how important being published is
Being published is important, but friends and family are more so- Life is for living and sometimes it’s easy to let ‘the writing thing’ get in the way of spending time with – yes, friends and family
- If writing starts to become a chore or deadlines make the whole thing unenjoyable, take time out to remove the pressure– self-publishing is great for that, you can work at your own pace and miss as many deadlines as you please :-)
- Keep a sense of humour – even when your Amazon rankings are dreadful, you’ve had a two star Amazon review and even your husband can’t be arsed to read your books – none of it is really that important in the grand scheme of things.
Being published is important, but friends and family are more soYou can find Jackie’s Author Page on Amazon here.
DEIRDRE PALMER:
I’ve learned so much, about writing, publishing, promotion, etc, as I’ve gone along, and as I reach this point I believe I’m a better writer, and, hopefully, wiser. However, I can’t think of anything I wish I had known at the beginning. What I’ve learned is based on experience and couldn’t have been picked up any other way. The highs and the lows have taken different forms from what I’d imagined, and it’s much harder work than I’d anticipated, but I wouldn’t have done anything differently.
You can find Deirdre’s Author Page on Amazon here.
She also writes as Zara Thorne, whose Author Page is here.
JO BARTLETT:
Things I wish I’d known five years ago:
1. That in five years time, loads of my writing dreams would have come true
2. That disappointments and bumps along the road really can lead you to a different, but better, path
3. That no matter what ambitions I fulfil, I’ll still want more
4. That it’s impossible to write a novel that everyone will like
5. That writer’s bottom isn’t a myth… although perhaps I’m glad I didn’t know that!
You can find Jo’s Author Page on Amazon here.
Thank you so much for joining us for our series of posts following our five-year anniversary. We don’t blog as much as we used to which in some ways saddens me but then I remind myself that the reason we don’t blog so much is that we’ve all become published writers and simply don’t have the time to devote to the blog that we had when we first formed and were on the first rung of the ladder.
We will continue to post about new releases and share the occasional post or interview, but most of us have our own blogs/websites to populate too.
Some of us are retired and write whilst enjoying that, some have left work to be a full-time writer, some work part-time, and some balance this alongside a full-time role. And, for all of us, there are never enough hours in the day to achieve everything we want to.
Thank you for any part you have played in our journey and we wish you all the best, wherever your reading and/or writing takes you in the future.
There are ten of us.
Five years ago, we had one indie-published novel between us.
Now we have 69.
Dreams really do come true 
Jessica xx
