Last week I recorded a video where I answered some of the questions I’ve been asked on Instagram and in my private Facebook group.
I’m not going to lie I felt all sorts of terrified whilst undertaking this small project. Fear and worry about my face being on screen for thirty minutes, imposter syndrome as I thought - who am I to be giving advice or talking about my writing journey I haven’t achieved anything. And also a kind of invisibility frustration. The latter something I need to think about further and maybe write a blog post about it.
But I pushed through my fears and sent it live and have had some lovely feedback.
I was asked about:
Patreon
Whether I struggle with perfectionism (my immediate thought was no but realised I do in some cases)
How I decide between what I should do and what I truly want to do
Is it too late to be on social media?
How to get past the numbers
My favourite part of everything I do
My journey as a writer
My major stepping stones that helped me get to this point
Vlogging
So if you’re interested in any or all of these questions and answers then do watch the video below:
And if you have any questions yourself do let me know.
If you're looking for ideas on how to fill your journals and notebooks I am sharing a journal flip through to show how I fill mine. My journals are often messy but each one has a definite purpose.
I use one journal as a writing bullet journal to track and log my writing and creative projects. I use another to plan my writing and creative tasks. I have others for particular writing projects such as my book proposal, essays and YouTube scripts. Then I have some simply to journal and to free up space in my head.
In this video I share each notebook I’ve used in the last six months. There’s a completed journal, a couple of new notebooks and I also share how my notebooks (and writing) have been affected by the recent pandemic
Instagram is the main way I engage with my audience. I also love the creativity of it. So I'm sharing how I incorporate Instagram into my daily writing life. It actually, with a bit of practice, doesn't take up a lot of my day - but I also see it as an essential part of my writing business.
Instagram is part of my writing routine. I love the app but I also see it as an essential way of growing my author platform. It can be used in a natural way as part of a marketing plan for writers. If you're looking how to market your book or how to use social media as an author but want to be authentic then this might be the way for you.
At the beginning of every month I create a fresh start for my writing and creative projects. I have a little brainstorm, reset my task board, and take note of all the relevant stats for the previous month.
Click the link to see the video that shares how I go about doing it so I’m inspired and motivated for the month ahead.
With writing we are lucky in that we don’t need much in the way of kit before we start. Just a notebook and pen. A computer is also good as is a printer. In this day and age many people have already got these items for work or school. I’ve always written my projects in Microsoft Word but since last year I blew the dust off the Scrivener software I invested in some years ago and started to use it for my book proposal. And I was hooked. Since then I’ve used it for my Patreon essays and for my newsletters. Everything now gets written in there and then gets saved on my external hard drive and backed up on another external hard drive.
In this video I share exactly how I use Scrivener and which external storage I use. Click the link to watch: https://youtu.be/EEqj6LqUVkk
My latest video is a comparison of A5 notebooks . I am a bit of a notebook addict it has to be said but I did need a couple of new ones to replace my now full planning notebook and writing journal. Whether I needed six to replace two is besides the point!
I thought it would be interesting and useful, however, to take a selection of A5 notebooks, both hard and soft cover all available to be delivered and do a short comparison of them.
All notebooks are A5. Five of them are lined and one is dotted. Two brands have 120gsm paper and the rest have either 80gsm or 70gsm. I believe all of them except the Lemome are produced by British companies.
I've come to the end of my first writer's journal of 2020 so I've decided to do a flip through of some of the pages.
I've thoroughly enjoyed writing in this dark blue Lemome lined journal. Inside I write down all my ideas. They might be regular journal thoughts, ideas that (frustratingly!) come to me before I go to sleep, a few sentences, some feelings, brainstorming and from all of this I create my essays, my novel, my non-fiction, my blog posts and videos.
And it all begins with some scribbles in a journal.
This is my video where I flip through and show you what I’ve done on each page and how my ideas have developed.
This is a video of my monthly planning system. It shows the exact steps I take to work towards my projects every month by dividing the projects up into individual ‘bite sized’ tasks.
This system has helped me enormously over the past few months. It has made me more productive, it enables me to fit work in around my children (particularly at the moment) and has given me confidence as I can physically see I’m chipping away towards my big projects. It also helps me get started on big projects that feel a bit overwhelming - which can lead to procrastination.
Journaling is fast becoming one of my favourite ways to spend my time. The gentle art of writing in a lovely notebook helps me not forget my ideas, to make space for more thinking and ideas and helps relieve anxiety.
Over the weekend I sent out a newsletter which opened with a short anecdote about my YouTube channel. The subject of the newsletter wasn’t actually about YouTube at all but I received an email back from one of my lovely subscribers asking what had happened with my YouTube journey. She said: It feels almost like we followed you on your journey then when you arrived at the Emerald City, you left us outside the gates.
I completely agreed. I’d stopped talking about YouTube once I reached monetisation. I’d shared a lot of what I was going through including my analytics and how close I was getting on my Instagram Stories - but then just didn’t carry that narrative on.
My YouTube journey has dominated my life for a year. I was thinking about it a lot; anxious that I would not reach the relevant requirements and then, when I did, I was worried about being rejected and monetisation would not be allowed for my channel.
So I thought I’d explore why I stopped talking about my YouTube channel in this blog post, as well as looking at my YouTube journey so far.