We basically had a bush BBQ and then sat around eating a terrific cheese board selection, cooked sausages, roast potatoes and corn cobs and even toasted a few marshmallows over a candle, all the while talking books, writing and more general topics. What is really worth mentioning is that Rob and Nick have moved down from Queensland and in a short time made themselves valuable members of the writing community, such as we have, here in the Blacktown local government area. They have taken the initiative and started up a Writer’s club that meets on Wednesdays at Blacktown library and Mondays at their home. They made an effort to meet their neighbours for Earth Watch by letter boxing for a few streets around them. So much so that when I for some reason lobbed up at #62 the Asian man there was able to tell me to go to #95. He knew what was on and where! (I swear the flyer had #62 on it and that changed to #95 while I was away)

The lesson to learn is that while writing is a lonely craft or business, you have to make the effort to get out there and meet your peers. Say hello and make things happen. Otherwise you will be forever sitting behind that monitor and while you can make some great friends online, there is nothing like sitting there face to face and sharing some food, drink and good conversation. Isn’t that a part of what the writing life should be all about?

There were allegedly already people complaining to her offlist about my views and now this! I was asked by a couple of posters to apologize to her but I replied, ‘Why?’ I am not responsible for how she chooses to react to something I say, more so if I did not intend any offence or insult and I didn’t. I was making the point that here we were discussing what might be censorship and there was this pressure to close the discussion down and yet for what reason? Two of my attempts to reply were never posted until I started sending offlist emails and then all of a sudden one of them was posted. I was given another warning that I had better behave or else. I mean it was so pathetic and childish. Of course I was removed and no doubt they are having a wonderful time sipping their tea and doing their knitting and saying how nice it is now that big, bad dissenting voice has left.

Talk about thin skinned. But this is our society today. I was never rude or attacked anyone personally (although one bloke who is now well into his sixties insisted on posting a photo of him in a red jump suit on a motorbike back in the 70s and that was too much temptation not to mention) yet because I refuse to accept the mainstream view as decided on by the manager and her clique, I was accused of being childish and ‘snippy’. Whatever happened to writers having some guts and backbone and standing up for what they believe in and writing about it? If I had wanted to insult and offend they would have been insulted and offended in no uncertain terms but that wasn’t the aim.

Even another thread was censored by her to stop me replying which shows it was now personal to her and not about the discussion. I guess this is PC in action. Political Correctness as interpreted and applied by someone with a little power over others in a specific arena. So be it. That is the way of the world.It seems that we no longer want people to hold views and if they do either they can’t express them for fear of offending someone, or the view held must be the most inoffensive and sheep like option on offer. Fence sitting is an art form it seems. In these forums it appears the protocol is to offer your view but if someone disagrees then immediately flap about in the breeze and change to whichever way the wind is blowing. Sorry, but I refuse and I have paid the price. So be it. It does remind me of another quote, by Groucho Marx who once said “I would never belong to any club that would have me as a member”…

I decided to ramp u the prospecting for writing work. I was lucky to come across a new client who wants a 70,000 word book ghostwritten. A lot of work as I have to develop the outline and structure from a ton of ideas, links and snippets he has sent me but I can do it and do it well. Already he has put me onto a couple of other potential clients. My eBook client from last year has given me some article writing work, the rate is half my usual low rate but I get half the sales the articles generate. I don’t have  a problem with an ‘Ayn Rand’ model of writing, as I call it. Ayn Rand was the ultimate capitalist/writer combination. That client has passed me onto another who needs blogs and a web site filled with content and I passed him on to a colleague who is a whizz with WordPress, so the good fortune goes round and round.

I have found by being so busy I am more productive. I still have the collaboration with Rainbow Writers to offer my Online Writing Online course. It has been ramped up and put on steroids, it is bigger and flashier than I could ever have made it by myself and will soon be released. The community college courses are up and running so the fourth Rorschach Anthology will be published in April. The publishing end is coming along with Hilda Hopkins getting some major coverage in the world’s largest machine knitting magazine in March. I wrote a feature article on the books and their author, Vivienne Fagan aad we plan to serialize the first book and offer some as competition prizes through the magazine.

So all in all my writing business continues to grow and that is a good thing. I am losing weight at the rate of 2kg a week and that is a wonderful thing. I juice fruit for breakfast and some lunches and eat less the rest of the time and try to do my exercise routine as often as I can. No point being wealthy if I’m not healthy enough to enjoy it, is there? Which just happens to be what the 70,000 word book I’m ghostwriting is all about! Stay tuned.

Shipping was listed as taking  over a month to get the book to Sydney but both books ordered have arrived in about a week, same time frame as with Lulu. The cost of the books are about half what Lulu charges, a significant saving. The down side is they pay by cheque which costs me $15 to clear and takes 40 days, while lulu pay into PayPal. Time will tell if enough books are sold because the big draw with Create Space is they sell hard copy on Amazon.com.

I have written a novel, ‘Twenty Severn Seventy’ which is entered into the 2012 Miles-Franklin Award. That was my contribution to NaNoWriMo, quite an experience. I am also writing another novel which will not be written in just 28 days, plus it is going to be double the word count. That novel is the only fiction I plan to write in 2012. I am going to focus on selling the writing that I have on the inventory of StreetWise Publications, focusing on promoting and marketing because that is the end of the business I need to learn more about. StreetWise has several excellent authors and some very good writing on the shelves. Jeff Lassen, John Aalborg, Vivienne Fagan, Aaron David and Jonathon StCyr as well as the Rorschach School of authors and of course my own material. In the four or five days previously sales of Vivienne Fagan’s ‘Hilda Hopkins’ series have gone through the roof thanks to some marketing efforts we targeted. We have proof of concept, now I just need to multiply the efforts over the range of titles we hold.

Writing a great book is only the beginning. Getting it on line, published in print or whatever is the next step. The real mark of success is, of course, selling lots of copies. What is even better as a sign you are doing something right is when you have several books for sale and readers of one buy the rest. Sales of Vivienne Fagan’s books have included several multiple orders of all six in the series as well as the same customer coming back to buy the rest after trying the first couple. Always a great sign. On top of all this, once school goes back I will be tutoring and lecturing. I won’t be writing for any essay writing sites, while WriteRight (Oxbridge) have paid me for my work, it has been in dribs and drabs and always after weeks of waiting past the promised payment date. Not to mention a lot of excuses and promises and I am still waiting for the last $50. I am sure they will pay but I write on time and ‘superbly’ according to the owner, I expect to be paid properly and on time without having to chase them for weeks on end. Then again, I can’t get their web site to load so who knows? So even if you get paid it can be a chore. I will look for more content writing opportunities for 2012 because thanks to the Google Panda slap of 2011, quality content is once again a must have to rank your site highly. I’ll talk more about that and those opportunities during the year.

These are the very real issues a freelance writer/publisher/lecturer/tutor puts up with for the love of his craft and the ability to write for a living. Christmas is upon us and for many it is a time of not so good cheer as so much pressure seems to be brought to bear to have a good time, to eat and drink to excess and to buy presents galore. On top of that the unneeded extras such as Christmas crackers that are a waste of time and space on the table; I mean, who wears the silly paper hats anyway? Or keeps the rubbish plastic thing inside with the lame joke and what have you. I am so over that as my 13 year old daughter would colloquialise.

Six weeks of five kids at home means they will need airing from time to time and that costs money. You can only walk to the local park so often before even the dog says ’nuff! Going anywhere costs money, either for fuel and parking or train fares and often it is cheaper to drive and pay for parking than pay for seven train tickets. You have to be switched on and only travel on the Sunday Funday discount fare, pick free but fun destinations and take your own food and drink. It requires more thought, more planning and more preparation, in all, more effort and that is something we have been weaned off of in this day and age. Which is all thanks to those who make their money flogging all the effort saving stuff that costs so much. Sadly, too many have bought into the belief you need to spend ‘that much’, it is what things cost today and so on. You need to spend money otherwise you are depriving your kids.

Rubbish! Your kids want your time and your attention far more than a ride on a $2 roundabout or a new plastic made in China toy to add to the hundreds they already have littering their bedroom floor. Not so long ago people knew they were not rich and even not really middle class and they had values and standards and did the best they could with what they had and they had a fun time doing it. It wasn’t always easy but they survived and times got better but then we all fell for the advertising con, that we deserved to live the middle class lifestyle even if we had to go into debt to do it. In fact, we were failures if we didn’t have tons of credit.

We live credit card free and our only debt is out mortgage, the rest are expenses we can cut out as and when we need to. We are working class and proud of that, even though I have a Masters degree, we have a mortgage, private health insurance, own two old cars and a block of land in the country. We just don’t see the need to pretend we are what we aren’t, nor do we feel any shame in not being huge ‘successes’ with the big house, new cars and all the stress and worry of losing one or both incomes. My wife gets to stay home with the kids while they are young and once they are in school, she will work and her income will be a bonus we never had before, so we don’t plan to spend more like most but rather save it and make better use of the windfall.

Orwell wrote of the biggest fear of the middle class being that they would fall into the working class below them, but the reality was that they had nothing to lose ‘but their aitches’. In other words, the stress of trying to maintain a lifestyle because of peer pressure when the income didn’t allow it was phenomenal. The working class, on the other hand, were already down there and had nothing to lose, nowhere to go but up and thus none of the stress. Of course they had their own worries but in modern, 21st century Australia, we will neither starve nor want for medical care and we are very grateful for this. The worst that could happen is having to go to the Church Free Dinner Night on Wednesdays. That is a very well patronised charity project in my neighbourhood and lots of poor in our community avail of this generous and very Christian act. I know because when I drive past, the car park is always packed! How poor are we really if we can drive to the soup kitchens?

I have just finished David Morrell’s ‘The Successful Novelist’ and I recommend it to all writers. He makes it clear there is an awful lot of work for the author once the writing is done to help sell the book I personally see little value in not doing it yourself. For now, check it out at smashwords.com or by clicking the link below for the paperback version from lulu.com

So what is age and what does it give the writer other than a lot of material and a certain smugness to know you made it this far? When I was a young bloke I knew I wanted to write fiction but I decided I would wait until I was 40, then I felt I had something to write about. I was 35 at the time so I got started the next day, no point waiting. I haven’t written much inthe way of fiction of late, too busy with the stuff that (hopefully) pays money but this month I signed up for NaNoWriMo. I have thoroughly enjoyed crafting ‘Twenty Seven Seventy’ and I plan on writing more about this post code in the future. This is where I live and the people int he story, as will be those in the short story collection to follow, are the people I share this community with.

Where I live is a low socio economic area in western Sydney and it has a reputation as being rough. Well there are plenty of rough people here but there are many who are good and decent and appreciate art and literature, too. We just got a terrific new library here in Mt Druitt and it is the equal of any in the upscale, money suburbs. It gets used a lot too and that has to tell you something. So why shouldn’t I write about where I live, the stories here are as rich as those anywhere in the world. It’s how you tell them!

So how did I manage so many words in so little time. Part of the reason is that I planned the novel before I started writing. The other secret is that the 1st of November started in Australia many hours before it began in the USA where the contest is managed from. A bit of a head start you might say. The big secret though was the pre planning. I had the idea all sorted including characters, plot, structure, setting, conflict and theme, all written down before the start. That meant I had time to write a few sample paragraphs and get my voice sorted out and clear up a few issues. Not that I have ever been one for writer’s block, just doesn’t happen to me. If I can’t think of something to write about topic X, I write about topic Y instead. By the time I finish or get bored with Y, something has come to me for X.

I also don;t have any paying clients at the moment other than my own Internet Safety Essentials web project where I am providing the content and writing the units of learning for the online writing course. Those I do one week at a time so that the students don’t get swamped ahead of time (my excuse) and as work is down and it is the worst time of the year (more bills than income opportunities) I need to spend time marketing my business.

So the NaNoWriMo is actually recreational writing for me, even though I fully intend to publish and sell the finished product. I like the way you have a word target to reach within a set time period and you know there are many others out there also writing away. I have several other writing projects in various stages of undress I need to address. One is an autobiography, the others are novels/novellas. I used to write a lot more short stories until I started writing for a living. Now, like a mechanic with a clapped out car, my writing tends to be factual for clients more than fictional for my pleasure. Now, all I need is that six figure advance and I can turn my hand to novel writing full time!