What I'm doing this month - April

Easter has been and gone. The chocolate eggs have been chomped and digested. I've started a new diet.

What else is going on at Fi Central?

Working on my novel

Now that I'm working full time hours, any non-paid writing is being put off until evenings or weekends (including these blog posts).

For a long time, I felt blocked with my novel. I could blame my lack of writing on how busy I was with my new business, or school holidays, or just needing 'thinking space'.

I won't call it writer's block because that always seems like an excuse. I prefer Steven Pressfield's term 'resistance'. And boy, was I resisting planting my bum on that seat to work on my novel.

There was an element of self doubt involved but the more I drilled down into why Inner Fi didn't want to write, the more I realised that with money coming in from my new business, the motivations to be a novelist had changed.

Having my novel out there is no longer about earning a living. It's now completely because I want to share my story. Until I'd got that straight in my head, there was no way Inner Fi was going anywhere near my novel.

Once I came to that conclusion though, all the resistance fell away. Suddenly there was a flood of ideas and tweaks and in a matter of hours, I'd written two new chapters.

I am 'in the flow', creatively, and making speedy, much-needed progress on my un-named novel. After implementing a few of those (major) tweaks, the original title no longer works but I'll sort that out once I have a re-drafted novel in my hands.

Murdering The Text

I've been putting out feelers to current clients and on social media about a new path I may be taking with Murdering The Text - improvised murder mysteries.

My current murder mystery events feature a play on a stage. An improvised murder mystery would remove the need for a stage and any line-learning too.

I'll let you know what decision I come to on that one.

The official stuff

The time of the dreaded tax return is almost upon us (well, me). This year, for the first time ever, I have all the information I need to hand. I know, I felt faint too.

Most years, I've put off my tax return until Christmas is looming but with changes to the British tax return system on their way, I thought it was time to do the grown-up thing and get organised.

What I'm thinking about this month

I have a habit, when I go to bed, of closing my eyes and saying to myself in my mind, "Now what can I think about?". I don't mean to do it. I really do need my sleep. My night-owl mind just has other ideas. So I thought I might as well share my evening musings.

My writer website

This train of thought started with a bit of a quandary - what do you put on a writer website when you don't have a book published yet?

There's a lot of varying opinion out there about this but the main benefit I can see to setting up my writer website (instead of this blog) before I have a book to sell is building my audience and raising my visibility as a writer. That's why I started this blog in the first place. Having an established writer platform will hopefully strengthen any submission I make to a literary agent too. Fingers crossed.

Whether to submit my finished manuscript to a literary consultant

I did this a couple of years ago and whilst the response was slightly (ok, completely) heart-breaking, I recognised that the report was incredibly helpful.

So the question now is, when I've finished this draft of my novel, should I have another literary consultant have a look at it? We're talking in the price range of £350 to £600, depending on who you use, but now that I'm bringing in more money I could definitely afford it.

The question is therefore, is it worth the money?

Self publishing versus traditional publishing

Another benefit (?) to earning more money is that I could afford to self-publish my novel with all the related editing and design costs.

This leads back to the reason that I want to get my novel out there - I want to share my story - but do I just want to get it out there and have complete control (including all the marketing) or do I want the validation of a literary agent and a publisher?

I don't have an answer to this one but I suppose it doesn't matter until I have a complete novel to submit.

Spring

Where is it? We had snow last month and again over the Easter weekend. Where's the spring flowers and the happily chirruping birds and the chance to wear footwear other than boots? I know I live in Britain but come on, Spring. Hurry up.

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That's my month. What are you up to in April?