Fi Phillips

We each have twenty four hours a day. That is an undeniable fact. How we use those hours is up to us - sleep, work, play - and equally how much worth we place on those allotted hours is our choice too. I recently resigned from an unpaid role managing a Facebook page for a writing group. I've been in the role for a year and I felt that the time had come to move on and use that time and effort more effectively for my writing career. That was the main reason. The second reason was that during the past year, the 'founder' of the group has expected more and more of me and has been unpleasant, to say the least, when I have tried to discuss the page with her. My resignation was met with an outpouring of poison from this person. One of the unfortunate factors of offering our time for free is that certain individuals will have no respect for our effort. If they are not paying us for time spent managing a Facebook page or in writing an unpaid article for their site, those ind...

I was initially going to write "I'm not talking about your general self respect, but rather your self respect as a writer" but now I think of it, the two are strongly tied together. I was brought up in a family that was loving and wanted me to write but that also felt I should have a proper job because my writing was just a hobby as far as they were concerned. I followed their lead and trained as a secretary. For years, I toiled away in office jobs and kept my writing as a safe haven to return to in my spare time. I dreamed of having my novels published but ultimately I had little respect for myself as a writer. It wasn't until I penned my first murder mystery play for the drama group I was part of that I began to think that my writing was anything more than a hobby. From then on, I began to make time for my writing, in fact guard that time ferociously. However, I still didn't call myself a writer to anyone other than my inner self. I was a secretary, a P.A., an ...