This week has been about getting my Drama Book published and up online, but it has also been about engaging an audience. When I shared the idea for the book with the lovely – and very friendly – people on the Drama Teachers’ Sharing Group on Facebook, I thought four or five would request a review copy. Wow, was I wrong. 500 people eventually asked me for a review copy of the book. This was a very different from publishing my book on novel writing, when I also gave away review copies but it was much harder to reach people. As I said in an earlier post, I had really found my niche, partly by accident, partly through research, partly because I used to be a drama teacher myself and still am occasionally! My niche was BUSY TEACHERS. At least one person told me to stop giving out review copies because I wouldn’t make any money, but I decided to go ahead and do what I had promised: I like to honour my commitments, and also here were the exact people that I set out wanting to help way back in 2002.
But 500 people! How did I manage them all? How did I communicate? How did I get the book to them? This really was starting to feel like yet another big distraction. So was camping (I’m writing this from a distance again, but from the perspective of 11th August, camping is TOMORROW! I’m on a deadline). In a way both things were distractions from my novel. In a way both things were important parts of my life. (Sharing my teaching work, and spending time with my family.) Life in a garret – whatever that would mean – isn’t for me. By the way, if you’re waiting for the moment when you get to spend time in a garret in order to start writing your novel, maybe you should just start writing. But I have almost finished my novel. I needed to restructure it. Imagine me sitting at my desk with Drama Book? Part-time teaching? Camping? Childcare? all above my head in speech bubbles. No restructuring focus time for me, not yet anyway.
That’s it until after the camping trip, which involved two storms, a runaway cow, and madly pulling pegs out of the ground in the rain, but I’ll leave that to your imagination….