One of the challenges any author has to face is the worklife balance between the professional career woman/fiction writer and working from home around a family and life.
The same is true for anyone working from home, of course, but somehow authors do not have the same respect for their time and energy.
Nicola Marsh has been blogging about the busy life of the working mother/romance writer
Kate Hardy's schedule always leaves me breathless and feeling like a lazy slug!
http://katehardy.blogspot.com/
One of the cliches which still comes up, even today, is the image of the glamorous lady novelist reclining in her luxurious lifestyle being waited on hand and foot.
One of the cliches which still comes up, even today, is the image of the glamorous lady novelist reclining in her luxurious lifestyle being waited on hand and foot.
Both men and women have whispered to me, the hallowed names such as Danielle Steele, and in the UK, the lady herself, Dame Barbara Cartland, and then switched to JK Rowling and asked when I am moving to the mansion.
Hey hum.
Two thoughts come to me.
1. This is the dream lifestyle of folks who have never actually written a book - and completed it. All 100, 000 words plus of it.
2. These authors are the masters of personal branding.
Barbara Cartland is as real to many people today as she has ever been. And I am the last person alive who is going to criticise any writer who sold as many books as she did. Why is she always mentioned?
Dame Barbara is celebrated for:
* publishing novel number 723. Yes, 723
* writing an average of 23 books year. in 1994 she held this world record for 21 years
* selling more than ONE BILLION copies by the mid-1990s
* working her career. This is a woman who was giving 400 to 500 radio and TV interviews a year when she was in her 80s, creating her own line of jewellery etc.
* making sure that the TV cameras were there when she launched her own website - on pink computers - in 2000
* creating a brand which has infiltrated the memories and psyche of anyone over 30 in the UK today. well. certainly romance readers over 40.
For example: Little Britain Skit-
Oh, and did you know that Danielle Steele had NINE children at home, and her manic-depressive son committed suicide at age 19? Take a look at this woman's personal life and marvel that she could even get out of bed in the morning without crying.
Maybe things have always been the same after all.
TOTAL RESPECT.
What's playing on my YouTube right now? Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=mEW2aEazNCQ&feature=PlayList&p=9E78A195607312A8&index=2
No comments:
Post a Comment