This post was originally published at Novelicious.com and is now at WritingTipsOasis.com. WritingTipsOasis.com acquired Novelicious.com in June 2022.
Good morning!
Due to a change in the genre that she was writing, our Tuesday columnist Emily Tootsweet found herself no longer able to write a column about chick lit. So thank you SO MUCH to Emily for all of your wonderful columns and best of luck with the crime writing!
For those writerly types who enjoyed reading about the adventures of an aspiring author – we have a new column with a new writer – The Secret Dreamworld of an Aspiring Author by Anna Bell! Welcome Anna, to the Novelicious team!
ABOUT ANNA 
Anna Bell is an aspiring author who can still claim to be in her twenties (just). She daydreams far too much about being a full time writer and living in a tropical paradise with her hubby to be. Until those dreams come true she is a museum curator and lives on the South Coast.
She loves chick lit and when not writing she can usually be found with her head in a book. Her favourite authors include Sophie Kinsella, Freya North, and if she has a good supply of tissues handy, Elizabeth Noble. She also loves a good boogie to cheesy music with her friends, backpacking and strolling beside the sea.
You can listen to Anna’s podcast novel on her website www.annabellwrites.com and follow her on twitter @annabell_writes
I Love Myself, I Want You to Love Me
Not only are those the lyrics of the most amazing Divinyls song, but it is actually the mantra I repeat in my head when I try and do all my non writery book stuff. The stuff I really, really hate doing. The loathsome self promotion.
When I started writing novels I had this delusion that you wrote a book and you got it published. Three months after declaring drunkenly to my fiancé, as we walked past a big publishing house in London that I was going to write a novel, I had a draft of said novel in my hands. I had written it, done a quick edit and I thought I had job done. Yes it was rough around the edges, but surely literary agents would see that sparkle in my work, wouldn’t they?
Well sure enough they didn’t. And I learnt a little bit the hard way what most aspiring authors will tell you. That it doesn’t very often work that way, and the chances of getting an agent and or a publisher are pretty slim.
Which brings me to my lovely mantra, ‘I love myself, I want you to love me’. Luckily, I love, love, love my work. That isn’t rocket science. If I didn’t believe in it and actually think it was half decent then I wouldn’t work my arse off trying to get it published. The hard bit is the second part – getting others to love it.
As a fairly modest person, I don’t often jump up and down and shout about how wonderful I am. I’m not very good at that. I blush at work when I’m given credit for things and I’m always much happier working away behind the scenes.
I’m also a really rubbish networker. The thought of working rooms fills me with dread. Having to be at events balancing wine glass and mini plate, whilst eating a sausage roll and trying to politely interrogate random strangers is all too much for me and I avoid it like the plague. And I get the same thoughts some times about Twitter too. I’m always a bit nervous tweeting people, so most of the time I just sit on the sidelines reading tweets.
Neither characteristic really bode well for me getting people to love me (or at least my work).
But I’ve just got to accept it is as much a part of getting represented or published as sitting there at night banging out chapters of my book.
So I’ve started with a few whimpers of my mantra. I’ve been dipping my toe in the twitter pool, occasionally tweeting about my work. I’ve started reviewing and reading chick lit books. I’m podcasting a novel as I write it. And then of course I’ve started writing this column for Novelicious which I am mega excited about (thanks Kirsty for the utterly fab opportunity).
I don’t think I’m quite shouting from the hills just yet, but I think I’m starting to at least climb them in preparation.