Proud to be a Writer by Kathryn Brown

I’m proud to be a writer, says Kathryn Brown author of top selling novel, Discovery at Roeshill.

Do you ever revisit work you perhaps drafted or submitted years ago? The other day, I found an old file containing several short stories I had written for a creative writing course. I read through some of them and they were, admittedly, rather amateur and would have needed a considerable amount of editing to be submitted for publication, but it reminded me that we all have to start somewhere. None of us are experts when we first pen a manuscript; it takes years of practice and experience to get to a level where our work will be deemed as even ‘half-decent’, but so many writers assume the fame and fortune and a successful career is bequeathed upon us overnight.

You might be someone who is brilliant at writing articles for magazines or you might be someone who writes a regular column for a newspaper. This doesn’t mean to say you can write a book. It simply means your work has been accepted and that puts you on the first rung of the writer’s ladder. The saying “everyone has a book in them” may well be true; our life’s experience is often extensive enough to warrant a hardback on the shelves of a bookstore, but sitting down to write said book is a different matter entirely.

Many of our authors at Famous Five Plus have written and published several books, some which have been incredibly successful. But the fact is they wrote the books themselves. They thought of the ideas, the content, the characters, the place names. Their love for the creative word is evident on every page. That is an achievement in itself. To then go on to self-publish a book, market it, promote it, stand by its side and hold its hand every step of the way is another achievement. Self publishing isn’t about not being able to find an agent or a traditional publisher; it is about fulfilling a goal and standing by what you believe is a way forward for your work to be appreciated.

I see so many articles and tweets and messages branded around the Internet saying how amazing it is to have been taken on by a traditional publisher, and all the while I think, “It’s pretty amazing to write a book and self-publish it, too.” When I first wrote those short stories for my creative writing course, I was satisfied that I’d done the best I could. But over the years I’ve learned so much about writing, not least that I am proud to call myself an indie-author.

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