Writing to reach you

It’s often said that everyone has a novel inside of them. Not everyone however, actually decides to take the plunge and write it. So if you’re one of the many aspiring writers ready to take a leap into the dark and put pen to paper what can you expect? What exactly does the life of an author entail?

If you’re looking to break free from petty office politics and the humdrum of nine to five then the lifestyle of an author may sound ideal to say the least. But along with freedom and creativity comes hard work, commitment and a test of your self-motivation. With no demanding boss and no slightly irritating office colleagues to earmark your time, you define the office hours, and with time in your hands it takes a lot of self-discipline to succeed, as children’s author Joe Craig found out.

After graduating with a degree in philosophy and initially getting into the music business, the stories in Joe’s head demanded to be heard and his writing career took over. Here he tells us more about the discipline and ambition that helped him turn his pipe dream into a career.

‘I never thought that my first proper career would be as an author and certainly not a children’s author. But I had this story idea in my head for ‘Jimmy Coates: Killer’ and I thought if I don’t write this down I’m going to go completely nuts. So I sent the first two chapters and synopsis to an agent who specialised in children’s books, with the simple question should I carry on writing or should I stick to music? She said she would represent me and she gave me pointers for working on the rest of the book.

‘There isn’t really a typical day, and that’s one of the things that I love about it. One of the things that keeps me motivated is the fact that each day is completely different and has new challenges. My immediate task now is to sit down and write the next book and it has come to the crunch time where I write 2,000 words a day.

‘I motivate myself by using psychological tricks that I can’t believe actually work. I write down my daily and weekly word counts and set myself targets. My days are a combination of being obsessed with the number of words I have written and little maxims like ‘What would you do if you knew you couldn’t fail?’ going around my head to make sure I keep writing.

‘The challenge is to sit down every day and get through the volume of work I have to do to meet my target. I have to put serious boundaries around writing time to give myself the best chance of getting the next book written and making it good.

‘At the moment I am feeling the tension between the best writing time being in the evening and this being the only time when anybody wants to socialise. So for two or three months of the year I basically can’t go out and see anybody because I know that if I do I am using two or three hours of my best writing time.

‘One of the things that I think motivates me is being very ambitious and planned in how I see the future going. My immediate future is that I need to get the fourth Jimmy Coates book written by February, which is when the third one ‘Jimmy Coates: Revenge’ comes out. Then I would like to start another children’s book series.

‘It has always been my aim to achieve some success in many different areas. There are a few TV products that I am developing and I want to get a picture book written. Perhaps further down I will write an adult novel. It is using what I made as a base and moving to bigger and better and more exciting things.’

Further information:

• Writers' and Artists' Yearbook