Reflections after a year as a… published author?

Like Agatha, though for vastly different reasons, I struggle to call myself an author. However, I have made a little promise to myself. As I embark on this adventure in a new direction, I am determined to do a little reflection at the end of each year. There’s a great deal that goes into this new entrepreneurial authorly life, and I do think there is a reason we're not aware of any of it at the beginning. Having spent the last six months in a somewhat state of overwhelm, if I knew even half, I would most probably never have begun!

If you are reading this, please don’t be alarmed. I do not regret any of it in the least. I am stupendously glad, I love learning and I have so many ideas brimming out of me, I can’t imagine doing anything else. Yet, a new year gives rise to thoughts of how to do things better—so many thoughts that I’ve implemented a new strategy of writing down things on index cards...

So far I have eighty. I know. A little hefty, particularly considering it has taken me a whole week to fully complete one. However, I have just succeeded. Yay! My doodled little flowers in the corner, colourful borders, gold pen, and stickers feel most rewarding; and it is particularly satisfying to mark it as ‘closed’ with a big pink one.

Amazing how a few stickers can make you feel and I must use more of them with my students.

Anyway, the index cards are a system I'm adopting from the Professional Creative podcast, particularly her interview with Lisa Jacobs, author of Your Best Year. In the interview she encourages us to overcome the ‘daily scramble’ by organising tasks into ‘open, closed and new’, and to limit ourselves to three or four per day. After years of violin playing; practising, daily words and similar things requiring discipline have become less challenging, but I invariably procrastinate over others—most recently marketing and communications. Yep, those departments have been on a rather long sabbatical, swanning around the Caribbean with Miss Marple solving murders. They’ve really taken their eye off the ball, and although that may be a clue for those familiar with the story, it’s no excuse.

Fortunately, the other day, I listened to a podcast the other day on intuitive marketing. It was an interview on The Creative Penn podcast with Becca Syme, who has become very popular for her application of Clifton strengths. I must say Joanna Penn’s podcast is a fountain of wisdom, and I’ve learned an extraordinary amount from it. In fact, without her, I wouldn’t have known where to start. I’ve read so many useful books upon her recommendation too, including The Anatomy of Story and The Anatomy of Genre, by John Truby, and if you are into writing, I highly recommend them.

Whoops, I’ve wandered off-topic. Marketing tends to have that effect on me. You see, I’ve often felt icky about it, and after Joanna's interview on intuition, I wondered if there is another way—a means of sharing as a group? I acknowledge I have the propensity to apologise for living and am somewhat of a shrinking violet, but I began to think it’s something worth exploring.

Then, by serendipitous accident, Agatha appeared on the television that evening in Agatha Christie: Lucy Worsley On The Mystery Queen! It was so exciting and inspiring and…

Huh? Oh, no. Don’t worry, I’m not getting distracted again… well, only a little, you see they were talking about The Detection Club.

I had to write it in bold, just so it adopted the voice of authority. You know, the one they alway use in advertisements? And there’s even a picture. See?

Are you as excited as I am? I hope so, but if you aren't, maybe you will be when I tell you it was formed in 1930 G. K. Chesterton, of Father Brown, was their very first president! There was not only Agatha Christie, but Dorothy L. Sayers, Ronald Knox, and many more; and it sounded like a hoot. They formed an oath, wrote round-robin novellas to pay the rent on the premises; holding themselves very accountable to Knox’s commandments… Well, everyone except Agatha. It turns out she was a bit of a rebel.

If that wasn’t astounding enough, I discovered the club still runs nowadays! The novelist, Lynn Truss has actually been there, and says ‘Newly elected members are initiated in the dark, for example. They are obliged to vow never to resort to “divine revelation, coincidence, feminine intuition, mumbo-jumbo, jiggery-pokery, or acts of God.”’

Doesn’t it sound mysterious… and fun? That’s not all…

‘One of the officiating members bears a skull on a cushion (Eric the Skull), its eye sockets illuminated from within by a pair of red light-bulbs, on which the oaths are sworn.’

Erik the Skull sounds very intriguing and incidentally, it's also the title of one of a radio play created in 2020. There was an early one made in 1948 for the BBC Light Programme called Mystery Playhouse presents The Detection Club, and I can’t wait to check them out. It’s also given me ideas for a Violetta radio play too...

Anyway, after feeling rather discombobulated of late, I wondered if detection club might be just the ticket. Perhaps my newsletter could be something like that? The Music Club? Sounds a little boring. Perhaps…Reading between the Ledger Lines? Ooh, that combines both music and literature! We’d also need a mascot like Eric the Skull, an oath and even possibly a set of commandments…

No. Slow down Agatha Bellsy. Although that idea sounds very bright and shiny, it will take some serious mulling over. For now, you must force yourself to concentrate on completing the other seventy-nine things on your flash cards.

Or… you could add it to your newsletter! What a splendiferous suggestion! Thank you Agatha once again.