Shelf of Dreams

Several years ago, when my first book was no more than a twinkle in my biro’s nib, I attended a workshop on becoming a professional writer.

It was a day long workshop in central London and crammed full of useful advice for would-be writers such as, ‘don’t worry, rejection isn’t personal’ and ‘Catch 22 was turned down by 2,457 publishers before it was eventually accepted.’

My favourite moment of the day came when the workshop leader asked us to close our eyes and picture what writing success would mean to us. She suggested picturing book signings, television interviews or our names at the top of the Times Bestsellers. I pictured a bookshelf full of books, I assumed all written by me.

Now I bet you’re thinking, I know what happened next, she went home and built a bookshelf just like Kevin Costner built a baseball pitch in Field of Dreams whilst whispering enigmatically, ‘If I build it they will come.’

Not quite.

However, a couple of years later I did purchase a very nice self assemble set of pine shelves from Argos. And I did put it together myself.  Although I didn’t whisper, ‘If I self-assemble it, they will come.’ It was more like, ‘Oh bollocks, where the hell is screw A?’

Anyway, I made the shelves.

And I wrote some books.

And, just as I had pictured in my visualisation of years earlier, the shelf began to fill with books bearing my name – some of them even in German!

But then something strange happened. Something I hadn’t forseen in my visualisation.

My marriage broke up and I became a single parent.

And my writing career suffered a bit of a setback.

So I decided to set up a small coaching business called Finding the Plot in order to put everything I had learnt to good use and help other writers and hopefully provide my family with some financial security.

One of the more recent services I offer at Finding the Plot is editing. Last year I edited many novels by other writers. And this year they all seem to be being published.

One by one, copies of these books have been sent to me by their authors to say thank you for the small part I played in helping get them into print. And one by one these books are joining my own on my Argos shelf of dreams.

It never occured to me back when I was starting out that some of the books I visualised on that shelf would have been by other writers. But I am so, so pleased that they are.