a tentative step…

…towards sharing my world. I filmed a short vlog yesterday, and whittled about 40 minutes of footage down to about the 5 minutes you see in the final video. I only have my phone, which is a few years old now, but I wanted to record a bit of a day-in-the-life.

I have really enjoyed Blogtober, and being able to write as much as I like and share photos of what I’m doing. I often feel that the pursuit of art, especially as a business, is not well-portrayed, and naturally we only show our finished work, or a curated view of works in progress. Running a business of any description requires a lot of dedication and belief in oneself and one’s product, with the added piquancy that rejection of our work can feel deeply personal, even if it’s nothing of the sort.

Take this:

Thanks for your message and the information about your books, which do look very lovely. 

We have a very small shop with a tightly-curated selection (and no storage space so very reliant on daily deliveries rather than bulk orders!) and in general I’m afraid that we are unable to stock self-published books. However, we do look at every email from authors/illustrators whether self-published or not. I can see that your booklets are very beautifully produced. I simply don’t think that we can stock them right now as we don’t have the right way to display them but if things change I will get in touch.

Of course, this is a kind and considerate message – to be honest, I’m always pleasantly surprised when someone takes so much time and trouble to explain, and I really appreciate them doing so; the norm is that there’s no reply. I think being able to write effectively is so important, and part of the reason why I counted blogging as work: it hones my skills and obliges me to think about how to communicate a message, which is vital in marketing anything, but especially when marketing ourselves.

So here is a short vlog about my day: