Writers’ Bottom and Sumo Arms

The delightful Jane Wenham-Jones kicked off her Sunday Extra session “Wannabe a writer we’ve heard of?” by wondering quite how one could be expected to follow the likes of Joanna Trollope. She needn’t have worried. Irreverent, relaxed and entertaining, Jane lead a wonderfully informative discussion that proved to be the perfect wind-down to two-and-a-half days of non-stop, fever-pitch excitement (that’s how it felt for this first-timer anyway).

Billed as offering “hot tips and networking tricks for those on the publicity trail” the session covered such diverse topics as facebooking, radio phone-ins and flirting shamelessly with old Rotarians as a way of demonstrating that every possible opportunity should be embraced and that no beginning should be considered too small.

By way of example, Jane suggested arranging to give a talk at your local library. If even ten people show up, that’s still ten people who might well go away and tell another ten people, who in turn might mention it to another ten… and who knows, that word-of-mouth might eventually reach the ears of the one person could change your life. 

She also stressed that, in these highly competitive times, no link is too tenuous to be worked. Is something going on in the news that relates to a subject/theme in your book? Then get in on the discussion. From having your say in the local radio phone-in (with casual mention of your name and book title) to pitching hot-topic related ideas to the national press, never be backward in coming forward. As Jane so rightly observed – there’s an awful lot of airtime and column inches out there needing to be filled each and every day. The trick to nabbing a portion for yourself is to keep things relevant: “Author writes book”, whilst madly (and very rightly) exciting to you, is not an angle.

There was so much inspirational, invaluable advice on offer that I couldn’t begin to encompass it all here, but the following three points sum up the essence of the session for me:
  • Always position your arms slightly away from your body when being photographed at your book-signing table to avoid Sumo Arm syndrome (try it out in front of the mirror to see how much more toned they look when not squashed flat against your body!).
  • Don’t wait for opportunities to come to you. Go out and ask. After all, what’s the worst that can happen? You’ll get a no thanks.  “Rejection is hard,” Jane rationalised, “but not terminal.”
  • Getting yourself up and out there on the publicity trail not only increases your public profile, it also decreases the size of the dreaded Writers’ Bottom likely to have snuck up on you over the long months of slaving over your keyboard.

It’s mostly thanks to Jane’s excellent and accessible Wannabe a Writer? (Accent Press) that I’ve got as far as I have, and come October, I’ll be making sure I’m first in the queue for Wannabe a Writer We’ve Heard Of??

Written by Jo Eustace