Something Had to Change

What was it that made me realise it was time to re-evaluate my life and career? Was it any of the following?

Driving 2,500 miles a month, on average.
Five RTAs in seven years, including one vehicle write-off.
Being a regular guest at several hotels in the Holiday Inn brand.
Escalating blood pressure.
Inability to attend Parish Council meetings due to work.

Probably a combination of all if the above. As a pagan, I would celebrate the Spring and Autumn Equinox, with a promise to seek balance in my life. It wasn’t happening, not in the last seven years. And for what? What did I gain? I had a good salary, which is generally seen as a mark of success. I had a decent car on the driveway. I was able to support my son through university. We had three family holidays a year. But …

I was tired. I was physically and mentally exhausted. My blood pressure was dangerously high, and my diabetes was out of control.

It would take a day at least to relax into being on holiday. My ‘hobby’ of writing urban fantasy became more of an outlet to pour emotions I couldn’t voice for fear of appearing weak. As I mentioned, five RTAs, albeit all but one were rear-impacts where I was the victim. The one involving a vehicle write-off? That was due to being tired, having to drive two hours to reach a destination by 0800, as my employers were cutting back on hotel stays as it affected the profit margin. Trust me, I would not have been on the road at 0550 through choice.

I accumulated a lot of Holiday Inn Reward points such that I was a Platinum member of their loyalty scheme. I was a regular guest at the Holiday Inn Scotch Corner such that the barman knew my favourite dinner order, but in seven years, I never had the energy to use their rather decent looking swimming pool. The same could be said for several other hotels. I would eat my dinner and maybe work on my current novel, but I would be too tired to exercise, even though it was essential if I wanted to stay healthy.

I have always been keen to represent my village, such that I served as a Parish Councillor on two occasions. I had to resign the second time, as I found it impossible to attend meetings. That was despite having a note in my diary of the dates. But work meant that I might be away from home.

The crux came in early 2018, when the risk of redundancy became real. I had known from 2017 and before that it was a risk. There was a crossover between my sales territory and that of three of my colleagues. An attempt had been made to ‘encourage’ me to leave, such that when the notice was given, I had decided that I would hold out for the best package that I could squeeze.

So, there I was. Redundant at the age of fifty. My severance package meant that I had enough to support my family for six to eight months. Surely I would find another job in that time, I did also sign in for benefits, only to discover that thirty years of working without interruption, the last ten of which were as a 40% tax payer, entitled me to £34 per week as Jobseeker’s Allowance, for which I had to trek into the Job Centre every fortnight to ‘sign on’.

But, I realised something. My heart wasn’t into finding another job in the medical sales industry. So, I used the time to examine my options. Could we live on a lower salary? Medical sales was described to me as the job with the golden handcuffs. I also helped my parents as they were downsizing. So many things accumulated and to what end? There was the health issue. I had a recent scare over throat cancer.

My religious path has demonstrated to me that much in my life happens for a reason. Even the bouts of anxiety and depression, given the support I have received from true friends. That was where I put my trust. It was well-placed. On one of the dreaded group sessions at the Job Centre, we were introduced to Darren, who was looking for people for The Works store in Cambridge. He could only offer a four-hour per week contract, but he reckoned that it would be more than that. I had nothing to lose in talking to him.

After a twenty minute discussion, he asked me to submit a CV online as that was their system. I did, but received a rejection. A month later, we were told he would be in on the next day. I decided to ask him why, after our positive discussion, I had been rejected, particularly if he was still recruiting. It transpired that he did still want to see me, the four-hour contract turned into eight-hours, and could I attend an interview at the store the next day. Another competency interview and bearing in mind this was my first job, at the age of 51, in retail, I left the store with a start date of 17 September.

I discovered that Darren had felt that I was capable of much more and had submitted my details to Gail, the Area Manager, with the potential for a store manager role. To cut a long story short, I was interviewed by Gail and offered the role of Manager of the Newmarket store.

So, there you have it. After much consideration, I have decided that the stress and anxiety of working in medical sales was not worth the salary. Yes, I earn less, but the difference in tax allowances mean that I have a net salary not far short of my previous job. More importantly, even those issues my colleagues view as stressful are nothing. Twenty years in medical sales did teach me transferable skills,

Now I go home each night. I eat with my family. My dogs know who I am. My diabetes is under control and my blood pressure in improving. All because I dared to take a risk.

Come 1 December, after three weeks of training, I shall take over as Store Manager of the Newmarket branch of The Works.

So why is this important to me as a writer? Time. I have time to write again, time to research. Time to enjoy writing, rather than seeing it as an escape from stress only. This whole things taught me an important lesson. I used those first months after being made redundant to write. Over seven years, my writing and characters had matured, so I took the opportunity to revaluate where my series was bound. The pleasure in writing was restored. Work life balance is essential. It is not a nicety.

RELEVANT LINKS FOR JO PILSWORTH
https://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/JKPilsworth

Paranormal may not be your thing. Urban fantasy may not either. But who knows? I may be one of your friends new favourite author.

Inspired by #Legends an #UrbanFantasy series.

Alpha: https://t.co/IRZLR92AFu
Beta: https://t.co/DGDDI03VB9
Merysekhmet (US link): https://t.co/fFOUm5MHUs
Toho: https://t.co/oKtbDgrqiH https://t.co/mGMuJWd6Xd
Medved: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07C19QKPH

AMAZON LINKS

Alpha (US link): https://t.co/IRZLR92AFu
Beta: https://t.co/DGDDI03VB9
Merysekhmet (US link): https://t.co/fFOUm5MHUs
Toho: (US link): https://t.co/oKtbDgrqiH https://t.co/mGMuJWd6Xd
Medved: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07C19QKPH

Tag! You’re it!

The other morning, I was looking through categories. One of the topics of recent discussion on the Interwebs has been how some individuals have manipulated systems like the Kindle Unlimited way of recording how many pages have been read in order to pay the author their share of the KU pot of money.

There are some quite unscrupulous people out there, and inevitably, it is the ones who play by the rules who suffer.

‘Stuffing a book’:

This is a process whereby the content of the book is inflated. One of my personal issues is when you buy a print book, and find that a large font has been used, making a moderate word count seem more. This seems to be a tactic to inflate the price of said print book. In terms of e-books, ‘stuffing’ means that overly large line spacing has been used, or several ‘free’ books have been added, generally work that has been published on a website or similar. This can mean that a supposed 350 page book has 800-1000 pages. Yes, apparently that has been the level of ‘stuffing’.

This process hurts honest authors because, if someone reviews ‘stuffed’ titles regularly, they are deemed to be in cahoots with the cheating author. So ALL their reviews are cancelled on Amazon, even if they are innocent of wrong-doing. This means in turn that an honest indie author who relies on each hard-earned review suddenly finds that they have lost a couple or more reviews. Even if the reviewer was innocent, they are unable to post new reviews.

So, it is not just a financial cheat, but it has a knock-on effect to others.

Keywords

Another interesting one, and it doesn’t just apply to books. A friend of mine sells handmade polymer clay on Etsy. The descriptions used by Carly’s Creative Clay may seem strange, but it is done that way so that her items can be found in product searches. Similarly, the descriptions used in the Little Thoughts Store are similar.

It is no different with books. I read a very interesting book recently, where this process was explained. For example, someone looking for a book like mine might type in ‘shifter romance series’, which might give more than a few returns. The trick is to think like your potential reader. What words will they use to find their preferred genre. These strings of words are what one uses when listing a book on Amazon or Smashwords. A keyword is not a single word. That is the important thing. Consider what a potential reader will look for. The flipside is quite simple. In what category do you list your book? Some categories have fewer books that others. Paranormal romance is a huge category. ‘Military paranormal romance’ is slightly smaller. ‘Urban fantasy military shifters computers’ is even smaller. Pick a small category and hey presto! Sell a hundred books or so and you are a best-seller in that category. So now, you can can add ‘Bestselling Author’ to your accomplishments.

Beware padding. keywords are also used when looking for a job. I have been looking at admin/secretarial type jobs recently. After all, that was my original training, and I have the transferable skills. But, and it is significant, my last twenty years have been working in sales. Many companies scan CVs for keywords, so just as you would try to work out what a reader might type in the search bar, consider what a potential employer might look for. If you want to convince them of transferable skills, use the right keywords and tags to demonstrate office skills. It may sound stereotypical, but that is the world in which we live and try to work.

RELEVANT LINKS FOR JO PILSWORTH
https://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/JKPilsworth

Paranormal may not be your thing. Urban fantasy may not either. But who knows? I may be one of your friends new favourite author.
Inspired by #Legends an #UrbanFantasy series.

AMAZON LINKS

Planning Serves a Purpose

Coming from a sales background, I am sure you will have heard some variation of the maxim “Piss poor planning results in piss poor performance”. I have had that one thrown at me from the time I started in my sales career, well before I acquired nearly 20 years experience in pharmaceutical and medical equipment sales.

As an author, I have heard a variation. Authors are described either as “Pantsers” or “Planners”. Planners is obvious in terms of meaning. The story is planned out, sometimes in more detail that the actual word-count of the finished book. I have several friends who write fantasy. For them, the planning process is essential: world building, religions, language, weaponry etc. For others, such detail holds back the flow of their writing. They are the “Pantsers” of the world, the writers who ‘fly by the seat of their pants’. I would have said that, until now, my style of writing was definitely “Pantser”. Perhaps that was as a result of my online role-play background, where part of the fun was the spur of the moment writing. You would never know what your partner would write, and would have to write something to maintain the flow of the story.

Given that this blog series is about “Life After Redundancy”, and more specifically, maintaining employment-relevant skills, planning is a key part. Fail to plan, and you won’t achieve in sales. Whilst I am working, it is something that I would do without really thinking about the process. Now that I have time to think, it is proving an interesting exercise.

So, I have ‘nothing’ to do all day. Right? Err … nope, as anyone stay-at-home parent will tell you. That’s where the planning comes into play. When I visited the Stationery Show in London, I looked at some of the planners on offer. One in particular caught my eye: the Ponderlily Planner:

36466984_10156700642562269_6595566635476582400_n — Ponderlily Dated Planner: Month overview

Why did I like this system? Simply because thought had gone into its design. The To Do list was extended, but not too much to make it a rolling list. The weekly view also has just the right amount of space. However, what made this one different was that it also had a substantial undated, ruled section. How many people take both a diary and a notebook to a meeting? The intention was to avoid taking the notebook,

36511086_10156700642577269_5027534196659191808_n — Ponderlilly Planner: Weekly View

and just have one relevant book. One book and less chance, in theory, of losing sight of the goals.

Then we have exhibit #2. I have to admit that prior to researching this topic, I had not heard of the American brand, Happy Planner. Their planners comes in several formats, but simply put, you have Big (about A4 sized), Classic (around A5 organiser size) and Mini (about the size of a personal Filofax).

To me, it seems that this is a crossover-type planner. The Happy Planners and other similar brands, are designed to be used with sticker kits. In medical equipment parlance, the planner is the equipment and the sticker sets are the consumables. It is easy to say where the company intends to make its money. I use the Big as a ‘family planner’ The sticker decoration changes each month and each week. I do this so that the weeks don’t merge into one timeless event. This set comes from an Etsy shop run by Mac&Gray. The Classic may be one I will use when I return to work, but it is far from certain. The picture at the top of this post illustrates a sticker set from the Crafty Planning Shop. The Mini HP is my ‘handbag’ planner.

Now, it might be suggested that I could just create a Google calendar for this, but as I pointed out to my son, his father doesn’t use one of those. Visual works best for both of us.

This is an example of my weekly spread in my Mini Happy Planner, using a mixture of write-on stickers for specific events and stickers for various tasks or reminders. This particular set comes from Little Thoughts Store store on Etsy.

One of the issues I had when working was that the work/life balance went out of the window. I am a ‘visual’ kind of person, so having these sorts of reminders works for me, in terms of planning out what sort of tasks need to be done. There is still space for appointments to be noted as you can see on the left-hand side, so neither the routine nor ‘special’ tasks are forgotten. The relevance to work is that when it comes to finding time to block out for my writing, editing and research, I know what else needs to be done.

Piss poor planning leads to piss poor performance. Remember?

By remembering to plan, I am maintaining a very vital skill for the workplace. It is also encouraging me to maintain the discipline.

One final note is how planning in my writing is also having a positive effect. When I started writing, I had quite a simple story. Now, three years down the line from my online role-play days, the stories are a lot more complex. The most recently published book featured a storyline that involved Special Forces and computer hacking. If I didn’t do some research and make copious notes, I might lose the continuity.

36498332_10156700642097269_4017581037960822784_n — Mini Happy Planner with a monthly spread

Planning. We may not like it, but it is important. Just remember, to paraphrase Mercedes Lackey, the only thing to come out of glorious plans are glorious funerals. Plan, yes. But, don’t plan to the point that you are unable to change and adapt those plans when circumstances change.

RELEVANT LINKS FOR JO PILSWORTH
https://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/JKPilsworth

Paranormal may not be your thing. Urban fantasy may not either. But who knows? I may be one of your friends new favourite author.
Inspired by #Legends an #UrbanFantasy series. #RBBC

AMAZON LINKS