This week I return , after Free January, to putting my material behind a paywall. I do hope you will continue to support me and the Boot Camp writing community by making a small investment of less than £1 a week. I keep reading about people on Subtack who are making a fortune. I am definitely not one of them, partly because my social media skills and presence is very poor. Time and again I think of giving up these posts, but I keep going in the hope that the level of support will rise - and to be honest, it has stayed almost completely flat for months now. All in all, it pays me about the same as my state pension, and it takes me quite a lot of time and effort. It seems only fair that work - and it is work, as much as I enjoy it - should receive some recompense. For those who cannot afford it, I will continue to put up free posts from time to time, but in the meantime I shall keep the costs as low as Substack allows and hope you can encourage me by making a small investment. Thank you.
I sometimes think I am something of a hypocrite. On the one hand, I make a living teaching people how to write. On the other, I’m not sure you can teach anyone how to write - or at least write a novel. A quick Google search will reveal literally thousands of tips on how to write fiction. Each of these tips, in their own way, might be useful and good advice. The trouble is, taken together, they can easily overwhelm a writer. They produce the illusion that with enough teaching, a novel can emerge. This isn’t the case. As I have observed before, a novel is grown, not made. It comes from some place deep inside, that takes a simply idea and complicates it until the book turns into an exploration of a theme, powerful enough to examine at book length.
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to Tim Lott's Writing Boot Camp to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.