14th March, 2024 - well that was a waste of time

I've given up on the copywriting thing.

It took me taking a break from chasing freelance clients whilst I moved house to realise that I really could not be bothered to start up again. And that led to a deeper conversation with my partner where he essentially told me the hard truth that he'd known me for 10 years and in those 10 years I have constantly been saying "I need to make money elsewhere to support my writing," but maybe that excuse has run its course.

We've got our mortgage, we're making money, we're in a safe position for me to not worry about chasing extra income. Which means, I have no excuse to not focus on writing. A strange feeling. It makes me realise how many obstacles I've been putting in my own way to hold back the inevitable time when I have to spend time doing the thing I claim I wish I had more time to do. Well, it's here. I have the time.

I've decided to take on a more methodical approach to writing this time around. I've got a list of topics and I've gathered resources for each of those. I'm then going to follow this structure that I found on reddit which encourages you to think of each topic as if you were on a university course. I'm going to spend time writing with each topic as a focus as well as looking for close readings that illustrate that topic and writing mini-essays on places where this technique is used well/not so well. Whilst doing that I'll try and share work online to open it up to criticism. This seems a much better way of improving as before I'd always struggled to judge my progress.

Let's see how this goes. Time to put the work in.

9th November, 2023 - back to the journal

As with anything in life, it's important to maintain some sense of balance. A lot of my mental energy is going into pushing the freelance copywriter stuff now so I need to remember to take time for the other parts of my creative life I enjoy.

Reading is usually the first thing to go, but I zipped through Denis Johnson's 'Train Dream' yesterday and it felt wonderful to be back in the throws of a good story. The daily journal is making a slow comeback with recordings of the trivial, everyday and more consequential. And eventually, I want to get back to my creative journal with writing exercises. That always felt like a nice safe space to just play and experiment with words, stories and ideas. With some kind of routine in place for driving the freelance work forward, it will do me good to slowly get back to my books and journals. Balance.

October 31st, 2023 - not that scary really

I tend to question and go back and forth on absolutely everything I do. You only need to read a few posts from this writer's diary to discover that.

I've recently made some adjustments to my site (this site) so that it includes both my creative writing and endeavours in copywriting. I've renewed my efforts to pursue some freelance copywriting work - getting back to my marketing roots. I've gone back and forth a few times now on whether having them under one URL of scottrobertswriter is correct but I have a gut feeling it might be.

I tried having a separate scottrobertsdigital site before and it felt a little off. At some point in the future (something I've been realising more and more) I'm going to have to reconcile the various interests in my life into some sort of cohesion. Having copy and creative in one place definitely feels like a step in that direction.

Both aspects of writing allow me to touch on various interests in my life, with writing being the connecting factor.

Right now I'm trying to build up some experience and a bit of a network for my copy work. Feels like an uphill battle at times but will keep at it. In the meantime, I've been trying to make a conscious effort to spend more time reading - though as I type that I realise I've been neglecting it of late (blame it on the darkening days and skewed sense of time) but I will get back on that. This time of year I always find myself yearning for non-fiction above fiction.