Blog hop Q&A: Writing goals 2014

I got tagged by the lovely Tabitha Rayne, who got tagged by the fabulous Oleander Plume, who got tagged by the delectable SL Gonzalez for a little blog hop Q&A about this year's writing goals. So thanks guys and here goes:

If you could achieve anything with your writing in 2014, what would it be?

If we’re in daydream, pie-in-the-sky territory, then actually being able to be a writer full-time would be just lovely, but I have too many financial responsibilities to go chasing a dream like that when there are so few writers actually making a living from it with any kind of long-term security. I know there are those who say if you have such a dream, you should go for it and let nothing hold you back – and I do believe that we are all architects of our own lives and futures. I’m in this for the long haul; right now I have competing priorities, but I need to keep practising my craft and building up a body of work.

What are the top three demons you must slay to achieve your goals in 2014?

1. Needing to eat and sleep.
2. Believing that ‘being a writer’ necessarily involves living in a little stone cottage by the sea.
3. Being at the mercy of the muse/my mood/the weather/my surroundings etc, which combine to mean that I don’t always feel most creative when I actually have time to write.

Name three things that inspire you to write.

1. Walking
2. Sex  (Obviously I mean the wondrous richness of human relationships, the search for The One ­- or Two, or Three etc - the union of kindred spirits, the quest for a yang to your yin and vice versa, yada yada yada. I lie. I actually meant kinky sex.)
3. Publication (or, more precisely, the recognition from publishers and editors that my work is good enough for publication.)

What advice do you have for a new writer who is considering writing fiction?

First, just do it. Because there are thousands, possibly millions of people, who say they want to be writers but never sit down and write. Get on with it. Practise your craft. Try things out. Find your voice. Dare to call yourself a writer, right now rather than in some misty dream of the future.

Second, maintain your integrity. A very small handful of people manage to make a fortune from their writing. And when you’re sitting in your mansion in Beverly Hills surrounded by 10ft electrified fences in grounds patrolled by trained killer zombies you may not care how proud you feel of your work’s quality, your hard graft, originality, creative spark, your book’s sexual politics, its contribution to the sum of human understanding. 

Most of us will be somewhere on a line between earning a couple of hundred quid pocket money a year to just about scraping a viable living. So, to me, it’s important that you at least feel you’re doing something worthwhile, something you believe in, something you can honestly say you’ve done your very best at. (For the record: one, I am naively idealistic, and, two, I believe that exploring and perhaps encouraging sexual pleasure is highly worthwhile.)

And I'm gonna tag two of my fellow Best Bondage Erotica 2014 authors Kay Jaybee and Jacqui Brocker! Tag, you're it (*runs away*).