5 Facts About Joey As An Author

5 FACTS ABOUT JOEY AS AN AUTHOR

Last week I talked about five facts about my ideas process (found here) and this week will be the last of these for a bit where I'm gonna talk about five facts about me as an author. A few things to get out of the way if you're new to the blog, I'm Joey Paul, and I'm an indie author of almost twenty books, and I've been writing since I was nineteen, over twenty years now! I write young adult, across a variety of genres from paranormal/mystery to crime to urban fantasy to dystopian and some others I'm missing along the way. Now that's done, let's jump into the facts.

FACT #1: I DON'T HANDWRITE MUCH OF ANYTHING
I used to be someone who would handwrite their chapters and then type them up, editing as I went. This was the case all the way up to my fifth book, Lynne & Hope, and I think it was during that, when the writing got too painful that I stopped doing it. I still edit as I go, but I don't handwrite pretty much anything to do with writing, except my autograph and such in signed books. I have Fibromyalgia and it's made it way too painful to handwrite and grip a pen for any length of time, so I find it easier to get the writing done on a keyboard and go from there.

FACT #2: I'M VERY MUCH A PLANNER OF MY TIME, AND NOT MUCH ELSE
People will talk about how organised I am, and while I will agree with that, it generally only applies to time management things. I don't plan my writing much, and I don't plan pretty much anything else in my life. I use a planner because it works for me, and allows me to stay on target and productive. When you have deadlines, it's a good idea to work out how you're going to get those done, and planning has been a long process to get to the point where I am now.

Outside of planning my time, I'm pretty much someone who takes things as they come. Because of my health, I know that schedules and such get knocked out all the time. Like I know that sometimes I'll plan to do this and that on a certain day, but poor health will stop me from managing it, and because of that, I've learned to be pretty flexible, even when it comes to plans for writing and the like.

FACT #3: I DIDN'T GROW UP WANTING TO BE AN AUTHOR
Or at least it wasn't a concious thing. I did write stories and books through my teen years, and I did ponder the plans to maybe one day be published, but my dream growing up was to be a doctor, and I planned my classes at school and college to reflect that. Of course my health got in the way and that was blown out of the water, and so I turned to writing. It was something, as I said, that I'd played around with, and here was the chance to actually do something with it. I wrote with the plan to get published, but that didn't happen until 2005 and even then it wasn't a good publisher, so I turned to self-pub/indie in 2011 and haven't looked back since.

FACT #4: I FEEL LIKE I COULD WRITE ANYWHERE
I know that it was a thing pre-pandemic, that writers would go to coffee shops and the like, and write there. For a long time I didn't do that because of access issues, but now, even with the pandemic still going on, I do feel like I could set up and write pretty much anywhere. I've always got a lot of hospital visits and appointments, and while I don't always write at these because of space and ill health, I have found that I can write, and do pretty well, while in hospital. It's something to pass the time with, and I'm usually quite able to shut out the noise around me and just focus on getting the words on the page.

FACT #5: WRITING IS MY IDENTITY
I know that for some people, making their job a part of their core personality, is a bad idea, but for me, writing is, and I think always will be, a big part of who I am. I tell stories because otherwise I don't know how to deal with things. I will work things out in small pieces of fiction. I will have themes of my own life going through the plot. I don't write self-inserts and such, but I do have a lot of me in my characters, depending on what they're going through and where I was during that period of my life. Writing is very much a way I cope, and how I process things, and I think that's okay.

So there we go, five facts about me as an author! I do plan to do more of these five facts, but for the time being, this is the last one. I hope you've enjoyed learning more about my process and how I deal with writing and editing and all that goes with that.

Any questions? Lemme know in the comments!

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