Satya writes: A post from the archives about giving books away for free, after the re-launch of Thaw. 

One of my friends got in touch last week, outraged that I was giving my new novel The Most Beautiful Thing away for free on Kindle on Tuesday and Wednesday. She enjoyed the book so much and thought it was worth so much that she couldn’t bear the idea.

So am I doing it from the kindness of my heart?

No.

Here’s the deal.

1). I am an author, and I want to make money from my books. We need new carpets.

2). I want to be read by as many people as possible. I know that my character Joe has affected people. He’s moved them to happy & sad tears, and then stayed with them long after they’ve closed the book. My book has changed them. This is why I write.

At the moment, I’ve been graced with seventeen five star reviews on Amazon. But nobody is buying my book. Why should they? They’re not seeing it, because it’s not in the charts or in the shops. They don’t know who I am. Why should they part with their hard earned cash, when they have a list of novels by their favourite authors waiting to be bought (never mind the teetering pile on their bedside table)?

Giving-my-book-away is a part of my current book-selling strategy. If enough people download it, it gets into the Amazon charts where more people who don’t know who I am will see it and download it. Some of those people will tell their friends about the book. Some of them will write me a review. Some of them (like last time I made it free) will even get in touch and offer me a donation. People are nice.

Of course, it might not make a big splash at all. But at the very least my book will have a brand new readership, and some of those readers will care about Joe as much as I do. And that’s good enough for me.

Yesterday I had a launch day for me-as-a-writer-called-Satya and-not-Fiona.

I wanted to celebrate this new phase of my writing career and say thank you to everyone and raise my profile and, hopefully, give my novel ‘Thaw’ a chance in the big wide world.

In preparation for the day I’d put in maybe thirty hours of work – coming up with an idea, crafting blog posts and newsletters, messaging people who said they wanted to take part. Not to mention the time Kaspa has spent designing the new covers, formatting the books for paperback and kindle, or the time it takes to write the books…

The day began. A newsletter went out to more than three thousand people, I posted to our more than three thousand Facebook page fans, I emailed many friends. Thaw was only 99p / $1.49 for the day.

By midday, two people had bought Thaw on kindle, and one of those people was my husband.

I felt disappointed, despite feeling ungrateful and spoilt. The day was really about people sharing what gives their life meaning, wasn’t it? Well, it was. But I still wanted to sell more books.

This is a part of my journey as a writer. However much I would like to be un-moved by how many books I sell, I am. Of course there are financial implications to selling or not-selling. But really, the biggest thing that gets hurt isn’t my bank balance but my ego. Good old humongous hungry ego.

This afternoon I’m off to a friend’s house for a Buddhist gathering. We’ll do a little practice and discuss a teaching. Tomorrow we’re hoping to walk around the gardens at the Malvern Spring Show, and maybe buy a plant or two.

It’s good to do these ordinary ego-puncturing things and be an ordinary person again, which of course I am all along, even if someone does make a film of The Most Beautiful Thing and I get to meet Johnny Depp.

And it was a good day. It was wonderful to see what you’d all written (go see some of the pieces here, I’m a bit worried I saved the wrong version so if you’re not there I do apologise, do send me your link again!) And by the end of the day Thaw had charted in the literary fiction charts .I do feel like I’ve done all I can for the book now – it’s on its own…

Funny old life, being a writer. Funny old life, being a human being. Go well today. Enjoy the birdsong.

Once upon a time…

I tell stories for a living. I told the story of Leonard who thought he knew his beloved wife until he found something in her handbag that changed everything. I wrote about Ruth who gave herself three months to decide whether or not to kill herself.

Why do I tell these stories? What drives me to write?

Because my main characters turn up in my head and ask me to tell their story. Because I am deeply in love with language. Because I find things out about myself and about the world as I write. Because I want to be heard.

But for me, the most important thing about writing is that it helps me to uncover the truth, and it helps other people to uncover their own truths.

People read about Violet’s awkwardness in relationships and they recognise parts of themselves. They read about the very worst of Ruth’s depression and they feel less alone in their own darkness. They read Joe’s journey and it helps them to understand their friend’s son, or to acknowledge their own need for acceptance.

When we uncover our own truth, layer by layer, when we can be more honest with ourselves and with others, we are led to a deeper understanding of why things are the way they are. Through truth (when we get past the ‘ouch’) we find compassion for ourselves and for others.

The most important thing about truth is that it leads us towards love. It helps us to love others and to love the world. And it reminds us that we are loveable, just as we are.

…and they lived happily ever after.

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This blog is for ‘What I Live For‘, an online event to celebrate the re-launch of my novels under my new name. Read other people’s contributions here & on Facebook here.

Find out whether Ruth does find enough meaning in her own life & buy her three-month diary for just 99p / $1.49 on kindle today (also available in paperback).

And if you’d like to explore meaning in your own life during May, join me for one of our mindful writing e-courses - Writing Towards Healing, Journalling Our Way Home or how to be idle with a Mindful Moodle -  all starting today.

“I myself am made entirely of flaws, stitched together with good intentions.” ~ Augusten Burroughs

Yesterday on Twitter, someone wrote to tell me: I find your normality very refreshing : )

The phrase stayed with me. At first I wondered if it was because I’m a Buddhist priest. Maybe priests aren’t meant to be normal, and so it’s a surprise that I was enjoying listening to Jarvis Cocker on the radio?

The more I thought about it, the more I saw this tweet as evidence of success at my mission in life.

The characters in my novels are all deeply flawed. Joe is pretty much in the dark when it comes to forming relationships, especially with girls. Ruth‘s flaws are so deep, she doesn’t know if she’s even going to make it.

The characters in my novels are also deeply loved – by me, their creator, as I write about them. And when the books are written. I was flicking through the new version of The Letters last week and it made me cry three times.

Sometimes it is a struggle to love my characters. And sometimes it is a stretch for us to love each other, and parts of ourselves. Our cracks go deep, and if someone prods us in just the right (wrong) place they can see our raw pink insides. This is when we’re mean to each other, because we’re frightened and we are trying to protect ourselves from something unimaginably awful. We also get prodded and prickled by the world, and it makes us eat too much cake or feel murderously jealous or delight in the misfortunes of others.

Tomorrow I am re-launching my career as an author with my new name. I feel a little bit terrified. Will anyone buy my books? I feel audacious. Why would anyone buy my books? I feel hard-done-by. Why haven’t millions of people already bought my books? I am also excited, and humbled by the support I already receive from all of you, and deeply happy to be refreshingly normal. Deep bow.

I think the cracks in the sky accompanying this piece are rather beautiful. Don’t you? Share one or two of your cracks in the comments below. Let’s all be broken together.

Forget your perfect offering. 
There is a crack in everything, 
That’s how the light gets in. 
~Leonard Cohen

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PS if you’d like to explore your own glorious broken-ness during May you can work with me or Kaspa with three e-courses starting tomorrow - Writing Towards Healing or Mindful Moodling with me, or Journal Your Way Home with Kaspa – there are still a few spaces left.

Earth & Sky by Dyrk Wyst

“For there’s more enterprise / In walking naked.” ~ W.B. Yeats

Here I go again.

My four novels all have new covers, to re-launch my writing career with my new name. I feel like I’ve just bought a strange new hat and am wearing it for the first time. I think it suits me, but I could be horribly wrong…

Most of us would rather everyone liked our hats.

We ask our friends what they think and then we pay close attention to their reaction. Are they just being polite? We ask again. We ask some strangers and share a photo of our hat on Facebook. One person pays us a compliment and we get a nice warm glow. Another pulls a face and we put the hat in the back of the cupboard and never wear it again.

This is the trouble with relying on others to validate us and our hats. When we become constrained by this needing-to-be-approved-of, it limits our ability to do our best work. Our best work might alienate the people we’re currently in touch with. It might ask disturbing questions and raise people’s defenses. It might be just ahead of the zeitgeist. 

Gez Smith talks here about how addicted most of us are to these ‘positive strokes’, and yet: “…to do our most interesting and creative work, we need to get away from this need for approval, do something genuinely new, and do it because you believe in it, not because others will approve of it (although it’s nice if they do).”

Some people will like these new covers, and some will much prefer the old ones. That’s okay. Some people will like my books, and some people will hate them. That’s okay.

I love them. I love my characters very much – Ruth, Leonard, Violet & Joe. I love the stories they have to tell, and I have faith in the message they are taking to the world.

I shall wear my strange hat with pride. What about you?

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You can buy the books on kindle now, but we’re officially launching the novels on the 10th of May with a free online event, ‘What I Live For‘. People will be writing or making art about the things that make their lives worth living. If you’d like to join us, read more here or say yes to our Facebook invite and invite your friends.

Shhhh.

This isn’t the official launch of my novels (with my new name and lovely new covers).

This is the secret-ish pre-launch, where I ask people who already know and care about Ruth if they are able to write a couple of sentences about her at Amazon UK or Amazon US, so that when we do the official launch people who don’t know me will be tempted to read her story.

This is part of the plan to get Ruth out to as many people as possible… reviews on Amazon make a very big difference. Unless they’re REALLY terrible, like this one ; )

If you haven’t read it yet and if you get sucked in by this first entry to her diary, you could also buy it before anyone else gets their hands on it and write a review if you feel moved to. I was going to make it free on the day but I’m re-thinking that so watch this space..

Thank you for your support, lovely people. Ruth says thank you too.

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The Aldeburgh Scallop by pcgn7

These hands are ninety-three years old. They belong to Charlotte Marie Bradley Miller. She was so frail that her grand-daughter had to carry her onto the set to take this photo. It’s a close-up. Her emaciated arms emerge from the top corners of the photo and the background is black, maybe velvet, as if we’re being protected from seeing the strings. One wrist rests on the other, and her fingers hang loose, close together, a pair of folded wings. And you can see her insides. The bones of her knuckles bulge out of the skin, which sags like plastic that has melted in the sun and is dripping off her, wrinkling and folding. Her veins look as though they’re stuck to the outside of her hands. They’re a colour that’s difficult to describe: blue, but also silver, green; her blood runs through them, close to the surface. The book says she died shortly after they took this picture. Did she even get to see it? Maybe it was the last beautiful thing she left in the world.

I’m trying to decide whether or not I want to carry on living. I’m giving myself three months of this journal to decide. You might think that sounds melodramatic, but I don’t think I’m alone in wondering whether it’s all worth it. I’ve seen the look in people’s eyes. Stiff suits travelling to work, morning after morning, on the cramped and humid tube. Tarted-up girls and gangs of boys reeking of aftershave, reeling on the pavements on a Friday night, trying to mop up the dreariness of their week with one desperate, fake-happy night. I’ve heard the weary grief in my dad’s voice.

So where do I start with all this? What do you want to know about me? I’m Ruth White, thirty-two years old, going on a hundred. I live alone with no boyfriend and no cat in a tiny flat in central London. In fact, I had a non-relationship with a man at work, Dan, for seven years. I’m sitting in my bedroom-cum-living room right now, looking up every so often at the thin rain slanting across a flat grey sky. I work in a city hospital lab as a microbiologist. My dad is an accountant and lives with his sensible second wife Julie, in a sensible second home. Mother finished dying when I was fourteen, three years after her first diagnosis. What else? What else is there?

Charlotte Marie Bradley Miller. I looked at her hands for twelve minutes. It was odd describing what I was seeing in words. Usually the picture just sits inside my head and I swish it around like tasting wine. I have huge books all over my flat — books you have to take in both hands to lift. I’ve had the photo habit for years. Mother bought me my first book, black and white landscapes by Ansel Adams. When she got really ill, I used to take it to bed with me and look at it for hours, concentrating on the huge trees, the still water, the never-ending skies. I suppose it helped me think about something other than what was happening. I learned to focus on one photo at a time rather than flicking from scene to scene in search of something to hold me. If I concentrate, then everything stands still. Although I use them to escape the world, I also think they bring me closer to it. I’ve still got that book. When I take it out, I handle the pages as though they might flake into dust.

Mother used to write a journal. When I was small, I sat by her bed in the early mornings on a hard chair and looked at her face as her pen spat out sentences in short bursts. I imagined what she might have been writing about — princesses dressed in star-patterned silk, talking horses, adventures with pirates. More likely she was writing about what she was going to cook for dinner and how irritating Dad’s snoring was.

I’ve always wanted to write my own journal, and this is my chance. Maybe my last chance. The idea is that every night for three months, I’ll take one of these heavy sheets of pure white paper, rough under my fingertips, and fill it up on both sides. If my suicide note is nearly a hundred pages long, then no-one can accuse me of not thinking it through. No-one can say, ‘It makes no sense; she was a polite, cheerful girl, had everything to live for,’ before adding that I did keep myself to myself. It’ll all be here. I’m using a silver fountain pen with purple ink. A bit flamboyant for me, I know. I need these idiosyncratic rituals; they hold things in place. Like the way I make tea, squeezing the tea-bag three times, the exact amount of milk, seven stirs. My writing is small and neat; I’m striping the paper. I’m near the bottom of the page now. Only ninety-one more days to go before I’m allowed to make my decision. That’s it for today. It’s begun.

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Available now on kindle on Amazon UK & Amazon US or in paperback on Amazon UK & Amazon US.

Thirty two-year-old scientist Ruth White is looking for a reason to carry on living.

Lonely and stricken by grief, she gives herself three months to decide whether to go on beyond her thirty-third birthday and begins to record her thoughts in her daily diary.

When Ruth meets the eccentric Red, an artist who Ruth commissions to paint her portrait, she feels the faint stirrings of something that has been missing from her life for so long: love.

But can Red thaw Ruth’s frozen heart – and does he want to? While Ruth tries to rebuild relationships with friends and family, the clock is ticking. Can Red save Ruth from herself and make her believe life is worth living – before it’s too late…

Thaw is an intense and thought-provoking read that will appeal to anyone who has ever been touched by the healing power of love. Once again, the bestselling author of The Most Beautiful Thing applies her insight and shows us how, even when there appears to be none, there is always hope.

Here’s the Facebook page for Thaw.

Being a writer makes my life worth living. What do you live for?

Join me for the relaunch of my writing career under my new Buddhist name. Today, Friday the 10th of May, tell me what gets you up in the morning & share some writing or a photo or some art called ‘What I Live For’. You can post your piece on Facebook or on your blog or on Twitter or wherever you like.

My four novels will be re-released today with brand new covers. My novel ‘Thaw’ follows lonely and grief-stricken scientist Ruth as she gives herself three months to decide whether or not to continue living. Over these three months she explores what makes her happy and unhappy, deepens her relationships and seeks meaning. There’s 75% off the kindle version today (99p in UK / $1.49 in US).

Most of us have difficult times like Ruth. But even if we’re happily getting on with things, life has a habit of swooshing past us. I’d like to invite you to you spend some time between now and the 10th of May reflecting on the important stuff in your life. You might want to consider your role as a father, friend or partner. You might want to think about the work you do or the community you live in or your spiritual practice. You might want to practice gratitude, or do a stock-take, or make some new plans. You might want to appreciate the natural world. What do you live for?

Share your thoughts with us. If you’re a blogger you could write a blog. If you’re a painter you could paint a picture. If you’re on Facebook you could post some writing or a photo which represents what you live for. You could tweet something using #WhatILiveFor, or make a fun list of the little things (your first cup of coffee, the sound of birds singing) that make you happy. You could be adventurous and arrange a meal with your friends when you all tell each other about the good stuff in your life, or go on a pilgrimage to somewhere important to you. Keep it simple or go to town. It’s completely up to you.

Feel free to use this introduction to accompany your piece:

- – Today I’m taking part in ‘What I Live For’, an online event organised by author Satya Robyn. People like me all over the world will be sharing what gives their lives meaning. In Satya Robyn’s novel ‘Thaw’, Ruth gives herself three months to decide whether she can find a reason to carry on living. There’s 75% off the kindle version today (99p / $1.49) – read more here: http://www.satyarobyn.com/?page_id=56 - -

There’s a list of people taking part – email me satya@writingourwayhome.com if you’d like me to include you (and your blog if you have one). The list is here.

Do invite your friends along – we have a Facebook invite here (where you can also share your piece) or forward them the link to this blog: http://www.satyarobyn.com/?p=154. I’m looking forward to reading them all!

Today has been a bad day. I woke up to this review of my book ‘Small Kindnesses‘, encouragingly titled ‘I’ve never read a book like this’:

“I am amazed that there are so many good reviews of this book. It is utter drivel, I can’t describe it as anything else. It is highly padded out and extremely clumsily written. Much of it struck me as inappropriate. The main character, Leonard, was selfish, insensitive and really rather repugnant.
It was the worst book I have read in a long time. With all that there is to choose from, I would give this one a wide berth.”

Ouch.

I tried to remember how I can be delighted at bad reviews. I failed.

I tried to get on with my writing. I failed.

I shared it on Facebook and lots of people said lovely things. It still hurt.

Drivel. Clumsily written. Repugnant. Ouch.

Reviews don’t hurt me very often. This one felt mean. This one felt personal. This one made me feel upset for my character, Leonard, who I am inordinately fond of. I know, he’s not a real person. But he kind of is.

And then we found that water has been getting in through our flat roof which needs to be replaced immediately at great expense, and various other disappointing and annoying and upsetting thing happened. You know how life is.

It’s a funny old life, being a writer. Our books goes out into the world like our babies, and then other people tell us exactly what they think about them. They don’t mince their words. They sometimes find our babies extremely clumsily written.

It’s a funny old life, being a human being. We are who we are, and some people love us to death and some people find us the most annoying/self-centred/boring/awful person in the whole of England.

I think it’s okay to feel hurt. Julia Cameron told me it was okay once, in one of her books, and I believed her. We can feel our wound (ouch! ouch!) and give ourselves time to recover.

I think it’s also okay for me to remind myself that none of it means very much anyway. My only task is to write the best books I can write, and to be the best human being I can be (which, trust me, isn’t a very good one. But then I’m in good company.) And to get some quotes for the flat roof. Although I’m blessed with a husband who’s already done that bit.

And just now, as I prepared to write this blog, another brand new review (of my novel The Most Beautiful Thing).

“Amazing book – 2nd read. The characters are so real from the outset. I’ve laughed and cried as the story unfurls – this is a must read book.”

We don’t have to let go, we simply have to not hold on. ~ Joseph Goldstein

Thank you for listening. And now, I shall try & persuade my husband to come out with me and eat cake. (Cake is very good for review-wounds. You should try it.) I’m not holding on any more.

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‘Another slice of black forest cake’ by 3liz4

For 38 years, I have been Fiona.

I started life as Fiona Julia Robyn Hall. When I started writing poetry in my early twenties there was already a published poet called Fiona Hall, and so I chose Fiona Robyn as a pen-name. Then I got married, and became Fiona Thompson.

Then I got ordained as a Buddhist priest, and was given the first name Satyavani (which means truth and eloquent communication).

It was all very complicated, being different people in different areas of my life. And so a few weeks ago I decided to join all the different parts up and become one person.

Satyavani Fiona Robyn. Satya Robyn.

After many years of writing and working hard at flogging my books, I’ve been lucky enough to do rather well with my most recent novel, The Most Beautiful Thing. And, with my next novel, I will be starting again from scratch. I’ll be writing with a new name, and unless Amazon is cleverer than I think it won’t link my new book up with my old ones.

This is probably a bad commercial decision. My changing-my-name-by-deed-poll has also been unpopular with some of the people I love. And yet, sorry as I am for any upset I have caused, I have decided to go ahead and do it anyway, because it is important. It’s important because of the central place Buddhism has in my life. It’s important because I want to be open and authentic, and I don’t want to section off parts of me from other parts. It’s important because I am a slightly different person to the one I was a year ago, and this person is called Satya.

“…I want to add just one more bit of advice: to keep growing, silently and earnestly, through your whole development; you couldn’t disturb it any more violently than by looking outside and waiting for outside answers to questions that only your innermost feeling, in your quietest hour, can perhaps answer.” ~ Rainer Maria Rilke

I am prone to ‘looking outside and waiting for answers’ – I think that most of us are. But I want to keep growing. Changing my name was the decision I needed to make in order to grow. I wonder what will be next?

What decisions do you need to make which might be unpopular with your friends or family, or might lead to less money or power or people-liking-you? Can you make them anyway? Share them in the comments if you’re brave enough…

And if you’d like to grow with the company of me or Kaspa, take one of our e-courses next month (starting Friday) – Finding Your Way Home or Writing and Spiritual Practice, or a Creative Intensive for anyone wanting 1:1 support and to get their creative work done.