15 YEARS OF STORYTELLING AND SELF-PUBLISHING
Although I’d spent the best part of four decades working as a copywriter and agency owner in the ad industry, moving into the self-publishing arena, when I relocated to Perth at the end of 2010, proved to be a real eye-opener and a complete game changer.
I guess I’ve always loved telling stories. Being able to sit down with someone and have them open up to me, telling me all about their life, warts and all, gives me so much satisfaction. Being able to listen and absorb what is told to me is a skill that I have honed as a result of sitting down and taking briefs for advertising campaigns for so long.
Listening is a skill that is very much underrated. Being able to take what you’ve been told and then turn it into an effective advertising campaign is both an art form and a talent that takes many years to hone and refine. It’s also very much a team effort that involves like-minded creative people delivering a targeted message to a specific audience.
Luckily, I soon discovered that storytelling and publishing require and employ a similar process. I firmly believe that every one of us has a story in them just waiting to be told. The skill, that I have been able to develop over the past 15 years, is getting that story down on paper and then finding the best way to tell it to the right audience.
Sounds simple when you put it that way but finding the ‘seed’ of the story and then crafting the words around it, is where the experience and expertise kicks in. When I was creating TV or radio campaigns for clients, the most effective way I found of communicating the relevant message to my audience was to tell them a story – a short one, admittedly (when you only have 30 or 60 seconds to tell it) – but still, a story in its own right. And the more compelling, logical and convincing that story is, the better it will be received by that audience.
There are so many different ways to tell and present a story – from first person to third narrative, flashback and chronological – that, to the uninitiated, it might seem a difficult conundrum deciding which approach is best. But experience and instinct seems to always lead me to right approach.
The first book I ever wrote was a 50-year history for what was then, Air Pacific, Fiji’s International airline. I worked with Air Pacific for many years, handling their advertising and producing their annual reports, so I knew the company inside out. Funnily enough, when I was approached to research, write and publish it, I eagerly accepted it, even though I’d never written or published a book before. I think I knew, instinctively, that it was something I could take on and do well.
It was a milestone event in my life and even though it was published in 2000, and I wouldn’t put my toe in the water as an independent author, until a decade later, it was my litmus test. It took a year, but the airline was delighted with the result, as was I, as I’d proved to myself that I could work my way through the process and deliver a finished product.
Looking back at ’50 Years Flying the Pacific’ now, I cringe over a couple of ‘rookie errors’ but I’m still incredibly proud of what my team and I produced all those years ago. Now, almost a quarter of a century later, with my 20th book published in December of 2024, I pinch myself when I realise that I have been able to achieve what many of my fellow writers strive for but don’t always reach.
I think back to my 18-year old self, racked with self-doubt about my ability to make it as a writer and reflect on the roller coast ride that my writing career has taken. My one regret, I wish that I’d had the self-confidence and guts to bite the bullet and pursue a career as a published author way back when I first ventured into the industry.
But, fortune favours the brave, and I have to admit I wasn’t that brave all those years ago, preferring the safety of a secure salary. The benefit of hindsight can be a beautiful thing, but sitting here now, writing this article, if I’m being true to myself, I might not have made it if Id taken the plunge back in the 70s and that might have put an end to my writing career there and then.
Instead, I served what I’d like to call, a ‘forty-year advertising apprenticeship’ before finding my true calling. While I’m now in what for most people my age would be considered the ‘twilight of my career’, I don’t think I can ever see myself stepping away from what I do. As long as my mind is still clear and I can still sit down, take a brief and turn it into a story, I plan to keep doing what I do. Storytelling has always been in my blood and always will be. If you are reading this, I’d love to have the opportunity to tell your story.