Delayed Gratification is on hold…

Dear Fans… and subscribers (the 28 of you)

It’s been a productive week in the world of book writing and the finish line (if there is one), is feeling closer. 

To be honest, I’ve kept the book writing to myself for the last couple of years. For a few reasons. 

The number one reason was down to trying to perform delayed gratification. I’ve threatened to write a book, comedy, and scripts in the past and as soon as I got started people would be very complimentary. I found that this was not helping and I’d soon just ‘get the likes’ and that was enough. 

I think it’s important to carry out delayed gratification when setting any goals, but this past two weeks it has been slightly different. I’m so close to the finish line, but just need some extra support to help me stumble over it. After keeping my book to myself for so long, it is now in the hands of new readers and it’s very encouraging to see the feedback I’m getting. 

I’ve taken a bit of a gamble with this book. I’ve put any other life goals on hold until this is finished and to the best standard, I can deliver. I work at sporting events such as the Olympic Games and Commonwealth Games. After each event, people are always interested, in which event you’ll go to next (mainly so they know if they should keep in contact or not). Each time we finish a contract, and someone asks me I always reply with ‘I want to write a book and then go into TV’. 

So, this time round I am not doing anything until this book is complete. I’ve had to move back in with my mum (again). I sometimes pick up a couple of shifts in a friend’s coffee shop to get some pocket money. Although mainly I just focus on book writing every day. If that’s not sitting at the desk writing and editing then I am building my social media pages, designing front cover ideas, branding and marketing, and trying to build up my network.

Whilst working at the Birmingham 2022 Commonwealth Games I probably didn’t read a page of my book for about four months. I kind of needed this break away from it, because when I returned to it in August I thought ‘Yeah this is fucking powerful. This is great.’ I am my own biggest critic, so I know I am proud of this work. 

I know people think it’s an odd decision to try and change careers at my age, but for once in my life, I feel like I have a special talent for something. That’s writing, and telling funny stories that are also thought-provoking.

I shared the book with my sister about four weeks ago now as I needed someone else to believe in this project. She read the entire book in six hours. All thirty chapters and sixty-thousand words. She said it was a real page-turner and she couldn’t put it down. As fantastic as that was to hear I did kind of feel like ‘it’s taken me three years to write this and you read it in six hours.’ 

The book is now in the hands of five other readers all with differing knowledge of me and the story as well as their relationships with cancer. The feedback so far has been so helpful and amazing. 

I am still waiting on eight agents to get back to me on my applications, but I’m also working in the background to self-publish in March time. 

I am excited to share it with you all in 2023.

This week my good friend Dean Record who set up yougotthisaf.com has now also purchased www.afmarseh.com and www.afmarseh.co.uk. I am fully professional now. Just need the headshot photos to be taken. 

Thank you for reading and have a great week. 

If you could be so kind to share my page with friends and family and get them to subscribe to my email list that would be fantastic. 

You can also comment on this blog post below. 

What do you think would be a good number of book sales to target myself with? 

Af Marseh  

P.s oh and tomorrow is my cancerversary of being 6 years all clear from cancer. Even though I am writing about it every day I’d totally forgot about it. Only to be reminded by my Facebook memories. So I am taking that as a positive that for the first time it is not consuming my mind. It was a race to get to 5 years all clear as that was the remission dates I was given. Happy days.