Kathryn Anna Writes Bespoke - A new adventure

On keeping going and finding new ways to work with words

Sunday saw me take Kathryn Anna Writes Bespoke out into the big wide world. I loved every moment of the wedding fair at the Hundred House hotel – having people read my work (and even shed a tear!), admire the prints and generally fall in love with the idea of a poem being written for them made my heart sing.

Starting your own business is fun. Tough, terrifying, exhausting,fun. I feel like all my skills in talking to customers (thanks to years of selling specs), learning how to write and use SEO (thanks to years of writing content for anything and everything) have joined up with my greatest love to create an opportunity that’s too good to miss.

Photo by Riccardo Annandale on Unsplash

When I began writing poems for family and friends I was amazed that people were interested. They were, and they loved them, but you know there’s always that nag that perhaps people are just being kind. Changes to the content writing landscape early last year (AI I’m looking at you) meant I had to make a decision. Either pursue content writing as a fully fledged career or find another way to use my words to make a (modest) living.

Content writing is an art. It demands understanding of SEO, understanding of marketing and a supreme desire to work within the consumer-driven world. After a couple of months exploring courses and tips from marketing gurus I realised that this was not where I wanted to be – and was probably not a world where I would thrive. I’ve never been a natural business person, and never really enjoyed the conventional corporate world. Shoehorning myself back there felt like a step backwards, a betrayal of all I’d learned about myself and what matters to me.

What else to do? There is precious little money to be made from poetry, even for the uber-poets who grace the airwaves and are part of the national psyche. The main ways to gather an income are by running workshops, winning competitions and simply selling poems.

I love the idea of running workshops and delivered two successfully – training skills kicked back in and I genuinely enjoyed them. The challenge as a person with M.E. is sustainability. To give a good workshop I need to be at the top of my mental and physical fitness – something that is unpredictable and often lets me down at the last minute. I had to go back to the drawing board.

On the back of my successful exhibition with Maggie Cameron last year, I decided to make cards. The cute little flower poems were pretty, appealing and ideal for spring and summer birthdays. Or so I thought. Sales were poor, Etsy fees took over half my revenue and to be honest the poems felt like they were written by someone else.

Where to go? Dare I try to sell my poems to strangers? To ask them to trust me to write something for a big birthday or even a wedding. I can rarely resist a challenge and so Kathryn Anna Writes Bespoke was born

.

I struggled a lot with the poem style at first. The work needed to be accessible enough for people to enjoy, but good enough that I felt happy to put my name to it.  I toyed with using a pen name, but felt that meant I was writing work that I wasn’t proud of. People deserve better than that.

My moment of clarity came during a conversation with a dear friend who simply said “you’re writing for people who aren’t necessarily that interested in the academics of poetry, the just want something that sounds nice and means something to them”. A perfect description and that’s what I do. I get to know my clients, build a relationship. and write something that they love. I always say that I write to connect with people, and honestly there are few better connections than getting a letter saying how much my words have meant on such an important occasion.

So here I am, on the threshold of a new year. Who knows what it will bring for both my commercial and literary work. I’m proud that I keep trying, I’m proud I’ve reached out for support and I’m proud that I’m following what I love, however difficult it may be. I’m proud that I can say this. And yes I still hear the warning whisper “pride before a fall” but I’m not so far from the ground that it would hurt.

Thank you for reading – please do share my new venture far and wide – it’s one of the main ways to support me.

Until next time

Kathryn

xx