Welcome to my little corner of the internet, I hope you stay awhile. I will be slowly building up my presence – if you like what I’ve started, feel free to reach out? Although I’m an introvert, I really want to meet like-minded people.
My name is Ainsley Caine, I’m a new writer and in the middle of drafting my first novel. It is a romantic suspense story based on a dream I had a number of years ago. I’ve tried to write this a few times and haven’t ever succeeded, either I’ve been too busy, or I’ve overthought the premise… You may relate?
I’m now blessed to have the opportunity to be full-time creative. I left my long-term gig in Government early December 2019. It was an incredibly tumultuous time for me not only because it was the end of a big chapter in my working life – but because also because I lost my beautiful Dad during this period. He was my rock, my biggest fan, my mentor in life, and my world pretty much disintegrated. If you’ve lost anyone close you’ll know what I’m trying to say.
My beloved husband still toils full-time in a job that definitely keeps him busy and I consider myself lucky that he is fully supportive of my writing and illustration goals. He is also a creative person and is brilliant with landscape photography.
Once I started to come out of the haze of December/January, I used my days to research the craft of writing and produced some art pieces. I added some illustrations to various online shops to bring in some additional income, it’s slow, but it’s also a good diversion for me.
I LOVE learning and have become a bit of a course addict, with full memberships to Skillshare, Masterclass, and others including; the Self Publishing Formula (Mark Dawson), Publish, and Thrive (Sarra Cannon) and Creativindie (Derek Murphy). All these forums bring different perspectives and I keep going back to each for ongoing inspiration and support.
In the corporate world, I was in product/service delivery and used the agile style of working to reach objectives. I liked the mix of adaptability and structure agile affords and the way hands-on management could keep the work-flow moving. Planning helps keep me focussed on the task at hand, I have always been easily distracted, so the addition of agile tools helps me to ‘age quod agis‘ or, to ‘do what you are doing’ and focus on the task at hand. For someone who was not allowed to sit near a window during class, using agile and other organizational methods, keeps me on task with my daily/weekly and monthly planning.
With the use of a Kanban board, planners, and sprints (also advocated by Sarra Cannon), I use some of the mechanisms which supported my way of working in the corporate world. I have found they can also prove useful in a home-based work environment.
As I write this the COVID-19 workplace is in happening, and my home-based office is being used to full advantage. You see, I’m a bit of an introvert (Myers Briggs personality is only 4% of the population) and it suits me better than most to be working from home.
Hope you enjoy my site, reach out to contact me (I’m better on paper/screen). I’m genuinely happy to discuss most things, especially art and writing-related subjects!
