Well didn’t the last six weeks just whizz past?
After attending Bloody Scotland in September, I was utterly enthused about the writing, and have been over busy ever since.
Met some great people up in Stirling and will definately be going again next year, I even managed to get a publisher to agree to read my latest book. I sent her ‘Locked Up’, and she came back saying that “I enjoyed reading this. It’s well written and engaging, and you write very convincingly about the prison setting and structure.” Unfortunately she didn’t take the book, because she didn’t think it had the mass appeal that she and every other publisher are looking for. Which might have made me feel dreadful, if she hadn’t actually been so gracious with the compliments above. So the manuscript is with another publisher and I still have my fingers crossed for that, but I’m also planning for a crowd funding project to see if I can get the book published independently if the traditional route gets closed off to me.
Had to spend the swap over between September and October doing a week’s intensive course for work; that was tough – though I am now a register PRINCE2® practitioner.
However, as intense as that was, I still managed to write the second instalment of the Locked Trilogy, which I finished the first draft of on 19th October, only 59 days after starting it, I’m quite proud of that. I wrote it long hand, and boy did it ever make my hand ache, so I have no idea how many words it is, I just have to type it up.
Still I’m happy with the story, of course it needs a lot of revision, but it’s a first draft and it did what I wanted it to do, so I have to consider that a success.
Also in October the writers club had Meg Kingston in to give a talk, on crowd funding at it happens, have to say that this was one of my favourite talks this year, yes, because I’m interested in the topic, but also because she was a lovely woman and a really good speaker. Very inspirational.
On the success front, I also have two short stories being published in a World War One anthology. ‘Unforgotten’ is a collection of short stories and poems to be launched on 24 November at Swansea Library. The two stories take quite difference paths, both are about soldiers from the war, but one finds his worth, the other losses his. Not the most cheery stuff ever, but hopefully the readers will at least feel something.
Well NaNoWriMo starts tomorrow, interestingly last year’s NaNo is when I wrote the first draft of ‘Locked Up’. I’ve been vacillating between what story to write for this November, that’s included writing the third part of the Locked Trilogy, and a couple of other stories. I thought I had decided to write a romance story, and I mentioned this to my husband, who then came up with this really brilliant idea for an unusually switch around. In fact it’s so unusual that I need to really think about how to achieve it, but that rather throws the whole story line up in the air, and I’m unsure what to write now, so tomorrow in front of the empty Word file might be interesting. Just have to wait and see what ends up on the page.
The Write Route 