Thursday 29 January 2015

Random writing

I was talking to the person that I refer to as my marketing director earlier and she suggested just writing randomly. She said just start writing and see where it takes you. She reckons it'll get the juices flowing and form a habit if I do it every day. I know she'd right about the habit forming so I'll give the other thing a go sometime.

What I did

I decided to send a couple of queries. One was to a magazine that I have never worked with before and I have to email them an idea and the other was to a magazine that I have  worked with in the past but the editor has changed. The new editor does write lovely emails though. I have to work on something specific and send it to her.
Something to focus on at last.

Thanks for listening.

This could well turn into a bit of a waffle but I'm feeling the need to purge my thoughts.
Remember I started the year off so well? Two submissions and work on the project that I've told my marketing director (JW) that I'll have finished by mid April, well its kind of stalled since then. In fcat, its probably more of a stop than a stall apart from that children's story I worked on last week.
You see, I get filled with self doubts. Am I good enough? Is what I write good enough? Is there a point to it? you know the sort of thing - so I haven't written mainly due to the last question I mentioned. But then I tell myself that unless I write and submit how will I ever know the answers to any of those questions?
And then there's the question of what I write. I have notebooks  full of things that I have written with the pink pen that need to be typed up, edited etc so what do I write first? Do I try a short story or one of the article ideas that I have? Maybe I should just concentrate of the project with JW but then what happens to the rest? My writing time is very limited  due to the day job and the fact that  I do actually want to spend some time with my family so how do I use it best?
I have a couple of hours today because I'm home because of the snow (every cloud etc) so I'm going to use it. But how?
No more questions - I'm just going to go and do something - other than procrastnate that is.
Thanks for listening.

Sunday 25 January 2015

Advice remembered

Many many years ago, I wrote a children's story which while it wasn't taken up by anyone a lovely person at Bodley Head wrote to me telling me what was wrong with it and giving me a bit of advice. I've not really "written" for children since, I mean I made stories up for my children but it was generally done as I was going along and not written down. I started to think about the original story for children recently and thought that I would give it another go. I remembered what the agent said and hopefully done it right this time.
It's not quite finished yet but not far off.

Sunday 11 January 2015

Not my fault.

So I may have got off to a flying start but this week I got a stitch and have been walking. I've done a bit of editing but not much more. I could tell you that it's because I've had a cold but that wouldn't be true. Well it is true I have a cold but it's not stopped me going to work so it wouldn't have stopped me writing either.
No my only excuse is Game of Thrones.
Never watched it before and just said that it wasn't my cup of tea. Husband and sons both all watch it though and so I thought what the hec I'll give it a go, I won't like it. WRONG!!!!
I downloaded the first series which I was able to watch t my leisure only to find out that by the time I'd finished that the other two series were no longer available. Lucky for me Number One Son came to the rescue with the box sets. I only have series 2 at the minute, he's going to get series 3 back off his mate and buy series 4 when it comes out in February. However I feel obliged to watch them as quickly as possible (nothing to do with how much I am enjoying them) so I have spent much of my hour and a bit writing time a day watching those. Poor excuse i know but the only one I've got.

Thursday 1 January 2015

Off and Running

So far I've blogged twice (if you include this one), made two submissions and worked on a project that I've told my Marketing Director (aka as my dear friend JW) that I'll have finished by mid April. And its not even lunch time yet.
However when I've been looking at what's out there already I see that Norah has a couple of things that were sent to her at he end of September and I just wondered what the turn around time was like at the moment. Is there still hope? Like I say its been a while since I did this seriously so I'm a bit of a novice, well I always was but even more so now.

Not a resoloution

This is not a New Years resolution - I gave up making those a long tome ago but in 2015 I do intend to be a better blogger. First of all apologies to those of you that left comments to previous posts because I've not been here for ages and have only just read them.
I'm not going to go over the past two years but I'm sure you'll all appreciate that writing - be it stories, articles or even this blog have not been top of my agenda. Now that I have got my life back and got Christmas out of the way, I hope to change that.
I'm making no promises but that is my intention.
happy New Year everyone
x