hello

I'm trying to be a better blogger but the truth is that I have absoloutely nothing of interest to tell you so I won't bother. I have been thinking about you though and just wanted to say hello.
Hello

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.

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.

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.

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

A quick update

Just a quickie because its very late and its been one hec of a day but I have to tell you.
I got a call yesterday fro the hospital asking me to go in for a blood test today and as a result of those which showed continued improvement they took my neck line out. The doctor says he can't say how long it will last but he reckons it will be years. He can't be more specific because recovery after this length of time is unusual so he doesn't really have anything to go on.
I am blessed.

Re-birth

I don't quite know how to say this so I'm just going to spit it out.
To cut a very long story short it appears that my kidneys are waking up . I haven't had dialysis for 10 days and after a blood test today I was told that I am off dialysis (for now but fingers crossed for long term) and to come back for another blood test in 2 weeks time. I thought it might be weekly blood tests so that ion itself is a bit of a result.
I feel like I have been re-born.
Happy day.

Every.....

...Ellen needs a George.

Do you want....

.... to meet Ellen and George?

Time frame.

As I said in my last real post on here I'm getting me head down and working on BTL because there is something about it that I can't give up on but the thing is I know that I can't give up everything for this one project. I've spent a long tome on it as it is and I have other things that are a WIP and maybe one of those is "the one." So with that in mind I think I am going to give myself 6 months to get it right and maybe another 3-6 months to find a taker for it. If nothing comes of it then maybe its time to print a copy for myself and call it a day.

Not a sign of madness.

The latest info on my other journey can be found here. Please feel free to have a look because they say talking to yourself is the first sign of madness.

Work in progress

I'm trying to get my head down and re-write BTL now that I've found the right voice for my MC. It's proving quite a task, involving a lot of changes but I'm determined to do it but need to accept that it could take a while.
I've said before that there is something about this book that means that I can't give up on it and I'm sure that I can't be the only one that has felt this way about something that they've written. Can I? Please tell me I'm not.

Flying the nest

There will be a couple of short stories winging their way to a certain magazine in the morning. They are two that I wrote recently with the old pink pen and there are several more where they came from. They are still sitting in a note book though so they won't be going anywhere just yet.
I've also finally found the right voice for the main character of my book BTL. I just can't seem to give up on it no matter how I have tried to walk away from it.
Not much of a post I know but there's not been much happening.

A question.

As most of you know I have been out of the short story game for a while but flushed with my recent success (I do realise it was just one download but its a start) over at Alfie Dog Fiction I'm looking to submit some of the stuff that I've been working on recently.

So my question is, is it still okay to submit more than one story to the same place at the same time. I have a couple of stories that I hope Norah might be interested in.

At last

I have several stories on Alfie Dog Fiction and finally one was downloaded. Now I know that its not a lot to get excited about but it made me smile. The story that was downloaded was called last Supper and is a story that would never be published by the usual outlets so I'm really chuffed that someone chose to read it. I just hope that they enjoyed it.

Another one

I wrote another thought about my kidney journey and you can read it here.. I mention it only because I don't want to be talking to myself. That sort of thing is madness.

On a different note one of my short stories was downloaded of t'internet. I know its not much to write home about but its been a while since I had any success and it put a smile on my face. I also mentioned that fact on Facebook, something that I haven't done before because most of my friends don't know that I dabble with writing. Don't know what made me announce it today.

I don't know how well this will work but I have decided to blog about what's happening re my kidney problems. It's not properly set up yet but I have written my first post and its here.