Time to Plan!
This is a rather belated post bearing in mind that it is already February but it’s all about my writing hopes for the year ahead.
I can honestly
say that although last year was a busy year for me, it wasn’t productive
writing-wise. My short stories consistently failed to hit the right spot and I
lost my focus. On the plus side I did complete a freelance journalism
correspondence course I had signed onto the previous year, through Writing
Magazine. I’ve always been interested in
history and love the research but have never had the confidence before to write
non-fiction for publication, but now, thanks to the course, and particularly Michelle
Higgs, I have the confidence to do that.
Not only that, but I have a number of articles ready to be edited and
sent out. So, one of my hopes this year is
to start to generate sales in non-fiction magazines.
The news just
before Christmas that from now on Take A Break would only be accepting submissions
from a list of approved authors was a blow to the UK womag market. Although I’ve sent a number of short stories
to Take A Break, I never quite got it right so naturally I wasn’t on that
list. And whilst I never might have hit
the right note, it was something I had hoped for and was another market for my
short stories. I know some of my fellow
writers who had had several stories published in the magazine in 2016 weren’t
on the list and were disappointed by that.
I completely understand the magazine’s reasoning for doing what they
have done. They are running a business
and it must take a considerable amount of time and effort to deal with the unsolicited
submissions. However, now I fear this
will increase the burden on the remaining UK magazines who still accept
unsolicited stories and wonder if they will, in the future, chose a similar
option.
Some of my
friends had significant success last year with the overseas womag market, so
whilst I will continue to write and submit over here, I’m also going to do some
research and see if I can start submitting aboard.
But what I
really felt at the beginning of the year was that I needed to get my writing
mojo back. I dug out a first draft of a
novel I have been working on for a while now and re-joined the Romantic
Novelist’s New Writers’ scheme. Now I
have deadline of August to whip my novel into shape.
All in all it
looks like I’ve set myself a lot of goals this year to fit in between a busy
work and family life. How am I going to
do this? Well, I have a plan which I’ll
tell you about in my next post.
