Life Is Like A Butterfly

The past few years have been very up and down for me and what with bereavement and ill health, mostly it’s been more down than up. 

At the beginning of this year I really felt that the dawn of a new decade was going to be a fresh start. Well, COVID certainly put paid to that for me as well as the rest of the world.

 

It’s strange to think how the world has changed this year – who would have thought back in January that wearing face masks would become the norm?

 

In many ways life for me hasn’t stopped since COVID. I’ve worked all the way through it and at first working from home was a bit of a transition – especially with everyone in the house at the same time.

 

But you have to try and look on the bright side and the lack of a social life has certainly benefitted my writing and I’ve tried to carve out a little bit of time each day (even if its not much) to write.

 

I’m a bit of a butterfly in my writing, flitting from one project to another, so this year I decided to change my tactics and focus on one project at a time. 

 

You may recall that in February 2018 I suffered from an unexpected brain haemorrhage and ended up having surgery at The Walton Centre in Liverpool. I’m so grateful to the staff for saving my life, and I think that during this crisis the NHS staff have certainly been recognised for the fantastic job they do.

 

But it did take me a long time to recover and for a while I had to put my writing on hold. The whole experience was completely out of my comfort zone and I decided that I would write a memoir about it. I’ve always kept a journal so on days when I couldn’t manage anything more creative at least I had an outlet and it also helped to keep me sane.

 

So when NaNoWriMo came around last year I decided to go for it and by the end of the month I had completed a very rough first draft.

 

This year I’ve spent a lot of time editing it and managed to get to the point where I was ready to submit it to an agent. Unfortunately, when the first agent came back to me she told me that it wasn’t right for her. But on the plus side, she did say that it was well written so that gave me something to hope for.

 

I dusted myself off and have since sent my manuscript out to five more agents. How I selected them is another story and now while I’m waiting for them to get back tome, I’m carrying on polishing the rest, just in case I get asked to submit a full manuscript. I’m also thinking about my next project.

 

Wish me luck.

Hooray!

This week I finally sent of my first novel, Balancing The Scales to an agent!

Its been a long time in coming.  The original spark came when my boys were small (I did say it was a long time) and after dropping them off at nursery I would arrive at my full time job feeling as though I had already done a day's work.

From there I fleshed out the characters, gave my main character some obstacles, and then threw a few more at her for good measure.

I joined a correspondence course with Writing Magazine and my lovely tutor, Sue Johnson, guided me through the first few chapters and eventually I completed the first draft.  Then I edited, once twice and several times more for good measure.

After receiving a critique from the Romantic Novelist's Association New Writer's scheme, I redrafted again and sent to my writer's group. And yes, you guessed it, edited it again (who said writing was easy).

Now my novel is as good as I think I can get it - for now at least.  So I researched likely agents, wrote my letter, synopsis and CV and finally sent it winging on its way.

So now I'm keeping my fingers crossed. I doubt that my first arrow with hit the target but you never now, and its certainly got more chance out there in the big bad world than languishing on my hard drive.  And in the meantime I've got plenty more projects to be getting on with.

Here's a blurb:

To the outside world Alison Williams has it all: a successful career; handsome husband; two adorable children and a large house in a leafy suburban village just outside Manchester. But Ali is a woman on the edge, trying to hold everything together and failing miserably. When her husband, Rob, chucked in his job and become a student, he also abdicated all his other responsibilities. Now, no matter how much she tries, Ali just can’t get through to him.

If her home life isn’t complicated enough, Ali has the boss from hell who is trying to push her out. When Graham refuses to let her bid on a project which would be good for her career, she goes over his head and sets off a potentially devastating chain of events.

Ali begins to wonder if things can possibly get any worse. And then, one day, they do.  Somehow Ali has to dodge the obstacles that life seems to be throwing her and learn how to balance the scales of her life.  

Fingers crossed!

Catch Up

I can't believe that its already the middle of July and I haven't managed to post a single blog this month.

I just don't know where the time goes these days and its not because I've been writing. Working, yes, but not writing.

I am, though, trying to slot in the odd few minutes of editing whenever I get a chance. I'm currently working my way through a novel I sent to the RNA New Writers Scheme two years ago, but its a long, slow process.

Its the novel that I have done the most work on and its been in the pipeline for more years than I care to think about, but even so it has still  needed a lot of editing this time around.  My writing group have been looking at it too and giving me some valuable feedback (as ever) so I'm pleased about that.  So far they are enjoying it and say that they are disappointed that they can't read on when they get to the end of each section.  (Can't be all bad then).  I'm hoping to send them the final installment soon, so I'm keen to hear what they think of the finished story.  

Then its back to the drawing board and reworking the first three chapters so I can knock it into shape to send out to agents.  I'm looking forward to having it in a format that I feel happy enough to send out, but no doubt will have to steel myself to receive the inevitable rejections.

Still, nothing ventured, nothing gained as they say, and at least it will feel like I've achieved something, even if it does come bouncing right back to me.

Hope you are all being a little bit more productive than I am this summer.  

Linda