Another Year Over

 

Well, thank goodness for that – 2021 is officially over. Covid has put so many pressures on everyone and we’re still not out of the woods. In fact, the number of people I know who have contacted the virus recently has spiralled. Thankfully the symptoms don’t seem to be as aggressive as previous strains, but you never know how its going to affect you.

As I suffer from Rheumatoid Arthritis and need to take immune suppressants to control the disease, I have to be very careful about the contact I have with people. So far I’ve been lucky and have managed to steer clear, but now it feels inevitable that at some point everyone of us will test positive. We can only hope that because of the vaccination process, that for the majority, it becomes nothing more serious than a really bad cold.

I’ve always use the period between Christmas and New Year to review my writing goals from the previous January and set new ones for the year ahead, and I try to start the new year fully enthusiastic for my writing life. Usually I manage to achieve all my goals until roughly mid-February, and then I go off on a tangent. Although I only had one short story published last year, I did do a lot of work and I have a couple of big projects which are nearing completion. Hopefully these will bear fruit during 2022.

As ever my goals for losing weight, eating more healthily and exercising more fall by the wayside before the year is very old, but I will set them again for this year and hope that I can put some strategies in place to finally meet them.

During 2021 I fell out of love with short story writing, not because I don’t enjoy writing them anymore, but because I’m struggling to know what to do with them. The short story market has seriously diminished over recent years, especially as some magazines have closed the submission process to writers who haven’t been published by them previously. I’m sure this is because they are inundated with submissions and that shifting through the slush pile it too labour intensive, but it is saddening for those of us who are struggling to get our feet on the rungs of the ladder.

Lockdown has exacerbated the problem and sometimes it has felt as though submitting short stories is like posting them into a black hole. So I was delighted when Yours Fiction accepted one of my stories – The Floods of Change - for publication. And I was even more delighted to see it in print in the November 2021 edition, and even get a strapline on the front cover.

I was also delighted see a new magazine on the market, Seven Days, but disappointed by the news that even in such a short time it has proved not to be viable. It has seriously made me want to take a more direct control of my writing life, and over the last few months I have been doing some research into self-publishing. This is something I will be looking into in greater detail during 2022.

I hope that you are all feeling enthusiastic for your writing life and the beginning of this new year, and most of all that you stay healthy and happy.

Covid and My Work In Progress

Despite still being in lockdown, 2021 seems to be rushing along at a breakneck speed. I can’t believe that this weekend the clocks went forward and the nights are lighter. (Let’s hope the weather continues to improve).  

I’ve been working hard on my writing so far this year and one of my goals was to get one of my long standing works in progress to a stage where I can submit it to agents. But I’ve realised there’s a major snag in my plot – and it’s all thanks to Covid – the gift that keeps on giving.

 

My work is a contemporary novel based around a professional woman who is desperately trying to balance her marriage, being a mother to young children and her career. 

 

My heroine is the breadwinner of the family as her husband has recently become a full-time student to retrain. On her return to work from maternity leave after having her second child, she finds that her lovely boss has been replaced with the boss from hell. He’s a bully and seems intent on pushing her out of her job, something she absolutely cannot allow to happen. 

 

And here’s my dilemma. On her return to work she asks if she can be allowed to work flexibly so that some of her hours can be worked from home. Of course her boss flatly refuses believing that working from home is a euphemism for watching daytime TV. Now that Covid has put paid to that kind of attitude, the premise that she wouldn’t be allowed to work from home is redundant. 

 

So now I’m a bit stumped about what to do to fix this. Covid has changed our way of life so much that the dilemma is how do we reflect this in our writing? Do we set our stories before 2020 at the risk of them being automatically outdated, do we ignore the impact Covid has had on our lives or do we try to imagine a life post Covid where we hope that life will return to something that resembles the life we used to know? Bearing in mind the length of time it takes to get anything published, I’m tempted to move it forward to a life post Covid, keeping it similar to how we used to live but adding in the change in people’s perceptions. In doing this I can only hope that I get it right. Or at least close to it so that a further edit isn’t too onerous. So now another major edit is needed. Thanks Covid.

Its Life Jim But Not As We Know It

First of all, a belated happy New Year to everyone, and let’s hope that it does turn out to be a happier year than the one we’ve just left behind. Although as we’re back in lockdown again, it hasn’t exactly got off to a promising start. 

Don’t get me wrong, this new lockdown is certainly necessary, it just seems such a shame that nine months on, and despite the fact that we now have a vaccine, we don’t seem to be much further forward than we were last March.

 

2020 was a difficult year for all of us and whilst we can hope that things will be very different in the not too distant future, we still have many challenges ahead of us.

 

I’ve never been a fan of the dark winter months at the beginning of the year and usually wish I could hibernate. So trying to see some positives to this awful situation, lockdown is probably the nearest I’ll ever get to that.

 

Since March I have largely been working from home and whilst it took some adjustment at first – especially with a house full of people – I have, just about, got used to it.

 

Since July I had been going into the office one day a week on a rota basis so that everyone’s not in at once and that we can maintain socially distancing. Going to the office is a welcome break from the mundanity of working from home, but the thought of working in the office the whole time seems a very strange concept. I’m sure I’ll adapt though when / if the time comes again.

 

These are certainly scary times where nothing is certain and fear lurks outside our doors. All we can do is try not to fear the uncertainty too much and concentrate on the things that we can control.

 

So, at the start of 2021 I’m concentrating on being grateful for the things I do have – namely my family, a job and a home. I have a certain degree of financial security and in these uncertain times that is something that can only be a blessing.

 

The plan is to use these winter months of hibernation as a means for me to concentrate on my writing. I’ve set my goals, and given myself timescales for each month, and now all I just have to do it stick to it. I’m doing OK so far, I just need to make sure that I keep it up once January is over. Wish me luck!

A Momentous Day

Yesterday was a momentous day as the first COVID vaccines were administered to the elderly of our nation. Once more we need to be thankful for our NHS service which has the capacity not only to deliver these vaccines but also to do so without charge. We have a lot to be thankful for, not least that thanks to research, it has been developed in the first place. At last there looks like might be an end to the uncertainty and never ending fear of COVID even if it’s not until well into next year. 

Across the world people are set to experience one of the loneliest Christmases in living memory. My heart goes out to anyone who lives alone and I am extremely grateful for the fact that my own widowed mother currently lives with my youngest brother so even if we can’t go and see her she will not be alone.

 

I currently live with my husband and two sons so I won’t be alone this Christmas either but celebration with the wider family is definitely looking doubtful at the moment. 

 

I’m very behind on my Christmas preparations this year and am struggling to develop any enthusiasm for the festivities. I’m not particularly fond of online shopping for presents. Unless it’s something specific, I’d rather see before I buy when it comes to presents for other people and prefer the inspiration of an actual shop rather than searching through random websites.

 

So I delayed the majority of my Christmas shopping until after this second lockdown. And then last weekend disaster struck. Towards the end of last week my husband’s foot swelled up for no apparent reason. On Saturday I took him to A&E where he spent most of the day being tested for a blood clot because he has a heart condition. The result was that they thought it was an infection and he was sent home with antibiotics, and because he was told not to put any weight on his foot for at least a week, a Zimmer frame. Four days later and things haven’t improved much and due to his mobility he can’t do very much for himself. He doesn’t feel ill in himself, which is a good thing, but he’s getting very bored and frustrated as he’s used to being active and it’s hard to see him so incapacitated. 

 

As if that wasn’t enough, on Monday my youngest son was sent home from school as he had been in contact with someone who had tested positive for COVID and now has to self-isolate for the next fourteen days. He’s not worried for himself but for me and his dad as we are both in a vulnerable category. So far he has no symptoms but if he does test positive later this week we’re all going to be in isolation over

Christmas. Perhaps this is a first world problem but if I don’t get my finger out and soon, if we do have to go into isolation then Christmas won’t be delivered and as a woman I will feel like I have failed my family. 

 

Fingers crossed he doesn’t develop any symptoms and that we don’t either otherwise it’s going to be a very zoom Christmas. At least we have the internet and a lot to be thankful for. 

 

Hope you all stay happy and healthy during the “festive” period!

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.