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.

Submit, Submit, Submit

No not in a 50 shades kind of way, I'm talking here about short story submissions.

Last year I only had two short story submissions accepted but when I reviewed my submissions at the end of the year, I found out that I had only submitted ten throughout the year.  

Don't get me wrong, this wasn't the full extent of my writing during the year, but it did bring home the fact that you really have got to be in it to win it.

Rather than setting a target based on number of submissions throughout the year, in January I decided that I was going to aim to have at least ten short stories under consideration at any one time.  

By the end of March I only actually had four under submission, so I decided that I wanted to submit another three during April and three more during May so that by the end of this month I would have achieved my aim.  Obviously this is with the hope of building on this to exceed my target by the end of the year.

By the middle of April I had only submitted one story and then the following week I received one back so it was time to get moving.  

To be honest, I haven't written much new so far, but I have been trawling through my laptop and found some I had written earlier!  Some I've been editing, some I've completely re-written.

By Thursday though I still hadn't submitted, so I started on a period of intense editing and by yesterday afternoon I had hit my target!

Feeling quite pleased with myself as today I have edited another story which I plan to send to a competition.

Maybe finally I'm getting into the swing of things!

Hope your weekend is going just a well as despite the weather!

Targets!

I had a busy week last week, revising and resubmitting short stories.  This was in an effort not to let January be entirely wasted from a writing point of view.

You see, I’ve set myself a target to submit four stories each month and coming into the last week of the month, I was set to fail miserably.  During the month I had only subbed one story, and that had been rejected, along with two others. This left me with only one story out there and that’s been out for a while so is probably a no.

To be honest it sent me into a panic.  If I’m not sending stuff out then there really is no hope.

So last week I rejigged my latest rejection and sent it out elsewhere, and revised two other stories which have been rejected before, but which I am hoping are a case of me not finding the right home for them yet.

So technically I achieved my aim last month, even if what I sent out wasn’t new.

I did manage to write one story which is still in its first draft, and I will be working on that this month along with others, but it’s a pretty poor show.

In my defence, January was a difficult month, settling into my new job.  Apart from a new routine, it’s been mentally challenging so the last thing I’ve felt able to do when I come home is to either write or edit.

This month, I aim to send out four stories again – hopefully sending out stories more quickly than they are rejected, so I can build up my submissions.  Some of them this month might even be new material.

Motto for February – must do better!