Goals!

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.

Happy Leap Year

With all my thoughts of improving productivity I was delighted to read an article in February’s Writing Magazine which just about summed up everything I’ve been trying to achieve recently.

But what I hadn’t thought about until I read the article was Leap Year.  Although I had registered somewhere at the back of my mind that this year we had an extra day, the implication of that hadn’t sunk in.

We’ve been given an extra day!  A day we wouldn’t normally have.  A gift to all us writers out there.  When I read it I thought knowing my luck it will fall on a working day, but it’s not, its a Monday.  And although I’ve arranged to meet an old friend for lunch, I’m determined to make the most of my gift for the rest of the day.

Happy Leap Year everyone.

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!

Track Record

I've been toying with the idea of submitting some articles to magazines recently.

 

I have some articles in mind and some publications, but so far I've put off actually doing anything about them because, quite honestly, I'm scared.

 

I know that sounds silly, I have no qualms sending my stories off to magazines, even before I had any published, but with articles it is somehow more daunting.

 

Catching up with December's Writing Magazine, I read what I thought was a brilliant step by step guide to submitting articles, but the thing that made me quiver, was the bit about telling the editor what articles you've had published before.

 

I've had a few fillers and recipes published but I don't think that would make an editor choose me over a more experienced writer, neither am I expert on the subjects I would like to write about (local and family history) but I am very keen on these subjects.  Would my passion be enough?

 

It's daft really, my fear of failure has become a self-fulfilling prophecy.

 

How do you get that first article published?  Any ideas?

November Madness

Today is the first day of NaNoWriMo, so good luck to all you scribes out there who are aiming to get 50,000 words under your belt this month.

Sadly, this year, I feel that I have too many unfinished pieces of work to start on a fresh one, so I’ve decided not to take part.    But November would feel slightly empty without some sort of a challenge. Right?

So I was delighted to read the article “Ten inspiring ideas to try instead of NaNoWriMo” on pages 12 & 13 of the November issue of Writing Magazine, and it set my little brain buzzing.

And, in light of my very poor number of blog posts in October, I’ve decided to issue myself the challenge of posting each day in November.   It seemed like a good ideal at the time, but I’m beginning to wonder if I'm not just a little bit insane.  Now it does feel like it’s the first day of November.

I’m sure some posts will be very short and some will probably be complete rubbish, so please bear with me.

One down, only 29 to go!

Happy November everyone.

Where Did November Go?

It’s been a while since my last blog and the reason is National Novel Writing Month. I had meant to blog on my progress stage by stage but even though I completed the required 50,000 words last year, I did not anticipate how much time it would take me to complete the challenge.

And completed it I have, I'm glad to say. This year I was a little more organised and plotted out some of the story during October, got to know my characters and did some research.

This included reading some novels in my genre – chick lit (which was such a hardship – not!) and reading these two books which were invaluable. Together they really gave me a good angle on where I wanted to go with my novel and some pointers on how to get there.

A very big thank you to these authors for their invaluable advice.

I began the month on good form and the words literally flowed from my fingertips. Changing my approach from being a pantster to being a plotter really seemed to work. But then during week 2 I began to panic as I approached the precipice and realised that during October I had run out of time and consequently run out of plot. Then my task became a little more difficult.

I decided that I would find some time in advance of each writing session to do some more plotting so I would know exactly where I was going when I came fresh to my keboard.

Time is a pesky little creature I found, as elusive as riches so I had to return to my original mode of writing by making up the plot as I went along – a somewhat more scary business.

I found that I could not find much time to write at the weekends when family took over my life so I tried to write 2,000 words a day, scribbled into sections wherever I had a slot. Its not the best way to write but sometimes needs must.

By the end of week two I was struggling; searching forever for that elusive half way mark. Reaching that was like sweating blood but eventually I reached the crest of the hill and cheered from the top.

The ascent was much easier at first – I positively galloped over the 30,000 mark and thought that my troubles were all in the past. But then I really did run out of plot. A little nugget of advice came to me from long ago and I put in something dramatic. The rest of the plot slipped in after that with some new twists and turns which I don’t think would have come to me if I had been trying to plot in advance.

By 40,000 I was whizzing ahead and finished today, a day early with over 51,000 words.

I’ve still got some way to go until I reach the end but I’m determined to keep going. Another piece of advice – write every day – has proved itself to me again. Its so much easier to pick up the thread of the day before when there’s no long time gap in between and also because I knew the next day I would be sitting down to write, flashes would come to me when I was in the car or shivering on a football field as my boys played a match. That doesn’t happen if you leave it too long and that – I think – is where writer’s block comes from – fear of not knowing where you’re going next.

I also met some new people on line and because there as a new region in my area this year, a few writers who I’m aiming to meet up with in the flesh and who will hopefully become writing buddies. Seeing their wordcount going up day by day has spurred me on to up my count too, so perhaps I wouldn’t have done it without them. So thank you to you too.

Now I’m over half way through a very, very rough first draft but as you can’t edit a blank page I’m chuffed.

I can’t continue at the same pace though – especially not in the run up to Christmas but I’m going to set myself a challenge of writing 1,000 words every weekday and by the end of the year I hope to be so much further on and to be gaining momentum.

It’s a plan anyway. Then I will go back to Love Writing and See Jane Write, reread them and then start to revise. Also, for anyone who had just finished the first draft of a novel December’s Writing Magazine has a fantastic article by Sophie King on revision. Definitely one to rip out and look at next year when I’ve got that first draft on the page.

So that’s my plan for December – and perhaps no I’ll have more time to blog too. Thank you NaNoWriMo – I finally feel like I’ve got my MoJo back.

What method of writing works best for you?