Friday 25 September 2015

I Love Autumn!

I love autumn. Not just because it's birthday time for me, but because it always feels like the time for new beginnings. As I've said before, I think many of us associate autumn with the start of the academic year.

I did some goal setting at the beginning of this month and one of the things I did was to sign up for The Fish Flash Fiction Online Writing Course. I've always wanted to write better flash fiction and when writer friend, Diane Simmons recommended this course, I knew I had to sign up. What better way to kick start my writing? I'm currently working my way through the second module and it's great fun. I can thoroughly recommend it. Mary Jane Holmes is a fantastic tutor and turns around assignments in a very short space of time. I'm learning a lot!

I was thrilled to bits when Richard Pike of Curtis Brown Agency said that he'd be very happy to read the revised version of my novel whenever I was ready to resubmit. I've made a few changes already and have written a new outline. Let's just say it's a project that's bubbling under.

A more urgent project is a serial I'm writing for The People's Friend. Again, I've written a rough outline and the first few hundred words. I'm on a tight deadline for this one, so from next week, the serial will have to take priority.

A little bird told me that prolific womag writer, Della Galton, currently has fifty pieces of writing out there. I totted up and I currently have fifteen. My aim is to double that, at least, by Christmas. I submitted a 3,000 word story to The People's Friend this week and have started writing a new one with them in mind. I also have one almost ready to send to Woman's Weekly.

I was thrilled this week to receive an email from Janine Enos of Bridgend Writers' Circle asking me to judge the final few stories in their annual short story competition. I used to judge at least two short story competitions a year, but haven't judged any in a while, so this is something I'm really looking forward to.

Finally, I found out this week that one of my stories has been shortlisted in The Doris Gooderson Short Story Competition. That gave me a much needed boost, because in other news, our beloved guinea pigs died within a week of each other this month. They were six-years-old, so had a good innings, but we miss them so much.