Onwards and Onwards

Happy New Year.

Some stats from 2018:

Didn’t manage to complete my GoodReads Challenge, only finishing 18 out of the 20 books I had challenged myself to read. Unfortunately you can’t count all the half-read ones, although I think there will be a flourish soon as I get some of them finished. Others will languish forever on the shelf with bookmarks at the point where I had had enough. I am going to read more of what I want to read this year, and not follow my book group’s recommendations quite so religiously. Book groups are great at getting you to expand your horizons, but I have hit the buffers too often recently and need to read my own choices for a while. (Though that doesn’t mean I will stop going for all the chat).

I listed 139 possible competitions/submission slots on my Excel Goals Worksheet and submitted on 41 occasions, winning or being published 5 times, so 12% of what I submitted got somewhere – not bad. I just need to get the submission level a bit higher along with the hit rate.

UPDATE: Just found another acceptance in my Junk folder – more info will follow.

I earned a grand total of ( I can hear the taxman getting excited) £229.36 (including 7p in Amazon royalties), less £84 costs bringing a profit of £145.36 for the calendar year, or appox. £2.80 a week (oh, how we writers live). I did get paid in Australian and US Dollars this year, which, added to the usual Euros and Sterling, makes me a truly international (if poor) author.

On the plus side, I didn’t spend any overnights in hospital this year – which means my kids didn’t (YIPEE), though I am still on Carer’s Leave without an end in sight to that.

I also set up my new business Beech Editorial Services, and have been doing a bit of editing and proofreading, although waiting to reap the rewards there.

My Writers’ Group, the G2 Writers, goes from strength to strength, with another published author to our name – Charlie Gracie, and we are just about to welcome two new writers into the fold, which is very exciting.

 

And so 2019.

I might not be an optimist, but some stubbornness keeps me going. I am trying different things with my writing and maybe one day you’ll see my name in lights (if not there is always Amazon). Keep reading, keep writing, keep hoping, and have a great 2019.

 

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Nevermind

I’ve been rather obsessively checking the Reflex Fiction website everyday where they have been publishing one non-winning flash fiction since the middle of Nov. Their top three are going to be announced at the end of the year (and win between £250 and £1000). Well, my wait is over (this time around anyway), as I was published today. You can read my story Lie Still here. It would be great if you could leave your comments on it, either here or on the Reflex Fiction forum. In the meantime, enjoy.

An A-Z of ‘Character Conflicts’

Really great ideas to get the mind ticking over

Blog About Writing

The bad news is, my entry to the Writers’ Forum ‘A-Z’ competition (they wanted an 800-word A-Z feature on any aspect of writing) DIDN’T win or even get an honourable mention 😦 BUT that means, WF’s loss is our gain because here it is, just for you: the A-Z of character conflicts.

We all know a key element in fiction is conflict but it’s easy to think this just means ‘fighting’. It took me a while to realise conflict is more about giving your character problems or obstacles (both internal and external) to overcome. I’ve often thought a list of possible conflicts would be useful. There are many more than 26 of course but here are some ideas (and for the purpose of brevity, ‘hero’ in this piece stands for any main character, male or female):

A: Addiction. Drugs, sex, alcohol, gambling, nicotine or shopping: give your characters an addition…

View original post 833 more words

Winning Story – The Writing Quarter

I do like a competition, especially ones that have no entry fee and still give a prize. So I am now AU$30 better off, and have now been published by magazines in Scotland, England, Ireland, America and Australia.

You can read my winning story Crooked  at The Writing Quarter.

Interview Online

I’ve just done an interview with The Writing District about my winning short story It. You can read the interview here.

Charlie Gracie – Book Launch

The G2 Writers have another success on our hands, with the publication of Charlie Gracie’s first novel  To Live With What You Are.

If you want to find out more, head over to Charlie’s blog, and of course, buy the book.

Procrastination, Clutter and the Creative Process

A friend just won a de-cluttering voucher at a raffle, her husband commented, ‘I know what we need to get rid of, it’s doing it that’s the problem.’

Well, I am a fan of clutter, although I am also an ex-librarian and it has to be organised clutter. I tend to know where things are, even if things aren’t quite in Dewey Decimal order. I thought I’d share with you a photo of my very cluttered work space just before I have a bit of a tidy.

My mind can be on about three different projects at once, and this is reflected in the guddle that is my desk. I also know what needs to be read/attended to/filed, it’s just getting round to doing it that’s the problem.

 

My messy workspace.

Can you spot:

Inspiration quotes and Guardian cartoons hiding the front cover of All the Places I’ve Ever Been;

Dictionaries and grammar books being held straight by Lewis’ chess pieces;

My new business cards for Beech Editorial Services;

My lovely blue sand hour glass, which amazed my teenage daughter as it actually runs for an hour. (She’s more used to egg timers). It’s meant to help me stay focused on the task in hand;

Catalogues that I have browsed through, but need to actually buy from if anyone is going to get anything for Christmas;

Books on Mary Queen of Scots and a printout on the Scottish Enlightenment;

At least four notebooks;

A Bakewell slice;

Files full of information and inspiration for the two novels I am currently working on;

Lots of stationery;

A pile of half-read Writing Magazines?

Amazingly there is no coffee cup (surely some mistake), and I’ve saved you the boxes of magazines and newspapers that hide under the desk, to be plundered for ideas at a later date. And that, really, is the point of all the clutter, to inform, to entertain, to inspire – I sound like the BBC. Organised chaos, basically, a bit like my mind…

Right, on with the de-clutter, I might be here a while.