I don’t know how many times I’ve celebrated the finishing of my novel. So have I abandoned, I hope not, have I finished? Well, I’ve been re-writing for the past few weeks, taking account of comments from an agent, and have changed the back end of the book quite a bit – I think it had been a little rushed in some of the drafts as I was so desperate to get it finished. Now I think it has a better paced ending, and hopefully it will get over the next hurdle and an agent will pick it up.
Other than that I’ve been doing my usual looking at competitions and openings, and sending off anything that’s appropriate. So in the past week I’ve entered the McKittrick Prize,http://www.societyofauthors.org/mckitterick applied for a Scottish Book Trust Grant http://www.scottishbooktrust.com/writers-and-writing/new-writers-awards/new-writers-award-category-fiction , submitted to New Writing Scotland http://www.arts.gla.ac.uk/scotlit/asls/NWSsubs.htmland sent off some stories to a woman’s magazine, as well as sending my novel back to the agent who I’ve been in communication with.
So for next week, I’ll be working on two stories that are half written, and I’ll be looking at a novel I definitely did abandon a few years ago. There’s 25,000 words there, so I’m hopeful that I should be able to salvage something from it. I’ve got some new ideas to pep it up and make me want to write it – and make people want to read it.
I’m also about to look into publishing some material online – either as ebooks or iTunes, so more of that later, again I’ll need to do a bit of work on the older material now I know more about writing than I did when I wrote them. All very exciting, and to be squeezed into the couple of hours I’ve got each day. I have changed my working hours, though, so that I’ve got Fridays off, but after 2 whole weeks of this new freedom the kids have got a holiday next Friday, so will be disturbing me. Mind you, I could do with a bit of a holiday myself, so will just enjoy the long weekend.
Colette Coen 