Summary:

Anxious build-up to Winchester, followed by a fairly draining experience of the festival itself, and a re-evaluation of my writing priorities.

 

Monday:

I submitted seven short stories, pieces of flash fiction and poems for potential publication or to competitions. Very much not my favourite activity, but it’s the only way to get anywhere!

I also went through the new issue of Mslexia magazine and added more submission opportunities to my rolling spreadsheet, ready for when the ones mentioned above get rejected!

 

Wednesday:

I caught up on all my reviews from the last week.

 

Thursday:

Off to Winchester! Though all I did today was arrive, find my room, relax for a few hours and go to bed.

 

Friday:

First full day at Winchester. Interesting and useful workshop on the fantasy/sci-fi market, and two agent meetings, which provided mixed and contradictory feedback. I met some lovely people over dinner, though and also got an email to say that a print magazine wants to publish one of my short stories.

 

Saturday:

Great workshop on cultural appropriation, not so great workshop on creating evil characters, useful tips on avoiding the slush pile, and an interesting talk about book blogging. Plus two more agent meetings, with more mixed and contradictory feedback.

I was due to stay over and do another full-day workshop on Sunday, but I decided to head home, as the whole thing was exhausting.

 

Sunday:

I did some submission tracking, and started to process my Winchester experience. There’ll be a proper blog post about this soon…