Summary:

Lots of plans to think about for next year – and hopefully some more stuff to achieve this year.

 

Monday:

Very slow start to my writing date with Ann today. I still felt scattered and it was hard to get on with stuff.

I eventually started with this month’s discussion post for GYWO, which was about organising a first draft. I felt it was quite an apropos topic for me, after last week’s feedback on Artisan and my current difficulties with plotting Colours.

Then I helped Bear with a post about last weekend’s writing retreat in Devon.

After that, I couldn’t ignore it anymore, and had to start thinking about the teething problems I’m having with Colours. After an awesome start to the first draft, I ran out of steam a bit, and have realised there’s a lot more thinking and planning I need to do before I can really carry on. So, I broke out my A4 hardback notebook, gave myself a double page spread of space and did some brainstorming.

Then I decided I would feel better about my productivity for the day if I added some actual words to Colours, so I wrote the next scene.

Amie sent through in-depth answers to my questions about Artisan, and it was all very encouraging. I started looking forward to getting back into working on that novel, which was a surprise.

I spent the last section of the writing date typing up notes from an old notebook, which felt useful but was also really easy, as my brain was giving up by that point.

My writing day was rounded up by getting confirmation that the publisher who first offered to pay for one of my stories (back in July last year) has gone out of business – before my story ever saw print. Hey ho – I’m frankly surprised it’s not happened more often, but it’s an unfortunate end to my first supposed publication success.

 

Wednesday:

I made notes from a new Scribophile critique I received on my flash fiction piece, and also added to my Artisan revision notes from Amie’s further feedback.

I got the final proof of an anthology story that’s coming out soon and checked for mistakes before confirming back to the editor that I was happy with it.

 

Sunday:

I caught up on my reviews and submitted some stories to publishers and competitions.