A Very Slow Start...

Getting back to the normal everyday routine is not going well.

So this coming week I really must be tough with myself.

Over the years I've learnt to listen to my inner writer, it's that little voice that says you really should or shouldn't do something, whether it's writing or generally. When I ignore it I usually find later that it was the wrong thing to do.

Well that's what happened the other day, and it was quite a shock.

You may have previously seen me mention an epistolary story that I'd written for one of the quarterly prose competitions at the writers club, and that I intended to rewrite it for a Writing Magazine subscribers competition currently running.

Well I made a copy to work on from the version on my external drive, settled down to read through it and see where improvements and additions could be made to increase the overall length to be within the required word count.

At the time it was originally written I had a sneaky feeling it needed to be longer, but I had no idea in what way; so I was fairly confident that I'd be able to work on it now.

Having decided how I could extend the 900 word story without losing the best bits of the existing story, I considered how I could create a slightly more resolved ending.

That was when my inner voice screamed: STOP! Don't do it! It's NOT FINISHED! There's a bigger story behind this. You need to tell that story before you write the end!

And that is not an exaggeration...

After a few deep breaths and half a mug of coffee I felt calm enough to look at the text again, and I knew that inner voice was right. It won't work at the required length for the competition.

It's certainly not a full length work, nor a short novel. Perhaps it's a longer short story or a novella.

So it's being put aside to brew whilst I get on with other stories.

Will I be able to write epistolary story to fit the entry requirements? I don't know. But I do know the decision I made about this existing one was right.

Like the plants in the picture, some stories are neat and compact, and others keep growing where they want to...

Stories can be like
these plants...

Happy New Year...

Happy 2017...

I hope your Christmas went well.

Today is very foggy and cold, so apart from a brief trip outside I've been indoors in the warm, relaxing, catching up with friends online and reading.

I've also being making a few definite plans for the first few months of 2017.

With Take A Break Fiction Feast moving to only accepting fiction from those writers on their preferred list, it means that the remaining markets are going to be getting even more submissions, so I need to get on with writing and sending out the stories that I have ideas for (that fit their requirements).

But first I want to get on with adding to and revising my epistolary story (that I got second place for in the writers' club winter quarterly prose competition 2015/16), as there's currently a subscribers only competition in Writing Magazine for this form. The deadline for this is mid February, so my personal deadline will be the end of January.

Having not looked at it since the spring, my subconscious has developed the idea a bit more.

Of course I also need to get back to the second draft too.

Finally there's my annual word total that I reveal at the end of the year- to remind myself what I've done, and that I can do more the next year...

In 2015 I wasn't including my blog posts, which I did include this year. And of course when I'm editing something I'm usually taking away not adding words so that will drop the 2016 total a bit.

2015 total: 28,795

2016 total: 34,612

That's an increase of  5,826 words on last year.

So that's it, my last blog post of 2016.

It's been another year of surprises, learning and improving.

See you in 2017...



image: pixabay