Let me tell you something...

...My first drafts include an awful lot of telling, and not a lot of showing. My first drafts are generally a lot shorter than they should be. My first drafts are rubbish. But you know what, that's ok. My subsequent drafts (for there will be many) will be rewritten so the telling becomes showing. This will add words. And make everything better. There are some things I can do quite well. I'm ok at dialogue (which is a skill, and I'm very lucky to have it). I've given my characters awesome names. I think I have an interesting story. I have some really bad habits. I change tenses as often as I change my socks and it is a massive struggle to keep a handle on it. I haven't found my main character's voice yet, so that keeps switching too. I'll be honest, that is really annoying me even though I know that I've got to write through it to find it...anyway, I'm ahead on my words for today. I want to hit 10,000 by the end of the day. I also want to make salted caramel brownies, which I'm going to do in a minute. So, writing and brownies. Good day? I hope so.

Day two in the NaNoWriMo house...

Right, I'm going to keep this quite short and sweet because I have other words I need to type, however, I thought it would be nice to check in and keep you up to date with how my NaNo is going. So I started yesterday, which was good on words (3668) and baaaad on quality. But I did set some scenes that will be interesting to revise, and learnt some things about my world, which was good. There was a fair bit of AND THEN THIS HAPPENS and THEN SOMETHING ELSE HAPPENS HERE BUT I'M NOT SURE WHAT EXACTLY which serves the purpose of shifting the story on whilst reminding myself of what I was thinking at the time. Today has been much better. I've written a good fight scene and am now up to 5008 words, which is a tenth of the way through! I'm aiming for 6000 by the end of today. Actually, I'm aiming for 6000 before I get in the shower...I definitely think that this NaNo is aided and abetted by the fact that I'm not really drinking, and that I'm still not back at work full time. Oh, and the fact that I have a plan and I know some bits and pieces about my characters. That is definitely helping. Fingers crossed I'll plough ahead with my word count. I'm aiming for a completed narrative by the end of November, like a giant 50,000 word plan which I can print and draw all over and then re-type from a nice blank page. Because this year, NaNo is all about the re-write. November is a vehicle, and no matter how difficult it seems, I know it is just the start of the hard work. How exciting!

We're going to need a bigger map...

So I'm busy planning my NaNo story. I've bought books. I'm researching. I'm exquisite corpsing like it's going out of fashion. I have a new folder to put it all in (one that matches the theme of my story, oh yes), I'm downloading pictures, I have a spreadsheet, a spreadsheet for crying out loud, with a list of characters and what they look like and their traits and everything. What is going on with me? I never do this! Ah, but yes, Bijou, perhaps this is always why you always write a massive jumble of word spaghetti that cannot be unravelled. Hmmmm... And do you know what I've discovered? Planning is fun. Figuring my shit out on paper and getting my craft on and prit-sticking the bejesus out of loads of grainy photos of stuff that looks like it might relate to my characters or time period into a carefully selected exercise book and making a visual aid and doing something with all the thoughts in my head is very satisfying indeed. It makes everything seem a bit more real. I don't feel like I'm guessing. Sure, I don't have everything figured out. I don't have a clue what my character's favourite colours are, or what they would choose for their last meal or even when their birthdays are, but I know what they look like, and how they'd act in certain situations and a fair bit of the reasons why they'd do that. I don't want to know everything. I figure I need to leave something for the wedding night and I'm worried that too much of a certain type of planning might kill the passion...but a bit of planning? Half a dozen pages of randomly constructed images to help inspire me when I'm stuck, pictures to describe, facts to refer to...that sounds like a plan to me.

Second - a bit about a writing (because that's why we're here, right?)

So I started a new writing course thing last night. I know, I'm forever going on them, I'm like a writing course addict. But this one seems especially good (I'll tell you why in a little minute). It's run by a lovely lady called Lisa who has a company called the Poetry Fold (check out her website here http://poetryfold.co.uk/). Anyway, one of the reasons why I really like her is because I was due to go on this course in April, and I couldn't attend the first session because I felt horrid and then by the time the second one rolled round I was in hospital. These courses always have some sort of no cancellation policy, especially last minute ones, so I was expecting to lose my money. But no! Lisa offered to keep a place on the next course for me, which was so lovely and at a time when it felt like everything was going wrong and I was feeling very sorry for myself it was just such a kind and unexpected gesture that it made me a little bit tearful. So that's reason one. Reason two is it's my day off today, and I've been up since 6.30 am (that's in the morning, folks, the morning) playing one of the games she taught us. I'll run through it with you, you might have heard of it. The name of the game is Exquisite Corpse and it's so easy and fun and useful that I can't believe I've never played it before. Anyhoo, you need a bit of paper with two columns. One on the left = adjectives, right = nouns. Write a massive list of nouns (about 20 is probably a good number but it's entirely up to you) then if you're playing with someone else fold the paper so they can't see the nouns and get them to write the adjectives. If you're playing with yourself as I am this morning, put the list of nouns away until you've forgotten about them (which will probably be about half an hour in my case) and then jump on the adjective wagon. I've chosen to make a table in word and type out my nouns so in a bit I'm going to print it and put it in a safe place and do the adjectives later, or give it to the husband to do my adjectives for me which might also be quite fun. We played this last night and some of them were hilarious, some interesting, some thought-provoking. My favourites were... * thin flatterer * fat moon * velvet path Anyway, it's fun and easy and you know it was a good game when I'm up before seven on my day off playing it. Oh yeah! I always think it's really interesting how random writing exercises can link to things I'm already writing/planning and thin flatterer is a fab description of one of my more tricky characters for my NaNo project, so I'm very pleased about that! If you want to play this game with me (and I recommend it if you're writing, totally) then let me know and we'll figure out the logistics of it...right, that's it from me. I'm off to make a cheese toastie for breakfast, because I'm underweight and that's how I roll...boom!

First - some housekeeping

Right, this blogspot thing changed whilst I was on the sick and there are a couple of things I really want to be able to do but I can't. 1) How the devil do I get line breaks in??? Whenever I leave any white space between my lines (and I do, although I totally understand if you don't believe it) it dis-a-bloody-pears. Why? How? What do I do to fix it? 2) Aaaaaages ago I'd set up a lovely little feature so whenever someone left a comment, it sent a little message to my blackberry and I was able to see it straight away and comment back and it was all very nice and sociable. Now I've joined the iphone generation I no longer have the blackberry email address it was linked to and I can't for the life of me remember how I set the email alert thing up or figure out how to change it 3) Are you on the tweeter? Do you follow me? You probably should, I'll tweet you back and everything. I am @bijouractonteur. There is also a strong possibility that you could become my 100th follower and wouldn't that be nice for you?

When is reading not like reading?

When you're planning on writing something and get your editorial head on and mentally criticise it line by line. Or is that just me? When I was at Uni, I had to stop reading for fun for the whole of my final year because every single thing I read I was just thinking about it critically, how they did this, how they achieved that effect, what I would have done differently or what I would love to do myself. Hmmm. I don't want to sit backstage at the theatre, thank you very much I'd prefer to be front-row. So I'm planning my YA book and have started to read in genre. I'm steering clear of Twilight because I've blacklisted it in my head. There is no real reason for this, I've just decided I don't want to read it. I'm sure it's brilliant and I'd love it if I did but the line has got to be drawn somewhere. I can't read everything. I'm already a big fan of Harry Potter, His Dark Materials and the Hunger Games (well, the first two. I wanted to give Katniss a massive shake in the last one). I've started to read more and found that my inner editor went absolutely crackers. I can't name the book I'm talking about because I don't want to be some massive cow who slags off other writers, when writing a book is an amazing achievement and something I can only dream of. I read an article (on Perez Hilton, of all places) basically saying how this book was being made into a movie and was the "next big thing" and the best/most dangerous thing about having a kindle is that you can think of a book and about a minute later you can totally own it. Anyway, I totally own this book. And at first, I loved it. And I still really like the story. It's the way it was executed that threw me, some of the things didn't make sense to me, some things just confused me and there were quite a few points that made me think, ooh, I'll steer clear of that. So what did I learn? * how can a girl who is so plain be so attractive to everyone and have boys fighting over her? - my heroine will be a stunner * too many characters are confusing, especially when they are all around the same age - I'm going to have three core characters and well defined secondary characters who cannot be mixed up * repetition is annoying - get creative I think those are the three key things I'm going to bear in mind when I finally get typing. Which I'm saving for NaNo. In the meantime, I'm off to make up a book of inspiration. See ya!

The revolution will be written down

Eeek! How exciting! I am starting a new writing group. A writing group for serious writers, who want actual feedback and critiques and to know how to make their writing better. We are going to have subs and use the money to pay the expenses of proper writers to come and talk to us. We are going to have a name, and an email address and structure. And we are going to meet regularly! We will require commitment from people! We will, in short, be the polar opposite of any of the other writing groups that I belong to! I've already had a meeting with my fellow organiser and we want the same things, it is tres tres exciting. Right, must dash - the writing revolution will not organise itself...

jobs and frogs and phones and food (but not really any frogs)

So once again I'm at risk of redundancy, and this time I really think that I'll lose my job. On the 31st December - Happy New Year! Personally, I think I've been through enough this year and that the universe should give me a break but that's not the way it works. So I'm looking for an actual job, and I've discovered that I can do this with apps on my phone. Apps for jobs! What will they think of next? I've also signed up as a writer-for-hire on some websites. As of yet, no one has wanted to hire me but I'm going to crack on and keep trying. It's quite exciting to think that someone could want me to write their copy for them. Fingers crossed they do. I've also decided that I'm going to pitch some articles, freelance stylee. I'm really lucky and was able to speak to an actual freelancer who gave me some wonderful advice, so I'm mulling over a couple of ideas and should get them out there soon! Wouldn't it be nice to actually earn money from writing? Wouldn't managing my own time totally suit me and my pesky hospital visits? Yes and yes. I am going to give it a go. In other news, I'm having a new phone delivered today which is terribly exciting. I'm also having people over for tapas later, and I'm making it all myself. I've already made a mango/lemony-lime cheescake and a chocolate peppermint slice. Once I've blogged (and finished watching Top Chef) I'm going to make some salsa (not technically tapas I know, but hubby loves it and it's easy) and then I'm making meatballs and chicken skewers and chilli-garlic prawns and tortilla and sundried tomato and cheese parcels and grilled aubergine...nomnomnom. Laters x

Less whinging, more writing

I'm having a small dilemma. Normally at about this time (or sometimes sooner) I have my idea for Nano (http://www.nanowrimo.org/). Ideas are not my problem. I have bucket-loads, and my idea for Nano this year is an absolute blinder. I love it. It is the Christmas Eve of ideas. My problem is, you see, I love it a bit too much and I want to write it immediately. Now, I can see all you normal people out there scratching your heads and thinking, just write it now then. This is a non-problem, quit your whinging and get typing. Hmmmm. Good point, duly noted. I guess the problem really is that I'm scared. Mostly of two things. Thing one; that when I go to write it my story loses some (all) of it's brilliance and turns into a great big pile of poo. This is ridiculous. I am (at worst) a competent writer. I can string a sentence together. I know the rules. I've knocked out some half decent short stories in my time. I can probably do this. Thing two; I have never ever ever managed to write more than twenty thousand consecutive words and not get bored with the whole business ever ever ever apart from during Nano. What if my wonder story (which is a trilogy in my head) doesn't make it past the 10k mark? So when you take thing one and add thing two you get a great big bowl of irrational fear. I know I'm being stupid, which kind of makes it worse. It's like when I'm in hospital and they can't get the needle for the IV in and I cry. It's stupid. It doesn't really hurt and I've done far worse things to myself on purpose (hello foot tattoo and nipple piercings) and I know that getting upset does no one any favours, but yet I can't stop it. I guess my question really is, then, do I start to write now because I really want to? Or do I wait until November when I think I have more chance of sticking with it? Decisions, decisions... (if you want to, you can read more about my award-winning ideas and gold-standard procrastination by going here http://winningwords.org.uk/blog/ where I have been moon-blogging)

See, I told you I was ill...

So, hello again. I know, I know. It's been a while. More than a while. It's been aaaaaaages. (Here come the excuses) I've had a bit of a rubbish year. Since my last post, I've been quite poorly. I fell ill last November and nobody knew what it was, then they figured it out and I spent a month in hospital, then I was off work for four months. I've had some of my insides removed, lost a third of my body weight, yada yada yada. Let's just say it hasn't been very fun, and I haven't felt at all like writing. But now I'm better (yippee!) - I mean, I still have to go to the hospital every week for infusions. My body has stopped making some important things, which have to be replaced intraveneously (I think I've just made that word up!) and I'm really struggling to put on weight (which you think would be fun, but it really isn't). But apart from all that, I'm getting my sparkle back and I've started writing again. Not loads, but you know, bits. And I'm going to start blogging again. Regularly. If you don't see me on here at least once a week, feel free to shout at me. Being ill has its good points (guilt-free naps, cake for breakfast etc) and has also made me realise how much I want to do this. So I'm going to. So there. Watch this space...

stories at bedtime

So I've been reading my most recent story aloud, listening for hicups, killing my darlings. I've always heard people talk about reading aloud and how much it helps, etc, but I always poo pooed it, because, well, to put it simply, I can't be told. Anyway, to cut a long story short, I've now come round and am finding it most useful (point to note, other things I heard were great and ignored and then realised I loved are; Harry Potter, Kindles, sushi, red wine, Mslexia).

I'm quite pleased with my new story. Continuing current trends it's written in the second person, but it's quite a departure for me because it's historical and has a happy-ish ending. It's also super short, which I like, 712 words to be exact. This is part on purpose and part because that's how long the story is. I'm going to enter it in the Ruth Rendell competition (which you can find by following this link here http://www.interactreading.org/content/ruth-rendell-short-story-competition-20112012) and I'm actually quite chuffed with my bad self because although most of my stories are earmarked for certain comps, not that many of them actually make it. This one will because I'm literally at that last "take a comma out, put a comma in, delete half a sentence, change a word" stage of editing and if someone put a gun to my head, I could actually send it now. But I won't, I'm going to send it on Thursday, when I've been paid.

Other things that have made me happy this week are the fact that I've been mentioned in a blog as a resource for writers, which I didn't think I was and which made me feel oh so important. You can check out the blog here

http://talking-in-the-library.blogspot.com/

she's worth a follow, she really is.

And I think that's just about it for bijou-news. November is nearly upon us and I am super-duper excited for NaNo, and my Arvon course, both of which are almost here. I've built Arvon up to mythical proportions in my head, so am a little bit scared that I'll be disappointed, that nothing can be as good as it is in my imagination, where it plays out a little something like this: go and meet lots of lovely writers and be the most inspired I've ever been and live in a lovely bubble of candy coloured prose and short stories that flow like a big flowy thing, and get really constructive - hang on, I'll be honest since it's my head - really AWESOME feedback about how wonderful I am and then come home and continue being inspired and keep in contact with people I've met for continued honest and constructive feedback and end up finding an agent and getting published and binning the day job and living happily ever after.

Sigh.

Sometimes, it is a bit of a curse, this imagination malarky...

I've started, so I'll finish

Eeek, well my story is now published in Writers' Forum. It's really nice seeing something you've written in print, in an actual magazine which people actually pay for. Lovely, lovely, lovely.

In other news, I've found a home for my amazing title. It isn't for a story, but for a collection of stories (most of which are currently not in existence, or in some form of first draft limbo, or worse, incomplete first draft limbo). Anyway, I've formulated a plan. It goes a little something like this...

• finish all the stories I've started


• use NaNoWriMo to write more stories (I know it's technically a bit cheaty, but I figure that if I can write 50,000 words of short stories that I then look at and edit and do something with, it is better than writing 50,000 word of novel that is so jumbled and frightening that I don't know where to begin and therefore never look at it again)


• pull all this together into some semblence of order and send it off to New Writing North for their Northern Writers Awards


• send all stories off to competitions (with optional feedback) and make them the best they can be


• enter the collection in the Scott Prize for short stories

So, if I follow this plan it gives me about a year to do all this, which is do-able. I need to think about the stories as an all-together and not just as stories, but I've had some ideas on how I can do this, which is nice.

I've been reading a lot of short stories recently (helped in no small part by the fact that Salt Publishing are selling collections of stories for 86p for the Kindle. Yes, that's right, eighty-six-freaking-pence. It's all kinds of awesome). So I've been reading a lot of short stories and have realised something - I really need to up my game. Like, seriously. So imagine an appendix to plan A...

• practice, practice, practice


• don't be too scared to do brave things with my writing


• just be better, generally

One story that's stuck in my head is called Darling and it's by a lady called Padrika Tarrant and it's amazing. Absolutely make me feel a little bit sick with envy amazing. You should read it, it's very good.

Anyway, that's about it really. The husband has fixed it so I can now comment on my blog again, but the little icon where I can add a link and make it look like words has disappeared. I guess a girl can't have everything.

What's in a name?

So I'm in the process of changing my name. I'm going from Miss Something to Mrs Something-Something (yes, I'm double barrelled now, I could have been triple barrelled if I'd kept my old name too but I decided that would be a bit too much). Anyway, it's weird. And there is a lot to do. I never thought about how many organisations have my details and now they keep popping into my head...tax office, TV license, Sky...do I have to tell everyone? Does it  matter if I forget some?

On a slight tangent...I've realised recently that one of my areas for improvement is finding interesting titles for stories. I'm just not very good at it. I'm always The Something-to-do-with-the-story, which just aint disco, apparently. How do people think of good titles? Titles that are clever but relevant? I think this is the next thing I'm going to really work on and try to improve. Saying that, a brilliant title popped into my head the other day, so I now have a title that I love but no story to go with it. Apparently, this is how Ian Rankin writes, but its all new to me. My title is probably only so fantastic because it isn't attached to anything, like a really amazing photo where the subject has been caught at the only angle they look any good at, and when you see them in real life you think, oh. Was that you? Its a struggle at work too, as I have to give everything headlines and it is really hard - I wish I thought in witty captions, I really do...mind, when you're essentially writing the same stories over and over it is hard to be original. Ah, the dizzy heights of corporate journalism! Speaking of which, I must really get up and get ready to go to the office...bye!

Untitled

You are still feeling a bit out of sorts since getting back from Vegas. Sleep is inconsistent. You didn't make any time to write whilst you were away and now have stories that you want to put on paper. Since your recent success, you have decided that you really like writing in the second person. You are going to write all stories in the second person from now on, although you are confident that this will just be a phase and you will return to third and first eventually. You are going to experiment, and push boundaries. It is somehow freeing, you like this. You are reading more widely now, reading books that make you gasp, make you cover your mouth because you can't believe how beautiful the words are, how clever. This is what you want, this is the dream.

Houston, we have a problem

So for some reason, I can't comment on my own blog, or anyone else's. It won't let me. I don't know why, but it is very irritating. Not irritating enough for me to do anything about it, just irritating enough for me to be really irritated. But there you go.

Today is my last day at work before my holiday. I say holiday. I mean wedding. I'm oh so very excited. I'd be more excited if I wasn't full of cold, but I'm hoping that will pass before Thursday. My nephew, who gifted this cold to me, is well and truly off my Christmas card list, no trike for you, young man, oh no.

Well that was it really. I don't have anything interesting to say. I'm going to sit up in bed now and drink my vitamin drink and do some editing and then get up. Wooooohooooo!!!!


(That's how excited I am)

Fifth time lucky

As some of you might know, one of my favourite competitions to enter is the Writers' Forum competition. I enter quite a lot. It's cheap. I've learnt an awful lot from the feedback they've given me. In short, I like it.

Anyway - wonderful, wonderful news. My story has come second, yes kids that's right, SECOND, in their competition. Happy, happy days. I am slightly elated.

The boyf (I can't call him that for much longer, I'll explain why in a bit) has forever been pestering me to write a story with a happy ending. I've been resistant. I like misery. My stories don't really have happy endings, but this one did. I didn't force it. It came to me that way. There was about half an hour where I toyed with some horrible things that could happen to the main character, but I opted not to go with them, and boy, am I glad I did.

The other reason this story is a bit of a departure is because it is written in the second person, which is very new to me, but something I actually felt really comfortable doing. Do you ever have a story that seems to write itself? Well this was one of those stories. Wooooohooooo! So I think it will be out at the end of August, I'll keep you posted.

This is the second success I've had this year. If you want to check out my other story, you can do so here...

http://www.gumbopress.co.uk/wordgumbo/wordgumbo1.pdf

I'm on page 19.

And in my last very exciting news? This time in two weeks I'll be on a plane to Las Vegas, on my way to get married. We're having a very traditional Elvis wedding.

So it's all go in the bijou household!

oh, so fickle

A while ago, I wrote about why books are better than Kindles, about how I had no interest in Kindles, and would never, ever, ever even entertain the thought of buying one.

Last month, I bought a Kindle.

And I LOVE it.

I love that it is so light, and when I travel instead of having two (or more) paperbacks in my handbag, I only have to have one little Kindle.

I love the fact that it is linked to my Amazon account, so if I'm browsing and fancy a book, I can have it immediately (although that is quite dangerous).

I love the fact that there are hundreds of free books. Yes. Free books. Books that cost no money.

I love the fact that there are hundreds of cheap books.

So, I can't read it in the bath. So, I've heard a rumour that if you subscribe to a magazine, and end the subscription, all the back copies disappear. You can't share books (that is a bit sucky. I do love to find a good book and lend it to my friends) But...you know what? I don't care. I love it. Love, love, love it. I love it so much, I've bought one for my dad.

Will it stop me buying real books? No. There probably isn't anything in the world that would stop me buying books. But I'm getting quite a fine collection of unread books on my Kindle. Which is awesome. Next time I'm on a train, and I can't settle and I want to read something but I'm not sure what, I'll have a not-so-little library at my fingertips. What's not to love about that?

Happy Sunday

Well I've had a story accepted for publication! What a lovely thing to wake up to! It's for Gumbo Press, and will be in the first edition of their Word Gumbo magazine. I'll post a link when it goes up at the end of the month, but until then, woooohoooooo!!!

It's one of my better stories, and one that has been doing the rounds for quite a while. I've sent it to Aesthetica (twice), Mslexia, Global Short Story Comp, Writer's Forum...and I'm sure there are some other ones that I've missed off. So it's nice to finally have it accepted somewhere, and (at the risk of sounding trite) it does just go to show that you just have to keep sending stuff. Someone will want it, somewhere!

Last week, I was feeling quite rubbishy about my writing. I thought it was crap and I might as well give up and the small successes of the past were just a fluke and blahblahblah. Today, I feel a bit more positive. So I'm going to give my story back-catalogue an overhaul, get more stories to the stage where I can send them out, and I'm going to send them. Because as a wise man once said to me, "if you throw enough balls at enough coconuts, sooner or later you're going to win a prize".

feedback and the art of making it better and knowing when you just don't know something (or anything)

I like to enter competitions where I get feedback and a particular favourite is the Writers' Forum comp, because for the bargain price of £8 you can enter the competition and get feedback (if you're a subscriber, I think it's a bit more expensive if you're not).

This month, I sent in a story which I really like, but I was sure needed something doing to it but I wasn't sure what. I thought it needed perhaps some more conflict, or something else to drive the story forward but I couldn't quite put my finger on it. So I thought, I'll send it away and see what happens.

And do you know what happened? I got the best piece of feedback I've ever received from them.

Wooohoooooooo!

For the first time, they didn't pull me on the layout, thought the title was good, thought everything, overall, was well...good. Here, I'll let you see for yourself....

Hello Helen,


Landmines

Thanks for entering the Writers’ Forum competition.

Presentation: Manuscript layout is generally good.

Title: Very good. It’s apt for the story and works on more than one level.

Opening: Very good. This grabs the reader’s attention and takes us right into the heart of the story.

Dialogue: Generally good. The dialogue is minimal, but where used it does everything that good dialogue should.

Characterisation: Good, but your narrator’s age seems to fluctuate. I would suggest going through this with the age in mind and correcting the sections where the voice is too young or too old. Because of this fluctuation, I couldn’t quite grasp her age.

Overall: This is a well written and poignant story. It has lots going for it and your writing style carried me along to the end. However, you have a slight tendency to overwrite, almost as if you don’t quite trust your readers to get things. Often you explain something that your dialogue and narration has already made perfectly clear, for example: “But if he does wake up, he’ll know how much we love him and how much we’re going to miss him,” I said. This made her cry again [which was a bit confusing. I thought that was a nice thing to say]. You don’t need the words in brackets as they detract from what is already a well portrayed situation.

Commended - needs some work but has potential

Best wishes,

I have to admit, I was really quite pleased. I've tried really hard to follow all the (very confusing) rules in regards to layout, and I've taken on board advice from previous feedback about the title, and applied it and now my feedback is...good. Not great, but good. I feel like I'm getting there.

So I had a little think about what I needed to do and enlisted the help of a friend. The narrator for my story, Vivian, is six years old. I don't know any six year olds. We have a little downstairs neighbour who is three and a half and just adorable (quote of the day on the stairs yesterday "my daddy is sick of my mummy but he isn't sick of me") but she's really the only child we see on a regular basis, and even then she's only chatty sometimes.

So I asked my friend, who has three kids ranging from four to eleven, to go through the story for me and tell me what was working and what wasn't. She replied within a few hours with the most informative suggestions I've ever had. She hadn't just gone through the story, she'd written an introduction on her experiences with her children, the things they say and how they react in certain situations. I now feel like I can go through it and make the changes that I need. I now feel like I know what I need to do. Both of these are exciting feelings.

So this morning, I've been through the story. I've taken out my two favourite lines on Amy's advice as they weren't age appropriate and so far, it is going quite well. I'm glad I asked an expert as these aren't changes I would have made on my own (I loved those lines, but "kill your darlings" boohoo).

Right, ok, that's me done. I'm going back to my rewrite...bye!

writing courses for horses

So I've just signed up for an online short story course, organised by the lovely Michelle at Winning Words. This is the third course I've signed up for this year. The first one is a massively scary Arvon course. The second is a series of workshops run by Kathleen Kenny, which will take place in the Lit and Phil, possibly one of my favouraite places in the whole world.

Three courses, ranging from cheap - relatively cheap - bloody expensive. And I'll start the second course first, the third course second and the first one is the last one waaaaaaaaay off in November.

I think I'm going to blog about what I'm doing, and how I'm finding them. Whether they're value for money, what I'm learning, etc. So I guess this blog post is a pre-emptive declaration of intent.

They start in May. Watch this space...