Aspiring Writers

I recently joined the group on LinkedIn called Aspiring Writers. The person who runs the group had the good idea of running a short story competition, with the deadline of Christmas Eve.

I submitted mine today, with one day to go. It's called 'The Diary of a Taffeta Dress'.

One step forward?

Nicholas got in touch to say he had received our email but couldn't read pdfs as he only has a Blackberry. And 'sorry for the delay but your email went into my spam folder and I've only just seen it'.

Sam emailed him a web link so he could view her illustrations online. Let's see what happens. Hopefully he can click on a link with his Blackberry...

'Provincial Lady' - the original Bridget Jones

Am reading 'The Diary of a Provincial Lady' for the first time. Huge fun. Who would have thought a 'journal' from the 1930s would have been so entertaining and 'laugh-out-loud' funny?

Hmmm. Seem to recall reading book from the 1990s written in similar format and style - which was also written as a weekly column in a publication.

Note to self: Knew Bridget Jones based on Pride and Prejudice but didn't realise was also styled on 'The Diary of a Provincial Lady'. Sheer coincidence or blatant copying?

London Writers' Club

I finally succeed in getting to a meeting of the London Writers' Club. The other two occasions that I'd booked to go, I had to cancel. Anyhow, this time I made it.

The speaker this month was Jessica Ruston who has just had her first novel published. It's a 170,000 word blockbuster called Luxury. What amazed me was that she said it was the first time she'd written anything since she was about 11! She seemed to have no problem in finding an agent or a publisher, so, if she can do it....

I should get my 2010 copy of the Children's Writers' and Illustrators' Yearbook and start to decide who I should send my three picture book texts to. OK, I know I only have two texts at the moment but....

Please sir, do you like what we've done?

It's amazing how the sheer fact of putting work aside for a while (ie several months) can make you very objective when reading it again. I was happy with my second story back in April or May but now I realised it needed a fair bit of work doing to it.

And I could see exactly where I needed to make changes. So I spent time improving it, perfecting it.

And yesterday I sent it off, along with my other story and Sam's two illustrations to our ex-teacher. (See previous post).

We wait with fingers crossed to see whether he will a) reply b) like what we've sent him c) show it to his publisher....

Taking up a one-year-old offer

Over a year ago, a would-be children's illustrator (Sam) and I decided to team up. I'd write the text and she would do some sample illustrations.

We had both been on a course teaching us how to illustrate for children's books. The difference was she could draw and I couldn't.... Anyhow, our teacher had kindly offered to show any illustrations that he thought were good to his publisher. We were hoping that this offer would stretch to text as well.

Time passes quickly, other issues become more pressing (like getting paid work in a recession) and we still hadn't done anything about sending our sample text and images off to our ex-teacher. Anyhow, the other day I received a great illustration from Sam for my Mr Grubble story. It was perfect.

However, I thought it might be an idea to send our ex-teacher two stories and two accompanying illustrations - just in case. Sam had already sent me the illustration for the second story but, not having read my text for about five months or so, it just wasn't ready to send off.

I need to hone it and perfect it and make sure I'm 100% happy with it. I shall make it my 'Task of the Week'....

Time to get writing....

Had supper with some friends the other night who asked: "How are your children's stories coming along?"

"Um, they're not. Well, that's to say I've written two that I think are quite good but all the others need work on them. "

So, it should be pretty easy, shouldn't it, to sit down and polish these picture book texts? I really need to class this as one of my client's copywriting projects and schedule in a set time each week. Otherwise, I know it will never happen.