Since my last post, progress has been slow with perhaps only one new story completed and another under construction. The two are intended to be companion pieces, in fact. They are written in a way that means they can be read in isolation of each other, but the second story is also written to add a surprising twist to the first. A fun exercise, for sure, but I've not yet given a publishing strategy any thought. Do I send them off individually, or as a pair?
Also since my last post I have joined a new writing group. This one meets every two weeks and has 9 members. We each read submissions ahead of time then spend our meetings talking about the pieces purely in terms of what we liked and what could be developed. Simple. And a lot of fun. As a writer, I believe groups like this are less important for the feedback received, than for developing key critical skills. Writers who don't like to fraternise with other writers in this context are missing the point.
At the last writers' meeting, I presented a prologue and the first half of a chapter for a novel. Yes! A novel. But NO - I am not abandoning the short. I also hate people who think of shorts as merely a means to a more commercial novel-writing end. My novel is a long term project with currently no end in sight and I'll need to keep writing shorts to keep me sane as I go along. We'll see how that goes.
My job - which I wanted because it was part-time - has been full time (more or less) since I took it on last November. But last week I told my boss last week that I would be doing part-time, or she can find a full time replacement. A hard thing to do because I like my job and my boss but I need more time for writing, end of.
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