New Year, new submissions

Hello to 2016 - you've snuck up from nowhere, haven't you?

The New Year has brought but one resolution for me - write more. I have neglected my fiction for a long time due to various time constraints and work commitments, but this is now the time to strike and tap away at the keyboard like a caffeinated, tap-dancing mouse.


NB: Blog post edited 21/1/16.

I'm working on a few pieces currently, a series of shorts for the lovely Mslexia - for all women who write. Choices at the moment include poetry, fiction, non-fiction and confessions. My other current work is a new piece on Dreams for the wonderful and much-lauded Are You Sitting Comfortably? by White Rabbit and a few other bits and bobs. I may even dig out my novel this year - not my first work in progress, which is now more of a harddrive entity than a novel - but my second and main WIP.

With my CV landing in the inboxes of various agencies as we speak, I have to find something engaging to do in the long, unemployed winter afternoons. So I dance. Like Mickey.

Further adventures in caffeine

The girl poured a double measure of whisky - or brandy - into her coffee while no-one was looking.
I saw.
She saw me see her. I'm not saying anything.

I'm out quite late this afternoon to research any websites or publications taking open submissions this Spring - I tend to work better to a brief so I enjoy finding open ideas and having a think about what it means to me and how I can pull the story out.

Stories are always there - for me, it's like the Michelangelo thing: the statue is always there, in the piece of stone, and it's just up to the artist to uncover it. To paraphrase badly, that is.

Coffee holds my thoughts together and lets them string apart like mad bunting. This week I'm going to be working on my secondary WIP (work in progress) as my primary is sitting ignored on my external hard drive and there it shall remain until one day I gain the knowledge to be able to finish it.

My WIP is maybe a third through - it's a short story which is a dark comedy about what happens when you get what you really want. There's a goth, a doctor with sketchy morals and an elderly lady stuck in the middle. I'm not posting any snippets yet!

Courage is a rabbit

Years ago, I used to submit work without batting an eyelid. I'd contribute copy to music review sites, kept about four different blogs, sent spec letters to anyone and everyone. The courage of being 17 years old is a special kind you rarely feel again once you are past 27 and picking up speed.

I am beginning to submit work again. This is a Big Deal. Short fiction, mostly, to a few open publishers and I'm trying to write something, no matter how short, each day. Practice is as practice does. And courage comes.