Writing Targets for 2018

It's that time of year again when teacakes are eaten and writing goals are set.

On Monday, writing chum, Tracy Fells, and I met up in our favourite cafe. We ordered teacakes and coffee and went back over 2017 to see whether or not we'd achieved last year's goals (you can read them here). We also set new targets for the coming year. It's the fifth year we've done this as we've found it's a great way to keep us focused in the months ahead. 

Without further ado.... here are my 2018 writing goals. Hopefully I shall:

• Continue to submit two stories a month to magazines.

• Submit something new to the RNA New Writers' Scheme reader for a critique in August.

• Continue to submit to agents/publishers with a view to having my first two novels published.

As with last years goals, I've tried to make them manageable ones. Also, you never know when life's going to throw you a curve ball and you have to change your plans (I certainly wasn't expecting to lose my agent last year and have to start again along that route). 

My other (non-writing related) news is that I'm taking up a new challenge... I'm learning the violin. Yes, you heard me correctly. The violin. A while ago, I got it into my head that I'd love to learn to play this instrument. I have no idea why and neither did anyone else! 

Imagine my surprise when I opened my Christmas present from my husband and found this...

His present to himself was earplugs and now that I've tried it out I can see why! I'm determined to learn though and my final goal is to be able to play some carols on it by next Christmas. Think I will succeed?

And that's the end of my goals for this year. Do you set yearly writing targets?

Interview with Commonwealth Prize Regional Winner - Tracy Fells

Today, I welcome back to my blog my good writing friend, and competition queen, Tracy Fells. The reason I've brought her back is because she's just had a momentous win - regional finalist of the Commonwealth Short Story Prize no less! It's an occasion that cannot be left unmarked so I thought you might like to hear more about her winning entry and Tracy's route to competition success.

First of all, congratulations on being regional winner of the Commonwealth Short Story Prize. Can you tell us a little more about the competition?

Thank you, Wendy! The Commonwealth Short Story Prize is run annually and is FREE to enter so it really is worth entering. However, you can only enter if you can demonstrate you are a national of one of the Commonwealth countries (if you get shortlisted you do have to provide proof!). From the shortlist five regional winners are chosen and I was lucky enough to win for Canada & Europe region. The five winning stories are published – this year they are on Granta magazine’s website – and then an overall winner is chosen (£5,000 is the prize). The competition usually opens in September and closes early November – more details here: http://www.commonwealthwriters.org/

You’ve been writing (and winning) competitions for a while now. Was this your first attempt at this prize?

No, not at all. In fact this is the second year I’ve reached the shortlist (first back in 2014), so I was amazed to hear another story had done it again. Looking at my competition spreadsheet (yes, I’m that anal) I can see that this year was the sixth time I’ve entered, proving that persistence pays off!

Your story The Naming of Moths is a worthy winner (I should know as I’ve read it) how would you describe it?

Hmm, I know you would describe it as a typical Tracy Fells’ story, as it has a distinctive thread of magical realism. Its origins come from an ancient folk legend but I would describe it as a contemporary fairy tale and love story.

What gave you your inspiration for the story?

Get yourself a cup of tea as this make take some time … September 2013 I was holidaying with hubby in Swanage (south coast of England). On a blustery and wet coastal walk we took shelter in a cliff-side castle’s café. The walls of that café were covered in glass panels – etched into the glass were the names of hundreds and hundreds of moths. I now wish I’d taken a photo at the time. The names were incredibly varied, lyrical and many of them were beautiful and not scientific at all. This gave me the title of a short story: The Naming of Moths. Unfortunately, the rest of the story refused to emerge even though I knew it would focus on moths and their names. Fast forward to early January 2016 and I was itching to write a story bringing in Hebrew folk history. Some inspiration came from Terry Pratchett’s Discworld series and ‘Feet of Clay’ in particular. Other research came from watching episodes of Supernatural and The X-Files. Then I can’t really remember but suddenly the full story sort of appeared in my head and I was ready to write it. I wish I could share the process (so I could replicate it myself!) but I trust to my subconscious to join the dots together.

If interested there’s a video of me talking about the story up on the Commonwealth Writers website here: http://www.commonwealthwriters.org/cssp-2017/

How long did it take you to write?

Again, I have a spreadsheet to check as I record daily any word count and what I was working on. Therefore, I can tell you the first draft was written over two days: 30 – 31 March 2016. It was reviewed by my workshop group, then further edits and proofread by hubby. Though I confess this was a story that wrote itself (when I actually sat down to it) and took little editing time to clean up. Some stories – often the really successful ones – are like that.

Are you a planner or a pantster when it comes to your competition stories?

This is easy! I am a planner and proud of it. I plan everything I write and can’t even begin to start the writing process until the arc of the story is complete in my head.

It’s rude, I know, to discuss money but…. let’s discuss money! The Commonwealth Prize is a serious win – mind spilling the beans?

Okay, just because it’s you, Wendy. I’ve won £2,500, which is the biggest prize I’ve won to date. As mentioned above the overall winner receives £5,000, which is still to be announced.

The presentation is going to be held somewhere very exciting. Can you tell us about it?

All the regional winners are being flown to Singapore for the prize giving event on 30 June (to be held in The Arts House, which looks beautiful). We’re staying on for a weekend of writing Masterclasses with Jacob Ross, one of the judges. To be honest this trip feels like winning another prize!

What are you most looking forward to on your visit?

Meeting the other regional winners and just experiencing Singapore. I’ve never visited Singapore or this part of the world so just hoping to soak it all up and not wilt in the heat …

What next for Tracy Fells. More competitions or a larger project perhaps?

As a short story writer I will continue entering competitions as these are one of the best ways to get your work noticed. I’ve just finished a new story which I’m hoping to enter into the Brighton Short Story Prize. I will be writing more short stories and flash, because how could I stop! And I’m excited about a new project, a novel which I hope to begin after the summer. It will have magical realism and all the elements that signal a Tracy Fells’ story! Right now I’m in that thinking phase for the novel, so not ready to start writing …

You can read Tracy's winning story here

If you want to find out more about Tracy’s writing then she shares a blog with The Literary Pig http://tracyfells.blogspot.com. You can also follow her on Twitter: @theliterarypig.

Did I Achieve My 2016 Writing Targets?

It's time to say goodbye to the old writing year and hello to a new one. 

In the first week of 2016, as tradition dictates, best writing chum Tracy Fells and I met up in our favourite teashop for teacakes. We weren't just eating teacakes though, we were setting our writing goals for the year. You can read the full post here.

So how did I do? 

Well, 2016 has been a strange year writing wise - a bit of a roller-coaster if I'm honest. My hope that this year would be 'the year of the novel' hasn't come to pass (I'm keeping my fingers crossed for next year) but it's not all been doom and gloom. I've had many stories published in three different magazines and this year, four of them have been turned into audios as well which has been very exciting. 

But what of my targets? The results are below and you can see that they are a little mixed.

Goal: To find an agent to represent me.
Achieved? Yes! At the beginning of the year, I was thrilled to be offered representation by the Eve White Literary Agency. You can read how it came about here.

Goal: To have written 50,000 words of novel two by the end of August ready to submit to the RNA New Writers' Scheme.
Achieved? No. The writing of novel number two had to be put aside as I was working on substantial edits for novel one. This was the novel I eventually submitted to the scheme and I can't thank my reader enough for her incredibly helpful comments.

Goal: To publish at least one more story collection.
Achieved? Sadly no. I can't self-publish any more story collections while I am under contract.

Goal: To write at least two short stories a month.
Achieved? Absolutely. Most months I've managed to write at least three. They've been a life saver during the often roller-coaster ride of novel writing and editing.

... and that's it folks.

All that's left is for me to wish you a very Happy New Year and thank you all for supporting my blog in 2016.

Writing Targets 2016

As usual, at the beginning of the year, writing chum Tracy Fells and I sat down in our local cafe, in Cobblestone Walk, to set our writing goals and give each other a stern talking to. Unlike the previous years, I came armed with this: a lovely little book just asking to be filled with potential achievements (you see I like to stay positive!).

Last year, I realised that any goals set needed to be straightforward and not overambitious if they were to be achievable and not stressful and I think I got them about right (if you haven't already seen how I did you can read last week's post here).

So here they are (gulp) - my writing goals for 2016!

1. To have written 50,000 words of novel two by the end of August (ready to submit to the RNA New Writers' Scheme reader).

2. To write at least two short stories a month. You may have noticed this has been reduced from last year's one a week but I have to be realistic as I'll be writing them alongside the novel.

3. Publish at least one more story collection - I'm really pleased with how well Room in Your Heart and The Last Rose have done (if you fancy reading them, the link is at the side) and so many people have asked when the next one will be appearing that it would be rude not to, wouldn't it!

4. Find an agent. This probably should have been at the top of the list as it is my ultimate goal for 2016 now novel number one is complete. I've already started the process... so fingers crossed.

And there you have it - four (hopefully) realistic goals for the year. One thing I do know though is that if I don't achieve any of them I am not going to beat myself up about it. At the end of the day the most important thing is that I carry on enjoying my writing, my wonderful circle of lovely writing friends and being in the privileged position of being able to entertain readers with my work... here's my latest story in The People's Friend Special.

You can read Tracy's 2016 goals here.

Life at Babcock Manor - My Second Serial for The People's Friend

It's been a busy time publication-wise over the last couple of weeks but by far the most exciting has been the first episode of my serial 'Life at Babcock Manor' in The People's friend.

This is my second serial and is an 'upstairs-downstairs' style family saga set in the 1850s. It starts when governess Emily arrives at the house owned by Doctor Craven and his wife to tutor their daughter, Elizabeth. Why is beautiful Mrs Craven so strange and distant? What trouble will her brother Lewis cause for the family? Will new maid Elsa come between kitchen maid Jenny and young footman Robert? I can't tell you the fun I had trying to answer these questions and more.

The inspiration behind Life at Babcock Manor was a Christmas story I wrote for The Friend a couple of years ago called, The Last Candle. Even as I was writing it, I knew there were more stories to be told about my characters. Eagle-eyed readers might remember some of the characters: gruff Mrs Banbury, the cook; serious housekeeper, Mrs Peters; Jenny's little brother, Jed. All of them return - along with new characters, flighty ward Belinda, dashing Lewis and kind new doctor James Upton. Governess, Emily, was the heroine in my People's Friend canal-side story, Workshop of the World. I love re-using characters, moving them to different locations and seeing what happens to them.

As I've mentioned before, the People's Friend is holding a serial writing competition. To help promote it, I was asked by Writers' Forum columnist, Doug McPherson, to give a few words about serial writing to go alongside those of fiction editor, Shirley Blair. Seeing this photo had made me realise I really must get a new one done - it's been around too long.

Alongside Life at Babcock Manor is my short story, The Iron Man. It opens the magazine. Did you know that this is the name given to the wind pumps on American farms? No, nor did I until I started to write the story for the great illustration my editor sent me, and did some research. Every now and again I'll write a story set in another country just for a change. I find writing about a different place (especially one I've never been to) challenging but also refreshing.

I also have a story called The Grapes of Love in Take a Break Fiction Feast, but as it relates to something I shall be doing in a couple of weeks time, I shall leave the inspiration behind this story until then.

Finally, for the first time, writing chum, Tracy Fells, and I have joined forces for a feature! We are talking to Lynne Hackles in her Novel Ideas column about the importance of writing buddies and teacakes -what else! Without Tracy's support I wouldn't have achieved half of my goals... honestly.

You can find Lynne's Column in Writing Magazine.

So that's it for this week. On Tuesday I am off to Skopelos for a week to soak up the sun and to add the final details to my Greek romantic suspense. It's all but finished and will hopefully be ready to send out to agents once I'm back. Exciting stuff. Can't wait!

Busy, Busy, Busy

I hope you won't mind that I haven't written a proper blog post today but I thought that instead, I would point you in the direction of the guest blogs and interviews I've been doing over the past couple of weeks since publishing my short story collection, The Last Rose. I would hate you to have missed them.

I'd like to thank all of the lovely people who have welcomed me with open arms onto their blogs. Please do pop over and have a read - you never know, you might find out something you didn't know about me!

These are the lovely people I have been talking to:

The Write Romantics

Anne Harvey

Write Minds Write Place

Karen Aldous

Ben Adams

Never Too Late to Write

Also, thank you Tracy for a generous bit of promo.

Please do support these great bloggers - I like to think of us all helping each other.

How's the Novel Going?

Okay, okay, I can't dodge the question any longer.
What question? I hear you ask.
The one referring to the thing that starts with N and ends with L.

I blame Tracy Fells of course. To be honest, I thought I'd got away with it as we had been sitting in the cafe talking for nearly two hours about the usual writerly things and she hadn't brought the subject up. Then just as we were about to pay for our teacakes (yes it's that time of the month again) and leave the café, she did.
,
"How's the novel going?"

At first I pretended not to have heard, but Tracy knows me too well and was not going to let me get away with it that easily. My target was to write at least 2,000 words of the novel a week, so the question she wanted to know was had I managed it?

"Well..." I said. "It's like this..."

Tracy cut in. "Don't tell me. You haven't had time because of your dancing, zumba, dog walking... oh, wait a minute that's it, Bonnie ate it!"

Very funny.

In actual fact my excuses for not having reached my target that month, and having only reached 12,000 words in total, were rather better than that and perfectly true: I'd had a serial to finish and a new collection of short stories to prepare for publication (watch out for it early March), I'd got stuck when I realised I hadn't planned the novel out properly and I'd changed the tense and viewpoint about ten times. You see, I'd been very busy!

The look on Tracy's face, though, told me all I needed to know - she was having none of it. I bowed my head. "I promise to do better next month Tracy."

"You'd better, or there will be no teacakes."

Now that is a threat (and one I think I've heard before) so this last week I've been setting aside more time for the novel. I wrote another chapter and managed to get a better idea in my head of where my characters were heading. I thought I was doing well then, out of the blue, I had a crisis of confidence - how could I be sure that what I had already written would have the makings of a readable novel?

The breakthrough came when someone gave me the following piece of advice (if I could remember who, I could thank them). They suggested I send what I had written to my kindle and read it as a reader would, rather than as a writer. That's what I did this morning and, because I haven't written a great deal, I was able to read it all the way through and the result was very exciting. I found I couldn't wait to find out what was going to happen next. It was the push I needed.

At last I can believe that what I am writing has the potential to be a story that I will enjoy writing and that someone will hopefully enjoy reading ... and I can't wait to carry on!

In other news, I have a story in this week's People's Friend (out Wednesday) and The current People's Friend Special and Woman's Weekly Fiction Special.

My Goals of 2014 - Did I Succeed?

At the beginning of 2014, I sat down over teacakes with writing chum Tracy and set myself some writing goals for the coming year - you can read the original full post here.

The goals (in brief) are below and I have commented on whether or not they have been achieved.

Goal: Increase my story output to three stories every two weeks.
Achieved? Yes and no. I managed this for several months until it became stressful! I realised that by forcing myself to write more stories, I was concentrating more on quantity than quality and unless my story is my very best, I don't want to send it. I also realised that by writing more stories I had to come up with more ideas and this started to feel like a chore rather than a pleasure. With this in mind, I dropped back to one story a week again - this feels just right and the ideas come naturally now.

Goal: Achieve my hundredth sale by the end of the year.
Achieved? I sold 102!

Goal: Write another serial
Achieved? Yes. Serial number two was accepted by The People's Friend and is almost completed.

Goal: Write a novel
Achieved? Umm... no. I started - really I did - but there was always something else I wanted to write. I'm a bit disappointed in myself but will try harder next year!

Goal: Publish a collection of my short stories in time for Christmas.
Achieved: A gold star for this as Room in Your Heart was published in September (available here.) It was only ever meant to be an ebook but after many requests, I published a paperback version as well.

So, as you can see, it was a mixed year but on balance, I was very happy with my achievements.

But do you know what the best goal of all was? It was to meet up with Tracy once a month to discuss targets and put the writing world to rights. We've managed every month for the whole year and I couldn't have a better writing buddy. I'll be posting my new targets for 2015 very soon - so look out for them.

Truth is Stranger than Fiction... or is it?

 

Thirty minutes late and full of excuses, I arrived at the abode of fellow author Hilary Mantelpiece. I tried to hide my guilt under a cloak of invisibility but she saw right through it.

"You're late... KJ." She was obviously not amused. "I have a very large rucksack and I'm not afraid to use it!"

Maybe I should have worn my spectacles when reading the note the owl had brought me earlier that morning - on which were written the instructions for meeting our new writing friend, Agony Christie. Luckily, if Ms Christie was dismayed by our tardiness, when we eventually arrived at our meeting place, she hid it well.

"I've booked first class," she said, indicating for us to follow her into the carriage of the train. "What do you think?"

"It looks like the sort of place where one might hear a cry emanating from one of the carriage compartments in the dead of night."

"You have such a vivid imagination, Ms Rolling Pin," scoffed Ms Mantelpiece. "And don't even think of bringing up the assassination attempt when we went to the Woman's Weekly Fiction Workshop... you know no one believes you."

The tea we drank was divine, straight from the orient and it went well with the Dangelberries I had conjured up with a flick of the wand I'd borrowed from a young wizard. We talked of commas and campervans and absent writerly friends and when Agony's husband, David Bayleaf, sometimes known as Agent G, arrived with his camera, we were thrilled.

"Make us look beautiful," I cried.

His look was scornful.

 

"I only do boats,"  he said.

 

The truth is stranger than fiction.... or is it? If you like your fiction to be well-rounded, you might like to read my friends' accounts here and here for the whole story.