Is it Really June Already?

Not posting for four weeks? How terrible of me! My excuse for this unforgiveable lapse in blogging is that I have had nothing much to write about. Instead of writing a tedious post about how hard it is to think of something to post, however, I will at least update you as to what I've been doing over the last month.

Firstly, I organised myself with folders and spreadsheets and notebooks and all sorts so that I can at least pretend to be a proper writer who is expecting to get commissions and be published and things like that. I like organising. As I have quite a lot of different projects going on at the moment, one of my new organised-writer techniques is to write down what I am going to achieve on each of them, each week. This gives me a pleasing sense of achievement when I can cross them off - why is crossing things off lists so extraordinarily satisfying?

My main project has been writing a short story about an artist, which I hope to have finished in another two weeks. It's longer than any of my other stories (5000 words) and I found the length quite hard to get right - it's long enough that something has to happen, but too short for anything much to happen! I'm quite pleased with it, although annoyed that the only way I can get it to work is to write it in the first person from the point of view of a teenage girl, which is highly fashionable at the moment (if you read competition winner's work), but hardly original. In addition to this, I have been working on my shorthand, on the first assignment of my writing course and on planning the changes I need to make on my novel. The first assignment isn't very interesting but it will be good to get it out of the way so I can make contact with a tutor.

Hubby and I are going on holiday in a couple of weeks to see my lovely sister-in-law get married and I would like to be able to focus on my novel re-write after that, so the race is on to finish my shorthand workbook and this short story before we go. The only thing I will still try to do at the same time as my novel is the next assignment, oh, and maybe a txtlit or something, just for fun. Ooooh, that's just reminded me that I forgot to enter the May txtlit and it's now 12 hours after the deadline. Damn. I had written an entry and everything. So much for being organised...

PS: I am pleased to say that my author profile is now online at Bamboccioni Books, in advance of the anthology I was commissioned to write for being published later this summer.