Please feel free to look around - you'll find information about the group's work, our group diary as well as the writing diaries of individual members.
A blatant nudge to anyone browsing here in the direction of Sharon's Blog to share her happy news. (And Richard's too of course, although he won't get to wear such a great dress...)
Huge congrats to both of them, and a bottle of something suitably sparkly at the next meeting I think.
I'm the vacant one at the back who enjoys throwing what the Americans would call "a spitball" at the meetings. Well, we can't have everybody agreeing all the time, can we? Occasional bursts of inspiration pepper my almost permanent block and this extends as much to my blogging activities as my writerly ones, hence my late arrival here. This is much to the chagrin of Sharon of course, whose hard work setting all this up on her old noisy laptop disrupted my sleep patterns for several weeks but certainly didn't deserve me turning up late to the party. Apologies all round.
Well I finally managed to get around to writing something I just hope you weren't expecting anything profound as I'm currently hiding from my laptop via, housework and ironing!
The problem is the ironing is nearly done and my laptop's calling me so I guess I'll have to give in, boot the beast up and get on with it.
Ah well, there's only so much ironing a person can do, but it has helped to smooth out my thoughts!
Feel like I'm joining everyone else after a long hike over rough terrain, and given my almost pathological aversion to exercise that's no mean feat. In our house we are currently experiencing some extreme technological difficulties, which makes connecting to the internet a little less easy than sending smoke signals from the top of an active volcano. Frustrating? Just a bit. Especially as there's a teensy weensy chance that I could get an email from the lovely editor I've been dealing with at HMB at some point....
Now I love my computer in the same way as I love my car, ie. they are both excellent ways of accessing shopping opportunities. But I have no idea how either of them work, which is why I am in open-mouthed awe of Sharon for setting this whole thing up. As far as I'm concerned the internet works through a combination of advanced electrical engineering and pixie dust, and we seem to be fresh out of dust. If anyone has any more scientific suggestions as to what the problem could be I'd be only too grateful to hear them.... If I can get back online, that is.
Anyway, before I disappear back into offline isolation, hello to everyone in the group. Oh, and get back to the writing instead of hanging around on here you bunch of slackers.
Last night we had our writers' group meeting at Penny's house. It was the first meeting I'd managed to get to so far this year so I'd been looking forward to it and was relieved when my health held out, even though I'd been struggling during the afternoon and wasn't entirely sure I'd make it.
There were so many faces I hadn't seen since either New Year's Eve at Penny's or longer. It was good to catch up.
Penny was her usual inspirational self, full of fun and giggles. And it was probably mostly down to her comment that I'm not focused enough that I decided to do some serious writing time management so today I downloaded an alarm clock programme and decided that every day I'd give myself a set time where I'd write. Today I wrote from 11:30 - 12:30 and managed to get 1,202 words down in that time. I turned off email and my web browser so that I wouldn't be distracted and decided that any research could be done after my allotted hour and filled in later. It worked :)
I am far more focused on actually finishing a story this time, though. It will happen! It will, honestly.
Luckily I'm one of two members who isn't worried about rejection. My philosophy is that if it doesn't sell, what's changed? My life will remain exactly as it was. Nobody will have died because of it and no other tragedy will have occurred. And there's always another story. One day they'll buy one... I hope :-)
Finally, a big GOOD LUCK to Iona who's been asked to submit her entire manuscript for the Mills & Boon Modern line (that's Harlequin Presents in the US). No doubt she's banging away at her laptop right at this minute, getting that last chapter finished.
