Feeling better and launched new blog ...

Am glad to report that I'm feeling much better now having finally (some 9 months down the line) had the all clear about something that came up during a routine scan on my thyroid, and sent me into a blind panic.

Being me, and it being my big five-oh next year, I am, of course, just waiting for the next thing to jump up and bite me, but - in the meantime (due, I suspect, to finally feeling that there may be a future afer all!) - I've taken a long hard look at my writing, and devised a sort of plan for how to go forwards.

The rewritten story is still with the mag that requested it, but - apart from waiting to hear what happens with that - I've decided that I was probably trying to run before I could walk, in aiming at the challenging, and highly competitive Womag market.

Apart from anything else, when I had my health probs, taking a longish book out of the library looked over-optimistic, and the (understandable) months of waiting for Womag verdicts suddenly seemed a poor use of what may have turned out to be precious time ....

So, I decided to do more Competition writing, and to get critiques, where possible, as well, so that every story I submitted would give me an opportunity to learn from my mistakes, as opposed to simply receiving a rejection slip, as is the case with the magazines.

This has proved much more rewarding, as there's a faster turn around, on most competitions, and there's always an outside chance of publication as a result of success ...

And I've learnt a huge amount, e.g. from 2 consecutive stories, sent to Writers Forum comp, both of which sadly only achieved Highly Commended, but with such detailed and insightful critiques, that I could see exactly why I 'missed the boat' as regards being placed, and could endeavour to rectify things for next time.

In the interests of learning, and practise, I've also become a distance member of a local writing club (because 'local' - in my case - is around 20 miles each way), and I've been following the excellent Tutorials on Sally Zigmond's Elephant In The Writing Room blog. As a result of these two things, I've had a story published in Dawn (the Writing Group Literary Magazine), and Sally very kindly published my story For The Love of Moo, on her blog, following my submitting it to her, as part of a writing exercise.

So, I now have a sort of strategy for continuing to write the type of stories I want to write, and, instead of feeling demoralised about them not fitting the Womag mould, I'm taking each one as a learning opportunity - and loving it.

It does raise the question, though, of 'if not Womag, then what?' because, whilst I'm happy to follow the above strategy, as a purely personal exercise, I do wonder what real publishing opportunities there are for non-Womag stories?

Because of ongoing probs with this blog (like it disappearing from time to time, or coming up with strange things on it) I've decided to launch a new blog, to pose the Womag question, and others, in the hope of maybe sparking some discussion, on alternative markets, say, and competitions. Anything really that may help all us aspiring writers to find a niche for our work.

The new blog address is http://jottingsfromthewritingpad.blogspot.com/ and it contains liks to some blogs I follow, as well as to my writing club web site.

I'd be delighted if anyone would like to join me there, and I'd also like to say a big thank you, again, to everyone who took the time and trouble to reply to my meagre postings on the Cadno blog, which really was a huge boost when I was ill :-)