The weeks round up

This week has been full of great, frustrating and amusing moments. With my work, we have moved forward and things are, dare I say it, looking up. There is still a long way to go in some directions, but overall things are looking good.

Writing has been slower than normal due to the work load at work. But having said that, I have made small inroads into another new project. I have submitted one of my 7+ novels and as it is very quirky I am hoping the readers will find it great fun and see its potential.

The session at the Windmill Writers was once again full of writerly chatter. Lucy kicked us off with her children’s novel. This is shown in two peoples pov. One of the chapters had good balance, but the other needed work. The main thing was to show the other characters in the story instead of telling us what they were doing. This encouraged a great amount of chat and I think Lucy will not find this issue again.

Alan was next to share. He was writing the second in his picture book series. Like the first, it has a lot of possibilities but needs some hard pruning to use a horticultural term. Too many words for a picture book. Picture books are one of the hardest things to write as you have so few words and everyone has to count. Which is true for all writing, but especially important when writing picture books. I’m looking forward to seeing the much shortened version next week.

Then Nicki shared some of her first every YA novel opening. This has an interesting plot and feels like it will develop into an interesting story. She has always has plotted out the complete storyline and has created all her character’s beautifully. I'm looking forward to hearing more of this and the rewrite of the opening, just to tighten slightly. Bloody amazing for a first draft, but that isn’t unexpected with Nicki.

Lastly I read some of my 7+ novel that I've submitted to one of the publishing houses. It had one of my audience looking totally confused, due to the strange characters and language used. The other two giggled along with the story and said they thought it very inventive with a touch of the Roald Dahl about it.

Over all it was another active session and along with all the reading and critiques, we were involved in lots of interactive writerly chatter.

The writing task for this week, should you chose to take the challenge. This is a simple one. Keep a diary of a week and from that diary write a short story using many of the aspects you have noted down. Remember to go into detail with your diary recording.

So go on, get writing.