Diary of Being a Writer; Week 216

Still not quite there yet, folks.

Okay, so maybe we should just admit this has turned into a monthly blog rather than a weekly one. Between work and the kids bringing home every cold going around (although not the spicy cough again, yet) and really wanting to spend any spare energy or time I have on editing, this just hasn’t been a priority. Nor has a lot changed since last I wrote.

I have read a couple of great books, The Portrait of Molly Dean and Bluebird Bluebird and I am loving Val McDermid’s Forensics, The Anatomy of Crime

I have finished my first run through edit. Now I need to go back and check that the changes I made work, go through all the dialogue for consistency and voice and then read it out loud. But the reading out loud won’t be happening until I can shake this persistent cough.

I have negotiated with work and will cut down to three days a week at the end of the month. I am looking forward to that speeding up my editing and my writing progress. The budget works because working from home means that there are no transport costs. I am making my coffee and lunch each day and I don’t need any fancy outfits for work. Tracky pants and t-shirts are fine until I have a meeting, then I put on a fancy t-shirt.

So the other thing whizzing around in my writing head space is the course I mentioned, Writing Crime Fiction . It doesn’t actually take up writing time; it creates it. If I wasn’t attending that on a Wednesday evening, I would be cooking dinner and hanging out with the family, not writing. I cannot emphasise enough how inspiring and helpful getting to hang out with a bunch of writers each week is. The concepts are really helpful and those 10 minute writing exercises really punch above their weight as far as getting productive ideas on paper go. I recommend short, focussed writing sprints if you are ever feeling stuck.

Part of the course is getting to have some of our writing critiqued, I really like both the course conveners and their writing so I desperately want to just show off and send them some of the edited, polished first Dawn but I also want to use their time wisely so I am instead going to send them a first draft of either the second or third Dawn’s.