Interview at Goldsmiths', next Tues

I heard yesterday from Goldsmiths' that they want to interview me. Going along next Tuesday at 10, and somehow going to persuade them that I'm worth giving a place on the Creative & Life Writing MA course to.

This is something I've wanted for a long time; I'd hoped it would be UEA and full-time and living a haphazard writerly life, but part-time and evening and weekend essays while working tech support is a price I'm more than willing to pay for the opportunity.

Fingers very very crossed!

Quick update on writing things

Updates on various writing things over the past week:

• Goldsmiths now have my application for Creative & Life Writing MA -- I'm waiting to hear if they want to interview me...
• Now up to 76.8K words on Four Red Spots, and have the remaining scenes-to-add vaguely listed
• Started planning my assignment for Unit 2 of my short story course
• Non-fiction writing, mostly The Office Diet is going well, but I'm still spending a lot of time trying to market it and making very slow headway, if any...
• Had my first post as a staff writer up on Diet Blog last Friday, which was cool :-)

Continuing with Four Red Spots - 71K

I hit the 70K mark yesterday on Four Red Spots; despite waking up late and only doing 750 words first then, then a bad day at work, I managed to hammer out a few more in the evening. Got it up to 71K this morning before spending the rest of the day working on blogging stuff (some writing, some brainstorming, lots of networking/marketing type things.)

I'm becoming more and more convinced that chick lit isn't really my genre. I'm struggling to make it interesting; I think the characters carry the story fairly well, but the scenes all seem a litle flat and frankly somewhat pointless. I'm itching to start work on the Big Novel, the project that's been simmering and simmering away for a year now ... but I also want to get Four Red Spots finished. Still, at this rate, should be done by Easter. Another 29K to go...

Five ways I raise my vibrations meme

Meme from Womagwriter -- thanks! :-)

Five ways I raise my vibrations:

1. Take a shower. For some reason, my best ideas come to me in the shower. Washing my hair seems particularly good (maybe it's something to do with warm water on the scalp, I dunno.)

2. Get moving. I get edgy and irritable if I've not had any exercise, a bit like a small and yappy puppy that needs walking ... Usually, a cycle ride sorts it.

3. Tidy my desk. I work better when I don't feel cluttered (and when I can find things like envelopes and competitions guidelines).

4. Read motivational blogs. I'm particularly into Steve Pavlina's Personal Development for Smart People and recently discovered an excellent blog called Path to Your Destiny.

5. Drink tea from my Shakespeare mug. My mum gave me the mug last Easter, and I always have my "writing" cuppa in it -- so it's become a great cue to put me in the writing mood. If I don't feel like writing, I make tea in the Shakespeare mug and then I have to write.

All very mundane, really, I feel I should've come up with something more writerly but those are what I actually do! I'll tag Sam next...

Writing Tuesdays: Mostly Submissions

Posted/emailed off a final round of submissions for Night of the Empty Moon today, which took up the whole afternoon. If there's no joy from this lot, I'm officially chucking it in the bottom drawer for the foreseeable future...

Disappointingly, one of the very few publishing companies I had listed as a possible has stopped taking unsolicited submissions, and another's website said no SF/F. :-( Still, I suppose I saved on paper/postage...

Got another 1200 new words on the NaNo one this morning, and various other writery bits and pieces -- some brainstorming for possible competition entries, and studying a chapter of my Palgrave book. Also wrote another post in the excuse-busting series for The Office Diet, and made fruit salad, and oat cookies... (there's only so much writing I can do in a day!)

A Cautionary Tale and some NaNoing

I had fun on Thursday and Friday morning last week, working on a "Cautionary Tale" poem for a Writing Magazine competition: "The Man Who Talked Loudly On His Mobile In the Quiet Carriage". The Boyfriend (and the Parents) found it amusing, so after a bit of awkward-scansion fixing, I think I'll send it in.

Didn't get any writing done on Saturday due to various Church things then meeting up with friends on the Saturday afternoon.

Today, I redrafted a short story exercise that might possibly be one I'll send to a women's magazine (waiting for some feedback on it), then -- finally! -- got back into the NaNoWriMo novel this afternoon. I'm aiming to have the first draft (100k ish works) finished by Easter, which means doing about 1,000 words a day till then.

Got 1,500 words of new scenes done today so it's a good start. The subplot of Katie's essay is developing, and a bit more about Jan & Keith's rocky marriage. And some more Sidgwick buttery cookie eating took place...

Finally done all the novel edits - the manuscript is FINISHED!

I spent quite a bit of time last week with the Lulu copy of Night of the Empty Moon, going through every single page and marking typos and clumsy-sentence type errors. It took a while, and a lot of patience. I was even scribbling away in the pub on Saturday afternoon (whilst The Boyfriend and his friend watched Wales trounce England. At least Arsenal won...)

Today, I got all of the remaining type-ins done (had already typed in the corrections to the first 4 or so chapters). It took most of the morning, but it's finally DONE. Either this weekend or next Tuesday, I plan on doing a big mailout ... I've got the list of hapless agents and publishers ready. ;-)

I've also been working away at The Office Diet, which is slowly gaining momentum -- my page views are consistently 100-150 a day at the moment, and I've had some lovely feedback on forums or by email from readers. It still feels like a bit of an uphill slog; I love writing it, but marketing it seems to take a lot of time. I hoped the mythical "word of mouth" would have kicked in by now...