Campus Digital Day and other stuff

My novel has come to a stop right now as time hasn't allowed me one way or another. However, I have still been writing as I signed up for The Poetry School Campus Digital Day. This took place on Wednesday when I took the opportunity to submit a couple of poems to the feedback section - Show Us Your Poems run by poet Kim Moore. Because so many people uploaded poems she was only able to feedback on one for each person, but that was fine. Kim was very positive about the poem she read of mine, making a couple of suggestions. It's always nice to know you are on the right track and having feedback from a published poet is helpful. You feel they know what they are talking about! One of the other participants gave me feedback on the remaining poem. It seemed he really liked it.

The day was very popular and the site was struggling to cope in the morning but improved as the day went on. I wasn't able to sign up to the live chat about first collections due to the volume of people wanting just that but the transcript was available shortly afterwards. I was interested to see how new writers were 'picked up' from slush piles, competitions and magazines and about the process of putting together a collection. Although I'd thought about how to order my poems I'd not thought about how they would look on facing pages. Worth remembering.

I entered the 24/7 Poetry Challenge but didn't win, still it was fun. We were given a set of words and had to write a poem no longer than 40 lines using each of the words. This is the sort of challenge I enjoy.

Meanwhile the Start Writing Fiction course with FutureLearn is going well. We've been submitting short pieces of writing and then other students are allocated pieces to feedback on. I did four feedbacks and I've had three on mine. All were positive which is good to know because I rarely let anyone see my fiction! I'm now trying to get a little ahead because I'm soon going on holiday and don't want to fall too far behind. Luckily the next week's activities are up.

Maybe I will get the chance to do a little on my novel over the weekend but my back is really playing me up so I can't sit at the table typing for long and I've had to cancel my sporting and walking activities which I'm sad about.