March - submissions and edits

This month I've been concentrating on editing and submissions as well as honing an agent pitch. The latter has caused me sleepless nights as time runs down and I think 'What am I doing?' and I feel my novel is not worthy.

I met up with the ladies from book club last week and they were so supportive. One lady even gave me some strategies and good advice on changing my negative thoughts. All she is right and sometimes I even manage it. I know when I speak about my writing I light up because people have told me that. If only I can do it when pitching. Maybe I should take the book group with me!

I've agonised over the pitch (I'm meeting two agents in two week time). I sent it to a friend and she came back with an important point. I needed to hook the agent in the first line and mine was a bit....stereotypical. I did some more researching and re-wrote it and sent it to her again stating a couple of books mine were similar to. Between us we decided I needed that in. Otherwise she thought it was good. Well, I think it's the best it can be. At least I finally understood what the story was actually about.

This month I've also been published twice online - Visual Verse and Paragraph Planet and I'm still considering a couple more submissions for this month.

I've been doing some writing exercises using Bridget Whelan's book Back to Creative Writing School. I've managed to get two short stories out of it so far. I'm enjoying the prompts. I also asked my Facebook friends for some ideas, like give me a name and setting etc. Two people responded and I ended up with two stories which I shared - I like to give back! One is set in Italy (the friend lives there) and I did a little research using maps of the city she mentioned. I wanted to have some sort of authenticity to it, though I've never been there. It was fun to do.

I've been making notes for a potential new novel but I'm not in the right place to write it yet. I have too many other things that need wrapping up and dealing with. Still, you can never have too many ideas in the pipeline.

Well, that's me for now.