Writing review 2015

It's that end of the year review time. A lot has changed since my last review. The biggest one was switching to fiction from poetry, though I started the year submitting poetry.

Here is a breakdown:

Poems entered for competitions - 13
Pamphlet Competitions entered - 1
Magazine/Ezine poetry entries - 10
Flash fiction entries - 7
Short Story comps - 3
Novella comp - 1

Poetry successes 1 (OU Poets 2015 Anthology) - flash fiction successes 4 (all with Paragraph Planet).
Other details - one flash fiction competition was scraped as the website closed!
I am still waiting the result of the novella competition, one short story competition, and a poetry competition where I entered three poems.

I have not included the poems sent to OU Poets this year for their Workbook because these are voted on in January for the 2016 Anthology.

I have not included poems and a couple of short stories published on Scriggler.

Projects - I finished what I called my 'online soap', edited and published around eleven or so episodes on WordPress before pulling it due to difficulties with the blog. Now wondering what to do with it!

Started and finished a novel. Seven of the draft chapters were published on Scriggler.com and received some positive feedback and one chapter had over 500 views. The aim is to start edits in January.

Attended the Winchester Writers' Festival in June for the first time. Presented a first chapter of my first novel to an agent and met lots of interesting people as well as attending some great masterclasses and lectures.

Goals for 2016:

Submit a novel to an agent.
Concentrate on short stories.
Write more flash fiction.

I'm purposely keeping my goals short and simple. I have two novels complete now. One has had four edits and still not ready, the other I haven't started editing. So lots of work to do there. I would also like to find other outlets for flash fiction.

You will see there are no goals for poetry. I feel I need some time out from it. Having looked at my file of poems there are many that are just not good enough and perhaps not even worth trying to re-write. There are a few I still like which I am editing and may have a go at sending out, but they are secondary to my fiction writing at the moment. It's like I don't have anything to say in poetry presently while I seem to have much to say in fiction!

When the programme for the Winchester Writers' Festival is announce in February I might consider attending again. Whether or not I will have anything worthy of agents' eyes I don't know. It will depend how far I get with my editing, but I guess that might be something to work to if I haven't already sent a manuscript out!

I have decided to continue subscribing to Brittle Star as I enjoy the contrast of poetry and short fiction, and I intend to subscribe to Popshot Magazine which I love - again there are great stories, poetry and fantastic colour illustrations. This was the find of the year!

Winchester is also holding a Poetry Festival in October 2016 and I shall try to get along to that. Any excuse to get back to Winchester again!

As for courses, I haven't made up my mind about that yet.

It has been a strange year as I've tried new things.Some have been successful, some have been a learning curve and some a disappointment. Now I need to stand back for a while and take stock of my work and decide where I am going with it. Getting on with my editing and submitting a novel will be a good start!

Thank you all for reading my blog this year. I hope that 2016 will be a successful year for your writing and do continue to drop by. Feedback is always appreciated and welcome.

HAPPY NEW YEAR