A Year of Celebration

My son's girlfriend gave me a new bookmark and these cuties which are no in my writing room.

 I'm a bit late posting, but January whizzed by and this month is going the same way. There was also the little matter of being distracted by another jigsaw puzzle which was great fun doing and I spent hours at a time on it. I have steeled myself not to buy another one for a while because they are all consuming and I really must be spending more time on my writing.

There is also another distraction. I have dedicated this year to a year of celebration because I am going to be 70 years old in the summer. Not being a party girl, I have been arranging little trips and doing a few things from my bucket list. Becoming 70 seems a huge deal to being 69! I try not to think of it as my last phase, that most of my life is behind me because I tend to be optimistic and really I have come into my own in my later years. 

I have a good friend who will be 70 fifteen days before me and for the last decade we have been doing something together as opposed to buying each other gifts. Things like the Hampton Court Flower Show, tea on a London tour bus and seeing ABBA Voyage together. This year we are going to Stratford-upon-Avon in July. We've booked an apartment for three nights and will do the whole Shakespeare experience. I can't wait.

My diary is now the busiest it's ever been for the next few months, and I still have to see other friends and do other things. Will I have time to write? Oh yes! In fact, since I joined a writing group, things have stepped up a gear. I'm part of the prose group and the new writing prompt group met properly for the first time last week in a branch of Waterstones (they have a cafe). There were two picture prompts and some headlines, or we could choose our own subject. There was no time limit, and we just read when we were ready.

You can always tell when things are going well when your audience reacts, and they did to my little comic flash. I heard the intakes of breath and chuckles, which fired me up. At the end, every one clapped and had lots of questions. This should be a monthly meeting. It was great with an interesting and friendly group of people. What I have gathered is that people like my comedy and someone asked me to write more. Things like this boost ones confidence and you feel that you are not wasting your time.

I heard about the open mic night through the writing group's Facebook page and decided to go along, mainly to listen. They did not organise it, but a couple of the group's ladies said they would come. It was held in the same place where the prose group meets, so I knew it. When I arrived last night I was asked if I wanted to read. I hesitated. Did I? I had brought along a selection of poems just in case I had the courage to stand and read. She said, 'they are a friendly lot', so I said yes, and the lady put my name down.

The first half would be for open mic reads, and the second half a guest poet, Rishi Destidar, who also writes a column in The Guardian, would read from his books. Sitting waiting for my turn wasn't good for my blood pressure, but I tried to concentrate on other readers. A good selection of poems were read, some serious and some humorous ones. Towards the end of the first half my turn came. I chose to read a poem written only last week entitled The Poetry Market, a sort of comic take on writing poetry. It went down really well and two ladies asked me if I was a teacher because I knew all the terms for poetry.

There was a real buzz around the place, and the group was diverse. The lady I sat next to had only been writing poetry for a short time and was in her 80's. There is hope for me yet! During the interval, I chatted to people including one of the ladies from the writing group who had also read. I bought a small Chapbook from the stall and suddenly it was time for the second half.

The Chapbook I bought last night

The guest poet read from various books of poetry. I was particularly drawn to his book of poetry on climate change, which he had written from the viewpoint of a god who despaired of us, but who he was still fond of. His poems were mostly comic with the odd more serious. It was a great end to a lovely evening. It is a pity that the open mic doesn't happen more often, but there next meeting will be in the summer. This was a great experience and lovely to meet and be with so many poets at every level.

Rishi Destidar reading

I have started submitting again, and while I have had some rejections, I am still waiting on a few things that I will hear about this month. The time felt right now to re-join The Poetry Society. They run  a members only poetry competition which is free to enter, so I have entered that.

I signed up for a set of six webinars with Writers Online (from Writing Magazine) on Self-Publishing. Next week is the last one. They have been so interesting and I have been filling my dedicated notebook to workshops. The webinars have covered whether self-publishing is for you, how to format your manuscript, marketing, website building, newsletters, how to get your work out there using Amazon, and wider distribution. Also covered was producing audio books, large print and special editions. Some of this I am really not ready for, and they do cost a lost, and until I actually make a profit is not worth considering, but who knows for the future. I have to say that had I not ventured down this route in the past, I would have been completely overwhelmed with all the information. As I know a little about the procedure, it hasn't been quite so daunting. I've learned a hell of a lot, but the thing we are told is that we do everything gradually, one step at a time. Don't try to do everything, and never what you are not comfortable with. The last webinar is about tax and the business side of things.

Taking part in the webinars will, I hope, help me when I come to produce my next book. I want to do it differently this time and with these tools hopefully I will be able to.

Well, that's it for now, which is probably enough. Keep the faith, keep writing and reading. See you next time. Please comment about anything or ask questions. I'm really friendly!

Well-being and a busy week

 I've read lots about what you should and shouldn't write in a blog post as a writer, but I have always tried to be honest about my journey and in the last few days I have been taking care of myself. I've felt a lack of energy and tired for a week or so, and then yesterday I realised that I'd finally hit a low spot when I got angry with some flowerpots! I can laugh about it now, which means I'm feeling better.

Being outside is usually conducive to my well-being, and eventually it was. I've spent the last couple of days in the garden and not on my laptop. I cut the grass yesterday. My last chance before 'no mow May'. I also potted up my tomato plants and today I planted out the peas and pulled up a plant (no idea of its name) encroaching along the flower beds and stifling my other plants. I had Rue as my 'helper', so there was a lot of stick and ball throwing in between. 

My 'helper'

Peas

It's all been too much!

This afternoon I sat outside with the latest book I'm reading. Reading has also been my life-saver. It's important to listen to your body and find ways to lift the mood. Finding what works is half the battle. For me, it is being outside. Just sitting in the garden creates a peace inside of me, though sometimes I do have to go further afield.

Our weather hasn't helped. We've had so much rain and cold. I thrive in sunshine and warm days. I can't believe we are in May already with only the odd good day. What has this to do with writing, I hear you cry. Well, I stopped writing. I decided writing wasn't helping. I had a very busy week last week, and while it was interesting and fruitful, I think it also sapped my energy levels.

About a week ago I joined ASPA, the Association for Self-Published Authors. Having let my membership to another self-published organisation lapse last year, I have found one I feel I fit in with. They are friendly and I don't feel I'm the struggling poor cousin while everyone else is making mega bucks from their books. With the other organisation I felt a failure because I wasn't producing three books a year, have millions of followers and top Amazon ratings. Does any of this sound familiar? 

Anyway, I attended my first webinar with ASPA looking at book reviews and how to deal with them, how some trolls give one star ratings with no comment, how to take some encouragement from even two or three star reviews. We had a chance to talk about our books and what we were working on at present. All this was new to me. I was actually asked questions and everyone was friendly.

The second webinar was with The Phare (an indie magazine who I have submitted to in the past). The subject was how to market yourself as a writer. This mostly consisted of having a good website and social media presence. This was a most interesting talk and I made tons of notes. Having a proper website is something I've thought about in the past and was on my to do list. Yet here I am two years later not having done it. The webinar made me think about two things, 1) whether I take my writing seriously enough and 2) whether others think I do! What I have done is update my profile photo and bio on both this blog and my Facebook Author page. It's a start.

My final writerly thing came on Sunday. I took my laptop along with me to the London Writers' Support Group meet-up (which came out of the course I took with Indie Novella). We were a small group this time, just three of us and we met in the bar/cafe in BFI. We spent half an hour chatting about what we were working on, what we were going to do that day, and anything we had attended lately. Afterwards, we wrote for an hour, each working on our individual goal. I worked on the next scene of The Island. Later,  we chatted about what we had done and whether we achieved what we had set out to do in the session. It was a successful meet up and we hope to get together again in a few weeks time.

So, there we are. I haven't yet decided when I shall return to The Island. Maybe I need more time away from it. It is quite a dark place and maybe that has been playing on my mind. Perhaps I should write something totally silly. I do write that sort of thing too.

There is, of course, more gardening to do, if the weather holds. But for now, I'm just taking things slowly and being kind to myself.