Sorry.

How do you start a blog post after about 6 months away?

Um, I'm back?

It's as good a start as any, and I think the coming back is the most important part. 


I've finally moved into my own little place (which is neither my own as I a) rent it and b) share it with my brother and soon another house mate, and not little considering where I was before, but it sounds poetic). The big advantage of this place - for the blog at least - Unlimited, fast, cable internet which doesn't block my own website (problems of living at a school)!

So, I am determined to become faithful again with my blogging.

Just to catch up on the writing side:
- Finished the initial edit of Virtually Ideal, where I outlined all the changes I needed to make.
- Am now up to Episode 4 of making those changes, only another 8 episodes to go!
- I spent a large part of my holiday writing a boarding manual for work, which was fun and interesting, but took up way more time than I thought it would. (I had initally offered just to edit it and do the layout, but as I was going through I realised it needed quite a bit more in there. So I took it from basically a 10 page document to a 100 page one. Whoops. But they kept nearly all of it, which is cool.)
- I got A Little Bit Of Leaven ready to publish on Amazon, and just before I did my grandparents told me they would really love it to be published by the Scottish magazine 'The People's Friend'. Ok, that's fine, I can do that. Oh, wait, their submission guidelines say they take serials of up to 50,000 words or pocket novels of up to 40,000, and our manuscript is currently 80,000. Oh, right.
So started my epic adventure to try to cut a manuscript down by about half. And you thought Stephen King's 10% requirement was harsh. I don't know if I'll be able to do it, but it is making a much tighter book, with nothing that's not directly related to moving the story forward. I'm currently up to chapter 3, I think.
- I've started a blog for my boarding girls/parents. I hope to update it every few days, but will rely on photos being worth a thousand words quite often.

So that's all my writing since I last saw you.

My goals this year:
I'm moving away from the draft every two weeks to actually do some indepth, hard core editing. You learn a lot about writing by doing good editing, which will hopefully mean that my future first drafts will require less work.
I have three projects in mind at the moment:
1. Cut A Little Bit of Leaven down by as much as I can, then submit to The People's Friend.
2. Finish two more edits of Virtually Ideal (major changes in place + final beautifying polish) and publish it episode by episode.
3. Re-work Sally Hunt Book 1 with all my new found knowledge and try again for an agent/publisher.

As always, I'm torn between projects, always wanting to jump from one to the other. I had settled that I would work on A Little Bit of Leaven, but then one of my girls has been reading the first few episodes of Virtually Ideal for me, and came up the other night demanding the next one. I gave it to her, and she's already halfway through it, and the one after that isn't ready! So I feel I should push ahead on that. So many choices!
Though, in the end it doesn't really matter which one I work on as long as I keep working! I have not been writing nearly as much over the past few months as I wanted to, and now I'm going to turn that around. Writing is back to being one of my top priorities.

So, don't have an official goal, except to write something most days. I'll start with that and see where I go. Oh, and I want to get back into reading about writing again. That's gone by the way side.

See you soon.

Buffy.