A log of my writing progress is long overdue. I know from other areas of my life that keeping track can be a really good way of keeping focussed, so I'll briefly whizz through last year's writing stories and then begin on 2014.
At the start of 2013 I made my New Year's Resolution to earn from my writing that year, to really push. I went on ELFM to promote Writers in the Rafters' latest booklet. I submitted two stories to womags (and both were rejected). I almost accidentally published 'The Sundered' on CreateSpace and Kindle and went on ELFM to talk about that. It generated no sales, but I think it got me noticed... as later on in the year I was invited to take part in 100 Poets, a flashmob poetry event taking place ahead of the New Zealand-Papua New Guinea Rugby League World Cup match at Headingly.
For this event I wrote several poems to be read to the arriving spectators, including a tailored rewrite of Kipling's 'If', and 'Give Blood, Play Rugby'.
After the rehearsal, Peter Spafford of ELFM got in touch to say Radio 5 Live wanted to interview one of the poets and he'd liked one of my poems so much he'd given them my details. A researcher rang and asked me if I had any poems about rugby. At this point, GBPR was a collection of ideas and two or three lines so I lied and said 'yes', leaving myself five hours to write something half-decent. I was duly interviewed and read the poem.
Next night was 100 Poets and ahead of the event, I got to read GBPR to the arriving NZ Kiwis. It would have been so much better if they'd expected it...
Earlier in the year, I'd entered the Let's Get Crafting Knit & Crochet' magazine's short story competition and I won second prize. I was mentioned in the mag and my story was posted on their FB page, where it generated a lot of positive comment. I will say the winning story was very entertaining and I was delighted with my prize - lots of yarn
Towards the end of the year, Peter Spafford got in touch again to invite me to consider having my own radio show on ELFM. Delighted at this unexpected opportunity, I said I'd be very interested and was invited to a meeting about it in January of 2014...
Which more-or-less concludes 2013. I'd written a fair number of short stories, a paranormal romance, 'Fallen', and a sequel to it, 'Between', for NaNoWriMo. 'Fallen' became my ongoing project for 2014, in need of editing and turning from a draft into a polished work.
So.... I earned around £20 in royalties, about £50 in wool, began this blog, began to tweet (and gained some rather delicious followers - the BalletBoyz) and generally decided I could no longer refer to myself as 'shy'.
Now Read On...
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