July, a Month of Change and Progress

Click on the chart to open in a new window at a larger size

It’s been a mixed month. The weather, always an important component of British life, has been largely hot and fine, which is fine with me: I detest wet and cold. But, of course, we get so few hot days that we feel we must make the most of them. So, the garden has been well attended, and we’ve had a couple of trips out. Relatives and friends have been visited. It all takes time out of the writing calendar. Unfortunately, my wife had a fall (at her bowls club, slipping on a wet floor) and broke her wrist in two places. She’s in plaster and still in some pain, which means I’m doing more of the household tasks than normal.

As for the writing, which is the purpose of this post, that has been going relatively well. I sent the first 3,000 words of book 1 of the adult fantasy to a publisher and, within a few days, Fantastic Books Publishing asked to see the whole MS. That involved a little bit of final tweaking, of course (you have to make it as good as you can). And, as a result of their interest, I decided to prepare book 2 for publication, just in case. I’m now awaiting their decision, but, as you know, the wheels of publishing turn slowly. So, watch this space.

In the meantime, I started book 3 in earnest and have, to this date, written 24,131 words. Not as much as I’d hoped, but the emergency with Valerie’s broken wrist and subsequent hospital visits have eaten into my days, of course. I was planning on 3,500 words a day to get the first draft completed before a specific date in September. It’s looking as though that is now unlikely, but so be it.

As for what I’ve achieved this month: I’ve written the first 6 chapters of book 3 and edited the final 10 chapters of book 2, read and reviewed 3 books, posted 11 posts on here, and submitted 1 short story to a contest. I also discovered another way to present the writing contest information I thought I’d have to abandon last month. If you look under the ‘Writing Contests’ tab above, you’ll find it there. I don’t have as much time to update this as I did before, so it’ll probably only be done once a month or so, but I will endeavour to keep the information current for you.

So, not a bad month. How has July gone for you? Let us know through the comments. Oh, and if you’re not yet following the blog, I’d appreciate a follow. And, by all means, connect with me on the other social networking sites: the links are all in the side bar to the right.

The chart, explained:

'Writing' - initial creation of stories, blog posts, reviews and longer works.

'Editing' - polishing of all written work to make it suitable for readers.

'Research' - discovery of info for story content, market research, contests and blog posts.

'Reading' - books and writing magazines.

'Networking' - emails, Twitter, Pinterest, Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+, and comments.

'Admin' - story submission, blog posting, marketing, organisation, tax, and general admin tasks.