New place

I have now moved to julieaday.blogspot.com.

Please come and visit me there to read all about my home organic life and writing life.

Beaty Addicts and Dancing

Did anyone see that programme last Thursday called Beauty Addicts: How Toxic Are You? I watched and taped it and will say that it was a must see programme. It highlighted most of the chemicals I already knew about but I didn't know about baby wipes and washing powder. I can't wait to change to all natural and organic stuff, most likely next year as I have so much regular stuff to use up still. 2008 is the year for being organic for me and my mum.

Anyone watch Strictly Come Dancing? I just love this programme and I think this year's celeb dancers are better than before, esp the women celebs. They are far better than the men so far and the men have a lot of catching up to do now. I esp liked Kelly and Aleesha's rumbas, oh my they were something. I was surprised to see that Kate was kept in by the public and think she probably got a lot of sympathy votes having been at the bottom of the board. Next week the men and female celebs battle it out between them for the rest of the series. Can't wait. I had to tape the show on Saturday cos I started suffering from exhaustion and had to go to bed for the evening. Last week was busy with one of my colleague's away on leave so I was doing the work of 2 people (still am but less busy so far), then I was out shopping all of Sat morning, and my brother came over with his family in the afternoon so still didn't get time to relax. It was only when I sat down to eat dinner that I relaxed and so did my body and I started to feel very tired. By the time Dancing came on, I had to go to bed. I tried to watch it but my head went fuzzy and went back to bed again. I was still not quite right yesterday morning but bucked up in the afternoon and am much better today.

Going organic

Well, I had a successful couple of weekends buying natural and organic skincare products. So far I've managed to buy soap, body wash, and my mum bought soap and moisturiser, oh yes and I bought toothpaste. Now you might think that buying organic and natural stuff is dearer than usual stuff and some of it is, but some of it isn't. Yesterday I bought from Neal's Yard Remedies near here at work a 100ml tube of natural toothpaste which cost £2.75. This proved cheaper than the first organic tube of 50 ml which I bought for £3.45, and also cheaper, albeit by 10p, than my usual conventional 100ml toothpaste. So if I like the second one I might stick with that. I popped into NYR yesterday and bought a few nice smelly things for my mum for Christmas (yes, I know I'm very organised but Christmas will come sooner than we think). Also, at the weekend I bought a book called A Slice of Organic Life about living green and organic. I've yet to read it but it does have in it pages about the chemicals in everyday products which I've already read about. Can't wait to read it as I am so keen to start going all organic.

I won't be going to Simple Spa again for my birthday next month. I phoned them up last week to book treatments only to find out that they no longer do the simple treatments that my mum and I had in August and now do more involved therapies with mitts and stones, which we don't want. I think I might go back to the hotel we went to 2 years ago but just have a facial and manicure and not the whole spa day as we did then. It's in Westminster so is easy to get to esp we now know where it is from before.

Work is galloping on with Bug, and I am now writing the last chapter. I have just started typing up Chapter 12 so a couple of chapters ahead of myself. Once I've finished this first draft I will go back to the start and revise it all with the notes I've made along the way.

Well, must get back to work now.

Well I'm stumped

I got home last night to a nice shock. I was walking up my road to my house when I noticed that something was different. I looked and looked again and shock horror, the tree outside our neighbour's which has caused all the bother recently was just a stump. The council had ordered for it be to cut down and so my mum got a nice birthday present yesterday seeing men chop it down. They jokingly said that they would try their best to hit my car (ha ha). They didn't, so that was good. Apparently they said that bees only burrow in trees if it's already rotten. Anyway someone else will be coming at a later date to take the stump away. Hooray!!!! I certainly didn't think it would ever happen, but it has and I am so pleased. At least I won't have the possibility of any more branches coming down on to my car during the winter.

On the writing front. I am half way through Chapter 13 of Bug and am enjoying it. Can't wait to finish the first draft and get on with rewriting the 2nd draft.

Well, must get on with some work now.

Recycling and chemical nasties

I didn't mention before that a couple of weeks ago my mum and I found our local Tetrapak recycling bank, which I'm really pleased about. As family and work colleagues know, I am very proactive when it comes to recycling and I wanted to recycle my milk cartons which were tetrapak. I read in our local paper the other week there were 2 local but mum couldn't find one and we found the other. So now mum goes up there (15 mins walk from home) about once a month to take my cartons.

I have recently decided to try and go organic and green with my cosmetics at home ie face and hand washes etc. I have been reading in the papers and in health magazines about these chemicals called Sodium Lauryl/Laureth Sulfate (SLS), aliminium, parabens and propylene glycol all can cause harm to the skin. SLS was in the toothpaste so I bought some organic SLS free toothpaste, aliminium is in deodorants so I bought an aliminium free roll-on, and am now looking at other products that don't have these things in, and a lot of wash stuff does. There is a Neal's Yard Remedies place near here at my work place so I might go and have a look lunch time today instead of writing. I said to my mum last night that all these chemicals are like these E numbers and additives that people are creating about now. Why food producers put all these things in the foods I don't know especially when they are saying they can cause all these problems in children now, although this scenario was brought up years ago.

Well, must get on with some work.

My 2nd SCBWI talk

I went to another SCBWI talk last night and really enjoyed it. I found the pub which is only a minute or so from Charing Cross station and had a dinner of rib-eye steak, chunky chips and a bit of salad (tomato and red onion - very hot). Then some water. I had to wait for a while because a few members were having a private chat before I was able to go up to the room to the meeting. I bought 5 books by the author, one of which I got signed, and I caught up with what's happening with a couple of friends I knew via the RNA, and chatted to a couple of other writers I know now. Then was the talk by the author, Sally Gardener, who has written for all children's ages and is now writing for teens. She was a very interesting lady who has had an interesting career. She was found to be very dyslexic when she was a child and because no one knew what was wrong with her in those days she was sent to a maladjustment school. Because of her disability she went into theatre costume design for some years until she wasn't happy anymore then she reinvented herself by saying she always wanted to be an illustrator. That was her second career, which led her to her third as a writer. What I should say that she discovered early on that she had the wonderful gift of seeing pictures of things in her mind which has helped her in her second career. She said that she loves writing for children and wants to continue doing so for as long as she can, and doesn't see herself as writing for adults as she doesn't particularly like adults much, and because of her disability she can relate to children more. She told us that when writing for children, the words should be manageable and gave an example that when she writes and comes across an awkward word she asks herself if little Johnny would struggle with this word and says yes so puts in other easier words instead. Also, we should never patronise because children could be cleverer than the writers. When we think about pacing we should stay on edge, and possibly think of music of its ups and down tempo. She said that we should have a voice which is how we write, and it is best advised to go through an agent because she finds hers very helpful and beneficial. All in all I had a good time, and on the way home I bought a sultana flapjack which I ate on the trains home and really enjoyed, although I didn't think it had as much taste as GM's bars. I got home about 9.20pm and thought my body would be so tired I would sleep through the night but I think I had too much to drink last night and ended up getting up and couldn't sleep that well after that, and now I am tired. Thankfully I am enrolling this morning and it's quite quiet so I can cope. Back in the office and busy this afternoon.
Must go now and get on with enrolment.

I'm still alive

I haven't posted here for a while for 2 reasons. 1) Got busy at work then 2) I got sick with a cold-cum-viral infection and have only just returned to work today after being off for just over a week. It started as a cold then once that died off I got tired and weak, so went to the dr's who said it's a viral infection and gave me the rest of the week off. Needless to say during that time I didn't do any proper writing, just notes here and there, oh and final amendments to the story I'd already sent to a small press magazine. Meanwhile I did get a rejection letter from Woman's Weekly but I have another story in mind to send. I didn't do any writing today but probably will get back to work on Bug tomorrow. While I was off I really got into tv cooking programmes and started watching Ready, Steady Cook which I enjoyed. I had already been watching Jamie and Nigella, and have even bought the Nigella Express book, and will probably buy the Jamie book too.

Has anything happened to you that you think it's fate? Well, this happened to my mum last week. She got stuck on a bus in traffic on the way back from shopping and cursed at the time but later changed her mind, because if the bus hadn't have been late returning, she wouldn't have bumped into a woman who works for the council and who she'd spoken to before about the bad tree by our house, and wouldn't have found out that her husband is actually our local councillor. So mum went down the road and spoke to him, in his dressing gown (he had to get up early to contact overseas) about the tree. He said that it was ongoing and thought that it was being dealt with and said he would look into it. Then mum bumped into a neighbour who had already put a claim in to the council about the tree and gave my mum the phone number to check that they'd received my letter. They had and I got an acknowledgement letter 2 days later saying they were investigating the problem. Then my mum finally bumped into another neighbour and found out what had happened to his car which she'd seen being towed away. He'd been in an accident and the front of his car had been seriously damaged causing £3,500 worth of damage. Fate, that was what it was.

Well, must get on with some work now.

Camomile and Rosie

I think I have found the culprit for my disturbed nights. I think it's camomile because I was working out what I might have started eating/drinking differently at the start of the year, when I started to have disturbed nights, and the thing I came up with is camomile. I also looked on the internet about camomile and there had been a survey where people were given camomile to drink 5 times a day (I only had been having one a day) and it was found out that these people's urine levels had increased. Which is what was happening to me, causing me to get up during the night. So most of my teabags I had at home I've given to my next door neighbour and the ones I have at work I'm drinking in the mornings to see if it makes any difference. Watch this space.

OK, Rosie is bursting to tell you about her second week at school during the bug period. Here she is.
Hi, I'm back. Well, first thing Monday was our teacher and pupil meeting where we told the teachers what we decided about getting help. They all agreed. So my enemy won't know what's hit him now. My aunt Lucy gave us our first dancing lesson with the jive and I had to encourage the class by mentioning merits to get them moving. My second lesson was ICT and I got a message from my enemy, which I found out what it meant at lunch time. He tried to make my team turn unhealthy by tricking their muses to thinking that junk food was tasty but I got revenge again. Then I started to wonder if Mrs Zabberwol, our head, had powers because I had a dilemma and she appeared out of nowhere, to help me. I decided she did considering I already knew that our PE teacher, Miss Fulmore, had powers. At the end of the day, I made the announcement to everyone about our food experience week and felt that I was winning this battle. But when I got home onto my pc, I had a shocking message from my enemy warning me not to be too sure. Oh, war was on, I can tell you. You wait, I thought until tomorrow...
Right, I shall let Julie talk again.

I'm back. You might have noticed that I've mentioned teacher's names when I've been writing as Rosie from my book Bug and wonder where I get them from. Well, Mrs Zabberwol sort of comes from my old secondary school head teacher Mrs Zackerwich (can't remember if that's spelt right or not), Miss Fulmore for PE, I think that my PE teacher had a similar name. Maths for Rosie is Mr Holroyd, which is a combination of my old maths and RE teacher. I try to think up of names similar to teachers I had or combine them. Rosie has Miss Beesy for HomeEc and I think there was a teacher's assistant at my primary school called that (or like that) whom I really liked then and wanted to portray her as a nice teacher in this book. But for Rosie's ICT teacher I thought of an appropriate name, Mr Byte, as he's a computer person. I'd be interested to know what others think of these names, so if you do read this, please feel free to email me with your opinion.

Writing update 2

I said in my last post that I'd just finished Chapter 9 of Bug but that was wrong. I have finished Chapter 9 but that was the other day, I was meant to be talking about Chapter 10, which I found today that I haven't quite finished and hope to tomorrow. I like to finish the chapter so each chapter reflects one day and the next starts the following day. I have worked out there will be 3 more chapters to write but I think the last will be more like an epilogue and be called The Realisation.
I shall now pass you over to Rosie who will tell you about her weekend.
Hi, Rosie here again. Last time we spoke I said there's a plan afoot, and the plan was to have a combined team and family meeting to discuss how to defeat the enemy. First of all though my team and I went shopping and something one of the girls said the day before gave me an idea for lunch. To buy something new they hadn't tried yet. That was hard for me because I had tried most of the healthy stuff and then in the last shop something I hadn't tried appeared from nowhere. Someone's powers were at work. It turned out to be mum's although she denied it at first. Aunt Lucy met us from our shopping and took us home. We had lunch and then our meeting. We discussed what the team and I had decided and then dad tells me I have one more power to find, as if I haven't got enough. Everyone was partnered with a teacher whom I knew to be on my side and then we would discuss it with the teachers and Mrs Zabberwol on Monday. Now that we had a plan and strategy for the week ahead, we all said the same thing. Bring it on!

Writing Update

Saturday I completed all the children's stories for the SCBWI anthology contest and they were posted on Sunday. I put plenty of postage on it so it should get there by the end of this week. Sunday I revised a short story for one of the small press magazines I subscribe. It had come back as a rejection but with the reason why, so I decided to ask the editor if she would accept it if the questions she raised were answered, and she said yes, so I did that and that should be ready to send off again this coming weekend. The editor said that if it proves long enough then she will make it into a little booklet to insert into the Feb 08 Valentine issue of the magazine. I hope it is long enough now. Yesterday I finished the first draft of Chapter 9 of Bug, so am now ready to start Chapter 10 where the cure is revealed. Only a couple of chapters to go until the finish now. Can't wait to revise it with all the ideas I've had for it. Once I've sent the above story off then I will read another story I've typed up for a competition. And then once I've done that I will write another animal story for another of the small press magazines I subscribe to, which originates from Cyprus. Watch this space.

My ms Stay critique from RNA

Well, I was brave enough to open the package on Saturday and read it. Most of the feedback was on the negative side I must say but it has given me ideas to think about improving it. Two things that were said were that there was too much dialogue and too little description. So with the description I've decided to keep Lottie in her home town (my home town) and not relocate her to Greenwich, that way I will know the background more for the book. I still have a lot to think about on it so will do what I did with Forgotten Memories, and put it aside for a few years while I concentrate on other books, and hope in that time I will come up with more ideas to improve it. Meantime, I will focus on Bug then probably Forgotten Memories.

Rosie's Thursday and Friday

I was telling Rosie's story but then lost the post so here she is again.

Hi, Rosie here again. You want to know how I got revenge on sister Denise, well I used my if and then power to change her face. Because I'd used up my daily ration of ifs I couldn't help her until the next day, which I did but got her to help me and my team. She's now on my side. On Friday I put my merit scheme into full action and raised the competitive spirit of the school. I thought I was winning but then he used his powers again. He turned healthy foods unhealthy so I reversed it but forgot about drinks, so he turned water fizzy, so I tried to take all cans and bottles away but he replaced it with another so I couldn't win. It was then that I realised I needed help from adults, so that night my team and I had a meeting to discuss how to go about getting this help. I enlisted the help from my aunt Lucy, who's a dance teacher, thinking that she could interest the girls in dancing. We decided to have a full meeting with adults on Saturday. A plan was afoot...

Rosie will tell you next week what happens next but in the meantime I want to tell you about my old secondary school, which Rosie's school is based on. Out of curiousity, the other day I decided to have a look on the net for it and was interested to see that it's now a specialist science school with a brand new science block built in 2003. There were a few reports from students praising the school for its varied lessons and inspiring teachers. What was this? I mused, it wasn't like that in my days. I liked the lessons, esp Engish which I reflect in Bug as being Rosie's fave lesson but apart from my English teacher whom I liked the best, I didn't think the teachers that inspiring. I know the curriculum has greatly changed since my day. To see what the school looks like here's the link http://www.sydenham.lewisham.sch.uk/03contactus/contactus.htm
The old buildings are still there, and they were there back when my mum was a student. Maybe one day I'll be brave and go to a reunion and see the place for myself but for now I'm happy enough to look at it on the web.

Shocking Day 2

The second shock I got was seeing my ms Stay back from the NWS. That was quick. I only sent it off on the 4th of this month so it's only a few weeks. I haven't opened it yet and read the critique (I'm dreading what they say about it) because I was concentrating on what to do about my car (see last post). I will open it at the weekend and read what they have to say. I most likely won't do anything about it until I've finished Bug, which I'm enjoying writing. I am now on Chapter 9 of the book so not far to go now until I've finished the first draft. I will let you know what they say about Stay next week.

A shocking day

This is what I came home to yesterday. My car covered in a thick branch of leaves. The gusty wind had broken off one of the large branches on the tree next door and it came off right on top of my car. I was in shock and rather flustered when I got to my gate and saw my my mum with 2 neighbours standing there. I phoned my insurance people who gave me the phone number for the actual insurance company I'm under. Luckily the tree and fence had supported the main thick branch and all that covered my car was the thinner branches with lots of leaves. I checked all my car over this morning and thankfully all the damage there is is a lot of scratches on the boot, so I'm not going to claim via my insurance, but I am going to write to my council and try to claim compensation through them. My mum had reported the bad state of the tree back in July but found out this morning that neither reports were logged because someone else (don't know who) had already reported about overhanging branches back in June so my mum's calls weren't logged, so my mum told the council this morning that they should do what they need to and we were going to claim from them. The photo above was courtesy of one of the 2 neighbours who was with my mum when I got home yesterday. The tree is in a bad state of repair. It's all soft inside and the bottom has got a huge hole due to bees burrowing inside of it earlier this year. I do hope that once and for all that tree will be removed. We shall see.

Rosie's Wednesday and Thursday

Here's Rosie again.

Hi, you want to know who my enemy was? It was Mr Summers my Geography teacher. I found out that he had been giving the girls foods and drinks which made them ill again. Great, I don't think.
That was my Wednesday, then came Thursday and more surprises for me. The first was another power. I found out that if I thought of someone then they would appear. The second was another power which I discovered in my PE lesson. I call it my if and then power. I say if so and so does this then that will happen and it does. Then I discovered another power and that was the power of thought. If I thought about something I wanted to happen then it would. Magic! I can help these girls with my new powers and hopefully beat my enemy. It was during PE that I thought of another way to get the girls to exercise more and that was to introduce a merit scheme. If they made more of an effort in their lessons then they'd get a star and if they got 3 stars then they'd get a merit, which would be rewarded at the end of next week. A bit of competition doesn't hurt anyone. Then at the end of the day I got a nasty surprise. My enemy, Mr Summers, had got help with his campaign to undermine my health plans. I wanted to know who would deign to help him against me and my thought powers came in handy, and I wished they hadn't. For who had been helping him? None other than my sister, Denise. I tell you I was shocked at her betrayal. I made her pay. How? Well, that would be telling, so I will let you know later. All I will say is that she didn't like it and pleaded with me to help her.

Rosie on Tuesday and Wednesday

Last time I left you telling Rosie from my children's book what had been happening at her school. The last thing she said was then there was Tuesday and thereafter... Well, I will let Rosie tell you more

Hi, this is Rosie back again. On Tuesday I went to school early to finish my homework, which after the events of the day before I found hard to concentrate on. While I was there writing, I got one of my headaches and then Mrs Zabberwol, the head, appeared with a puzzle for me. One of the girls was having trouble getting out of bed due to extreme tiredness. I got the girl to come to school and I would see how I could help. Anyway, it turned out, and she was the first of three that day, she had been having disturbed sleep due to stomach pains, which I later worked out was due to too much dairy foods that day. I won't go into how I really helped them but all I will say is that I got my idea from two health programmes I had watched, one of them was from You Are What You Eat. Then at the end of that day, we had an assembly where Mrs Zabberwol addressed the school letting them know of the health crisis we were having then called me up onto the stage. That calm facade came back to me then and I stood there telling everyone what had been happening. Then Mrs Zabberwol tells me that there's only one person who can find the cure and looks at me.

Yes, I know she meant me. All I had to do now was figure out how to get the cure. In the meantime I carried on doing what I was doing by telling the girls via my muse and imagery what they should eat and how they'd look if they carried on eating what they did.
I did this all Wednesday and then at the last break I got a shock. I had an enemy who was trying to undermine what I was doing. I couldn't believe that one of the teachers was against me as all the teachers I'd encountered so far had been with me and helped me. Who is my enemy? Well, I'll tell you tomorrow.

Course certificate and Rosie's story

Well, I did try to write something here yesterday at home but once again it chucked me out. So here I am at work doing this again.
Firstly, on Saturday I received a certificate of completion for the writing for children course I'd been working on. I thought I had to do 10 units but it seems there were only 8 which I'd sent off the week before. My tutor praised me for finishing the course saying I had patience and tenacity not to give up. I was determined to complete this course this time, as it was something that I enjoyed doing and interested me. I won't be extending it because I want to concentrate on stories and my book Bug.

Now I shall hand you over to Rosie Sullivan in my book Rosie and the Mystery School Bug.
Hi, I'm Rosie Sullivan and unlike most teenagers I know I like to live healthily by eating healthy foods and exercising. It comes from having a mum who manages a health food shop and a dad who is the sales rep. My sister Denise is not like me and won't be tempted to eat healthily but her time will come, I will make sure of that. Anyway, I thought that, apart from my family and close friends, no one was interested in my healthy lifestyle but I was wrong. It seems my school, which I thought was a normal school, is interested. It all started one Monday. When I left home for school that day my mum told me to do a good job for her. I thought she meant be a good student but later found out what she meant. In my PE lesson the hurdles I was about to jump shrunk lower to enable me to jump them easily, as usual our PE lesson made us late for French and I was surprised that our teacher Mrs Partain didn't say a word to me about it. Then at lunch I thought my eyes were tricking me when the unhealthy foods turned healthy. After that I had ICT and I got a message on my computer telling me to be aware of the eggs. It wasn't until Maths that I knew what it meant. Things got even stranger then. I got this huge headache and my eyes felt like they were burning me and in this ordeal I saw a vision of some boys come into our school and chuck eggs into our classroom. This is what actually happened and for me to predict this was totally strange. Class went chaotic then and to my surprise, me who is usually a shy person, stood up and took control of the class. Once I felt better and class returned, the lesson finished and then I got another message, this time from my Maths teacher Mr Holroyd, who told me that it was my time. Time for what? I mused. I was about to found out on Tuesday, when I confronted my Mum, who told me that I am special and that it was my time to help her and others put people on the right track about living healthily. What she meant by that I found out on Tuesday. Well, I thought Monday was strange enough, but wait until you hear what was about to happen on Tuesday and then after....

Rosie's story

Just a quickie to say that if I can and not be chucked out by my home ISP, I will let Rosie tell her story over the weekend. So watch this space to hear what Rosie has to say and what happens to her in my children's book, Rosie and the Mystery School Bug (nicknamed Bug on this blog).

An exciting opportunity

I have just found out about an exciting opportunity for myself in writing for children. I remember seeing an email at home from the SCBWI about an anthology but because I am still behind with reading all my emails and I thought it was just going to be about letting me know about an anthology they have done, I haven't read it yet. Anyway, I quickly looked at the SCBWI website here at work and found this anthology information. What it is is that they are wanting unpublished writers to submit short stories for an anthology which will be judged by editors, agents etc the end of the month. Hey, this is my cup of tea (or herbal tea in my case) I thought and have printed the information off. I have one story in mind to enter and just need to add the title to each page, print it again and create a one-paragraph synopsis for it. I also have another story (you can submit 3 stories) in mind which I have typed up but don't know if it was done on my word processor so needs to be retyped on my computer. I shall look on my computer tonight for it. I will also have to do a small synopsis for that. The deadline is 30th August so don't have much time but will do my best to get them there on time. I was going to revise a story that I've just had returned to me by a small press magazine but that can be put aside for now until I've done these 2 stories and sent them off. I will be working on these on Sunday which I've designated as my short story writing day. Monday to Thursday I will work on Bug, Friday is reading day, Saturday I will type up some of Bug.

Writing Bug

Or Rosie as I call it on my home pc. The title above should actually read 'Contemporary Romance and Children's Writer' but I didn't think when I created this blog. Never mind. I shall carry on talking about my children's book Bug. There are a few things that are different when I'm writing Bug, the fact that it's for children and the language, the topic and mainly that I'm writing it in the first person point of view and not third person as I do for my adult books, although I do jot down notes for Bug in third person pov. I think I write it that way because the topic matter in the book is something close to my heart and I can relate to more than adult feelings - that is healthy eating. I am finding it quite easy to write in first person, and my course tutor said that she liked my writing, even if it needed to be more entertaining. Bug is told in 2 weeks and is the story of Rosie Sullivan who finds that other people, namely her teachers, are interested in her healthy eating habits. Along the way she finds out that not only is it her that has magical powers which help her fellow pupils but some of the teachers too, as I'm just writing about now. I am currently on Chapter 8 where Rosie has just found out that two more teachers, inc the head of the school, have powers too. I have a few more chapters to go yet before I get to the end of the book, then return to the start and revise. I have had the idea that when I revise each chapter, there will be two pages for beginning of each chapter; one that says the day and a symbol that represents the chapter, and the next saying Chapter One and the title of the chapter. I got this idea from one of Malorie Blackman's books and liked it. I think it would make the book more interesting. When I've finished the whole thing then I will send it to a critique service for feedback before sending it to an agent.

Must get back to work now.

Saturday meeting

I went to a SE/London RNA meeting on Saturday which I always enjoy. I do like meeting other people who experience the highs and lows of writing, and especially if they are like me and are still not published and are still trying through the NWS. Quite a few of them who went on Saturday were at the conference so we had a quick chat about that. I heard that a complaint has been made about the M&B editors who went and it has been taken to M&B highers themselves. The talk was by Marina Oliver who writes fiction, how-to books, runs a critique service which incorporates a major writing prize. She talked about how she got into running the appraisal service and then the prize and what they do and what they have seen, giving us tips on how to make our mss good. The one thing that remains in my memory of what she said was that someone (I can't remember who) asked about storytelling. I can't remember if it was the same person but someone selected the first few pages of a Jilly Cooper book and commented why she is a good storyteller. The answer was that on the first page you got a question so the reader keeps reading to find the answer, when the answer is there, another question is posed so the reader keeps reading until they are half way through the book and want to carry on reading it. I wrote this bit of advice down and must remember to use it when I write any of my books. I know that I tried to pose a question to the reader at the end of each chapter in Stay to try to keep the reader reading it. I don't know how good it was until I get the report back and that won't be for several weeks because this time of the year it's the NWS organiser's busiest time to get mss from writers. The next meeting is in October and is on writing short stories which interests me as that's one of the other projects I am doing. Be it for small press, e-zines or trying for womens' weeklies such as Woman's Weekly.

Well, must get on with work and lock everything up. Probably try to post more on Bug at the weekend, if it doesn't chuck me out again.

It's finished, it's gone

Last week I managed to finish revising Stay, print it all off and post it to the NWS organiser (Satruday). I shall forget about it and concentrate on Bug (my children's book). I worked on it yesterday by creating a timetable for Rosie my heroine, which I based from one I got off my friend and colleague who has a daughter at secondary school. The school is based on my old secondary school. I am currently on Chapter 8 but have various ideas on how to improve previous chapters when I revise it. I shall also be working on short stories for the small press I subscribe to plus website magazines that I've recently discovered. I have sent 2 stories off inc a children's story to websites and wait to hear from them. I am also waiting to hear from Woman's Weekly about a story I sent to them nearly 2 months ago and hope to hear this month as I know they take about 8 weeks to reply.

Must get back work now although it's only filing.