Saturday 21 July 2012

Letter success, ‘manflu’ and a Summer holiday

Morning folks – I have officially broken up for the school summer holidays, so have six glorious weeks stretching before me. It feels so good. I have a long –to-do list in my mind, the primary goal being my manuscript being posted to Romantic Novelists Association’s New Writer Scheme. Their official deadline is 30th August but I have a self imposed deadline of 31st July. I have other plans for August! I shall reveal more as the time draws near.

So, how’s your week been? Mine has been hectic due to school winding up but slow and slightly relaxed due to having the worst cold of my life. I’m serious, never have I experienced a cold as tough as this. I’ve literally got through two boxes of tissues each day! I claimed earlier in the week that it had to be ‘manflu’ but was instantly correctly, by numerous men, that the very fact that I’m still functioning, yapping and moving means it can’t possibly be ‘manful’ - just simply, a cold. Thanks fellas.

This week, I discovered a tiny poem, written during my school day at the tender age of twelve, called ‘A week without telly’ in a dusty box at the back of a wardrobe. Firstly, I was amazed at how neat my handwriting was, then secondly, that it did in fact rhyme. I can’t remember writing the poem, but I do remember the teacher a Mr Gwatkins, who recalled tales of his upbringing in New Zealand. It was for this teacher that I produced my very first book, a six week class project. My story revolved about three children who had a pet robot, whose arms and legs dropped off at every interesting or critical moment of the plot. I can even recall the front cover, which he’d remarked was ‘well drawn’. Wow, such memories stashed away so deep within the mind - it has got to be twenty years since I thought about Mr Gwatkins and my tiny debut novel.

News to share – you may remember a while back I read the Simon Whaley’s book ‘Positively Productive Writer’. One of his suggestions is to always be writing something, however small, as it keeps the creative mind flowing. Well, I followed his advice and today, yes today, I received notification that a letter I’d written to ‘Your Cat’ had been published on their letters page and my cat had received a small gift. I dashed down to the newsagents, before breakfast, to purchase the said magazine and…. they weren’t lying. On page 24, is my letter about my clumsy cat Czar, accompanied by the beautiful photograph which I’d submitted, advice from Simon’s book. Woohoo! It was certainly a boost to my positivity and mind set seeing my name printed along the bottom. Now, that it’s worked once, I’ll repeat the process forever more. If you haven’t read Simon’s book, it is well worth a look as it’s filled with honest advice and helpful tips.

My plans for today involve searching and learning more about ‘Twitter’ and the related programmes mentioned at last week’s RNA conference 2012. Talli Roland provided a heap of advice regards the flow of traffic and the predicted time of traffic viewing your Twitter messages. I want to know more, but being the computer illiterate geek that I am, it’ll probably take me all day to find and organize. I’ll let you know how I get on.

As time has gone by, I feel my blog has slightly changed in its spectrum of information. I used to plug quite a few poetry evenings in my local area. I’ve recently stopped doing so as the majority of my traffic is coming from overseas. So, I feel it is a little unfair to keep enticing you with very local information, when a more general over view relating to my writing enables everyone to feel included. That doesn’t imply that my British followers can saunter off but more that I wanted to be honest and congratulate my overseas folks for their sheer number of visits. I am most humbled.  

Remember you can follow me on Twitter @odwyer_author to receive random updates throughout my week. Please pass my blog to anyone, you feel might be interested. Enjoy!

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