I Pressed Send

I almost cried last night. I have a broken foot and an infected ear - of which I shall spare you the details - but it wasn't that. The washing is piling up, the bedding's unchanged and the bathrooms could do with a 'bit of attention'. But it wasn't even that.

It was because yesterday, at 8.40pm I finally pressed 'send' on Glass Houses.

Its re-write has been nine months in the making. Following one agent's disappointing rejection but generous and astute feedback on the full manuscript at the end of last year, I embarked on a re-write in January. Then came dissection during the wonderful Writers' Workshop Self-edit Course at Easter, which inevitably led to a second re-write. Incidentally, I call it a 're-write' if it loses and gains more than 10,000 words - a bit like a crash diet but infinitely more healthy. 

Some of the fab self-editing crowd (and Gayle!)

A heap of hasty amendments followed on the back of workshops and talks, not to mention the general writer-ly buzz, at the York Festival of Writing, as well as from my new term of teaching. Is there a better way to say that, we wonder, it's bordering on cliché, I suggest, and off I trot home to *practise what I preach*. A final burst of tweaks after meeting with my new reader (she's so clever) and there I was, Sunday night, just in time for tea before Homeland, and it had gone, my baby, flown the nest again.

And like every baby resistant to change, after months of cajoling, tweaking, listening - albeit distractedly - and the odd torrent of abuse and self-loathing, I have sent off a better book than the one I submitted last year.

That isn't to say I will emerge with a contract. All I can do now is hope. And wait.

Well actually, now I clean and file and hoover and 'sort out' the wardrobes. I think about Christmas and cleaning the skirting boards, sort out the leak through the downstairs window, call the electrician to fix the kitchen lights, book tickets for the local village play, rearrange the short break I booked somehow forgetting I was working, earn some money and do my physio for my foot. And I sleep. I'm going to sleep at both ends of the day and for a period of time in the middle. 

And then I shall get back to work on book two… 

So, lovely readers, how are you?

Return to Dragons' Den

I’ve reached a milestone today. My blog counter flipped over to a magical round figure: 35,000 which was my target for page views in 2013. So I’d like to say a huge thank you to my lovely readers, you got me to my goal five months early!

It seems apt that I should think about a very early blog post, one which ratcheted up a whopping, wait for it, 35 page views. As I believe I’ve spouted here before, if you’re new to blogging, hang on in there. It takes a while for people to find you in the blogosphere but seeing the number of readers wandering over to your little blog increase in volume, is one of life’s more than simple pleasures.

The post in question is this one: Dragons’ Den for Wannabe Authors and pretty much describes the week I’ve just had, but from three years earlier. The difference is that after three years of editing and re-writing Glass Houses (I have written 70,000 words of another book in-between, honest), I’m happy to say that this time, it didn’t take me to chapter twenty to find a 500 word section of text I liked enough to read out to a room full of writers - published and not-quite published - as well as the truly wonderful cluster of agents musing over whether they should sign me now or wait until the fuss had died down. (Did I mention they’ll be looking particularly beautiful that night?)

But the detail of the abject terror which would ensue should my passage be picked as one of this year’s seven to be read out on stage at the York Festival of Writing’s version of Dragons’ Den, is every bit as real as back then. The difference is that this year, I have absolutely no doubt that this is an opportunity to be grasped with fingers spread wide and pulled into your chest so tight it can’t possibly be snatched away. I remember thinking, ‘there’s your winner,’ when I heard the lovely Shelley Harris read her 500 words on stage during the first York Festival of Writing. Her book, Jubilee, was subsequently published and, gasp, selected (amongst other accolades) for the Richard and Judy Summer Book Club in 2012. Can you imagine! 

So please, wish me luck, I’m about to submit my 500 word section from my novel for potential inclusion in the York Festival of Writing 2013, Friday Night Live.

Be on hand to hose me down if it gets picked, won’t you?