Happy Valentines Day!

Hello all, hope you are having a lovely valentines day!
So what is my writerly news? I wrote half a chapter of the novel this week gone, and am planning on finishing it off this afternoon. Only a few more chapters to go and that's the first draft done and dusted, so really excited about that.
I sent off some poetry recently to some magazines, got a rejection slip from Smiths Knoll this week. I wasn't expecting them so accept me, the standards are very high there, but all the same...sad face. Fingers crossed I get a better response from Magma and Mslexia. If not there is another magazine I've got lined up to apply to with things that get turned down.
Been attending a fair few writerly events in Bath, lots of poetry readings and performances. It's the Bath literary festival coming up. Haven't got any tickets yet but hopefully I will managed to catch a few decent things. Last year I saw 'Shakespeare on Toast' which was great, and the guy that did it is back this year so, fingers crossed I can see him! I also saw Wendy Cope, one of my favorite poets, and she was brilliant. I was very chuffed, as I went on my own and I normally get very embarrassed in front of crowds, but I stood up and asked her a question and everything. Aren't I awesome :D
Nearly finished reading Dawkins, like...80 pages to go. It's been SUCH a struggle, but I hate giving up on books, they haunt me for years if I don't finish! SO... time for a valentines pamper session in a nice warm bath with a...umm...not so nice book, lol!
Toodles for now x

Feeling Festive

Ho ho ho and all that!
Hope everything is going well for everyone at this festive time of year. Myself, I've been pretty busy, only had one assignment to hand in but lots of other writing to be getting on with too. I've just started my next car writing assignment, this one is about 'Used Jeeps' which I am loving a lot more than the last one I had, definitely more to talk about this time.
Really looking forward to having a week at home for the Christmas Holiday, hoping I'll get a lot of writing done. There are so many things that distract me from writing here, so it will be a nice break to go home and just chillax with the family and do a bit of my own thing. Hopefully get some reading done too, I've been neglecting Mr Dawkins recently, though I've got the that halfway point in the book where everything is starting to get a bit dull and samey, so fingers crossed it will pick up soon! I'm reading a fair bit of children's fiction for an essay (which I really should be starting...) so that is great fun, nice and light hearted (even though the subject is..umm...death) so that's been pretty cool.
That's about it from me, I'm pretty wary of what I'm posting up here at the moment, work wise, what with plagiarism and stuff, I don't want to loose marks at Uni because they think I'm stealing, that would suck! But fingers crossed I'll have some stuff to put up here soon xxx

Editing for England

Hello there.
I've been a pretty busy bee this evening, been going through lots of older work from a few months ago as well as more recent things, just editing and reprinting for hopefully more work shopping and feedback. I'm trying to put together a collection of work for my next book which will be about 40 pages long. So far I have two poems that I am happy with to go in, so a fair bit of work to do yet! I've plenty of material, it's just getting it to that top notch standard at the moment. It'll be a mix of page poems, prose poems and maybe short short stories too. So fingers crossed I can continue to receive feedback on my stuff and get it all sorted out.
Looks like I'll be spending this weekend indoors anyway as I'm coming down with a cold :( so plenty of time for reading and writing I guess. Still cracking away at Dawkins, fun fun fun, as well as several other titles.
Fingers crossed, more updates soon!

Friday Morning

Hello there.
Yesterday I attended a reading by the poet Luke Kennard. I was very impressed. Sadly a lot of the work he red were things that I had already red myself, but it was still nice to hear him read them aloud. It always changes the poem to how you imagine it, like when you pronounce a character's name from a book one way, when others say it differently. He didn't put the pauses where I thought they'd be, particularly in the murderer poem. I would have left pauses in different places for effect, but he seemed to power through these bits I would have treated delicately. But hey, they're his poems so I shan't complain!
What am I reading now? Well I'm hitting a bit of Dawkins, couldn't get a copy of the selfish gene out the library so I've opted for the blind watch maker instead, which is just as good I'm sure. I studied the watch maker analogy (william...paley?) in A level philosophy so I feel I have a heads up for getting to grips with all of Dawkins sciencey stuff. So far...very interesting, and I'm disappointed to say (as a christian and a soon to be conformed (maybe) Dawkins hater) that he is coming across and witty and very clever indeed. But there we go.
Writing? Well I've written chapter ten of the novel and typed up to and including chapter six. Those first typed chapters are totalling about 10,000 words which is okay-ish. I was hoping for a little more. But never fear, I have a three part plan. 1. Write the first draft, which will be the bare bones, coming in seriously under word count. 2. Bulk out the entire thing with a series of re writes where I focus on adding. 3. Proper editing, which consists of course mainly of cutting things out. So I'm hoping the end product will be of a reasonable word count :)

Dawkins and coffee are calling...