I’ve joined Peter M. Ball’s Sunday Circle to help keep my writing on track. Follow along here or join in the fun over at Peter’s blog, Man Versus Bear.

What am I working on this week?

 

The good news is that I completed my rewrite of the young adult manuscript that I intended to submit to Varuna for the publishing pathways fellowship. The off-in-another-direction news is that I’ve decided not to submit it there after all.

The decision came after I read ALL the information and got down to the bit where it said manuscripts previously submitted should not be re-submitted unless major revisions have been done. I originally submitted this manuscript back in 2014. I have done a major revision since then (that’s the rewrite I’ve been working on since mid-year). But I thought about what I really want for this manuscript, and what point it’s at now, and I’ve decided I’m better off sending it to agents.  There are two who have asked to see it and seeing the point of the Varuna fellowship was to get the manuscript in front of publishers, I figure getting an agent to present it to them is an equally good option (& saves the $120 submission fee).

So now it’s time to get onto the next project. My adult speculative fiction-horror-generally weird manuscript has been resting for around 6 months so it’s a good time to look at it again. But first I think I’ll go over my YA paranormal manuscript one more time and start submitting it to publishers.

What’s inspiring me this week?

I finished watching series 2 of Glitch on ABC iview and really loved how they wrapped up this series. In particular, I was impressed with how they weaved in the story of frontier violence into the narrative, and the notion of owning up to truth and making amends. It’s a topic I’m interested in as it’s also the subject of a horror short story of mine that’s being published in an anthology next month. Glitch does a great job of getting into the nitty-gritty of topics, and it deals with complicated and complex ideas and issues exceptionally well.

What action do I need to take?

My kitchen is being renovated this week so my home life will be a bit out of whack. My challenge will be to stay focused on writing tasks in among the mess the renos are bound to cause, and not use them as an excuse to be lazy.