DISTRACTIONS, DISTRACTIONS

So What is it This Time?
Well, there is always something you can blame isn’t there? This week we have been picking olives. Our first year and after 13 hours of scaling trees, an eye injury from a springy olive branch and a fall from a pair of very wobbly ladders, we harvested 180kgs of the pesky little fruit and now have 23 litres of oil waiting to be bottled.

So have I written? Damn right, I have. And it feels so good. What, with a new puppy as well, where do I get the time? Well, I have to pay great tribute to my Man Friday who has brought me a glass of orange every morning and then left me in bed to complete my target number of words, while he occupies Bertie, the pup. I am actually finding it difficult to stop writing and I only do because I get hand cramp (I write long hand initially, and then edit as I type into the PC – it seems to work for me). So I am on target… yippee!

I must also give some credit to the NaNoWriMo (National Write a Novel in a Month) competition which I did sign up to but as I was half way through... anyway I have used their target words per day to complete the final manuscript. Maybe next year...

Also, could things get any better I here you asking, I’ve had another successful pitch accepted. Its not paid work, it is for Members News Section in Writers News. But it ticks a lot of boxes…

• It celebrates success in a kind of showy off kind of way but I picked up the information about the market from the mag, so wanted to thank them

• Its free marketing for me as a writer, I’ve talked about my novel and plans for another

• Its free advertising for a virtual writers club I am hoping to set up and so have included that in the piece to see if I can drum up some interest

• It will hopefully direct people to my website and blog, so more marketing potential

Worth its weight in gold, I’d say…

And I am planning the second novel, based on our move over to La BuonaVita - you can follow the progress at our blog of the same name, where full credit must go to Man Friday for submitting such wonderful and funny pieces. Well I think they are anyway. It shall be a kind of fictional- fact 'flit lit' book (apparently that is a real genre) so there you go.

In terms of submission I have uploaded my weekly article to Suite 101, a short bio about Dostoevsky – what a story that is, quite fascinating, though I have never ever completed ‘Crime and Punishment’.

I have also submitted a short story for a 'Writers News' Competition and am just about to email my weekly. I always do that on a Friday afternoon, call me suspicious, but it seems to elicit positive responses. Maybe it’s because people are looking forward to the weekend.

On My Bedside Table
In the last blog, I forgot to say I’d also read a Judy Picoult best-seller called ‘Second Glance’. It’s a great read, slightly ‘unreal’ but I loved the setting and sense of mysteriousness she managed to paint with her words, I like her style – a clear beginning, middle and end but also with a sense of purpose and satisfaction. I have read a number of her books and love them.

Now I am reading the third Pullman novel ‘The Amber Spyglass’ but with everything else this week, including the eye injury, I’ve not read as much as I’d liked. Anyway, Sunday is reserved for reading so hopefully I will catch up…Well that's it for now, over and out.