Don’t put off until tomorrow …

It’s been a while since I blogged, so hello again.

It’s been quite a week.

Sadly, it started with the funeral of a dear schoolfriend. It was such a shock and as I have moved house (and country) so often, we’d lost touch in the last five years. One of the photos on the service sheet smiled back at me: an image of her posing on a Tuscan mountainside when, as giddy twenty-year-olds she had come to stay  with me for a while during my third year at university in Florence. Another showed us shivering in our school sports kit on a muddy pitch somewhere and there was one of her prancing about the stage in our VIth Form panto as the fairy godmother… I was cross with myself for not keeping in touch. She was such fun and too young to go and it was a sobering reminder that nothing lasts forever.

[image error]

Lovely Monica spreading fairy godmother gold dust

So, the next day I set off for a long-awaited writing weekend, run by Alison May, (Chairwoman of the fab RNA) in a comfortable Midlands Hotel. I was determined to make the most of it after the sadness of the previous day. I knew little about this part of England but, we were so busy with writing matters, it wouldn’t have mattered where we were.

I’m so glad I went. It was great not to have to lift a hand to prepare any meals and to luxuriate in an enormous bed all to myself where I was the only one snoring, but the advice shared by Alison was a gift. I hope to go next year too.

There should be a new term for us writers who are somewhere between pantser and plotter. Any suggestions?

The information we discussed in the group about structuring our novels was just what I needed. You will have to attend one of Alison’s excellent courses and for details of her “tool kit”, as she described it, but I came away regenerated, enthused and greatly encouraged. And it was very timely too. I signed a new contract for two more books with Bookouture (yay!)  and am at the beginning stages of my new novel.