Internet and Writing

 Until right this minute, I’ve had no Internet connection since Friday morning so you can imagine my frustration, considering the time writers have to spend online – on social media or otherwise. Even submitting stories, articles and novels is mainly carried out by email these days, apart from a few magazines and occasional agent or publisher. The up-side is that I’ve been writing more!

Fortunately, I’m able to use my husband’s work computer and separate connection at odd moments, when he’s having a break, but it’s far from ideal. Even just in these past few days, I’ve had two lovely pieces of news, one of which came by email and needed a response, the other by text but required viewing online.I don’t how many of you know of txtlit, which I mentioned a long time ago, and it’s in the box at the side of the blog. This is a monthly competition, on a specific theme, submitted by mobile text – and must be no more than 160 characters (not just letters) including the first word ‘Story’. I won it a couple of years ago and had forgotten about it again until trying to get my writing organised at the beginning of the year. I entered the January comp with the theme ‘hello’ and was notified I’m a runner-up. Sure enough it’s now online, just when my internet goes down! This is a great exercise in being concise.

The other great news is an acceptance from The Highlander magazine in America, which takes Scottish historical articles. I’ve written for them before, again not for a couple of years while concentrating on novels. The lovely editor emailed to tell me he would be running my article on Inchmahome Priory and could I now email the photos. Fortunately, I had them all ready in a file on my computer but had to put them on a stick and send from husband’s computer. At least they’ve gone now!I’ve really enjoyed getting back to writing shorter items like articles and stories, which is where I started, and it’s certainly a different form of creativity from slogging on with a new novel and wondering where it’s going! I’m also trying to finish the critiques for the romantic novel competition I’m adjudicating at the SAW conference in March. I’ve really enjoyed this, especially when they are all of reasonably high standard. Still deciding on the winners and commended but at least I’ve had no Internet to distract me the way it usually does. Maybe a few days with no connection is not too bad after all, as long as it's not too long. 

Rosemary