Walking the writer’s walk

My summer of writing competitions.

Here’s a virtual trophy to celebrate effort. The one given for ‘Progress’ to the child at the back. That’s me this summer. I’m going to get it engraved. It’s the only prize I’ll get in 2020 and it’s all my own fault.

Photo by Giorgio Trovato on Unsplash

You get lots of good advice as a new parent and a new writer. Yet it seems for both you need make the mistakes yourself to accept you aren’t a special case who’s going to breeze through where others struggle.

This may just be me, of course.

My parenting advice is limited. I have children, although no ‘mother of the year’ awards yet. Lost in the post, perhaps? Here’s the sum total of my wisdom: they need less bathing and dressing than you think in the first few months – spend the minutes gained either rocking gently, watching TV or (oh my god) sleeping. You’re welcome.

I’m an experienced parent, at least in terms of time served (16 years and counting) but I’m a complete novice at writing, with a mere 12 months under my belt: halfway through an online MA in Creative Writing with the Open University.

The MA kicks off again in September (or perhaps October, I really need to check that) but from March 2020 I, along with many other people, had nothing to do but housework and shouting at teenagers. I knew it was premature, but boredom and hope prevailed, so I submitted fiction to various places to ‘see what happened’.

Mostly what happened was nothing. I knew, in my heart of hearts, that was going to be the case. I can’t quite remember why I thought I’d be OK with it, or why I ignored the plethora of advice out there. Advice like:

1. Once you’ve finished, leave it. (Don’t do what I did and send it then look for changes. It’s like I can’t see it until I give it to someone else and look at it through their eyes. I suspect this may be an area ripe for psycho-analysis.) Give yourself enough time to read it like a stranger and edit it. Even if you’ve already edited it. Then edit it some more.
2. Keep a list of words you overuse. Excise them ruthlessly. It may be whole category of words (pesky adjectives). Following 1. above makes this transparent.
3. READ the work of past winner’s/judges/magazines. You need to match your stuff to an audience that wants to read it. By all means write what you love as well, but don’t go into it blindly.
   For example don’t send:
   • the ‘popular’, ‘fun’, ‘easy’ stuff (similar to what’s posted on this blog, because it’s low risk, inoffensive and amuses me. Also uses adjectives freely) to magazines you later realise are ‘serious’. Probably better suited to Woman’s Weekly or People’s Friend. If that still exists.
   • a piece about a sweary transvestite to a competition when the publisher specialises in YA. It’s well written, that story, but it’s not going in the anthology.
   • poems that don’t rhyme to a judge you happen to know likes a rhyme. She’s the judge, she gets to have these blind spots.

I’d read lots of advice like this in various books from various published authors. I agree with it with my sensible head.

My random head suggested I threw my work into the air like confetti to see where it would fall. Stony ground, it turns out. Should’ve paid more attention in Sunday School. I think I was hoping the Universe would send a sign. Oh crap, maybe it has.

On the plus side I did sit in a room by myself a few hours a day with a cheery ‘I’m off to do some writing,’ without feeling obliged to dust shelves or fail to communicate with the teens. If anything, more hours checking out the competitions first, and thus less dusting and failed communication would have been fruitful.

To quote every management consultant ever: ‘Fail to plan, plan to fail’.

Sigh. The Universe has spoken. Back to the keyboard.