Draft 3

I’ve just finished draft 3 of The Gift.  It is now 59,000 words long so a little on the short side for a novel.  While working on draft 3 I realised I wanted to hear more from one of my subsidiary characters, Pilar.  I've portrayed her as an embittered old woman, but now feel the reader needs to know why she is this way and so I want to give her a voice.  My only concern is that too many narrators may confuse the story - at the moment I have three.  I have decided to keep draft 3 as it is and to re-work another version, which will include some narration from Pilar.  It will also increase my word-count. So now on to draft 4!     

Success!

Back in July, I wrote a short story for a competition being run by the online writing group, WritersAbroad.  

I’m pleased to report that my piece was accepted for publication in their anthology, Foreign and Far Away!  The anthology, the fourth published by Writers Abroad, is out today and contains a selection of fiction, non-fiction and poetry.  It is available from Amazon.co.uk and Amazon.com.

Book Aid International will benefit from the proceeds of the anthology.  This charity increases access to books and supports literacy, education and development in sub-Saharan Africa. 

You can find out more and see a complete list of contributions and authors on the Writers Abroad website, www.writersabroad.com.

The Parisot Literary Festival

I’m feeling inspired as a result of going to the ParisotLiterary Festival at the weekend.  I managed to attend the sessions by Maree Giles, Amanda Hodgkinson, Martin Walker and Victoria Corby.   I can’t imagine the amount of organisation it took to make this event a success.  It is a real tribute to the organisers – thank you.  I’m already looking forward to next year’s festival! 

The talks by Amanda and Martin were back to back and it was interesting to hear how differently each author went about their writing.  For Amanda her story, 22 Britannia Road, began with hearing about a woman living in a forest.  This image stayed with her.  She wrote a poem, but the image refused to go away.   Martin writes the Bruno Chief of Police series.  He explained that he writes a detailed synopsis for each chapter and knows exactly where his story is going, although Bruno does, at times, have a will of his own. 

Victoria’s talk was about gaining confidence as a writer and it was refreshing to hear an author admit to being nervous at times.   Anyway, enough procrastinating – today I have a free day stretching out before me so I’m going to get down to doing some writing!