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Writing a novel – a writer’s journal part 10
No Comments »24th July, 2009; Category: Blogging, Competitions, Fiction, Master of Arts course, Novels, The Writer's Life, Writing a novel, Writing for Children
The Frustrations of the Writer’s Life
It has been a long time since my last entry in this series of articles. I have been very busy finishing off my course work for my degree. Then I had a stay in hospital followed closely by my wife having a stay in hospital too. On top of all that, I have had a very serious bout of influenza over the last three weeks with nine consecutive days in bed.
Over recent days I have managed to get back into writing my children’s novel. This will be submitted in November this year as the major part of my thesis paper. I have been getting rather stressed out by the fact that my supervising lecturer would like to see a draft copy of the manuscript by the end of July. Eeek – that’s a week away. Losing much of the last six weeks has put me way behind. I am so blessed to have a very understanding and compassionate supervisor.
Her compassion is very welcome, but the novel will not write itself. In the coming three months I will have to work very hard to get this project completed. The only way to accomplish that is to plonk myself in front of the keyboard and write, write, write. One of the additional frustrations is that I have other projects on the go. I have another two novels and four picture book texts almost ready to submit to publishers, as well as numerous short stories and poems ready to submit or enter into competitions. I need a thirty hour day and a ten day week!
One very practical solution would be to stop blogging and get back to writing the novel. It’s all a matter of application and priorities.
Good writing.
- Writing a novel – a writer’s journal – a series of articles outlining the process I went through in writing a novel.
How sweet it is
How sweet it is to get paid for one’s writing!
I received the cheque in the mail today for the prize winning poem I entered in a recent competition. Nice to be acknowledged in a competition – and get paid for it. It has inspired me to write more poems and stories and send them off to publishers. It has also spurred me on to get the many manuscripts of books ready for sending off too. I have a nice little collection of texts for picture books and novels for children just waiting for a final edit and a cover letter.
In addition to the cheque I also received a lovely certificate as the winning poet. Nice.
Good writing.
Prize Winning Poetry
Yahoo – I’m doing the writer’s jig again and again and again.
I just received notification this morning that I have won first prize in a Literary Competition. It was for a suite of poems in sonnet form and was entered in the Traditional Rhyming Poetry section. The competition was conducted by Freexpression magazine here in Australia, though entries were received from a number of countries.
It was hard work – a labour of love I guess. But getting recognition like this is very encouraging, especially seeing some of the place getters are frequent competition winners.
And the cash prize is very nice.
Check out some of my poetry here.
Good writing.
Three day novel writing race
The City of Salisbury in Adelaide, South Australia, is a great supporter of the arts. Every year they sponsor a Writers’ Festival. I haven’t yet attended one of these but all reports say that it is a worthwhile event to attend.
As a part of that festival – to be held later this year – they hold a special novel writing race. Writers are asked to write a novel over this coming weekend. It is a long weekend throughout most of Australia so that gives writers 72 hours exactly to finish their masterpiece.
I am not going to enter this year because of other commitments which would cut into my writing time. Next year perhaps?
In the meantime, for more information and an entry form click here.
They also run a short story and poetry writing competition and details are also found on that web page.