All right in the end

Of course, yesterday turns out all right in the end. (Why do I get in such a state? Why do I always forget that bad times don’t last forever?). I find an email from Mslexia (‘the magazine for women who write’) with a link to a free workshop on their site. I follow the link and find three workshops to do – one involving detailed observation, one in which you turn your attitude towards your novel into a metaphor and then if necessary adapt the metaphor (in my case brick walls and climbing over them), and one in which you write out by hand the first two pages from one of your favourite novels and then write out the beginning of your own novel-in-progress in exactly the same style, copying it sentence by sentence. I’m still working on the third exercise. It’s proving fascinating.

    I did subscribe to Mslexia for a while but found it rather daunting – all those talented women-writers – and so many exercises to do that I ended up doing none of them. They also run competitions. I entered the children’s novel competition last year and found it so helpful having a deadline and a purpose. The competition this year is for an adult novel but I have nothing ready. They may do another adult novel competition in two years’ time. I sort of have that date in the back of my mind . . .

    Have you noticed (in the first paragraph) that I’m writing in the present tense again? I keep reverting to the past tense which is what I’m used to but so many novels are now written in the present tense that I’m trying it out.