It's been a bit of a busy
week.
Last Sunday was awards
day at Trowell Writers' Club. We don't have many members but the
turnout was excellent and it seems like I made some popular choices
as the prose judge. So I'm relieved about that.
I sold my 40th story a
few weeks ago and my latest is in the October 24th edition
of People's Friend. Pleased with that too.
On Thursday October 22nd
I went up to York to attend a People's Friend short story writing
workshop. This was run by the magazine's commissioning fiction editor
Shirley Blair with the assistance of prolific writer Kate Blackadder.
As writers it's sometimes easy to believe that editors are grim
people whose only purpose in life is to make our existence miserable
by criticizing our work and rejecting our submissions. Well, either
we're all wrong or Shirley is a remarkable exception. The talks were
upbeat, the exercises were fun and she even threw in a few jokes.
There were 25 attendees whose age range must have spanned around 6
decades, the oldest being a sprightly 92 year old. I met a fellow
writer who I had already met on a couple of previous events at
Nottingham Writers' Club and another lady who works as an extra on
Emmerdale. Some, like myself, had already had successes with a few
magazines while others had not yet submitted anything. The event was
really useful to me and I'm really glad I didn't miss out. If you
want to submit to People's Friend it's essential that you keep up to
date with their guidelines which can be found on the PF website.
