My Writing Odyssey

We interrupt our scheduled blog posting (involving a fantasy series) to bring news of a new competition from Mslexia for budding female novelists. Whilst on the way home from work today I received an email from women's writing magazine Mslexia.   This is usually a nice surprise, more often than not containing some thought-provoking survey about how some aspect of life (mental state, viewpoints on adult material, etc) affect my writing.  Oddly enough, they are fun to do when I have a few minutes free, and like I said, they can be thought-provoking. As a bonus, participants in the survey will have the satisfaction of knowing they contributed to the next issue of the magazine. But this was a different email.  Like all good writing publications, Mslexia regularly holds good writing competitions for its readers to participate in.  This time they are holding a Novel-writing competition, offering a first prize of £5,000.  Three finalists will also be offered free p...

Most writing enthusiasts will have heard something of NaNoWriMo throughout their journey.  I heard of it about three years ago when a Deviantart friend entered, but I had not decided to try going further with my writing career at the time, and hadn't really appreciated what it was or what it meant.  The second time I heard of it was on another blog.  This time I knew what it was, but it was the middle of November, and far too late to try.  This year I have registered well in advance for NaNoWriMo, which means I have either had some sort of epiphany, or gone mad again! I really must apologise to my patient followers for my two month silence.  Stepping away from my blog was not intentional.  In the space of three weeks I began and deleted a dozen blog posts before deciding to give it a rest.  My writing batteries had somehow managed to run down completely, to the point where I opened a word document or new post and did nothing more than stare a...

The more eagle eyed of readers for my last post will have noticed that the title promised "and other stories," which did not materialise.  Truth be told, I completely forgot with the shiny excitement of blogging on my phone. Since then, I have tried the office capacity, for reasons I will explain, and was thoroughly impressed.  Much simpler to use, and with its help I think I got the hang of typing with my phone.  That been said, now I will never be able to type anything correctly using my phone again - silly me! Once I had posted my last entry, I noticed that my blog had found itself a tenth follower - hello J L Dale and thank you for following my blog.  I must be doing something right, after all, now that my followers now add up to double figures. Anyway, the other stories... The most exciting one is that I finally bought and paid for my wedding dress today!  I also got the chance to try it on for the first time and felt like a princess.  My mum h...

After eighteen months of putting up with my horrible old phone, the time finally came where I could upgrade.  So yesterday I went to my local shop and am now typing from my swish new HTC 7 Mozart!! I had been eyeing the Windows phones for a few months, and I had heard some very positive feedback about the HTC phones. Everyone who doesn't have one seems to want one, so I'm pleased to have one of my own. The main reason for getting this phone was the built in Microsoft Office, which I...er...haven't tried yet.  However, I will be having a play with it as soon as I get the hang of the way this phone works.  Anyone watching me yesterday would have been sick of the cries of "What's it doing NOW ?!" as compared with my old phone it is extremely fast. So, here is my test post.  Hope it turns out okay . HC x