I thought it what time I gave you a writing update on my progress. Today I worked through chapter nine of second draft of The Favourite Murder, the fifth book in the Sir Anthony Standen Adventures. There are twenty-three chapters, so at this rate the second draft may be complete by mid to late August. At that point I think I have three options.
- Option 1 – Print it and give it to my wife Claire to review.
- Option 2 – See if I can persuade anyone in my Writers Circle to read and review it.
- Option 3 – See what publishers are open to submissions, write a synopsis, and submit it.
Actually they may be a sequence rather than exclusive options. This book has been so long in the research and writing phases, that a few more months are neither here nor there.
Meanwhile I have submitted a poem to the Teignmouth Poetry Festival Competition. I also have a short story ready for to submit for the CWA Margery Allingham Short Mystery Competiion.
I wouldn’t have known about the Teignmouth Festival if Jeff Phelps hadn’t posted about it on the Milktown Writers WhatsApp. It’s so wonderful to be part of a Writers Circle. I’ve been asked, together with two other members of the circle to give a short talk on Creative Writing courses. I looked back over my work on the Open University Creative Writing and Advanced Creative Writing courses and they were so influential and helpful for me. The interesting part is going to see how the other presenters and I are going to be able to collaborate on the presentation.
The poem that I’ve submitted to the Teignmouth Poetry Festival is one that I wrote whilst on the OU Advanced Creative Writing courses. The tutor really liked it so fingers crossed. You certainly can’t win if you don’t enter, and a fiver won’t break the bank. I shall try and post my writing updates more often. For SEO reasons it’s important to post something everyday, and my on this day style of posts on history seem to be a way of achieving this. If I were writing about my progress in writing, a writing update once a month would feel more appropriate.