'You can't wait for inspiration. You have to go after it with a club.'
Quote by Jack London

This quote kind of suits my mood today. I'm working on a story at the moment. Last night I worked through the 2700 odd words I had, crossed some out, wrote new ones.

In the small hours of the night I worked out a scene that had to go in. I was up at 6am, heater on, huddled over the keyboard typing away.

Inspiration never seems to come when you have time and are prepared for it. It hides in dark corners and crash tackles you at the worst of moments.

The other sad fact is that the story I'm working on, is actually just a distraction, a form of procrastination in itself. This is the year I've commited to getting a whole book written. It's halfway through the year and I'm less than a quarter of the way through what I intend. Somewhere along the line I'm going to have to pull out that club and get cracking!

Submission Etiquette

I might have mentioned I attended a 6 week writing course at the beginning of this year. Each week a different tutor - published writer or, in the case of Ellen Datlow, publisher.

All of us, students and tutors, share a yahoo groups message board. This morning Ellen D posted up a message to the effect that 'I've just received a submission from one of you (you know who you are) who addressed me as Ms Datlow...' I'll cut to the chase. She pointed out that having spent a week tutoring, eating and drinking with us she would hope that we'd refer to her as Dear Ellen.

Well I fessed up (after a angst ridden email to N - who mentioned that it might have been him...). Then the response came back - two people had fessed up - and neither was actually the guilty culprit! Well we all erred on the side of caution. In fact the frenzy of writer angst was pretty funny retrospectively!