Just a quick update with some of the things I’ve accomplished this week – this post isn’t supposed to be a brag, this is me trying to 1) keep myself accountable for what I’m doing and 2) when I inevitably slip back into my anxiety-fuelled ‘I-haven’t-acccomplished-anything-and-never-will’ phases, I can re-read this post and remind myself that of what I CAN and HAVE achieved.

• I joined The British Fantasy Society – YAY! I am SO excited by this – I kept meaning to join last year but for one reason or another, I kept putting it off. This week, I decided to just go for it and I’m so happy that I did. I’m so looking forward to meeting other fantasy/sci-fi/horror authors and generally just geeking out. If you wanna know more, check out their website here. This also leads me nicely into my next achievement…
• I updated the list of writing competitions I’d like to enter this year – a couple of deadlines have already elapsed (whoops) but there’s plenty more I’ve got my eye on. I’ve also highlighted the two most important ones that I really want to enter – The British Fantasy Society short story competition, and the Chicken House Children’s Fiction Competition. I have an idea for the BFS one, and I’ll be submitting my self-published novel for the Chicken House competition, so I’m really going to push myself to enter both. After all, you don’t know what might happen til you try, right?
• I finished the first draft of my horror short story – I am so thrilled with this one. I originally started this story way back in February, with the intention of entering it into Pressfuls’ horror short story competition, but right around the time I started it, my mum was diagnosed with cancer and everything just ground to a halt til we knew what was going on (update: mum is doing well. I may do a more in-depth post about this later on, but for now, it’s all good). It may have taken me several months longer than I thought it would, but I’m so happy that I actually finished another story. Another post for another day, but let’s just say I have a hard time actually finishing any pieces of work, so to even finish the first draft is a major accomplishment for me. I’m gonna leave it for a week or so now, and then begin editing.
• I began whipping my fantasy novel into shape – apparently you can’t have too many notes for a fantasy novel (HA!), but I’m happy with what I wrote this week. Will I use it? Who knows – but by having the ideas there, I can figure out exactly what it is I do want my novel to be. I also re-read some of Roz Morris’ book (can you tell how much I love that book yet??) and from that, I sorted out my novel’s timeline and began to get the first draft in order. I’m currently toying with the idea of leaving the first draft for now and doing a detailed synopsis, but we’ll see. I’m pretty happy with the extensive notes (33 pages!!) and the bones of the story so far, so we’ll see how it goes.

And that’s it! I’ll do another update soon, so you can all share my pain of writing first drafts (is it just me, or are they a particular form of torture??)

What about you? What have you accomplished this week – both writing and non-writing related??

Til next time,

Z x