Women who'd evidently been running some kind of race spilled off the heath around the church and were crowded into the village. Even the area outside the Crown pub had turned pink. An infectious cheeriness emanated from supporters congratulating the runners. They gasped, sweated, laughed and hugged one another as they made their way down towards refreshment in the village.


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The living van below was restored by the Green family, who live in the same village as me. It initially made me think of the Reddleman’s home in The Return of the Native, but it is too big for that and was not used in the wilds of the 19thC West Country but was pulled behind the steam-roller of a road-building gang...

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Your hands sweat. You check your email inbox.
Nothing.
You check your answer phone.
No new messages.
You check the area near your letter box (although you already checked it this morning).
Still nothing.
You might as well just check your email once more.
Nope.
Perhaps it went in the spam folder. (No.)
You tamper with the idea of sending a message, “Sorry to send this message, but just wanted to check if you received the submission of my new memoir “Travels with my Hamster…” .
You agonise about whether to send it…
You do, of course.
A few minutes go by. Nothing. Perhaps this message didn’t get through either. I mean HOW LONG does it take to read and respond to an email?
Stuff it! You don’t need them anyway. Who needs to be published? You’ll sit it out and go for accolades and glory after death, thank you very much. Yes. That’s it!
(You send another email).
Those of you Strictly readers who are unpublished or “aspiring” writers will recognise this as the torture known as the Submission Process.
It is impossible not to feel too forward and yet simultaneously pathetic and needy, slimy and disgusting – the worst sort of life-form to crawl out from under a stone – when you’re submitting your book to agents or publishers.
Your world reduces down to the size of an email inbox (empty). You become incredibly boring. People start moving away from you at parties.


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...the lovely, the talented, the great Tania Hershman (she blogs about it here).

Click to see the list full list of honorees (of which I'm one, along with some great writers and friends). Congrats everyone.

***

I'd also like to draw your attention to this - The fab Jane Smith over at How Publishing Really Works is having an anti-plagiarism day on Friday and wants you to be involved. So do it! Plagiarism's about the nastiest thing we could come across in this industry and we should do all we can to banish it, and those who do it, for good and keep the writing community the happy, supportive and trustworthy place it normally is.

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OK, so you know how it is when you submit something to a short story competition, and you wait and wait for the date they said they'd announce the winners, and then on that day they kindly let you know that you have to wait another month because they had so many entries, so you wait another month and then they send an email saying they had almost 1000 entries and they would be letting the honorees know within the next 24 hours and you think, 1000, blimey, no way I've made the last 50 and you cross it off your very organised Submissions spreadsheet thingy .......

......and then.

.......then you get an email from the competition organisers................

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The other day, at the end of the leadership development programme I had been running, I took a taxi ride to Godalming station. As we passed under the oak leaves along the Surrey roads, the driver reached for his clipboard and brushed his hand against my thigh.

‘It’s okay, I’m not on the other side,’ he apologised.


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Well, so much for a lazy Sunday (which I'd planned). I took off after lunch, with this book, Niki Aguirre's 29 Ways to Drown and a notebook and headed off to a cafe. I read some stories and then I drafted a set of questions for the next author I'll be interviewing for the blog. And I really enjoyed it - it's a great way to look at writing differently, from a different angle, and it's really good fun; definitely a perk to being a writer and a blogger.

And the list of interviewees is growing. Expect to hear from a children's author, a short story author, a poet, a novelist and more over the next few weeks and months. I know. With these interviews I am spoiling you, and I'm very happy to do so.

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Oooh I've been away from this way of life for too long - think I've lost my blogging mojo! Once you get out of the habit you're kind of lost. I'm afraid I've been imprisoned by a mad sofa; it's green and very generous, soft with good spring. Actually there are two of them but the big one is the worst; it's a bully and yells at me from the minute I open my eyes - I hardly have time to get a cup of tea!

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Received the handouts from last Friday's Tales of the Decongested yesterday (thanks Martin), which contained my story, Lists (which originally appeared in Dogmatika) and that made me happy. Apologies for the poor quality (the iPhone's camera isn't its best feature) and apologies for the top one being on its end (Blogger knows best, doesn't it).

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