Blog - Staying on that treadmill

In this update

1. Another new format
2. Writing update
3. Book recommendation
4. A cool tool
5. Career prioritisation
6. A pretty picture of snowdrops

Just keep writing

Time to talk about process and prioritisation. Over the month of January, as you may have guessed, I have not been able to share a lot of work. Instead, I’ve been concentrating on entering a few competitions (most notably the Black Library over at Games Workshop). Added to that, the weather hasn’t been all terrible, especially for the last week, which has meant I’ve been out in the garden trying to get a few jobs under my belt.

So all of this leads to a confession from me - I may not be able to share new writing with you all every week as I did at the end of the year. However, I need to ensure that I write something each week, so I’m going to pull together some links and updates and share them with you all. It’s a way of keeping up momentum, which is so important when doing something creative

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You may find this interesting and you may want to share it with your friends. If so, please give me a shout-out.

Thanks

Phil

My writing

I’ve submitted a story to the Black Library open call.

As well as this I’m still waiting on responses to a poetry submission, a response to my novel (now called All Good Things) and Abbatoir Blues (a short).

My work in progress is a short sci-fi story, which I’m loving and will end up being submitted to a few online magazines. I’m also mulling over a very silly poem.

Books on the go

Currently reading Agent Sonya by Ben MacIntyre. His writing is so engaging that even such a dense book just rattles along and makes me want to return to it as much as possible.

For my reading so far this year - check out my website.

Making my life easier: Scrivener

I’ve used Scrivener for my writing for years now. However, it was almost exclusively for the ‘big things’ - novels and scripts and the like. Since I’ve been writing more short stories and poems, I’ve been using it just as much as an organisation tool. It allows me to jump between projects but also allows me to bring everything together in one place.

If you write, whether it be blogs or scripts or short stories or poems or anything, it’s definitely worth looking at.

Something interesting

I recently completed a career prioritisation exercise which has really helped me understand that my work can be as rewarding as my hobbies - if it’s utilised properly. As I approach 40, I don’t want to be counting down the days to the weekend for the next 25 years (at least).

So, with my mentor, I scribbled down a list of 20 things that were important to me. It was more difficult than I thought. I then chopped this list in half - and then again - and then down to 3.

I used post-its to do this, there was something about the tactile approach that made it all the more rewarding.

Nature

Ahhhhhhhh here’s a lovely picture.