The Plan!

S'up blog readers! Hope you all had a wonderful weekend and enjoyed the beautiful weather and if you didn't have beautiful weather, well, you ought to know it was super sunny and hot in London ;)
Anywho, so it's been a week since I completed the first draft of my first book. I actually haven't touched it since! I've stayed well clear from it and will probably only look back on it, at the very most, once in between now and starting the Curtis Brown course. Daft as it may sound, I'd rather it was in a bit of a state, a "first draft state", if you will, in order for me to learn as much as I can.
   In the meantime, I've been working on a short story for a competition - the Sunlounger Short Story Competition - which means me submitting a one to three thousand word short story with a setting that takes place abroad. As far as I can gather, it's a book that will be filled with short stories written by well known and established authors of today.
   I've never written a short story before so had no idea where to start, nor how much information to give, what was necessary, what wasn't etc. So I've done my best and finished one - of probably three - I am going to submit. It may sound slightly greedy but as three is the maximum number of stories one can submit, that's what I'm going to do to give myself the best chance of being selected.

   So that's one down and another two to go!I have also decided to write some short stories occasionally for the purposes of this blog only. It'll keep the writing juices flowing and the best way to learn the "right way to write" is to keep doing it. By "right way", I mean grammatically of course, and learning about syntax. So far, the most feedback I've had from online forums is that I need to learn to tell the story without giving away too much, or spoon-feeding the reader. So maybe when I post stories on here, you guys can tell me what you think and certainly let me know if I'm giving you too much when I don't need to...? Any feedback you could give me so that I can "hone my craft" - to sound like an utter wanker - would be much appreciated.
   Another thing I'd like to add to the blog is to add book reviews. This year, I've read twenty-two books, and I'm rather pleased with that. It might not sound like a lot to some people who can put away two a week but coupled with writing my first book and work, I'm pretty chuffed. Then again, I suppose it isn't something that takes an enormous amount of effort when it's one of my favourite things to do.
So there we have it - THE PLAN. Thanks for reading :)


EG xxx