Freelance Writing

Writing: Managed to get another article on Suite101 this week to keep up some kind of momentum. Also rewrote and emailed a short story to a US market, New Love Stories. Meanwhile, I'm completely rewriting a children's novel to make it first person rather than the third person it was before. The hero is a young boy and I can't believe the difference it's making to the 'voice' by writing as the character. Think I'm often better at first person so I can get right inside the character's head. Delighted to have my adult novel away at an agent just now as it's encouraging to know that someone is willing to read it.

Talking: Enjoyed giving a markets talk at a writing group in Glasgow last Monday. Left them lots of places to try with their work and some magazines to check out. I'm often surprised that some of the markets are not already known, but perhaps other writers don't enjoy researching them as much. It's always been one of my particular pleasures - I just don't follow all of them up enough. Or I go through phases of trying new markets.

Listening: Attended an interesting workshop and talk in Glasgow on Saturday, given by the editor/publisher of Bridge House Publishing. They produce the anthologies my children's stories are in. It was more about writing for young adults and one of the most fascinating things was hearing about how the teenage brain develops. Scary stuff! I don't know how everyone survives that stage. But it was certainly good information for anyone writing for that age group.

Rosemary