Pressure builds up

Inspiration didn’t come yesterday, so I wasn’t able to read at the Guildford Writers’ meeting. But there was plenty of good stuff – everything leaving you wanting to know what happened next.

I had every intention of going to Guildford today, but woke up with a bad back due no doubt to shunting things around in my freezer yesterday – lots of bending and lifting. I took some aspirins and later went to Sainsbury’s instead. M came with me, feeling he should do some strong arm stuff in view of me limping around. So I bought twice as much as I'd intended. I would have had to go tomorrow, as I'd run out of several things.

The first Christmas cards have started to arrive. Must get down to that too and we have invitations to another couple of happenings in the pre-Christmas period. And I should have arranged to have my car serviced. It’s all too much.

I got an unsolicited review of my chapters today, to my surprise, from someone else at the YouWriteOn site – once again, I was criticised for too much in the way of explanation. I just can’t get these first chapters right. It’s not so much that the reader needs to know the back story, but my heroine needs to know certain things before she can go off and start researching the family tree. But I can’t put these things in without there being too much narrative. But I will certainly have to look at the chapters again, when the pressure’s off.

Sent off my short story entry for the Writers’ News competition.