Oops I did it again!

Hello everyone and welcome to my blog post for this week. I've allegedly taken a week off from living The Writing Life, but with no proper holiday booked and so much going on without my input, it hardly feels like I've had a break at all which is probably no bad thing!

So what have I been up to? As you may remember from last week, I was talking about tidying up my writing spot at the dining table and lovely Georgia Hill invited me to feature on her blog to talk about the Art of the Invisible Writing Cave. It was a fun, and hopefully inspiring, post. Here's the link if you want to take a look...

http://www.georgiahill.co.uk/?p=2135

Next up popped the absolutely thrilling news that Coming Home to Cuckoo Cottage has bagged the number 5 spot in the fiction Heatseeker chart this week. I'm absolutely over the moon, especially as that now means 3 of my 4 published novels have made that particular chart! A proud author moment indeed.

Hot on the heels of this excitement, and in line with my determination to challenge myself this year and broaden my horizons, I have accepted the opportunity to teach a Writing A Novel day course in lovely Lowestoft on Sunday November 19th.

This will be a first for me and I am very much looking forward to sharing my process with enthusiastic authors who are looking to make the leap. Hopefully I will be able to inspire them enough to go away and write the novel of their dreams! Here's the link to all of the workshops and courses fellow local author Suzan Collins has set up. There's plenty to choose from...

http://www.getwriting.co.uk/workshops.htm

And with the course in mind, one of the top tips I will be sharing will be twofold -

Do not fall into the trap of editing a first draft until you have finished it  

AND

Once you have started to write a first draft, don't stop. Plough on to the end.

Now, the reason I have highlighted all that in bold is because these two pieces of information are, in my opinion, paramount to productivity. So, knowing that I know this, could someone please tell me why I have yet again, started to write a first draft before I can commit to it AND why I've spent ages faffing about with the first few chapters? Answers on a postcard please because oops, I really have done it again.

The only thing currently saving my sanity is that this is exactly what happened when I started writing Coming Home to Cuckoo Cottage - lots of stop starts and faffing - and that particular book is ticking all the right #summerread boxes, so fingers crossed all is not lost.

That said, I'm ready to dive back in on Monday and then it will be all systems go, so if you spot me lurking on social media feel free to come on over and kick my butt!

Wishing you all a wonderful week and massive congratulations to Tanya and Trish who have each won a signed copy of Coming Home to Cuckoo Cottage!

H x