Jenny's Channel Swim

I told you all about my young friend Jenny Best who was attempting to  be the first person with a colostomy to swim the channel. Well, this just in from her mum, S. Jenny did fantastically well in the water yesterday after training for months. I'm so proud of her for even trying this. She must be mad, but the right kind of mad.

Copy:

Just wanted to update you, although some already know, Jenny was pulled out of the water after a brilliant attempt, having swum 8.5 miles
and for 7 hours.

She left the water desperate to stay and go on but hypothermia was setting in and she was deemed to be in danger by Eddi Spelling the pilot.  He, the observer Irene and Dave who crewed could not praise her enough.  Apparently there was an Icelandic man who was pulled out after 1.5 miles and last week someone stopped at 6 hours.  She did the equivalent of two relay swims!  Above all she achieved what she set out to do, which was to help those who hear her story and are facing the same operations, by showing that life goes on and you can still swim or dance or whatever takes your fancy, the sky is the limit really.   8.5 miles in very cold water is no mean feat and I am very proud of her, especially her dignity in dealing with not getting to the other side.  Thank you all for your support, we are both very grateful and thank you for all the kind thoughts sent to her on her return.

Somehow I do not think this is the end!
From a tired, proud mum.
S.

Jenny's Channel Swim

I told you all about my young friend Jenny Best who was attempting to  be the first person with a colostomy to swim the channel. Well, this just in from her mum, S. Jenny did fantastically well in the water yesterday after training for months. I'm so proud of her for even trying this. She must be mad, but the right kind of mad.

Copy:

Just wanted to update you, although some already know, Jenny was pulled out of the water after a brilliant attempt, having swum 8.5 miles
and for 7 hours.

She left the water desperate to stay and go on but hypothermia was setting in and she was deemed to be in danger by Eddi Spelling the pilot.  He, the observer Irene and Dave who crewed could not praise her enough.  Apparently there was an Icelandic man who was pulled out after 1.5 miles and last week someone stopped at 6 hours.  She did the equivalent of two relay swims!  Above all she achieved what she set out to do, which was to help those who hear her story and are facing the same operations, by showing that life goes on and you can still swim or dance or whatever takes your fancy, the sky is the limit really.   8.5 miles in very cold water is no mean feat and I am very proud of her, especially her dignity in dealing with not getting to the other side.  Thank you all for your support, we are both very grateful and thank you for all the kind thoughts sent to her on her return.

Somehow I do not think this is the end!
From a tired, proud mum.
S.

Writing at Last - Phew!

For the last couple of months Milford Writers' Conference has been looming on the horizon and with a place booked since spring I've known I needed up to 15,000 words in one or two pieces to submit for crit and discussion. In olden days, we used to have to take copies of our stories with us and the week consisted of a very heavy reading workload (mornings) critting workload (afternoons) and socialising workload (evenings), but with the advent of high speed internet we now send out our stories in advance to lighten the morning workload by enabling those of us who can to make a start on the reading.

Unfortunately this has had the effect of advancing the submission deadline to at least the week before the conference and many people submit a couple of months before, making those of us who are laggards feel doubly-tardy.

It's handy when Milford coincides with having a piece you're working on right now, of course. Last September I took the first section of my magic-pirate-adventure-quest novel 'Sea Witch and Rowankind' (then under the working title of 'The Elf-Oak Box') and, lo, I actually finished writing most of it in November, polished off the rest after Christmas, put it through beta readership in the spring, did the polish and... and... and I'm currently waiting for an agent to get back to me. Yeah, right! Same old, same old...

But this year I didn't have an obvious piece to take.

Yes I know, having got Sea Witch to an agentably submissible stage I should be leaping ahead on to a new project... but...

I have a book project which I took to Milford a year or two ago, got some generally positive, but constructive comments that made me change the focus from quest novel to political fantasy and I'm thinking of resubmitting that as one of my projects (It's Hari, FYI mevennen , bluehairsue and maeve_the_red , I think you've all seen him before)

I'm not a natural short story writer, but I do like to also take a short to Milford because the feedback is so fantastically helpful. I've had a story beginning on a back-burner for a couple of years. I really liked the beginning, but I couldn't quite get a grip on it. Well, yesterday and today I did it. I had about 1500 words in the pot already and now A Murder of Crows is complete at 7,500 words. (sigh) Yes I was hoping for shorter, too. I thought I might be able to do it in 4,000 words, but it got more complicated than that, and then the characters started to say: Yes, but what's my motivation?

Why am I not surprised that this story ended up at 7,500 words? Almost every damn short story I write ends up at least that long and in order to get them down to 5,000 or even 6,000 I end up cutting and stitching and polishing over the cracks. O, hell, I should just admit that I'm happiest at novel length, but I do keep trying.

Though luckily all the short stories I've sold have been similarly longish ones.

Anyhow I'm really pleased with 'A Murder of Crows' but I'm going to sit on it for a few days and re-read and further polish before sending it. So you'll get it in about a week, guys, OK?

In the meantime, now I know how long Murder of Crows is, I can prepare the first section of Hari (now provisionally entitled 'Spider on the Web') to use up the rest of my 15,000 word quota.

Writing at Last - Phew!

For the last couple of months Milford Writers' Conference has been looming on the horizon and with a place booked since spring I've known I needed up to 15,000 words in one or two pieces to submit for crit and discussion. In olden days, we used to have to take copies of our stories with us and the week consisted of a very heavy reading workload (mornings) critting workload (afternoons) and socialising workload (evenings), but with the advent of high speed internet we now send out our stories in advance to lighten the morning workload by enabling those of us who can to make a start on the reading.

Unfortunately this has had the effect of advancing the submission deadline to at least the week before the conference and many people submit a couple of months before, making those of us who are laggards feel doubly-tardy.

It's handy when Milford coincides with having a piece you're working on right now, of course. Last September I took the first section of my magic-pirate-adventure-quest novel 'Sea Witch and Rowankind' (then under the working title of 'The Elf-Oak Box') and, lo, I actually finished writing most of it in November, polished off the rest after Christmas, put it through beta readership in the spring, did the polish and... and... and I'm currently waiting for an agent to get back to me. Yeah, right! Same old, same old...

But this year I didn't have an obvious piece to take.

Yes I know, having got Sea Witch to an agentably submissible stage I should be leaping ahead on to a new project... but...

I have a book project which I took to Milford a year or two ago, got some generally positive, but constructive comments that made me change the focus from quest novel to political fantasy and I'm thinking of resubmitting that as one of my projects (It's Hari, FYI mevennen , bluehairsue and maeve_the_red , I think you've all seen him before)

I'm not a natural short story writer, but I do like to also take a short to Milford because the feedback is so fantastically helpful. I've had a story beginning on a back-burner for a couple of years. I really liked the beginning, but I couldn't quite get a grip on it. Well, yesterday and today I did it. I had about 1500 words in the pot already and now A Murder of Crows is complete at 7,500 words. (sigh) Yes I was hoping for shorter, too. I thought I might be able to do it in 4,000 words, but it got more complicated than that, and then the characters started to say: Yes, but what's my motivation?

Why am I not surprised that this story ended up at 7,500 words? Almost every damn short story I write ends up at least that long and in order to get them down to 5,000 or even 6,000 I end up cutting and stitching and polishing over the cracks. O, hell, I should just admit that I'm happiest at novel length, but I do keep trying.

Though luckily all the short stories I've sold have been similarly longish ones.

Anyhow I'm really pleased with 'A Murder of Crows' but I'm going to sit on it for a few days and re-read and further polish before sending it. So you'll get it in about a week, guys, OK?

In the meantime, now I know how long Murder of Crows is, I can prepare the first section of Hari (now provisionally entitled 'Spider on the Web') to use up the rest of my 15,000 word quota.