Crumbles
I'm putting all my faith in fortune cookies this year. On the 1st of January, the Divine L and I decided to start the new year as lazily as possible by having a Chinese takeaway. Naturally, we picked up a couple of cookies too. Lo and behold, mine contained the following message:
And the Divine L - who is my champion and chief source of motivation as far as creativity goes - found this:
So there we are: the Gods will be on my side in 2006!
The Sunday Times recently ran a depressing article about the current state of the publishing industry. I won't link to it here, because they don't allow much of their online content to be accessed by non-paying visitors, but the basic premise was this:
They took the first three chapters of two Booker-winning 70s novels (one of them by V S Naipaul, who is a Nobel winner), changed the names of the characters and submitted them to 20 agents and publishers, after having made up fake names for the authors, of course.
You can guess what happened, can't you?
Your determination will bring you much success.
And the Divine L - who is my champion and chief source of motivation as far as creativity goes - found this:
You have the rare ability to recognise ability in others.
So there we are: the Gods will be on my side in 2006!
The Sunday Times recently ran a depressing article about the current state of the publishing industry. I won't link to it here, because they don't allow much of their online content to be accessed by non-paying visitors, but the basic premise was this:
They took the first three chapters of two Booker-winning 70s novels (one of them by V S Naipaul, who is a Nobel winner), changed the names of the characters and submitted them to 20 agents and publishers, after having made up fake names for the authors, of course.
You can guess what happened, can't you?
For a start, not a single person recognised the works. And, more importantly, no-one considered them to be of any quality. All 20 agents/publishers responded with a rejection letter, most of which said that the writing contained some good ideas but was simply not worthy of publication.
Speaking of publication, I can no longer say that my short story - The Edge Of Happiness - is in the current issue of PRISM International, because that has now been superseded by the Winter 2006 offering. Do check out the mag's site if you ever have a moment to spare.
Monday should be exciting, because it'll see me dashing off to London after work to attend the first session of a 10 week course entitled Novel And Longer Fiction Writing. Feels strange being a student again, albeit a part-time, mature one.
Oh, and I'd better extend official, cyber-thanks to my muse, whose generosity has not dwindled over the last fortnight: just a few days ago, I completed the first draft of a 30-minute TV script called The Unchangeable Features Of Troy.
So, yes, things have been busy lately.
