Sending stories to magazines

As many people know, I’ve not been writing any short stories for the past year due to depression and various other problems. 

I’ve also neglected recycling them too. 

My rule used to be that when a story came back, unsold, I would send it to another market as soon as possible. Lately, I haven’t been doing that much either, so today, I’ve been rewriting/tweeking a few stories and sending them out to magazines. Two to Womans Weekly, 2 to People’s Friend, 2 to Weekly News, 2 to Australia and 1 to Take a Break’s Fiction Feast.

This was sandwiched round a trip to Morrisons as John was going to a car spares place in that area of Leeds. I came back to emails from the lady who runs the Writers Bureau. I was scared to read them in case I’d done something wrong, but it was good news. The first message told me that my test email assignment was OK and that I can now do marking by email. The second was some much needed positive feedback. This is what she wrote – ‘I’ve just looked at another batch of your marking (paper based) and was really impressed with the warmth and help you give.’ It’s given me a real boost, just in time for Swanwick.

I have a busy day tomorrow. I’m seeing Julia at Relate, collecting my iPod connect kit from Bose, having a bra fitting and then spending a couple of hours with a personal shopper. I haven’t actually bought the iPod yet as I can’t decide between the classic and touch versions ( I don’t even know how to connect to wi fi when I’m not at home). I need to have another chat with somebody at Currys.

I’m nto going to work late tonight as I’ve spent too many hours at the PC already. That said, I’ve just managed half an hour on my Wii machine. I haven’t been using it much lately (translated, not at all since Mum died), so I need to get back into the habit or I’ll never get fitter. One day, I also hope to get back to playing with the keyboard I bought in February which, again, has been gathering dust since March. 

One step at a time, I'm getting there, wherever that turns out to be.