I’ve been sitting here hovering between my growing list of emails and my equally extensive To Do List, realising it’s not difficult to answer this question. This blog was originally going to be called ‘Where Did March Go?’ but April seems to have disappeared as well and Winter will soon be upon us. Thankfully it brings no signs of slowing down. On the contrary we’ve hit Festival Season, are well into Submission Season, and in no time Book Week (Month as many will tell you) will be upon us.

March for me meant little time for writing as my focus was very much on family and my two other jobs. A mix of medical appointments for my elderly father and I (nothing serious thankfully) and two very important celebrations and it was goodbye March.

Despite all of this, I did begin with the WestWords Accademy and participated in Live Calls from both Creative Kids Tales and The Duck Pond, which helped to fill my creative well. To elaborate on only one of these, I was lucky enough to be accepted into the WestWords Academy this year, which involves monthly sessions with industry experts via Zoom initially, then hopefully some in person ones later in the year. The two we have had so far have been incredibly informative, inspiring and practical. I cannot wait to see what May holds for us.

April on the other hand has been very much devoted to writing, I have participated in AWC’s Creative Writing 30 Day Bootcamp and have currently produced a 7247 word first draft and despite being 2000 words behind, I am well on the way to my first humorous JF manuscript- once I revise to… um… add humour 😁 I’ve also entered two competitions, submitted mss to publishers submission windows, submitted mss for assessment and finally attended a book launch again. Yay! Shelly Unwin’s delightful Hello Baby was launched at the equally delightful (new to me) Lindfield Learning Hub. I’vealso begun dreaming, planning and mapping out how to launch Star, later this year.

I still have several more assessment submissions to complete, the last few days of Bootcamp, and two more local competitions to enter before the end of May, but I have to say I’m truly happy with the work I’m producing and my increased ability to back myself and claim the time needed to further develop my self and career as a Children’s Book Author.

It’s a balancing act to fit writing in amongst family and work commitments, but fit it in is exactly what I’ll need to do as I’m well aware that work will become busier over the Winter and Spring in both of my other jobs coupled with my Springtime release of Star. For those of you who’ve followed my blog, you’ll know this has been hard won and I strongly encourage any of you taking your first steps on this road to publication to work towards reaching this point of balance as soon as possible. It will make the journey a whole lot less bumpy and straighten out the winding road to becoming a Kidlit author much more expeditious.

So fellow travellers, farewell for now,

Savour the Quest,

Journeygirl.