Hello again Fellow Children’s Writers and Friends,

Firstly, thanks to all of you who’ve been following and checking in to my Facebook page according to my stats, not that I understand all of that or more to the point have the time. I just took that last phrase out of brackets because I realised that that’s really what this post is about.

Time. There’s two aspects of time I want to talk about today, or one I really want to talk about and the other my usual whinge about my lack of it. It’s not really a whinge because I love what I do-mostly, but more on that later. The second aspect is that we are now in the KidLit world’s peak time. Peak event, peak launch, peak course, peak well everything time. What does this mean? It means we’re spoiled for choice, it means FOMO and it means making some difficult decisions. Nothing world changing mind you, but certainly holding the possibility of personal transformation and opportunity.

This term sees me claim back some time to get my personal and creative life back in order. Yes, I’ve bitten the bullet and taken a term off one of my day jobs as a teacher. A casual teacher, therefore, not too major a change in time commitment, but a huge difference in physical and mental commitment. Time, I now plan to channel into my health and fitness and into my frustrated creative life. I will still retain my role as a Sacramental Coordinator, which I find remarkably rewarding, but can now spread it out over the week as (don’t laugh full timers) the two eight hour days were annihilating my creative stamina leaving me with only enough energy to do my mandatory meanial tasks. Not being a morning person, these tasks have now been relocated to before work, leaving evenings free for family and creativity. Why am I telling you all this? Well simply because, one critical component of creativity (other than a love of alliteration 😉) is figuring out your best time to create. Figuring it out and then making time for it.

If you are children’s writer and do not belong to any Writers Groups like SCBWI The Duck Pond, ASA FAW and (the now in hiatus, CKT) AWC or your State Writer’s Centre then I suggest you do some serious googling, because the industry is buzzing at the moment, pretty much from now until September, you’ll find publishing houses open, competitions on, Conferences, Festivals (you can even look back at some of my posts to find some of these) and books being launched by friends. Here is what I’m up to at the moment and what I’m going to have to miss out on.

All going well I plan to enter the Angels Anthology Competition, the WestWords-The Other City Competition (maybe) submit to a couple of publishers attend Zanni Louise’s Blue Mountains Writing Retreat this weekend, (YAY!) and attend a (US Based) 12×12 Book Chat. This unfortunately, is what ill be missing out on. Debra Tidball’s latest book baby Achored’s launch and the big Ethel Turner, Woodlands weekend event organised and run by good friend, Abbey Lane. Best of luck to both of you.

Farewell fellow travellers,

Savour the quest,

Journeygirl