Started writing

Well, I promised myself I would make a concious effort to start writing fiction this year, after many years of putting it off, writing one or two chapters and getting no further or just simply making my life far too busy to do it.

This time I decided that enough was enough, with all the issues going in on my household over recent months I need to do something for me as well.

Yes I do currently have the Open University to contend with, which is why I thought I would try my hand at writing short stories first, just to get some practice in, and also, generally write more, joining the ( I didn't know it existed!) blog community.

This week, though I should have been concentrating on a very rapidly looming Open University final assignment and when I mean final, it's the final assignment of nine months work and if I don't complete it, I fail. Not really an option, it just means I have to work really really hard at the last minute. Anyway, the point being, is that this week, I have written my first short story.

It started out as an idea scribbled down in a note pad, and then promoted to the ranks of my computer screen where I typed idea's, paragraphs and characters. I went a little off course and reigned it back in, edited it, read blogs giving advice, took notice, added things in and then today I was very nearly happy with what I had. I spoke about what I had been doing with two colleagues who were in the office with me at the end of the day.

I enthusiastically offered to send it them via email for their honest opinion and regretted the offer as soon as the words passed my lips as I knew that if they found it bland or just plain rubbish, then they would just be polite to me.

I heard the bleeps on the computers as the story arrived and watched as both female colleagues looked at their screens and started reading. Iris stated she would give critique if I really wanted her to, so I sat quietly yet fidgetly waiting. She finished first and said it was really good, all sentences and paragraphs in the correct tense and she really hadn't expected what was done and that it was really well woven in.

I then moved my attention to H as she read, and I waited. She stopped reading, looked up me and I saw she was crying! Oh my, words I had written had taken her into the story and she had cared so much she cried. She loved it. What a compliment!

Yes, as a first short story I fully expect it not to be made to publish level, but I need to do this, get plenty of rejections, learn my writing and my own style and keep going. I'm really serious this time. But honestly, it really did have me grinning like the proverbial cheshire cat when H cried.

I think I just started writing!