You know that saying about all work and no play…

That’s how I feel right now. It’s a winter thing. When the weather’s fine, I can take an hour or two off and go for wander round the shops, or into town. When it’s like this, it’s an effort just to take Raffy out for a walk.

Right now, I have no idea how many hours work I’m doing each week. I need to start adding them up. Why? So that I don’t feel bad about taking a day off!. The problem is, what counts as work? Should I include emails, tweets, time on other networks? It’s hard to know where to draw the line.

Lime nay people I can get to the end of a day and find myself wondering what I’ve actually done. That’s one reason  why I blog as it makes me look back over the day events so that I can see that yes, I have been working. Ideally I’d like to work for about 30 hours a week and have time for other things so I can get my life into some kind of balance.

Today I drafted a ne story which I will leave for  a few days before typing up. I find that way, some of the wrinkles in the plot will iron themselves out when I come to type it.

I managed to squeeze in one piece of marking, plus some time thinking about ideas for more stories. I want to get back to entering the FREE Writers News competitions. In the early 2000s I entered a lot of those, never won, lots of short listings, but went on to sell quite a few to magazines. I’m working on ideas for the first lien competition, about Jessica opening a door. I might even have a go at the poetry one about shadows as it’s free.

The other thing I did today was log on to ALCS and update my records. This wonderful organisation collects fees from places like school then distributes it to writers whose work may have been photocopied or used in some other way. In the last two years, they paid me enough to cover going to Swanwick, with plenty over. If you’ve had any stories, articles or books published, it’s worth registering with them. It doesn’t cost anything as they take the membership fee out of any payments due. ACT NOW as the cut off point for next year’s payment is the end of December. (www.alcs.co.uk)

Oh yea, and I also posted a great big bag full of critiques from the NAWG competition. More going off tomorrow.

Now I plan to do some more work on the next one in my series of writing guides, then it’s dinner, and some more reading. I’m WAY behind with magazines of all kinds. To be a successful magazine writer you have to read lots of magazines!

I’m in THE PEOPLE’S FRIEND this week, so I might as well read that too while I’m at it.

Tomorrow, John will be here, looking after Raffy while I go to Leeds Writers short story group. Weather permitting, I’ll get a look round the German market too.

Finally, re Sad companion of Paul. 

WellL done Linda for getting Blue Peter so quickly. That was the last one I solved  - just couldn't think of it.