I’m only here because I should be doing something else. And there you have it, the blog about procrastination has eaten itself. \u00a0I’m supposed to be writing. Not a blog post, either. On January 1st, I resolved to submit four stories a month and I’m struggling in June to submit one. \u00a0The anti writing gremlins are still staying with me, and as they’ve been here a month, they’re getting somewhat tiresome. \u00a0They are little worms burrowing into my brain, with their negativity. Much like the person, who having kindly given me a top, size Medium, looked at me wearing it and said, “I should have got you the Large.” \u00a0The AWG’s have the same effect on my self esteem when they whisper “You’ve read David Mitchell, haven’t you? Hilary Mantel? What are you still doing with a pen in your hand? What makes you think you have any chance with this writing lark? Give up now, loser…” etc etc “Oh, and by the way, you are too old and fat to wear sleeveless tops.”<\/p>\n
Not only the writing worms are saying this to me, but an actual editor too. Yes, the one I spent all my time creating a pen name for, rather than concentrating on writing a decent story. \u00a0A polite letter arrived with the killer sentence – \u00a0“we felt the story line was a little too weak to hold the reader’s interest.” \u00a0Arggh! Stab me in the heart with a fountain pen, why don’t you?<\/p>\n
But you know what? This feedback, like all the other critiques and comments I have received over the past couple of years, makes me think that editors are really rather good at their job. Without fail they manage to pin point, far more accurately and succinctly than I can, what I’ve been vaguely feeling is wrong with my story.<\/p>\n
A story may be weak, but it is never dead. \u00a0And this one’s still got a chance of life. \u00a0I’m planning to turn it into a flash fiction. \u00a0In the spirit of rallying my writing reserves and getting some work out into the public domain, here is one I prepared earlier. \u00a0My first ever piece of flash fiction, it was placed third in Flash Fiction World’s March 2013\u00a0<\/b>competition. \u00a0Read it here:\u00a0<\/b>http:\/\/www.flash-fiction-world.com\/going-back-to-frank.html<\/a><\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I’m only here because I should be doing something else. And there you have it, the blog about procrastination has eaten itself. \u00a0I’m supposed to be writing. Not a blog post, either. On January 1st, I resolved to submit four stories a month and I’m struggling in June to submit one. \u00a0The anti writing gremlins … Continue reading “I should be doing something else…”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[8,17,19,20,39,43,55,57],"tags":[71,80,81,106,110,117,127,132],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thegreatprocrastinator.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/193"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thegreatprocrastinator.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thegreatprocrastinator.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thegreatprocrastinator.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thegreatprocrastinator.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=193"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thegreatprocrastinator.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/193\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thegreatprocrastinator.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=193"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thegreatprocrastinator.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=193"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thegreatprocrastinator.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=193"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}