A good visit to The First Gallery's preview evening - their annual Christmas show of "well-made, affordable crafts & art, ideal for gifts" at 1  Burnham Chase, Bitterne (a private house).  Some nice stuff there; I bought a sculpture - block of etched wood, with two wire clownfish fixed into the top - wire and orange glass.  Show is on until 21st Nov 2-7pm, 21st-27th by appointment 023 8046 2723.

Attended a public debate at the city art gallery featuring the Press Complaints Commission staff and editor of The Daily Echo.  Some interesting rants and the PCC evidently doing a good job.

Indian meal at The Great Moghul in Eastleigh - v reasonable though food not served piping hot.

On the writing front, I'm still drawing up a list of possible target publishers and agents for my children's book (first draft more or less done), but considering paying for advice first, e.g. Louise Jordan.    The Daily Echo said my piece for the "In My View" column is 'perfect for the column' and they hope to use it soon.  It's a rant about how pubs and restaurants offer poor choices for vegetarians.  If they did better at that, they'd get more trade - if a group is going out for a meal and one person is veg and doesn't fancy the menu, the group go elsewhere.  Business sense, I thought.  Currently I have one other invited piece and two pitches with national magazines, and am working on a competition entry.

If anyone reading this has an opinion on whether it's worth paying, say, £75 for advice on a part book, could you let me know please?  Thanks.

Giving in, not giving up

Oh sad, sad.  Despite the previous blog, I have had to truncate my ambitious writing plan.

It's not the commitment itself; in the first ten days I wrote 10,000 words as intended.  However, working from the plot, I found that without introduction of sub and sub-sub plots it was not going to work beyond about 12k words.  And complicating the story would not seem appropriate for the readers I have in mind.  So instead of padding or weaving, I am looking for publishers of junior fiction who work with books of that length.

I'll spend the rest of the month sending query letters to agents and publishers, and refining the story, which I think is a reasonable compromise.  As my mother-in-law used to say, "Oh, don't get on at me"!

Committing ...

Just to make a commitment that, although not joining in NaNoWriMo (50k words in November), I plan to write 1,000 words of my novel for children each day of the month.  This would more or less complete it, should the work go well.  The plot was sorted a while back, though by today (end of 2nd day) I already see flaws in it and have changed relationships, events etc.  2,100 words and counting!

Good luck to our local writers who are taking up the challenge.  Notes to be exchanged this Friday at Southampton Writing Buddies meeting.