I’ve spent a great deal of this year hunkered down in my bunker attending to my writer skill set. Much of it reading craft books, attending classes (online) and participating in discussions with fellow writers. My current employment intitially sapped a lot of my free time, so actual writing took a bit of a back seat. Having said that, now I am sitting down reviewing all the past tasks I have managed to squeeze into the first half of the year and am suprised to find its a reasonable amount. So on the writerly front what have been my personal achievements so far for the first half of 2021?

• Finished draft three of Love War and Emus (about to stet into draft 4 after some wonderful guidance from Libby Iriks!)
• Joined Writers SA Manuscript Incubator program for ‘Among the Brave’ and prepping to go into draft number 2 (With the amazing Victoria Purman at the helm of our litte group mentoring program)
• Read lots and lots and lots of craft books and took lots of notes
• Attended many classes and courses – the highlight being Mark Treddinicks ‘Little Red Workshop’
• Wrote a novella length story for our upcoming Historical Anthology – A Season in Paris (more about my story and what inspired it later!)
• Wrote the first six chapters of a story I had a rough idea sitting in my head – and now it seems like it might be a ‘thing’
• Thought a lot about my first novel ‘The Bridge’ and how I can go back and really work on it – up the stakes, up the conflict, improve my characters and do a complete restructure complete with tossing out one of the POV and introducing another so that its more aligned with my writing style and where I see the story ending up.
• I also contiue to read lots and lots of books where I can. My current read is ‘A single swallow’ by Ling Zhang
• Entered lots of competitions – my ‘throw stuff at the wall and see what sticks’ philosophy for getting my stuff out there!

But the most surprising thing that happened is that once again I am a finalist in the Valerie Parv award. A bittersweet honour with the passing of Valerie earlier this year, means that she will not get to read my story but the RWA previous alumni of the VP award have stepped up and I look forward to receiving their feedback!