Hallelujah!

Dear Reader, do you recall, a few month ago, a blogger who bewailed her rejections and despaired of ever getting into print again?   (‘Coping with Rejection – 4 September.) Well, it seems that acceptances, like buses, come in threes.  I am very chuffed about being able to add some more links to ‘Some of Charlie Britten’s Published Stories’ in the left-hand panel:  ‘Visiting My Penfriend’ (CafeLit) (which was actually published in September); ‘Light My Fire’ (Every Day Fiction – I November) and ‘Daniel and the Pussycats’ (The Copperfield Review – current edition).   All of these publications are ones I’m very proud to appear in.

Also, I have just had a Christian story accepted for www.AlfieDog.com, for which I’m currently sorting out the contract.  (It seems weird to have a contract for a piece of two thousand words, but this seems to be the way things are going.)

I have to confess that my pathetic self of a few weeks ago would have been absolutely disgusted to have read a post like this one.  How dare she boast like this, I would have screamed inwardly, whilst forcing a tight smile and saying to myself that rejection is all part of the writing game.  I trust this comes out right… but I do hope that nobody reading this is feeling like that now.  What I can say is that I sweated blood getting all of those stories right, not right just for the editor, but for me as well.  ‘Light My Fire’ and the AlfieDog story were both re-writes and, with my daughter having her baby and with not being able to write during our half term visits, editing of these two took several weeks.  ‘Visiting My Penfriend’ was also worked on and worked on.  ‘Daniel and the Pussycats’ came more spontaneously as it was – in part – humorous, and humour comes more easily to me than passion and angst.

If you read my About page, you would see that during 2013 I aimed to have something published in womag and to have completed The Novel.  Dear Reader, I have failed on both counts.  Not one word has been added to The Novel since I started this blog and I expect that my one outstanding womag sub has been hanging about too long for anything positive to happen.  I have other stories ‘in the rough’ which could be sent womag-wards, but, DR, it’s finding the time and the energy to edit even one or two works to the sort of standard that womags expect.  I’m not doing NaWriMo; I couldn’t even consider it.  Even though the big event (arrival of grandson) has now happened, things keep happening in my life and taking up my writing time.  I’m not the only writer who works, but I’m blowed if I  know how the others manage.  I shall spend this coming weekend preparing for a teaching observation next week.

And, DR, just in case you are feeling as jealous as I would have been, you may safely continue to read this blog.  I only have three subs out there at the moment and I’m not holding my breath for any of them.