Anna Aden Writes

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December Update, Nation of the Great Unwashed and Smelly, Reviewing End of Year Goals, Christmas & Boxing day with family.

Nation of the Great Unwashed and Smelly I had locked myself out, so Sis kindly drove over to give me my spare keys. Anyway after waiting for an hour (due to traffic, diversions and slow drivers - 10 milers in a 20 mile zone) she turned up. After Sis gave a run down of her journey she started on lockdown and Nation of the Great Unwashed and Smelly, with most people working from home, it seems general hygiene standards may have dropped. Not that I noticed but then again I'm working from home....But apparently people aren't bathing or showering as much as they used it. Soap manufacturers are probably fine because they'll sell more hand wash, so it's just different products will do well. Holiday Breaks Christmas I took a walk and saw big Coz - got him a nice trendy (I think so) flat cap from Thomas Farthing. A classic wide fit, so I hope he likes it. I was doing the last of the shopping, not knowing what to get when the salesperson caught my eye, and I liked the way it f

October & November Update - Conferences, Calculating Author's Earnings

At times, it is difficult to know what to give an update on, and so times drag on, procrastination happens and I end up staring at a blank screen many a times. Also I've stopped keeping a journal or track of things that happen. So apart from the main one. Novel So I finally completed the draft after three years! There are blog posts here about it and after a while it took so long, I just stopped writing about it. So it's just a draft but I'm happy it's finished and all that remains for me to do is some revisions. Not sure when as I'm taking a break now. Online Conferences I went for another romance one in November and it was interesting. The focus was on the business of writing, and long term sustainability. I must admit, I have toyed with writing in the long term as a part time career but for the first time, I did the calculations and it didn't really add up to much considering the effort. So at the conference a presenter was talking about writer's earnin

I finished my novel draft!

After nearly three years or so, I have finished my draft novel-in-progress. Not sure what happens next, but I'm taking a nice break of sorts.

August & September 2021 Update: Novel-In-Progress & Writer's Block , The curious case of Mister Big Man, Writing Courses & Conferences : FREE ProWriting Aid Romance Week

Novel-In-Progress & Writer's Block I'm now writing the final 25% part of the novel-in-progress draft. I've done one outline and why I thought it would be easy escapes me when this process has nearly taken me two years to get here. Actually, nearly two and half if you count the dithering about. And a small fortune if you think of the editing courses, from Holly Lisle's Edit Your Novel, Faber Academy's version of Edit Your Novel and finally Jericho's Writer's version of Edit Your Novel. I guess I was looking for a simple solution and in the end I had to to what I was avoiding, and rewrite the story from scratch, and this I started in January 2020. It was my mother who suggested, I actually had writer's block with this novel, and I agreed. I realised that during the Faber Academy course but I'd always wanted to go on the Jericho Writer's one so I signed up. Writing though writing block has been a tough and boring and tedious process. Howev

July Update - Novel-In-Progress, Reading books, The curious case of Mister Big Man, Goals

Novel-In-Progress In the June update, I mentioned I was on a roll and writing on average about 10,000 words a month. Well, I managed less than half of that this month. Slightly disheartened until I did a year-on-year comparison with eh months - that is comparing June this year to June last year and I found the productivity was pretty much on the same level. This makes sense since I'm in the same job so the same work pressures as last year will be this year. All jobs have their busy periods etc. And If I think I write about 100,000 words a year, it pretty much an average of 8,000 -8,300 words a month, however some months will be more productive than others. But on the whole it's going okay. I'm a bit exhausted from work and that will play into the writing since they are both mental activities. The curious case of Mister Big Man Last month we covered Mister Big Man and how I'm fascinated but I've come to the conclusion that he's just an outer manifestation

June Update - Novel-In-Progress, Reading books, The curious case of Mister Big Man

Another update, yay! I hope everyone is keeping well. Novel In Progress It seems I write an average of 10,000 words a month so I'm estimating another 40,000 words. This means I'm looking at an October finish. Let's make that November. It's going okay and a bit slow because I'm also doing some research so that slows down the pace. Saying this, I'm glad I'm past the midpoint and heading to the first crisis point. Photography and Photoshop I had no real time for this. Books I'm doing a YA Fantasy reading tour and up to now have read about five. They all tend to have the same baseline story and characters. I have plenty of books-in-the-pipeline and it is only after finishing the current one will I review the others. A lot time ago, I did a children writing course so maybe this might be something I could do. The curious case of Mister Big Man This is messy it is what it is. Mister Big Man knows everything but really knows nothing and opines at lot about s