Anna Aden Writes

 This was advertised on Scribophile - the workshopping site I am a member of, and since I was coming up for renewal, and after some thinking, reflecting and doing some calculations,  I decided to get it. I wasn't going to get it until I realised the site's subscription had increased by about 37% to 39% from the last time, I paid.  So I thought since it was a discounted in the stack at least for six months to take it and give me some grace, or breathing space to see if I wanted to subscribe at the premium membership. So I thought since the stack was called. Write Publish Profit. I could use this as a challenge to raise the subscription fee. It may sound easy to raise $89 from writing but believe me, it isn't. I don't think, I've earn that to-date in royalties so this is a big challenge. Also it has to be $89 from the profit. So so this is basically 182% return on investment.  Anyway I got a 4 by 13 stack of products which means 52 products. I have up to June 23 to re

Happy New Year, Everyone! This was a quiet one, after watching two films last night I called it a night and woke up in the New Year. What films you ask? Guess Who with Bernie Mac, Ashton Kutcher and a lot of cringe worthy jokes. Then I watched Aloha with Bradley Cooper, Emma Stone, this was bit better. It had strong moments but I could see why they said it didn't really have any direction. Was it a romance? Was it a military story? It was hard to say what the movie was...a lesson in premise and precision but it gave a nice fluffy feeling and I must say Emma Stone did a brilliant job and so did John Krasinski - he acted with heart.  However it's a nice film and I learn a lot from it, but I think it would have missed the market because there were too many theme or subplots or whatever. Overall a brilliant cast, great acting but the story struggled with doing too much.  Decluttering My Creativity  This year, I'm focusing on decluttering my creativity in the sense of completing

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

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

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.

 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