Melissa Lawrence

Hi everyone. A good writing week this week, despite the distractions of the cricket and the tennis, possibly because my portfolio career has been suspended, pending further enquiries (don't tell my patrons!) and I've been at my desk every night. Long may it continue! I said in my last post that I was recently shortlisted (top ten) in the Writer's Toolkit flash fiction competition. The competition brief was to write a short story of 150 words or less on the theme of 'Secrets'. My story actually came out at exactly 150 words because at the last minute, after I'd sealed the envelope, I suddenly panicked and decided that the wording of the rules could mean that the story had to be exactly 150 words. Mine was 149 if I remember correctly and it was surprisingly difficult to add that extra word! Apparently the competition attracted 182 entries (which I must admit was quite a surprise) and entries came from several European countries as well as the UK. I was particu

Hmm. Well, that didn't last long, did it? So much for January being my favourite month, raring to get on with my writing etc etc. I was only back at my desk for one day before I began to feel ill and although I struggled on for the rest of the week, I felt too lousy to work at all last week which was why there was no new post, so apologies for that. (I did toy with the idea of posting "Melissa Lawrence is unwell" but decided it sounded a bit too pretentious.) Anyway, here I am again and although by no means firing on all cylinders (am I ever?) I think I'm on the way up again which is good. Probably because my brain is still in fuzzy felt land, I don't have a definite theme for this post so apologies (again) if it is a bit rambly, if there is such a word. First of all, what is it about rejections that they always seem to come when you're already at a low ebb? I finally managed to get my teenage/young adult novel Cracking Up ( an apt title if ever there wa

Happy New Year! I'm back again after a week or so away from my desk, refreshed and raring to go. Well, refreshed, anyway. Actually I'm still feeling quite good about writing and really looking forward to getting down to it again (a Christmas miracle if ever there was one) probably because I haven't done any for about ten days. To conclude my analogy from previous posts about writing and relationships, I'm a great believer in separate holidays for couples (and separate houses but that's another story!) and I think the same can work for writing. "Absence makes the heart grow fonder" and all that.     My enthusiasm may also be to do with the fact that, much to most people's surprise, January is my favourite month and I would even go so far as to say that January 1st is my favourite day of the year. (Apart from January 1st 2010 that is, when I went down with gastric 'flu but that's definitely another story.) As well as Christmas being over (hoo