Allright imaginary fans. So a couple of things to update you on. Firstly, John my author buddy told me some home truths about my short story. Unsurprisingly for a first ever short story, it has significant structural issues, which I am glad to get the chance to work on. As I was sneakily aware, my biggest problem is perspective - I am utterly useless at appraising my own work. Most of the things John said make me go 'yeah of course. I knew that. Why didn't I do anything about it'. To which the answer was: 'You have accused yourself of every possible kind of writing issue, so picking out the genuine ones is not always easy'.
Anyway - to assist me I have purchased a kindle copy of 'The Story Grid' by Shawn Coyne (amazon link). I am not sure whether I'm going to apply to Woburn, the first story, or write a new one I have half planned according to the new structure. I'll let you know how that goes.
Secondly I feel the need to express my thanks to Brad Reed, of the Brad Reed Writes podcast and other resources https://www.bradreedwrites.com/ for giving me oodles of writing tips - including the recommendation of Sean's grid thing. About 25 years ago I went to a creative writing class - and it was a bit pants tbh. Teacher was very charismatic but useless - not really interested/able to actually teach anything about plot structure, characterisation. Anything at all really. If only she'd been more like Brad I'd be famous by now!
So that's it for now. Tune in next fortnight/month/aeon.