A Number of Firsts

As is appropriate for spring, I am celebrating a number of firsts this month. I hope you will celebrate with me.

It might be spring but it's raining.

The poem I wrote for the Good Life in Galicia competition, celebrates four of those firsts.

•   It was the first thing I have written seriously for someone else to read. (I don’t count school here.)
•   The first time that I have entered an open competition.
•   The first time I have won anything for writing.
•   The first time I have had something in print.  I don’t include digital short stories here.

   The anthology is called The Good Life In Galicia and is available on Amazon in ebook format or on Smashwords in printed and ebook format.
   It has a variety of stories poems and anecdotes about life in Galicia.
  The first full meeting of our writers' group rather grandly entitled The Writers Guild of Galicia happened this week. Three of us at the moment but another member has just joined, so growing. We are planning to support and encourage each other whilst we are writing. Our goal is to be able to make a living through writing, so we are serious. Some of us are almost there some of us, like me, have a long way to go

Our choice of venue must mean something

We are pretty keen though.

I have completely rewritten The Chalice of Saint Bee and designed a new cover. This is a first because I managed to negotiate the Amazon system to do it. The system is designed to be straight forward but I am a bit of a klutz at anything technical.  The first time I do anything I invariably fail. I am, most definitely, a slow learner and tend to panic when given a set of instructions. Something always goes wrong. I even got one of my O level papers sent back because I got my name wrong.
   Now I know that anything can be changed. I can safely say that if you read anything of mine and discover a problem with editing and/ or formatting tell me. I can now change it and send you the updated copy.
   To celebrate I am running a countdown offer in the US and UK, so for 3 days starting on the 17th April, The chalice will be available for just 99 cents or 76 pence (Depending on exchange rates). Of course, it’s always free to read on Amazon unlimited.
I probably should count learning about Amazon special offers as another first.

The last first is the way I am writing this blog. Always before, I have written straight into Blogger; no edits, no changes. This post I am writing in Scrivener so that I can plan my posts in advance and edit them before publication. In theory, they should better. Please note though I am not a professional editor and my grasp of grammar is sketchy. However, as with the books, I am open to suggestions. Because I can plan these I feel a bit more relaxed about writing them. I know that some of you love to find missing full stops and misplaced apostrophes. So fire away.
    Editing and rewriting is the skill that I am currently learning and like everything, there is a steep learning curve. I am surprised to find that I am enjoying it immensely. For some reason, I previously believed that once something was written it shouldn’t be changed, other than for spelling and grammar. It was almost as though there was some sort of magic spell attached. I am still worried in my heart of hearts that people will laugh at me. When I have worked hard on something and it’s the best I can do. What happens if  someone laughs and metaphorically pats me on the head like a child. Would I be left so humiliated I would never recover? I might be about to find out. (I pose this as a question Because being patronised and laughed at happens to me all too frequently.)
  I am now finding that you can play endlessly with words until I turn them into something that I like (emphasis on the I here) . Although the process is fun, like everything else, it might take me some time to get the hang of it.