My WIP

This should be titled 'My WNIP' if I'm being truthful.

The on-line Writers' Colony to which I belong, Litopia, is a wonderful thing to be a part of (ooh, I've left a preposition dangling.  Never mind, it's my blog and I'll dangle if I want to).  I find talking and listening to other writers, some of whom have been published more than once, others in the same anticipatory state as me, is a helpful, stimulating and thought-provoking pastime (as well as a fantastic excuse not to be doing other things, such as the list mentioned further down the page - still beating myself with stick, BTW).

My aim, in the Colony, is to get to Full Member, Pitch Room status.  Essentially, the Pitch Room is where you can submit your work in the hope that it will be considered for publication (I haven't really looked too deeply into the ins and outs of this, as it is waaay too far down the line for me to worry about).  However, I am starting to feel a bit of a fraud.  This is because most (if not all) of the other members of Litopia have WIPs - works in progress.  That is to say, they are actually writing something.  I don't.  I have vague scratchings that could or might be suitable to be turned into a full-length novel.  I have lots of them.  But I don't have an actual WIP.

I was told, yesterday, by one lovely lady writer, Rosy Thornton,

'Write your book, get it published and I'll want to read it.'

'Yaay!  I thought.  Quickly followed by, 'Ah.'  For here was the stumbling block.  I have no WIP.

I have half-formed excuses and genuine reasons wafting around inside my head regarding this lack.  Firstly, I am about to start, within the next two weeks, a full-time job and my Level 3 OU course and I've only just got off my lazy behind to begin the proofreading and copy-editing course that I should have started back in June, when I had weeks of nothingness ahead of me, but, oh no, I thought kicking back and chilling was far more beneficial, what a twit!  Secondly, the girls will be leaving for Cardiff and Sunderland, so I will have an empty house and yawning acres of void to fill - also peace and quiet, not punctuated by re-runs of Friends, or MTV, or X-Box games where assassins jump from roof to roof in medieval Jerusalem slaughtering everything in sight.  I'm also wondering if, subconsciously, I'm storing up all this work, in order to be so busy I won't have time to miss the Friends re-runs, MTV, mess, needing to cook and care for someone else, etc.

Whatever the reasons are - for I'm sure they are multiple - I'm going to have to make do, for the time being, with research for the prospective novel (the first in a family saga, beginning with a fictionalised version of my Nana's life, I think.  All I'll say is that we continue to discover things about her some 10 years after she died, the most poignant fact for me being that she is buried a non-Jew in a Jewish cemetery under a false name) because I suspect that I'm going to be a bit busy.

Hopefully, by the time I get into the Pitch Room, I might actually have something to pitch.

A date for your diaries, by the way:  20 September - we will have a guest on Scrivener's Progress; as part of his world blog tour, the rather lovely Jonathan Pinnock will be answering some brilliant and erudite questions about his brand new book, Mrs Darcy vs the Aliens which was published by Proxima Books yesterday.  WH Smiths had Mrs Darcy at No 54 in their book chart on her first day out.  Congratulations to Mr Pinnock.  All I need now is to find some brilliant and erudite questions to ask!

Wish me luck!