This has been a busy week at Adult Education, leaving no time for Writing Matters (my blog, and my own creative writing). Weekends are usually my main time for writing, but I shan’t be able to catch up with my writing-self this weekend because it’s my niece’s wedding. She’s the only niece on my husband’s side - his only brother’s only child. I’ve got six nieces and nine nephews on my side.

I don’t want to give the impression that I’m not looking forward to this event - far from it- I’m very fond of Sally, and I was delighted when I heard that she was engaged to Luke - I think they’ll make each other very happy. It’s just another example of the way ‘real life’ tends to intrude on the ‘virtual life’ of a writer. At least, that’s my experience - a constant balancing act between focussing on writing; earning a living at my ‘real job’; keeping in contact with friends and family members (and/or fulfilling other responsibilities towards them and other people). Whenever I’ve reached the final, final end of writng a novel, I wonder where on earth I managed to find the time from!

I now picture the whole novel-writing process as a kind of huge bulldozer, rather like a snow plough, but pushing a track through water, holding it at bay as I surge ahead with my novel. Unfortunately, once I’ve actually finished it, the water floods back again, surrounding and almost submerging me.

I still have lots more to tell you about what I’ve learned about the craft of writing over 25 years or so, and the highs and lows of these experiences, as you can see on my About page, above.

Apart from my actual posts about writing matters, I’ve still got quite a lot of work to do on this blog-site, particularly on the ‘pages’ on the blue line along the top, with more ’static’ information about My Fiction, My Poetry, and lots more to put onto the Links page. I also need to find out more about the technical behind-the scenes aspect of WordPress.

I’ve had useful feedback from a few readers, who’ve suggested that putting dates on the posts would make the blog easier to follow, so that’s another item on my to-do list. I’ll get round to that as soon as possible (I’ve a feeling that next week at work will be just as busy - especially as I won’t be there today or Monday)

Hurray!! Four days’ off in a row, and I’ll be seeing my son and daughter and her boyfriend - the five of us will be in a cottage in the grounds of the place where the reception will be and it’ll be lovely for us to be all together under one roof.

And now I must go and pack the car while my husband heads off to his allotment to pick strawberries to take with us.