Writing in Progress

I'm dying to submit more writing to Triond, but meanwhile there are some other things I have to do first. I'm a member of a self-help group of experienced writers which we call the Gang of Five. We get together every couple of months to discuss in detail a piece of work by one of the group members.

As the other four are all writing novels, we usually read about fifty pages of their latest work in progress and spend the evening analysing what works, what doesn't, and how it could be fixed.

On Tuesday it will be my turn, so I must sort out what I would like them to read. I think I'm going to send them two or three short stories that I've been working on, but I need to do a bit more work on them first.

Today I've been finishing off one of the short stories. It was one I started writing about three years ago and never finished. It was still hand-written and buried away in one of my many notebooks somewhere. I had been wondering where it had got to for ages, and I only rediscovered it at the weekend when I was looking for pieces to send to Trion.

I managed to finish it this afternoon, so I shall e-mail it this evening to my colleagues and see what they think of it. I always feel a bit nervous at this point. I think it's turned out quite well and my husband likes it, but you never know what reaction you're going to get from other people.

What I do know, though, is that whatever they think of it, they won't leave me feeling hopeless. As a group we are very good at coming up with solutions to things that don't work in each other's writing. It will be interesting to see how they deal with a short story though, as the main problems we encounter in each other's novels are usually structural.

I'd better go and get my e-mails done now. Hopefully, by the time I speak to you tomorrow, I'll have polished up at least one of the other short stories as well. It's so good to have the time and energy to devote to my own writing, though. It does rather take a back seat during term time when I have a lot of marking and preparation to do for my students.