PRESENT-DAY SNIPPET: ONE YEAR IN, THE THINGS I SUBMITTED, READING, BANK HOLIDAYS, AND TAKING THE RING TO MORDOR*
*Just kidding…it was just a very long walk
My husband, Michael, is 46 today. It’s the ninth birthday we have spent together as I was there when he turned from 37 (my age now) to 38, which is quite exciting. On his birthday – and this is the kind of lovely man I married second go around – he’s just brought me dippy eggs and toast soldiers in bed whilst I finish off this post that I’d intended to send out yesterday and now have to adapt because I’m sending it out today.
In contrast, he’s only spent seven birthdays with me because we met when I’d already just turned 29 and moved to England on my third wedding anniversary to my first husband. (Thanks to my ex for kindly planning that plane journey on that date – well, I suppose he did upgrade my flight to premium – yay! Happy impending divorce!). A month after that fateful plane journey across the Atlantic, I met Michael. Fate? I’d like to think so.
Celebrating a year!
My Substack is now a year old. I’ve written 98 chapters. (Wow! A lot of reading for you guys!) Thank you to my over 130 subscribers. You all mean a lot to me. I may be a small publication but I have half a dozen to a dozen engaged readers and I love that. It means so much that people read and resonate with my words – even if some of them are super embarrassing to share.
I may post twice this week and bring you to the next chapter which is how I met my first husband. It’s either a cute or creepy story, depending on your view (i.e. he sort of stalked me and orchestrated a meeting, which to insecure me seemed romantic that he liked me ‘that much’ but middle-aged me is like, ‘hmm’).
#100daysofwriting starts TODAY
I’m excited to try
’ 100 days of writing challenge. Sign up here. It’s free and writing can mean anything – fifty words, five thousand words. It’s a low-stakes way to stay accountable and create a daily gentle writing habit. It starts today (sorry, I meant to post this yesterday) and I’m excited to see what I can accomplish. My plan is mainly to alternate between writing Substack chapters and novel chapters for my commercial fiction rom-com attempt!
In writing news (or rejection news, rather)
So, my screenplay actually didn't make it to either competition but I can rest easy knowing most likely hundreds to thousands of people submitted and only ten reached the first round.
I thought I’d reached the quarterfinals (embarrassingly) because the status on Coverfly (submission manager) said ‘In Consideration’ even after the quarterfinals announcement for the TITAN awards, but then I got an email a couple of days later rejecting me and another rejection for the Big Break Screenwriting competition. Maybe one day I’ll sell this TV pilot but until then I’ve submitted a bunch more things.
I received a rejection yesterday for the longed-for Penguin Undiscovered Writer’s prize (they shortlisted fifty books but goodness knows how many submissions they got). I still plan to finish my rom-com but it’s difficult to know what exactly captivated them this round.
In one of her workshops,
told the unusual story that she got three agent offers on her first round of querying because she perfected her first fifty pages and her query letter within an inch of its life and she does this type of coaching so that’s my plan – ask for her help when I’m ready. I’ve also seen that some people pay for developmental editors to help perfect their work, too, so these are all options.I plan to finish that rom-com and then start my next novel and go from there. Speaking of Katherine again (am I obsessed?) I attended a workshop of hers on rejection and resilience (replay here) so basically I’m just building up skills now. I’ve had quite a few rejections for various things and I’m learning to be more like ‘water off a duck’s back’ about them. What would be more remarkable is if I got yeses straight away than rejections. I’m part of the “writer’s club” now as most people get lots of rejections before they get any successes.
In submission news (I’m still waiting…)
I’m trying not to get my hopes up too much but I checked on my Harlequin/Mills and Boon submission (yes, old literature major me would have been snobby about this publication but at this point, anything is experience and why not?) and it says ‘in progress’ (last Friday, 6th September) which means someone may actually be reading it right now and deciding my fate. They are always open for unagented submissions and the novel length is around 50,000 words.
My therapist, Lorraine, told me about Mslexia magazine. How did I not know about this publication? I found two other competitions in the Mslexia Women’s Fiction Competition 2024 – one for a short story and another for a Children’s and Young Adults novel – so I’ve submitted pieces to both of those. The deadline is 23rd September, so any writers who want to submit still can.
I find out re the short story in November (but I don’t have high hopes here because I’ve never been much of a short story writer) and for the YA novel in January/February. I even had my niece read my YA submission (with a small monetary bribe for feedback) and see what she thought and to make sure I’m down with the Gen Alpha lingo (apparently ‘cringey’ is not a word now).
I submitted my Grandad’s memoir to the Bridport Prize Memoir Competition (forgive me for butchering the competition names). The deadline on that is the 30th of September so there’s still time. In November, I’ll find out if we are part of the long-listed 12 (obviously, a long shot). They are all long shots!
Amy Lord from my Arvon Writing Retreat told me about this competition. (The retreat was taught by Katherine Clemments and Andrew Michael Hurley). All three have written amazing books so check them out!
Things I’ve read recently
Recently, I finished Call It What You Want by
and my goodness it could be my 20s! Hard relate! I mean this character, Sloan, was a tiny bit worse in that she kept going back to this toxic ‘sitationship’ with a man she was ‘in love’ with who treated her like a glorified booty call when she had the option of the ‘perfect’ guy who treated her like gold. But really Sloan could have been me. I was that desperate and pathetic (at times) and inexplicable but thankfully, as all good characters do (and good character arcs), she learned! It’s a good read but it truly highlights how blind we can be by the cocktail of good sex, inexplicable infatuation, and low self-esteem. Plus, a splash of emotionally unavailable men.My therapist’s newsletter last week highlighted this concept perfectly. Was she thinking of me when she wrote this (before I got lucky and found Michael, of course):
“Women whose self-esteem is low are more likely to tolerate rudeness or belittling language from partners or to make excuses for their behaviour. Sometimes the fear of losing a relationship (or the dream of what it could have been) can result in them ‘accepting’ what others would consider unacceptable. Those with higher self-esteem know that they deserve respect and aren’t afraid to walk away from people who are abusive or manipulative, or when the relationship isn’t nurturing.”
I just accepted being treated as lesser and that sucks. I hope all those who accepted less in the past do not tolerate that now!
Watched the BBC Maestro course on writing for young adults by Malorie Blackman. It is a short course, but incredibly well delivered. She says in the course for a long time, she didn’t want to write about race. She just wanted to write protagonists that looked like her doing things that other children did in books and I love that. But eventually, she did write about race in a really compelling way. In her novel, Noughts & Crosses, which I finished a couple of weeks ago now (I love Audible), white people (noughts) are not the ruling class and black people (crosses) are. She does clever things with language and changes racial slurs to ‘daggers’ and ‘blankers.’ It’s about forbidden love between two young people of the opposite race and her depiction truly highlights all the ways racial, financial, political, educational, and socioeconomic disparities play out. I think it’s a must-read for anyone even though it’s intended for young people.
Another young adult novel I’m working my way through (I’m so much slower with print books these days – sorry, guys) is The Soulburn Talisman by
. I’m enjoying it so far but will let you know!I also finished How Not to be a Supermodel: A Noughties Memoir by
. I randomly found Ruth’s YouTube channel a while back (probably, like, when she started) and I just love her vibe (I even bought her dry shampoo when she came out with that). Plus, she’s just legitimately funny. I’d like to say she’s ‘real’ but let’s face it, she looks like a model but she’s also as real as someone can get for being a model and living in a Georgian mansion with two children and some cute cats. Her book isn’t an expose of the gritty underbelly of the modelling world; it’s hilarious and lighthearted really but does highlight how tough the industry can be. Thank goodness Ruth seemed to have an iron-level self-esteem.Fascinated by everything she said and wanting more, I even watched the Channel 4 documentary she featured in This Model Life (I think it’s called) and you could tell how intelligent and resilient she was back then even when she was lonely and broke in a Tokyo flat. I can’t believe the agencies charge the models something like £2,000 in rent for a poky, dirty New York flat before they’ve even earned money. I’m not sure how she stuck it out for twelve years but I’m definitely gunning for her success and I mostly follow her on Instagram now. I’d have loved her to write more things and reveal more and could easily have listened to all the life stories she had to share.
I just finished A Secret Sisterhood: The Literary Friendships of Jane Austen, Charlotte Brontë, George Eliot, and Virginia Woolf and it was like reading an enjoyable journal article in grad school.
wrote about it in her newsletter here and I only just got around to reading it. The sort of thing I wish my Master’s thesis on Elizabeth Gaskell had been like. (Sorry, Dr Elliott, for having to read my boring diatribe a million times over.)I’ve just started Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi. Has anyone read it?
A walk in West Yorkshire (two different days)
Michael and I are lucky that we live in a beautiful part of West Yorkshire. We have hills not even a five-minute walk from our house. We have views of hills around our house. We sometimes walk in those hills. I mostly do it went the weather is nice.
There’s also a whole hype about a local beauty spot called ‘Gaddings Dam.’
I’ve always wanted to go there as many of my local friends have been there. People talk about it. The internet even talks about it on TikTok. My old amazing personal trainer, Nicola, who only stopped training me because she got a fancy job for the NHS helping elderly people exercise (etc) always said we’d go up there but we never made a solid plan.
On Saturday, Michael said he was finally going to take me there. In his past life in his 20s, he’d even run up the trails there, he said. He always said he didn’t rate Gaddings Dam and the beach because he thought it was ‘a bit shit’ but I wanted to go so – and we have only been together over eight years – it was time.
I’ll let the screenshots of my Instagram story tell the story…
TL:DR: We get piss wet through like drowned rats; the walk is not an ‘easy’ jaunt (it turns into 11 miles and my husband used to run this before work in his 20s – did I mention he is 46 today…); we are both cold and miserable as the wind whips around us and into our ears; my flimsy Primani £12 actually gives a valiant effort of holding up for some of the way but eventually just can’t keep up; the trail doesn’t lead to Gaddings Dam; Michael only thought it was the Dam. It was, in fact, a series of other reservoirs that, perhaps, are beautiful on a sunny day but certainly felt miserable on this day. I’d never been so glad to be home and having a hot shower. We did go for a Thai meal date night in Hebden Bridge to make up for our shit four-plus hour walk of misery. To be fair, we were laughing and holding hands most of the way in our mutual misery. In a ‘you can’t make this shit up’ kind of way.
I really felt like I was taking the ring to Mordor in that I loved reading LOTR when I was 15-16 but, equally, I’ve never glamorised hiking, camping, or suffering for some ‘greater good’ mission. I’m a fair-weather walker. As my brother-in-law, Rob, is all about there’s ‘no bad weather only bad clothing’ philosophy, I’d rather don the bad clothing and have the fair weather.
Also, I somehow lost my lovely and actually stylish hiking coat. I’ve probably been banging on about this to Michael for two years. I’m not prone to losing things but all I can think is that it mistakenly got put in a charity pile somehow someday. I’ve yet to replace it because I don’t usually walk in weather that merits it.
In contrast, our Monday walk (we are off work and we don’t usually just have time to frolic in the hills) was much less ‘adventurous’ and it was a nice, sunny, crisp day. We went to our usual side of the hills but a walk we don’t do as often that has us passing ‘David’s memorial bench.’ David was my sister, Jae’s, father-in-law (my niece’s grandfather and my brother-in-law, Rob’s adorable father). He was one of the most lovely, gentle Yorkshiremen I’ve ever met and it was sad to lose him too soon, but Michael and I sometimes go on that walk that has us stopping at his bench to look over the hills and valleys and the farm where he grew up.
It always touched me that before he died, David got all those in his family a gift. He bought my sister a beautiful watch with a touching engraving on the back and a lovely handwritten letter. I wish I remembered the simple, beautiful lines but it’s always brought me to tears. What a beautiful legacy, I have always thought, to leave words behind for loved ones.
I’ve always been shy to ask my husband to take photos of me. Because self-esteem issues at being fatter, naturally! Thanks, elder millennial body issues. I’m usually the photo taker or I take selfies but I thought I’m going to get old and not have pictures of myself full-length throughout my life (mid-life crisis brewing?) so I asked my husband to take some photos of me on the tops.
Michael doesn’t like doing tasks like these, so he just snapped away with me talking and my mouth opened half the time, in odd poses, but maybe we will get it right eventually. At least, this time he didn’t take it from an impossible high-up vantage point as he’s quite tall (6’2”) but he did take a few from, like, 1,000 feet away (probably 100 feet away) claiming that he didn’t know he had to take them from closer up!
Side note
Somehow, even though
(love her posts and her book Ugly) doesn’t subscribe to my Substack she (very kindly) recommends me and I’m getting a lot of subscribers via her as well as some through , so thank you to you both!I’m now off for some birthday cake and tea as my mother-in-law (also called Elaine so Michael uses my family childhood nickname of Lainey for me) has just popped round to give Michael his card. (We have eliminated non-perishable presents for the sake of decluttering/inventory management over the years.)
Reading anything good and do you plan on doing the 100 days of writing challenge with me? Let me know what you’ll be writing.
Love all this for you. Even the rejection which objectively sucks but is what comes with putting yourself out there which is a brave and brilliant thing to do. Keep going & the right person to work with will say yes, I’m sure of it.
Side note: have you heard of NaNoWriMo? Might be worth doing after your 100 days, I’m going to do it after doing last year. I don’t know either if you saw my note about starting a first draft club, if you’re up for it as I’m also starting my first draft of a first novel.
Also love the sound of the books, saving to come back tomorrow when I’m not on my phone and google them all one by one!
And finally love the sound of Michael. More similarities: I’m 37, my partner is 46. He also takes care of the laundry and cooking. He doesn’t have Michael’s abs but you never know, maybe one day (but I’m very happy either way!) Aren’t we lucky! Happy birthday to him.
that last photo, of your windswept hair, awkward pose climbing up, it's the best. If you think about it, would you rather frame a gorgeous photo of you that caused an argument between you and your husband, or a silly photo where you are a dot but was taken on a taking-the-ring-to-mordor day in a place that you both love (?) and with thai food involved? I mean.... (ps: good luck with all the submissions, and I'm sure you'll learn from the rejections. They're not rejecting YOU as a person! )