Year of Opportunity

My new year resolution this year was much woollier than last years' "Enter a comp every month" idea. So it's been much easier to ignore. Clever, that, for a procrastinator.

I promised myself that this year I would take opportunities that came up, and that I'd make opportunities for myself.

I suppose the fact that I'm working (regularly) on my novel deserves a reserved pat on the back. (It's a long way to The End...)

But I'm afraid to say that an email whooshing into my inbox suggesting that I enter a local short-story competition that I was unsuccessful in last year didn't get a response from me. Oh dear. I think I'll have to chalk that one up as a missed opportunity. My PR gremlin might say it was good that I was fully focused on the task in hand, and didn't like to get distracted...

Anyway, yesterday I received a message from a magazine editor who published a short article of mine last year. It was unpaid work, for a very small, very local parenting magazine, which disappeared from view immediately afterwards without so much as a poof. They are intending to publish another magazine and the editor asked me to write another article, on single-parenting issues. It is another instance of experience rather than cash incentives, and I'm happy to do that right now, as it is such a small magazine.

But the simple act of someone asking me for something has ignited a flame of enthusiasm (must not lose focus from my novel....) and I've been jotting down ideas for articles all day and intending to make a list of possible markets for my ideas sometime soon when the kids finally go to bed.

Might not be such a bad resolution after all.