Bleak endings and bucket lists – blogs wot I wrote recently

And a good Saturday to you (or Sunday or Sunday or whatever day it is when you’re reading this…)

I’ve popped up on a couple of blogs recently so I thought I’d share them with you.

First up is my first regular post for An Awfully Big Blog Adventure – Happy endings not (always) required – in which I talk about the recent comments by Carnegie medal winner Kevin Brooks about the need for some children’s books to turn their back on happy endings. It led on from a plot I’ve been working up for a reluctant reader which has turned into one of the bleakest things I’ve come up with so far.

What I love about this blog is that the posts always attract comments and often develop into full-blown debates. My post was no different and there were really interesting contributions from others that helped crystallise my own thinking on the subject.

Why don’t you head over and join the debate?

Earlier this month I also turned up on the Girl’s Heart Books blog talking about bucket lists for writers (and also flying owls, like this fella!)

Do you have a list of things you really, really, really want to do? If so, get over to GHB and share ’em!

In other news, I’ve also become something of a test subject in Neuro Linguistic Programming, don’t you know! Go and read Cavan Scott – Anchorman to find out more.

And so that’s my roundup of what I’ve been up to. Well, some of it at least. All in all, June has been as manic as ever with multiple projects on the go. It’s all good stuff so I’m not complaining, although my YA novel had to go on the back-burner for a while. I’m not willing to have it stall completely however – not the least because I want to build this – so I’ve challenged myself to complete the first draft by the end of July. This will mean writing around 6,000 words a week on the novel, so I’ve been trying to write 1,200 or more as my first job of the day so it doesn’t get lost as emails start flying around and other jobs take over.

So far it’s worked. I’d hit my quota by Thursday, so let’s see if I can keep it going over the coming week too…