Back in the Hobbit House for one day only and have just embarked on Chapter 10 of Year 2 of my two-year MA in Creative Writing. So what? I hear you cry from the flatland wildernesses of cyberspace, and its a very good question. I’m glad you asked.

It’s the last taught chapter.

After 19 1/2 months of learning about character, plot, tense, time, narrative voices, psychic distance, rhetoric, euphonics and much, much more – this is the last taught week. No more exercises to do after that. No more discussions in various forums, dedicated to fiction, creative non-fiction and getting published in the world. After this week there will be only writing and Tutor Group Forums, and occasional workshops where we critique extracts of each other’s work.

It going to be very odd, indeed, just writing.

It feels a wee bit like the end of an era. I’ve just posted the first exercise of the End Chapter and there’s only one more exercise after that. That’s why I’m marking the event here, before I do it, to herald the beginning of the end.

Getting published wise, I’ve submitted to Molotov Cocktail and written a few flashes  that are nearly ready to send out, but I can’t decide on venues. I’ve been reading work posted on several on-line sites/journals and think I’ve whittled my first choices down to Fictive Dream, Spelk, and maybe the Jellyfish Review. I’ve never submitted to any of these but think I need to get a bit more work ‘out there’ even if its for free and as they say…nothing ventured… I’m also going to submit to Horror Scribes first anthology with a slightly reworked version of the flash that won their New Year comp.

Talking of comps, I entered the Retreat West flash comp, theme ‘forgetting’, and spring’s Reflex Fiction, which is a brilliant idea for a comp.  I came across it at Christmas when I had time to look.  They pick a short list from all the entries, then count backward, publishing one  each day (between May and June for this edition) until the winning three are published on the last three days. Here’s the link  https://www.reflexfiction.com/ They publish the stories with a picture that illustrates the text and (if you agree) you’re story is published in a print anthology at the end of the year.

They published the longlist on April 1st and I’m on it, which is good. I don’t know when my story will be published, it depends on how well it does I suppose, but I’ll post a link when it is.

Right then, back to the last exercise. No point in putting it off any longer. Endings are always beginnings. Best foot forward and all that