Went to an authors' fair a couple of weeks back. It was exciting to see so many successful area authors. My stories are now put together, but I keep thinking of other ones I might want to write. I still have a couple of months to play with those ideas. Our Writers' Circle meets again in a week or so and I hope to learn some good critiquing skills. When I look back at where I was with my writing a year ago I am delighted at my own accomplishments. The biggest challenge is to ignore the housework long enough to write!

A dry spell! My writer friends tell me they know all about it! So I write letters, and lists, and other not especially creative things! In front of me sits my collection of stories with most of the challenging work done. They are all revised and edited. So I guess the next step is to photocopy them. I hope they are in the best order possible. That was a puzzling task. My instinct was to sort them chronologically although the most recent writing was from the furthest reaches of memory.
One of my funnier stories is out in an area newspaper people tell me. I hope it is not a bad idea to be publishing these one at a time prior to sending the whole works to the publisher in November. There are about thirty stories, and I have given the little magazine about six of them over the last year.

I've been researching possible magazines to submit articles to. Most of the likely ones are American, which poses a problem for a Canadian who does not use a credit card. How to get American stamps for the required self-addressed stamped envelope? The area post offices tell me they can only be obtained from the USA.

Today I found a helpful article others might enjoy. It gives advice for people interested in writing for women's magazines. Check out www.writerswrite.com/journal/may99/boetig.htm
I hope to find more articles written by this lady who sounds so knowledgeable.

As I begin to organize my writing in hopes of marketing, I am looking at it in two distinct ways: What do editors want and can I write it? as well as What do I write, and who might want it? So far, I am terribly random in my approach, and so I am needing guidance as to getting answers for those questions. There is my Writers' Circle, and I have a magazine aimed at writers. There will be a course in the fall which might help too, and of course the internet has lots of resources. Have you seen the site called Fish Eggs for the Soul? (My computer skills are very basic, but my son-in-law tells me that someone reading this can e-mail me.) So if you are further along the path than me, I would enjoy hearing your thoughts on organizing and marketing.

So what do you write? I have done several children's picture books, a series of Christmas stories, a few magazine articles, and recently/reluctantly, at first, a few poems and a piece of fiction. Many of these things have been in print but only in area publications. Until this year I did not even know what a query letter was.
My main focus for almost a year has been a book of stories/memoirs in the "slice of life" mode. I am preparing them to show a publisher in a few months. We have a small Writers' Circle here, doing a variety of forms from suspense stories to plays. One of these writers is a very insightful editor whose opinion I am delighted to have. And the neatest thing of all: none of us knew one another a year ago. So it is true that when the "student is ready, a teacher appears". In this case, when each of us as a writer was ready, the other writers appeared!

Have you seen Sheila's (Unofficial) Guide to the Bakeries of Ontario?
Take a look at the July issue of Destinations & Discoveries magazine for Midwestern Ontario. (That's Ontario, Canada!)
From petit-fours to chelseas, congo cake to raisin bread . . . Is it a comprehensive guide? (Not at all.) Is it a memoir? (Well, in a way.) I just promised (for twenty-five years!) to write a guide to the bakeries of Ontario, and this is it (sort of!)