Damn you technology

It's all a bit of fun at the start...Facebook, Twitter, gmail chat and so on. The pleasant way of taking a break between chapters or spurts of writing. You rediscover friends and uncover natty bits of interesting but completely useless information. Before you know it, this technology takes over and the writer's block has become a writer's Great Wall of China. The little space of time you've claimed for your writing is taken up by Facebook updates and Google searches. When the baby wakes from her three hour nap, what have you achieved? Absolutely nothing. No sense of achievement, just a big dollop of guilt.

Procrastination is a familiar part of the writer's day to day struggle. And now the technology which can so often assist the writer (who handwrites anything these days?) has become the enemy. What to do? Has any writer out there managed to overcome the lure of Facebook? Turned their back on chat rooms? If you have, let me know. I need some help. It could be time for an intervention!

The first success of the year

Yay, I'm getting something published this year. A few months ago, I entered a short story competition for a website called Parenting Express (http://www.parentingexpress.com/). They were asking for a short piece around 900 words exploring an aspect of parenting the 0-5 year old age group. I decided to put together some of my thoughts about the first year of my son's life. Not long after he was born, we all moved to Hanoi, Vietnam for my partner's work. That first year of taking on the life of a mother as well as an ex pat was a challenging one. The words flowed fairly easily and I could have quite happily kept writing. I finished the piece and sent it in.

Down the track, I was informed that I wasn't shortlisted. Oh well, onto the next thing. Recently however I received an interesting email. My piece had just missed out on taking a place but the judges were so impressed that they'd like to publish it anyway. In 'My Child' magazine. Woo hoo. So look out for the May edition of 'My Child' magazine and you'll see my little piece. Unfortunately no payment accompanies this achievement. Instead I have a two year subscription to the magazine. Who said writing is a mug's game?