Where to begin...[warning: waffle ahead]

I am not sure that I know the answer to this question and am thus throwing it out there…to anyone who reads this blog.

You see, I am at a point in my life where I have no clue, I never really have done yet I have reluctantly pottered along. Since I discovered my passion, it has brought with it a whole new side to me that I am not used to having, and if you mix in with that the remaining side you’re left with the new me. The new me is a little too high maintenance for my liking!

Now, I shall attempt to explain this to you as best I can and I guess it is quite personal, but I invited you all along on this journey with me when I began this blog and if you are still here now then you may allow me this indulgence. I have touched on this all before so bear with me if it gets a bit samey.

You see…last April my life changed. It had changed prior to that in both good, bad and infuriating ways but what happened in April is the reason that I am writing this blog post from the courtyard of my hotel in Marrakech.

Some of you will have started following me – about 100 of you – back in April, some may have forgotten that they still are and some have become firm friends. Those who followed me will know that I partook in the A to Z challenge. It lasts throughout April, except sundays (I think?), and you blog daily on a theme or at random, but it has to be related to a different letter of the alphabet each day.

It was about February when I came across it and created this blog. Back then, in the early days, it was called ‘Suddenly Seeking Blogs’ as that had been my reason for participating. It metamorphosed into ‘The Suddenly Kate Show’ but I am sure it passed through an unmarked incantation of being ‘The Suddenly Seeking Kate Show’ as my theme was careers. I was hoping to work through the alphabet, taking a light hearted look at possible careers that I would have liked to do at one time or another in my life, and highlighting the pro’s and con’s of each. I never really expected to answer my own question, and if you look back to the early posts, you will see I have spent a lifetime wondering what it is that I would love to do so completely and have great passion for yet up till then had not.

It never clicked or happened straight away for me, even with my main focus for four weeks being to write, and I went an unusual route.

First, I started writing music reviews; I fully intended to be doing this 3-4 times a week and there are still some that I agreed an interview with in principle that still have yet to come into fruition. What I never took into account when I made that choice was how emotionally draining I would find it all. I am not, by my very nature, an emotional person yet when writing music reviews I put a lot of pressure on myself to do the very best review I could in support of the artist/band and spent a long time doing them. The first few interviews have only a few questions and it took me a while to fall into a pattern that I liked the look and feel of. People never tell you that music reviews garner the least comments on a blog. They also have the most views/visits. Statistically, it doesn’t seem right, but that is the fact of the matter or at the very least in my experience (as limited as it is). I do still write reviews, I have one pending release as we speak, but I try not to put too much of myself into them and they are hard to write without sounding like you are fawning or gushing over a band.

Secondly, I decided to spread my wings a little and step into the film review foray, it lasted all of two maybe three reviews! I love movies, but not always the same movies everyone else loves, and boy am I cynical! I blame old age creeping up on me or something, why else would I hate gratuitous nudity & sex scenes and the objectification of women?! Surely, I can’t be a feminist can I?

Thirdly, I attempted my travel series, I wrote about New York City and what I experienced whilst there and in the stages leading up to going. I don’t know if anyone found this useful, but I know that when I was looking for information relevant to all my paranoia's, I couldn’t find one. Maybe I should write a book; ‘The Paranoid Solo Travellers Guide to….’ All I need is a sponsor….just fill in your bank details in the comment section below! Its ok…I’m cheap

Then it all changed…

It was during a lull between music reviews when I started to write a poem. I have always done this. Done what? In times of emotional stress or instability I write poetry. I call it poetry too! I’ve never read a book about how to write poetry, and I have no clue about iambic pentameters and such (probably why I failed english literature) but I write my emotions in a few words and that to me is the extent of my poetry. Anyway, the poem was about music and sex, or at least the ambiguity of meaning. I was writing about music and what it meant to me but it sounded/read a lot like I was talking about S-E-X! What followed was another poem and then i stumbled across some flash fiction prompts…and the rest they say is history! At the same time i also signed up for National Novel Writing Month in November and I wrote a novel. Now, if i had to blame someone for creating this “artist” that I have now semi-become then I blame anyone who enjoyed something that I wrote. I can tell you, hands down no word of lie, that if someone had been negative about my writing efforts in those early days then i would have stopped. Yes people…you had your chance to stop me and you blew it! Its too late you all rushing to say something now…now I would use your criticism constructively to improve my work.

Now this leads me to my issue on where to begin…
You see I have the following waiting for my attention;

1. Act of Love
2. Girls Best Friend: several parts
3. Twelve Days
4. One Other
5. Music Review: mylittlebrother
6. Stitching update
7. Travel posts and photo’s

These are all being worked on in some capacity and I would like to know how best to do this…should I just do them all and post them at the same time? One per day?

I have another issue in that about 3 weeks ago now some friends recommended I join Wattpad. I had no idea what the purpose was or how you went about gaining fans and getting your work read. I still don’t. But at the time they were asking writers of romantic comedies to contact them. So I emailed them and the other day I had an email telling me that I had been selected to be a secondary link on the website they are putting up for one month to promote chicklit. I’m not sure if that's a good thing or not, or if they didn’t have many people and need as much publicity as they can get? I am also not crazy about Chicklit as a genre because I like to think that men have read and enjoyed my stories and at no point gone…this is just for chicks! But, i am also not sure if that is what chicklit even means either way I would like both men and women to like it.

I have digressed again (so unlike me) and the thing is it means rewriting some of it to get it ready for extra attention that it may get, it also means self-publicising which I hate and am poor at. The email kindly told you what to do to be ready for the 11th February – I’m not sure I have time! I also don’t have any cover art for the story which is Twelve days and that may put people off even bothering to read part one. I also need a new bio. It means that I shall be busy on Sunday if I go ahead and am going to have to be creative with my cover art…unless you are a closet artiste who wants to help a hapless fellow artiste out? Do you? Do you really? Also if anyone wants to be my publicist?

I am also thinking that Girls Best Friend may fall into the chicklit category, someone actually referred to it as such, and that is fine with me but…Act of Love is supposed to be a mystery story and I am now wondering if it is or not. One Other is the work in progress name for the story that will follow Act Of Love in my Rob Mason detective series. I am overwhelmingly aware that there are a million writers and books out there and I may just be (for all intents and purposes) just pissing in the wind but I don’t want to just give up! I really want to finish Act Of Love because reading it through recently, I found a few holes, but overall I quite liked it! Am I allowed to like my own story? I guess I don’t want to fall into any single category.

Then of course there is that other thing…ego…what if I do all this work and publicity and get lots of interest it will be great but what if I do all this work and publicity and don’t get any? I guess that is something that we all ask ourselves everyday and is probably the reason we have to take risks but I guess we don’t have to like it. I am pretty secure in knowing what I’m not in terms of writing style and the like and also in knowing what I am. Can I ask that if no-one visits me during the month of this promotional thing that my dear virtual friends tell me how marvellous I am and how foolish they are? hehehe…

In addition to all this, my contract at work is due to end and I am now in the enviable position of looking for another job (did I misuse the word enviable?) and have now ran off, partly for writing reasons but partly because I don’t know what the hell I am doing!
Any advice that you have – is welcome……woah! one at a time please! ;)