‘Keep on keeping on’.  I’ve been using this expression quite a lot lately.  Must be for a reason.

It’s been an exciting time for me for me recently and I’m not quite sure what to do with it but, if you care to read on, I would just like to share with you what’s happened to me in my little ‘writing world’!

Friday the 22nd February was quite a day for me.

Firstly, I had been asked to  write a guest blog for The Writer’s Bureau which was posted that day – my first ever guest blog!

Secondly, I was also really excited to see mention made of me in February’s edition of  ‘The Write Place’, The WB’s quarterly e-newsletter.  Never seen my name in print like that before, woo hoo!

Thirdly, the other big thing that happened is that I received my copy of April’s Prima. After months and months of talking about it (endlessly, sorry!) I can’t quite take it all in.  My first ever article, published, in Prima, a national women’s magazine.  Wow is the word indeed!

Thank you Writer’s Bureau, got to make mention here of you! The Writer’s Bureau has been wonderfully supportive and has given me great advice about submitting manuscripts and approaching magazine editors. Couldn’t have done it without you!

Everywhere I go and see rows and rows of magazines I scan them for sight of Prima and then smile slyly to myself knowing that my article is right there, inside its pages, for all to see if they should stop and take a look.   I want to tell everyone in the shop to go and buy it because my article is there but of course I don’t.

Yet, and most peculiarly, as much as I want everyone to read it, I’m strangely secretive and possessive of it, wanting to keep all to myself.  I’m not sure about other people reading it.  What if they don’t like it?  What if they don’t even bother to read it and just gloss over it?  Is that really odd?

Funnily enough, this paradoxical ‘oddness’ of being a writer is the theme I wrote about for  my guest blog. I called it ‘This Writer’s World’ and if you Click Here can still find it on the WB blog.   If you care to read it here, it can be found in the header menu, of the same name.

I don’t know why I waited well over a week to share my news here.  After all it’s not as if I’ve just found out I’m on the ‘Best Seller’ list for my latest novel and so expected everyone to already know about it.  I wish. I’m sure I wouldn’t have waited an entire week to share that news!

I think it’s just all beginning to sink in.  Probably because not that long ago I felt like I was well and truly on the rubbish heap.  I had a job I detested and a boss who used to saunter in to the office mid morning, call me darling and ask me to make his coffee.   Perhaps he should have called me ‘silly girl’ and patted me on the bottom while he was at it.

Been there, done that but this is now.

Now I’m here.  Now I write.  Now I’m in print.  What a feeling!

The love and encouragement from my family and friends has pushed me on. Thank you again dear ones. Then, when my sons and daughter tell me how proud they are of me, well, that is just the icing on the cake.

They, who are my pride and joy, my heart and soul, proud of their old Mum? I can’t ask for more than that.

And so yes, I shall indeed, keep on keeping on.

May your Monday be a ‘Sun Day’ and may it bring a smile to your heart.