A new start in September?

Does anyone else feel the same shiver of excitement as September dawns? It must be anchored to the start of the school year; new uniform, shoes without scuffs and that wonderful smoothness of the first page of a crisp, clean exercise book. Although nothing lasts and the covers of the exercise book would either be adorned with doodles or covered in wallpaper, or, horrors, brown paper. (I still have no idea why my generation were put through that.) Inside the pages would be dotted with red marks- no green for growth and purple for praise – and if it was maths that would include a liberal spattering of teacher’s kisses; little red crosses and the inevitable See Me, perhaps underlined.

So, is it time to turn over a new autumnal leaf and imagine it’s a new year full of new opportunities?

What about those stories hidden away in a file on your cloud? Or on a memory stick? Or even shoved into the catch all file called documents with a name you can’t remember? How many times have you muttered under your breath, ‘I’m sure I once created a story about mistaken identity, where is it?’ and by the time you’ve located it, the competition has closed.

Not anymore. Top of the list of tasks for September must be to organise my stories. What have I got that can be resurrected/ rearranged/ rewritten or abandoned (never…there’s always something that can be rescued)?

I’m planning on a new filing system with title, genre, a one line synopsis, date and where it can be found.

Then when I discover a competition, I can scan through and identify any potential culprits.

There’s still no guarantee of success but at least there won’t be a sense of waste for all those hours spent tapping away at the keyboard. 

And instead of a fresh, clean page on my exercise book, I’ve got an empty spread sheet waiting to be filled.