Tap Tap Tappity Tap...

Can you hear it? The tap tap of keyboards up and down the land honing 4k word opening extracts for Undiscovered Voices. Illustrators, how are you perfecting your entries? The scratch scratch of pencil, the splash of ink or slide of a mouse? I do know writers who've submitted already - maybe they've reached the point where after a tour of the thesaurus they're switching words and ending up with the one they first thought of?

I'm not quite at the submission stage yet, eek, but I have decided to enter, which is mad with less than 3 weeks to go. People are saying you've got nothing to lose - well I have but  inspired by Christina Banach's story of perseverance and success in gaining agent affirmation,  I'm going to wo-man up and risk it.

This is in spite of the foolish thing I did on Friday evening - after a pint of Orchard Pig cider, I told my OH how my story was panning out. It ALWAYS sounds ridiculous without the security of a full MS, complete with solid ending, in the bag. He was honest and encouraging but 'Whatever I say you're not going to believe me are you?' Let him join all the other  Mr and Ms Ducks who've also suffered long for our Ducky & Beary creative angst. They can't win.

Orchard and Pig heady combination when served in a bottle.

One day I will call myself an author and I might actually cave in sooner than you think, as this week Sheila raised my awareness of Google Authorship  and how much it's a good idea. But is it really calling myself an author I'm after, no it's having lots of authory fun on something like an agent's retreat - by the time I'm in that position, they'll all be having them not just trendsetters like Gemma Cooper.

In the meantime, I delight in volunteering for SCBWI and it is a delight to do this for such a lovely group of people. Six-books-published-in-two-and-a-half-years author from the South West Network, Ellen Renner, delights in volunteering too, even with that punishing schedule. In fact, SCBWI volunteers abound on W&P, not least of all, Nick, who for one week, will be taking a well deserved blogless break and handing over to a mystery blog breaker while he's on his hols.

Also next week, Ask an Agent will be here on Wednesday as will another imagination fuelling meditation from KM Lockwood, on Monday it's 'holidays'. There'll be some illustrator know-how in a spluttering of ink from Anna Violet on Friday and from Thursday, Network News will be coming together with Craft Book Reviews  to see us through the summer. Next Saturday, there'll be information for another SCBWI competition with a design bent and I'll be in Edinburgh having a laugh at the Fringe for most of the week, yay!

If you've been following our Chalkface Challenge, head over there now to find out the results from the Shadowing Judges - did they pick the same as the kids?

Hoping the sun is still shining in your part of the world,

Jan Carr

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Jan Carr is the editor of Words & Pictures. Her fiction is older middle grade, she blogs occasionally and loves to write in magenta.