Welcome to my website and especially welcome if you've arrived here via the www.miltonstreetwriters.co.uk website which is under development. Although we've been together since March 2008, we've only just registered with NAWG (National Association of Writing Groups). Their website is www.nawg.co.uk and our group was featured (centrefold!) in the December 2009 issue of their 'Link' magazine!
Milton Street Writers is a group of 15+ members (usually around 8 attending the fortnight workshops) with a mixture of poets, short storyists (I like making up words!), scripters and autobiographers. As we are a critique group, we usually overrun our 2-hour sessions so we are unfortunately at capacity as a 'bums-in-seats' group but I will be putting more info on here (hints and tips etc) or you can contact me (via the 'What I do' page) if you have any specific writing-related queries.
About me - I am a fledgling writer (of just over 5 years) who is passionate about the craft, and wanted to share with you my knowledge and experience gleaned to-date. My apologies for the occasional font inconsistency - the software I use is somewhat unstable but its benefits still outweigh the odd querk.
I write fiction, mainly short stories and poetry, and have been published in Woman's Weekly. I have also submitted to three competitions and won Ripping Pages (see 'Links' page) competition January 2008 with a poem 'Fight for life'. In late 2008 I started submitting short stories to other women's magazines and online site Bound Off (see 'Links'), the latter of which were my first two rejections (which I'm quite OK about as they only accept one or two stories a month).
Totals now: 1 acceptance (yeah!), 17 rejections with nothing left 'out there' so I need to get my BICHOK (bum in chair, hands on keyboard!) but hung fire until after an advanced course on 3rd October with Joanna Barnden which was very useful and will get new stories sent out shortly. In the meantime I finished novel no. 2 (most of it in the last three weeks of October to clear the path for novel no. 3 which I completed within the 30 days of NaNoWriMo 2009. I finished with a few hours to spare at a staggering total of 117,540 words... a figure etched on my brain!
I finished the first draft of my first novel for NaNoWriMo (also see 'Links') in November 2008 which was just over the 50,000 target and which is awaiting editing alongside no.s 2 and 3 in January. I loved doing the NaNoWriMos so much that there may well be a fourth novel before November 2010...
I started hosting Milton Street Writers, in Northamptonshire, England in March 2008 and most of the hints and tips that do, or will, appear here are taken from the handouts provided for my co-writers. I say that I "host" the group as I don't profess to being the teacher as I'm a novice compared with most. I also belong to other writing and poetry groups so am definitely keeping my hand in. :)
I'm now on Twitter! Check out http://twitter.com/morgenwriteruk (unfortunately morgenbailey was already taken) and http://twitter.com/sentencestarts. Sentence Starts is a daily tweet of at least one (currently seven: a week's worth at once as I have around 2,000!) sentence beginning. As I said after posting the first seven, sentence beginnings are fun because two (or more) writers can start with the same few words but then go in completely different directions. Let me know if you have a writing-related Twitter page and I can check you out.
I hope you enjoy looking through this site (and even more so when it's complete...I hope to add fairly regularly) and if you learn one thing, I've achieved something.
Feel free to click on the Contact me page (currently in the 'What I do' section) and fill the form in. Thank you for visiting and do pop by every once in a while as the website will be updated with new hints & tips.
The content of, and information given on, this website is either personal opinion or details taken from the internet and therefore in the public domain. All fictional content contained within the 'What I do' section is copyrighted to the author and permission must be sought before its use.
Copyright © Morgen Bailey - updated 14th January 2010
