It’s the penultimate month of the year and you know what? I’m feeling it. Ibiza seems like it was a million years ago. Work (my day profession) has been fully full-on in the swing of the GCSE year with mock exam after mock exam. I feel like I’ve barely had time for my writing – and in a sense, that’s sadly true.
As you may know, I’m also the Editor in Chief of Bindweed Anthologies, running the publication since 2016 alongside my hubby, Joseph Robert. We’ve had a record number of submissions this year, to the point where we’ve had to increase our rejection rate, turning away quality work from writers all over the world, simply because we can’t have an anthology published that’s as long as a Tolstoy novel! This half-term break, instead of getting into the swing of all-things Halloween, I spent my week off formatting the Winter Wonderland 2023 eBook and typesetting the paperback, ready for publication on 21st December. In addition, we still have a hundred or so submissions still outstanding, and must reply to let those authors and poets know whether they get a yay or nay. I had no choice but to close to new submissions in order to make things sustainable.
All of this has meant that my own writing WIPs are having to take a backseat. My three projects – a psychological fiction short story collection, a ghost horror set in London and the sequel to The Buddha’s Bone – are all around 20k words. Part of me wonders whether it would be better to power ahead with one of these stories at the detriment to the others, given my limited time at the moment, but I’m passionate about, and enjoying all of them equally so it would be hard for me to choose.
But, you know what? Since I can’t decide, and to avoid stretching myself too thin, I’m going to keep chipping away at all my various projects. Eggs in one too many baskets? Maybe so. Expect some cracked shells and splattered yolks from me in the coming months!
Leilanie Stewart 