I am spinning a lot of plates, right now. Aside from my domestic responsibilities, I have got a full dinner-service of writing projects on the go.

I have been working on my memoir about losing Georgina, whilst continuing to come up with pieces for a poetry pamphlet and scribbling short stories which zoom into my brain, seemingly out of nowhere. I have been asked to perform poetry at several local spoken word events. I am still seeking an agent for ‘Blues’ after a couple of near-misses and some encouraging rejection letters. After feedback from a Beta-reader who knows her way around a narrative arc, I am restructuring ‘Blues’ whilst trying to stay true to my original intentions for the book. I have also just found out that I’ve been accepted onto the Writer’s Block North East mentoring scheme, to develop a new novel.

My brain is busting with ideas, but the real challenge is not to come up with these projects, but to see them through to fruition. At the moment, in the absence of firm deadlines, my system is an informal one – I see which project I feel most driven by, on a given day. This works well – ish. What is important, I’ve found, is that I do some writing of some sort – that I keep in training.

As anyone who’s seen my ‘jogging’ in preparation for this month’s Race For Life will attest, training has not transformed me into a natural athlete, but it has taught me a lot about sticking with it, even when my lungs are imploding.

My writing life also requires stamina. I need to build up my multi-tasking muscles.Sometimes, spinning all these plates is about having eyes in the back of my head whilst I carefully polish each  one, individually. And this is how I’m aiming to build up my body of work – piece by piece – until it is fit to go on public display.