A fresh 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 within a few weeks, the covers of the exercise book would either be adorned with doodles, 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 an autumnal leaf and imagine it’s a new year full of new opportunities? I am currently working on the third part of a crime trilogy to be published next year and I’m using small sections of stuff I’ve had saved on my cloud for years.  It’s easy to retrieve because a few years ago, tired of searching for pieces I knew I’d written, I overhauled my whole filing system on my laptop. I went through everything and assigned it a date, a title and a brief description of the contents.

Like this;

TITLE DATE THEME FOLDER

A skinny latte is not for everyone 2014 Romance and comedy with cake and coffee Stories 2018-19

It works well and I am far better now at saving drafts in separate files than previously. And as I don’t write many short stories today or even enter them for competitions, so it means all that hard work is not wasted. In fact, one character even turns up in a novel as a minor part.

So as the evening get darker, perhaps there’s an idea here for you. We can all enjoy a second New Year, can’t we?