Is this helpful to anyone? It's on failure in #writing I KNOW that querying and submitting when you're trying to get published for the first time are TOUGH, so let me embrace the act of failing publicly at all stages.*Ready?
(* and was it really failing anyway...)

First of all, I have a number of things on the go at the moment including edits on a new novel, my first non-fiction on submission and a new short story collection doing the rounds, too. Can't share more; hope to soon. Third and fourth book out last year; did okay. YAY.

What two books out in one year that is like epic wait no what did you say you also had two whole books turned down? Yes. Rejection is part of the show & you need to roll with the punches. In addition to this, ONE of those books is not I will be going forward with so...

Apart from a longlisting with #SavingLucia and winning the Writing and Publishing award for the city of Bath last year, I have not got on a longlist for anything, never mind a shortlist. Not Ondaatje, Exeter, Yeovil, Costa short story, Fish, Bath Novel TWICE, Mslexia - HANG ON -

- Mslexia for an entire poetry collection & memoir, didn't get any residency I applied for, including Gladstone's, which frankly I would have sold some relatives for, not ACE & neither did I get a Society of Authors grant, so I wrote #Famished between 4 & 6 am before work

Neither did I get anywhere with poems & short stories for Bridport, Wellcome, Goldsmiths x2 or, x3, Republic of Consciousness prIze. It did not take me long to find a publisher, which is great and I didn't technically have many agent rejections - as I had so few replies

Here's the moral to all that. You already know about the not giving up bit. Well here I stand. There will be things that have been much easier for me than others & things that are harder. Each to his own and no two routes are the same. But have I been put off? Not bloody likely

So there we are. Best agent a girl could have now, I have got to know some of the best people ever (and muted anyone with an ego as big as Dallas, or like, say, Uriah Heep) & I'm pretty well read but I've discovered a world of new books, ideas, outlooks. It is THE BEST THING