Charlatans

I read the other day about several fatalities at a badly run, misguided sweat lodge, run by a self-help guru.

Of course, me being me, I was obliged to go to the man's website and sign up under a fictitious name to get all the free programmes he was offering and to see what on earth he was trying to do.

Make more money, as it turns out - that and nothing else.

I fell asleep listening to the audio version he has online so possibly I have been hypnotised into giving him what little money I have in return to the secret to getting more and being happy about giving him all of it.

I also have a $100 voucher to go to one of his sweat lodges. Anyone want it?

Words

I am up to 56,850 words of the novel now - and it has only taken me three years. For about 22 months of that time it has been languishing unread, even by me, in an online briefcase. I even forgot where I had put the last version I wrote until yesterday.

Anyway, now I will get back to writing it and hopefully, soon, I will have a manuscript that I can send out. I know it's more usual these days to pitch the idea and then write the novel, but this is one of six that I have started and got to various stages at (the shortest word count is 18,000 and the longest one is around 58,000 according to the electronic word count. None of them are properly finished although three of them have endings.)

I really need to get myself together with it.

Three of them are, I suppose, novelettes, being well under the 80,000 or so words accepted by the publishing industry these days as a minimum.

I even sent a few out a while ago, and got to the stage where I was talking to editors and agents about them - but it all fell through and I lost heart.

Now though I need to feel I have achieved something.

The vegetable book has also gone awry - I got as far as writing a first, short, draft and some illustrations but I am terrible at following up on things.

And the children's picture book idea has also gone wrong. The trouble is I have too many thinbgs that are only just started or nearly finished and so I am not at all sure wher my focus should lie.

If anyone has any tips on sorting myself out that would be great.

I still have several plays and screenplays in draws and on ancient floppy discs as well. And lots of poems that never got published. I did get a few in little magazines and journals, but it takes so long as most of them are quarterlies and you can wait over a year after acceptance until publication.

I need more validation, is what it probably is (that and some money).