Life has felt like bad fiction this 2020

It’s been a few months of weird stuff for all of us…My Blogs wore me down -– always the photo upload ‘thing’ – it has got even more inconsistent than ever and most of my updates have died before birth because of lack of oxygen and I have faced an existential crisis over them and ‘my writing’ generally. Not that I haven’t been writing – I have – just not the fiction. I have been engaged in the non-fiction side of things about farming and this has been fruitful in more ways than one and has led to some big changes.

I have made decisions

I am no longer going to plan to publish fiction under my own name or any name that is identifiably me. This is due to a lack of confidence in myself caused by a difficult set of circumstances which made me realise, that at least for fiction I, and my family, needed me to have a ‘public face and name’. Or in other words a pseudonym. My long name would never fit on a novel anyway and I had always had a variant of my name that I planned to use as the YA and another version again for the adult stories. I had websites, in these names, and Social Media, that I set up some years ago but I realise now that this is holding me back for whatever reasons – mostly poor mindset and lack of confidence.

It was partly that old question, “if you knew you couldn’t fail what would you do?” and I would write on and publish. If my problem was my identity then obscuring that removes the obstacle – even if it only gets me moving forward again.

I am not choosing a new name now but I have got rid of the two websites in the original names and all the Social Media attached – they weren’t being used and the Blog photo ‘thing’ was worse just because they existed – I have halved the problem already!! Possibly even saved myself some money ( that won’t last 🙂 )

The second decision ( which is more a result really ) is that following some Market Research in smallholding groups etc around writing about smallholding and farming I realised that we could actually restock the margins of this farm with Goats. This would then put me in a similar position to anyone starting out in goats and so might provide a niche I could write in based on my years of experience and my experiences of ‘starting again’.

It is already providing some ‘experiences’!!!

This Blog I aim to use as a Writing Journal and a Riding Journal – though ‘Riding’ is probably unlikely given the life circumstances we have right now – ‘Pony Pondering’ might be more apt – whatever it is just, getting into a routine, Blogging again will help even if no one ever reads it 🙂The farm Blog  will be where I journal about the re establishment of Bridevale Goats 2 and they have their own FB page alongside other farm, garden and orchard rambling on.

Will this help me get back to the fiction and get back to a job I was working hard at? I don’t know but I have halved one problem and circumnavigated the other so there is no excuse…