The self help book on writing novels is americanised, but excellent. It's already given me some ideas in how to improve "Echoes" and also encouraged me to think about writing some short stories.

I think I'm going to reprise a short story I wrote in my teens that was submitted for a competition - it didn't win, but the story was limited to 500 words, whereas most competitions limits are a lot more. I think the story is still sound, though I'm going to change it slightly and I'll have more words to play with. The various compos I've looked at tend to give free critiques as well.

I'm getting a really really good feeling about all this. Perhaps I should polish up my English grammar though.