Morgen With An E

Hello and welcome to Word Count Wednesday. How have you been getting on? Another packed work week for me but I’ve finished… until September. Yay! It means I have a month and a bit to catch up on all my projects including preparing for Swanwick Writers Summer School (where I’m teaching ‘Plan and Write a Novel’), publishing 2027 (and 2028) diaries, generic (dog, cat, transport, entertainment,…

Hello everyone. I’m delighted to announce the results of the twenty-sixth 50-word competition on the theme of ‘too popular’. There were 22 entries from 12 writers this month, all regulars, which doesn’t happen often, still lovely. With such a low word count it’s tricky to fit a whole story (start, middle and end) so they’re going to be snapshots. One disqualification as ‘ice cream’ (as a noun) is…

Hello and welcome to Word Count Wednesday. How have you been getting on? Inspired by last Saturday’s BeaconLit book festival (the big small literary festival), I’ve been writing some small pieces in the evenings. No details as they’re still works-in-progress and something very different to the norm so I’ll publish that under a different name. 🙂 During the day it’s still the (day) job of client…

Hello and welcome to Word Count Wednesday. How have you been getting on? Another busy week with client editing, beta reading for Self-Pub Fest stalwart and New Street Authors‘ Chair David Wake and the latest all-day online festival, which was fantastic. Take a look at https://self-pub-fest.co.uk/online/5-july-2026-festival for the five panel recordings. The first of the Wednesday WIPs critique…

Yes, the competition has closed for June and has opened for July. The theme is ‘Stopping something important‘. The forthcoming (up to December 2027!) themes are available on the https://morgenbailey.wordpress.com/50-word-comppage.

Hello and welcome to Word Count Wednesday. How have you been getting on? No writing as such this week, which is fine. I’ve been through a WIP I started while commuting to/from Capital Crime and have done some tweaking but nothing much. I’ve been concentrating on client editing so I can have (some of) July and August off. Of course things are cropping up take chunks out of July but I’m hopeful for…

Hello and welcome to Word Count Wednesday. How have you been getting on? I’ve had a wonderful week. I was working right up to last Wednesday evening (nearly 10pm) then getting ready for Capital Crime (London crime writing festival run by DHH Agency) the following lunchtime. Two and a half days of listening, enjoying, networking and… writing nearly 10,000 words while commuting. Fab. I didn’t take…

Hello and welcome to Word Count Wednesday. How have you been getting on? Nothing new from me this week as I’ve had two client novels to go through (two rounds of edits and cataloguing chapter lengths, timeline, characters, locations, repetition etc.) and it’ll be close to the wire this week as I’m off to Capital Crime on Thursday! So two and a half days off then it’s Father’s Day on Sunday and…

You may have noticed that the Sunday prompts stopped at the end of May 2026. Other things took over but I was also creating daily prompts for my ‘300 Words A Day’ Spotify Podcast, which I feel would be far more useful to you. This has been running since August 2025 and provides more insight into each prompt than simply giving you a picture and short prompt once a week.  See…

Hello and welcome to Word Count Wednesday. How have you been getting on? I can’t believe it’s been a week since I wrote the last WCW post. I’d love to say I’ve done some writing but sadly… This week’s been a mix of client editing (one book due back early, another due by Friday of next week but I’m at Capital Crime from Thursday afternoon so it’ll be back by Thursday morning at the latest. I am…

Hello everyone. I’m delighted to announce the results of the twenty-fifth 50-word competition on the theme of ‘The other side of the world’. There were 25 entries from 14 writers this month, including 6 new to the competition, which is fantastic. Sadly two of a new entrants’ stories were disqualified for being 91 and 98 words (I used to run a 100-word competition so perhaps for that instead).…

Hello and welcome to Word Count Wednesday. How have you been getting on? No new writing this week as I’ve been helping a friend (who’s also one of my mentoring clients) get his book ready for publication (which I’m also in the process of doing for him!). I have however gone back through some of my WIPs (works-in-progress), one of which is perfect for my sixty-book series so that’s another 8,350…

Hello and welcome to this feature (inspired by Story A Day May) where I post a prompt, and accompanying – though not necessarily connected – picture*, so actually two prompts, formerly every day but now on a Sunday due to other commitments (sorry!). *This week’s photograph shows the back of a torso (so gender unknown) wearing a dark-coloured hoodie. The figure is facing a wooden walkway with a…

Hello and welcome to Word Count Wednesday. How have you been getting on? I’ve been writing every morning and have 10,395 words. Thank you, nerdy Excel spreadsheet… the only way I can keep track as I’m working on several in a sixty-book series! Do leave a comment below to share your progress, successes and otherwise, and of course anything else that’s happened to you, writing related, over the…

Hello and welcome to this feature (inspired by Story A Day May) where I post a prompt, and accompanying – though not necessarily connected – picture*, so actually two prompts, formerly every day but now on a Sunday due to other commitments (sorry!). *This week’s photograph shows a large dusty old attic with (day)light shining from the back of the room from the left, showing a lighter wood…

Hello and welcome to Word Count Wednesday. How have you been getting on? Refreshed after a week in Spain, I’ve written over 5,000 words! T (husband) wanted a week of not doing a lot, which seeing as we were staying at a friend’s house in a village at the top of a mountain and we’d been before, wasn’t difficult. So I continued with my sixty-book series, which is developing nicely. My day job is…

Because my day job is editing novels, I usually read short stories but with the prospect of a week-long break in Spain I thought I’d take a few (seven) novellas. The results are below… ‘The Ballard Down Murder’ by Rachel McClean (101 pages, 32 chapters, published 2025) Rating: 2/5 Despite the reviews on Amazon (other than someone complaining that the book’s too short), I was disappointed with…