Writing Progress – non-fiction

The more I want to write about, the less time I have for each item/project/subject. 

My recent shelved or dumped writing projects are non-fictional.  Having researched the world of beer blogging for my beer tasting notes and reports on micro-breweries and pubs I found very large number of people doing that already, equipped either with much better taste buds or olfactory imagination than mine.  Where I get “malty” and “hoppy”, they find a range of flavours that would do credit to the most creative wine buff.  I have well-developed receptors for bitterness, but since that taste dominates all else for me in beer brewed with high alpha acid-content hops (check out the jargon.  I can talk the talk at least), I tend to get “beer” or “strong Espresso aftertaste, or “quinine”. 

Olfactory shortcomings notwithstanding, a new beer blogger on the block is probably as necessary as a mayor in most cities, another over-the-counter analgesic or more romantic television portrayals of sexy vampires, so I have withdrawn from the field with good grace.  Instead, I shall concentrate on blogging about Castlegate Brewery products in the certain knowledge that there is no competition.   

The glossy regional mags have proved resistant to my pieces on micro-breweries.  Perhaps because most already have food and drink writers on the staff who guard their fiefdoms as vigorously as anyone else with a living to earn.  Also, I find magazine “styles” to be restrictive and don’t enjoy writing to suit them.  So, no more visits to said breweries in the guise of a “writer”.  At least for now.  A project on Victoria Cross winners similarly crashed and burned and as for my planned “Morris Traveller in Festival England”, the less said the better.  

The problem I find is somebody has done everything and everybody has done something so my potential markets are saturated .

So, for the time being, my non-fiction concerns the progress and products of Castlegate Brewery and researching history, crime and folklore for “Ester” and other fictional projects.