Counting down to the Mslexia final

I'm trying not to be stressed out by the Mslexia deadline for judging. I know I'm in the last 12 of 1800 women. That is the level of success I'm up for at the moment. Being placed or commended or whatever would feel a lot like I need to do something about it. To be honest, being in that last 12 means I could at least send out to agents, but I'm holding fire because I want to enter the Good Housekeeping competition, and you can't if you are published or agented. So I'm trying to stay calm.


Life, of course, doesn't understand this at all. The kids have been applying for jobs and my daughter and boyfriend are moving out, I've had a minor medical procedure which freaked me out completely, the cat spent the day at the vet having most of her teeth out, no.1 son is driving home tomorrow through snow and ice, the house is in chaos and we have a house guest coming that I've never met.


Out of nervous tension, and the the need to keep the sedated cat quiet, I've been stuck in the study writing - 2000 words today - and trying to relax. I could do with being put out of my misery. I can't win - Borrowed Time is a commercial genre non-literary novel, and fantasy to boot. But I still can't settle to anything.

For something to do (as I don't spend enough time at the computer) I'm working on familiarising myself with Scrivener for Windows. I totally understand that this is a miracle product and should make holding a large piece of text like a novel in convenient chunks much easier. The problem is, learning the new Word took me months, and Scrivener is like starting again. I can't see me using it for book 2 any time soon. Has anyone else tried it?