When I was learning to swim in the sea at the start of last year my coach who calls herself The Sunny* Mermaid kept telling me to ‘just try’. I did my best to follow that advice, and I can now swim. Not brilliantly, but those few lessons were a big help to my ability and confidence.

Being me, I then wrote a story, very loosely, based on the experience. (If you’re thinking of taking lessons with Deb, I promise that she only has my character’s good points, and is most definitely not intimidating.) That story is in the current (1st January) issue of Take A Break’s Fiction Feast.

Coincidentally I saw her walking her dog this morning. I didn’t know then that the story was published, or I’d have told her.

We can’t achieve everything we’d like to do just by trying, but there’s not a lot that’s worth doing which doesn’t require a bit of time or effort, or both. If there’s anything you’d like to do, whether it’s swimming, having a story published in a magazine or something else entirely my advice is to give it a go!

*It may have been sunny on a couple of the lessons, but being April it was also VERY cold!