Category Archives: Writing

Sorry, can’t cook tonight, the dog ate my wooden spoon……oh, and I’ve just murdered your flask.

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Family life this week….

Firstly, I killed a flask.

These are the beautiful little remains – kind of like the bottom of my Christmas bauble box (no matter how well I wrap the little suckers up!)

broken flask, broken vacuum flask

It’s not the first time I’ve murdered a flask, but it’s usually by sloppy flask-care, dropping it from a height and such. This one I killed by over cleaning, thereby proving the point that there IS such a thing as TOO MUCH CLEANING, and a flask exploding in your kitchen first thing in the morning like a firecracker could be the result.

And when I say over cleaning, I wasn’t even being particularly vigorous, just pushed the long handled brush in there a couple of times and …..BANG!…..one dead flask.

shattered flask

It later transpired that the BANG! and my scream of surprise was heard by Plumber Husband and both daughters.  Eldest and Youngest daughter assumed that since I was still standing there in the kitchen, (albeit in shock), that I was okay and no further action was required. Plumber Husband assumed that since I hadn’t called for help, I didn’t need any.

Me: “And what if I’d just been electrocuted or something?” 

Plumber Husband: “That’s okay – You’d finished my sandwiches.”

No flask of tea that day, though, MWAH HA HA!

🙂

🙂

Later on, and not to be outdone, our Bertie killed a wooden spoon.

This was a special spoon: seeped in juicy Jalfrezi sauce from our evening curry; not too hot; still a little meaty; and given to him while I was out doing my taxi driving stint. When I returned from dropping the non-paying customers at one of their many activities….this was what I found.

wooden spoon chewed up by dog He even brought it up to me.

Like a stick.

Which he doesn’t get.

Because I know how dangerous it is to give dogs sticks.

And so I had to watch him like a hawk to make sure he wasn’t sick, and the next day too.

He’s fine BTW.

black cocker spaniel, english cocker spanielAnd despite these little upsets, and the piles of laundry backed up from our week away in London, and the back log of paperwork etc etc etc…..despite all this – I’m still on target with my Nanowrimo novel. Thus proving to me that:

a)      I can make time for writing.

b)      I can make time for writing – even if family life throws a few crises my way

c)      Too much cleaning is not good for you – and might end up backfiring in your kitchen first thing in the morning!

What about you? How do you find juggling family life with writing?

 

 

 
Sadly, I’ve had to disable comments on this post. The spammers LOVE it! Those guys! Louis Vuitton, Raybans,those guys love me! Hope I’m not forgetting anyone!

Confessions of a NaNoWriMo Rebel

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NaNoWriMo starts in 3 days, so strictly speaking, no one should have started their novel – and yet………

Nanowrimo rebellion

I’m a first time NaNoWriMo-er, and I really, REALLY want to succeed. But the first 4 days of November are family time – it’s half term here – and so the seeds of rebellion were sown….

I did 4 days writing last week.

And on the 1st November, those wordcounts are going up on the website to count towards my total.

In some ways this is WRONG WRONG WRONG, and some might even say…shhh…..it’s cheating.

But then I came across Margo Berendsen’s blog post saying she was going to bend the rules too – and not only that, there’s a whole load of us NaNoWriMo Rebels out there, with our very own forum. Yay!

The only prize with NaNoWriMo is knowing you have written a novel in 30 days. I don’t really care if 4 of those days were actually in October. I hope you don’t either.

Anyone else doing NaNoWriMo? Anyone else planning on joining the Rebellion?

Making Time for NaNoWriMo- or why kids know better than us.

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how to make timeWith NaNoWriMo just days away, we could all use a bit more time.

But we have full lives: we have tasks to juggle, schedules to keep, children to ferry around.

There is no more time.

And that’s when you need to see things from a child’s point of view.

I was walking my daughter to school, late (again), when we came across a  friendly-looking  cat. Of course, my daughter wanted to stroke it, but I rushed her along saying, “Not today, we don’t have time.”

My daughter, being my daughter, didn’t listen, and as I marched on, she stopped and took the time to pet the fluffy feline. Moments later, I heard her running to catch up with me, out of breath, saying , “See. I did have time.”

And the thing is – she was right.

She made time to stroke the cat.

And then she ran to catch up.

We all have choices to make in our day, or tasks we could do faster or smarter. Currently, I’m choosing to spend 40 minutes every night watching The Vampire Diaries box set on our BT package. Now that’s a straight swop, 40 minutes viewing for 40 minutes writing (since I can’t watch and enjoy The Vampire Diaries on fast forward!).

But other things in my day can’t be sacrificed – the family needs to eat, I need to get the decorating done before Christmas, the laundry’s piling up – and this is where I need to do my running.

So, come November, I’m using the timer on my phone, setting a 30 minute alarm, and I’m racing through all those mundane but necessary tasks. If I don’t get the jobs done, I’ll write for an hour, then set the timer,  and race my way through it all again.

I think, by the end of November, I’ll be exhausted. But I might have my 50,000 words.

How are you going to make time for NaNoWriMo?

 

 

How to make my writing better?

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“Insanity is doing the same thing, over and over again, but expecting different results.”

Albert Einstein.

E=mc² Einstein

 image by Binlid at imcool.co.uk

I’m not good at asking for help, but I’ve reached a point in my writing where I can’t move forward without it.

Apart from an LSJ course on Writing for Children (which was excellent), no one has ever critiqued my work. I don’t belong to a writers’ group and I don’t have critique partners, but I also don’t have a completed manuscript, so to be fair, I was concentrating my efforts on that.

Here’s the problem: for the last few weeks I’ve been posting short flash fiction stories to the Writer Unboxed site for their summer competition. This was a big step, no one apart from the tutor at LSJ had ever read my work. And I had ‘beginners luck’ I think, as the first posting got an honourable mention, but the thing is, I’ve been posting every week since then, and I’m just not getting any better, or even equalling that first success, and I don’t know why.

My goal is to write novels, and I appreciate that short stories (and you don’t get much shorter than flash fiction) are a different medium entirely. But I should still be able to see where I’m going wrong.

Maybe I’m bad at editing – when I read the stories over, I don’t know what’s missing, but I’m clearly not connecting with the readers or the judges. If anything, I’m getting less ‘likes’ each week I enter.

There are a couple of my stories that I don’t like myself, in retrospect, but others I still do. And this isn’t about wanting to win the competition, it’s about spotting a problem and just not knowing how to fix it.

And then I thought about an episode of The Big Bang Theory I’d seen, where Sheldon quoted Einstein’s definition of insanity. Click here for a clip from the same episode, but not the actual quote, which is so good, you’re getting it again –

Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again but expecting different results

 

I don’t want to be that person, it strikes me as such a huge waste of time, (I barely have enough of that as it is!), so I need to ask for help.

I’ve decided to reach out to a couple of other bloggers and see if they know of any competitions or other online forums where I can submit work and where feedback is encouraged.

I’ll let you know how I get on.

And if you’re aware of any such places out on the Web, could you let me know?

 

 

3 inspiring links to keep you writing

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So, are you finished your book yet?

Friends used to ask this question when I started writing. Now? Not so much.

I guess they figure I should be done already. My book should be sitting on a shelf somewhere, and I should be signing copies in Waterstones, and doing ‘famous author stuff’.

I have to admit, I believed this fantasy once. I thought I’d write the book (which would be easy), and it would be snapped up (preferably with a bidding war) and I’d be going to the film premiere in Leicester Square in no time!

I’m not so embarrassed to admit this, since the fantasy was enough to get me started on this writing journey. We all have to start somewhere. And thanks to the many hours I’ve spent staring blankly at my current Word document, and all the writer’s blogs available online, I know a LOT better now.

But once you know how hard it is to get published, it can be a little gloomy, so here are my links to the most inspiring, honest and upbeat accounts of the road to publication.

1. Shannon Messenger, who began writing in 2009 and has her first MG novel out soon.

She does a great roundup of her writing year, which makes for an inspiring read.

Here they are in order      2009   2010   2011

2. Then, there’s Amanda Hocking’s story of how she self published all her books (and there are many –  she writes FAST!) – an epic tale of how it all happened

3. Laini Taylor’s post about how Daughter of Smoke and Bone (wonderful book!) came into being –wheeeee-real book!  You have to click through a few links to get the full story, but honestly, reading this blog is such a pleasure anyway, it’s worth it. Laini also has a great blog about her writing process, called Not for Robots, which is well worth checking out.

Of course, while you’re reading these posts, you’re not getting any work done…but procrastination is a topic for another time!