Feeling the Love

I am so so happy to have received this award from Jenny at Fulfilling Dreams.  Thank you, Jenny for being an extremely supportive fellow writer!

The Liebster Award (meaning “friend” in German) is meant to connect us even more and spotlight new bloggers who have less than 200 followers – but hopefully not for long. The rules are:

1. Show your thanks to the blogger who gave you the award by linking back to them.
2. Reveal your top 5 picks and let them know by leaving a comment on their blog.
3. Post the award on your blog.
4. Bask in the love from the most supportive people on the Internet – other writers.
5. And best of all – have fun and spread the karma! 

It's going to be hard to pick 5 fellow bloggers - especially as I'm new to blogging and don't have that many contacts at the moment! I think everyone's got more followers than me!

But... 

(Jenny, I'd send it back to you if I could...)

Catherine at Plume Dansante who was chatty, involved and supportive during MYWYN gets the award first of all from me.

Now I will have to go and look for some fellow bloggers who need the love and followers! 

Jenny, you made my day!

15/08/11 AND A BIG THANK YOU TOO, TO Annalisa Crawford at Wake up, Eat, Write, Sleep who has also given me the Liebster Award!  :-)

Oh POO! And some GOOD STUFF too!

Back from two wonderful weeks in Zakynthos to find three short story rejections in my inbox.  That's the POO part, by the way.  I admit to feeling a little deflated, but to be honest I was half expecting two of them to come pinging back at me and I think I'm getting a little more inured to rejection now.  Easier to cope with if it's tempered with a touch of occasional success (I have a story in Woman's Weekly this week) but still a bit of a kick for the old self-belief!

On the GOOD STUFF side, I have a new idea for a novel - inspired by my holiday - and lots of notes and photos and am feeling fairly excited (and daunted) about getting that started.  Should be able to get a fair bit done over the summer holidays as long as the MIL isn't too much of a drain on my time and emotions (think leech crossed with a deflated balloon and you're about there).  Shouldn't be too hard on her, I suppose, but she refuses to go out and find herself something to pass the time and just relies on us to pay visits and sit staring at the wall while she complains.  Not the stuff most inducive to feeling creative!  And, yes, she will end up in a novel sooner or later. 

If anyone reads this, I hope you're having a good summer so far!  Thanks for stopping by!

Waiting for the Writing Juices to Flow...

One night away in a hotel (for my husband's birthday) and after weeks of a head jammed full of life and day-job the story ideas are creeping in again - hooray!
I was beginning to wonder if my imagination had packed up and retreated into the back of my skull to hide from everything pressing in on it - I wouldn't have blamed it at all - but, no, it still seems to be there.  I have already packed my pad and pen to take on holiday with me in anticipation of my poor brain making up for lost time and  spouting plots and characters at me once everything else has receded and been replaced with huge decisions like which cocktail to choose.  Bliss!
The trouble is, my husband and friends keep asking me when I'm going to finish/write my novel and the answer seems to be that there's not much chance of being able to do it while I'm working full time.  I'm afraid that for me to write anything other than short stories, life needs to be less frenetic - and I don't see that happening!  At least I get the school holidays off, which I know is more than many of my writer friends have.  It will just have to be written in drips and drabs and I'll be about 70 when I finally get it finished... :-)
Have a good few weeks, everyone - no more from me until August now!

Life, the universe and everything... GETTING IN THE WAY!

It's that time of year again when the days and weeks accelerate and I stand by in mute helplessness as my life whizzes past me with a cheery wave.  I'm talking about THE END OF TERM.  A time for winding down, you might think, but NO!  So much to do and so little time to do it in!  Shows to assist with, trips to go on, special projects to bring to fruition... and in the middle of all that a novel to write.

Basically, it ain't getting writ.  There, I've admitted it.  It's here in my head, nudging at me now and then as if to say "Don't forget me, Mummy!", but it's not making it onto the screen right now.

It IS going to get writ, though - just in very small quantities.  What I am really looking forward to is lying on the beach in Zakynthos in a few weeks time with a notebook and all the time in the world.  Bring it on!

Poorly Writer Puts Unfinished Novel in Danger

And yes, the headline above (well, title really) refers to me and my WIP (Work in Progress to my lovely non-writing followers.)

Everybody except me probably knows about the dangers associated with reading what you've written after suffering from a chronic headache for four days and having to deal with a hypochondriac/needy MIL (Mother in Law to you lucky people without one...).

Let's just say it was a close thing.  I read it in disgust, wrote critical, blunt notes to self all over it and planned to abandon it.  I don't even know what stopped me deleting it then and there.

I'm glad to say it's survived and has been added to this weekend.  It's not exactly literature, but it just might be readable after a couple of years of working on it...  ;-)

First Person?

My mum always said she didn't like novels written in the first person - she didn't elaborate and now I wish I'd asked her why.

Obviously, there are pros and cons if you are writing in the first person:

The main pro is probably that it's much easier to 'show' rather than 'tell' as you are inside the character's mind...
and the main con is probably that, as the author, you are restricted to that one character's viewpoint, unless you break the rules - my teenage daughter has mentioned that one or two of the gothic teen-type novels she's read recently have...

I'd love to hear other people's thoughts on breaking the 'rule' on this!

Finger-Freezing Fear

Other writers will probably know what I mean by this... those frequent moments when the self-belief-sapping gremlins creep into the room and then into your head and whisper in your ear (from the inside, obviously) that you are rubbish and are just kidding yourself IN A BIG WAY.  Mean, nasty little things - they deserve to be stamped on but it is just so easy to listen to their poisonous little voices.

I am sure I am not the only one who has read a published novel and thought "Golly gosh, how on earth did that get published?  I can jolly well do much better than that"?  But then you read back what you've written (I know, I know, DON'T DO IT!) and the gremlins tell you that:

a) you haven't done any better than the novel you scorned
b) you're a big-head and suffering from delusion if you happen to be pleased with what you've written.

Your fingers freeze on the keys in fear and your brain launches into a fast spin.

DO NOT LET THE GREMLINS WIN!  Envisage blowing them out of your nose (well, they are in your head) into a big hanky, scrunching it hard and stamping on it.  Imagine their pathetic little screams and the writhing inside the hanky.  Put it in the dustbin and clamp on the lid.

And also remember that if you don't try you will never know!

That's better - I'm off to take my own advice now!