Blues

Well we've had white and red, but last weeks theme was blue.

I was somewhat under the weather, physically exhausted and mentally numb.  The pleasure of being offered a job wore off as quick as I realised what it would do for my finances - that is nothing.  I've been offered a significantly lower salary than the job was advertised at.  If I had another option I'd take it.

That dragged my mood down some and robbed me of concentration.  I didn't get much done in the week and the weekend was lost in catching on some sleep. Oh, and a ton of ironing.  So I've bent my resolutions missed a weeks blogging and haven't read Writing Magazine at all. Mind with doing the ironing I put Lovefilm on and managed to watch the whole of season one of "afterlife", a programme I was aware of being on TV when it was on air but never watched. It was brilliant.  Loved it.  Will watch season two at some point.

I tried to force the writing with a short piece for a competition, but it didn't work.  Will need to apply myself more if I'm going to be able to make the resolution to enter at least one competition a month.

I have however written more of the romance and come up with the follow up to Solutions.  Solutions by the way is a crime novel based in Merthyr Tydfil. It's all arisen out of my annoyance with the dictatorial nonsense from the HR department over this new job. Also on the weekend I took a walk up  a mountain to do some cache maintanace and spotted a great location for the first dead body to be found.  So while it wasn't a very productive week it wasn't the utter washout it felt like.

Oh one thing more.  This blog.  I'm finding this really useful.  It doesn't get read but it's a bit like therapy.  I get to air my views, focus on the positives and practice writing.  Great mix.   So to anyone who does ever bother to read it - thank you.

Love Is All Around

Well it is the week of St Valentine’s Day? 

Hope you had a warm day, in your heart if not in reality.  Don’t know about where you were, but it was freezing here.

Anyway, the theme of my week does seem to have been love.  Not all heats and flowers, of course, but love all the same.   Though in all honesty, there was a bit of the hearts and flowers.  Not only was it the week of St V’s, it was also the week of my husband’s birthday, but it’s only today that his present arrived.  Better late than never.

I’ve loving the way my life is at the moment.  Despite the fact that I’m changing jobs when the month changes I’m still enjoying the work-life balance that I’ve found since I was made redundant last year.  Before work, the nine to five kind not the scribbling kind, used to intrude on my time off.  That happens now if I have a particular deadline is looming, but so far it’s been four evenings in five and a half months.  Other than that, I’ve been getting back to writing which brings me back to my theme.

There is more romance in my writing this week.  One of my resolutions this year to to write another romance, and I’ve been working on that this week.  Got a good few scenes down on paper and thought up a couple more, it’s really going well.

One other item on the theme is that, strange and sad as I can be, I enjoy cross stitch and have been working on a large panel piece.  Truth be told I’ve been working on it for about four years and I’m only about a quarter of the way through it, but mostly because other things have been getting in the way.  But given the work life balance thing, I’ve been giving one hour a day to it and I’m seeing some real progress on it.

It’s a difference I’m comfortable with, it’s the annoying advise that I used to get when I was a kid.  A little and often.  Keeps the mind alive and active.

Well, got scenes to write, so bye for now.

What's in a Title?

Well actually, quite a lot.  In the office, it’s all about status, position and power.  In the literary words it’s the hook to bring a reader in.

And titles in both areas have been absorbing my time this week.

I’m currently working as a temp, my job title ends is “Analyst”, and on Monday I had an interview for another job, a one year fixed term contract, but that’s more security than I have right now.  On Thursday I was offered the job.  I accepted of course.  It’s not a writing job, but the mantra of mortgage two kids comes up, and there are still bills to pay.  And a job is a job, right.  This one is Investment Strategist, good title huh?  Sounds impressive than Analyst too.

On the writing side, I have been making in roads into the romance story I’ve promised myself to complete this year, and I have submitted two more short stories to competitions.  So I’ve kept up with three of my new year’s resolutions, which isn’t bad.  On the way with another one – reading WM every month, but though it arrived last week, I’ve barely read a page because of the distractions else where.

The pain with the submission of the competition is the difficultly I had finding a title for one of the entries.  The remit was a short story which opens with dialogue of no more than one sentence.

So I wrote the story last month, was happy with it, except for the title. Just couldn’t think of one.  At all.

Titles matter.  And not only in the jobs market.  So I’ve spent some hours trying to come up with a title on this latest entry, and all to no avail.  Been through every synonym I could find for dialogue and gunman to see if there was anything jumped out at me, but really struggled to find something that felt right. Today I had to find the right title, and I had to do it quickly as I wanted to get the submission in.  So I ran several options passed my husband, he didn’t like any of them.  Finally I gave a three word title, and the enthusiastic response was “yeah, that’ll do”.  Not the greatest praise ever, but workable.  It was certainly the best title I could come up with and it’s the one I used.  So fingers crossed it hooks the judges in.

See you soon.

Red All Over

Last week was all white, this weeks been more red.

Red to match the colour of my streaming eyes, over wiped nose and the frightening colour at the back of my throat.  After swimming and geocaching last Sunday, the cold that had been niggling but not developing for months, decided to descend with a vengeance.

           

Having been made redundant in July, I’m now a temp and despite the changes in the law, I still think of it as, if I don’t work, I don’t get paid.    Therefore, despite being ill, I worked all day every day this week.  To add to the misery, I couldn’t sleep well because I couldn’t breathe properly.  So I’ve pretty much been exhausted all the time,and by the time I got home from work, I couldn’t see the laptop screen in focus and my concentration was shot.  So there hasn’t been much going on writing wise this week, I’ve barely written a word. 

I even had to renege on my promise to my daughter to take her to see “Les Miserables” at the cinema because, frankly I’ve had no energy to sit through three hours of a film.

Thankfully, I haven’t missed any competition deadlines, so no major losses.

In fact the only thing that hasn't be 'red' is any book, though I did have a £10 voucher from Waterstones, so I did treat myself this week to "Death Comes To Pemberly" by PD James and "Belfast Confidential" from Colin Bateman.  I'm likely to start on the PD James when my head is back in place, but tonight I've got a job interview to prepare for.

Well, that’s it, short and not very sweet, but there it is.  See you next week.