All White

Well this week has been dominated by the colour white.  Mostly from the snow that blanketed us here in Wales.  To be honest I was beginning to think this week’s blog was going to be nothing but a white page too. 

One day was so bad with the snow that I had to work from home, no getting my little car out in that.  But like a lot of conscientious people that actually meant I ended up working more than my allotted hours.  But it was a couple of days later that was the  much more interesting, that day I had to drive to another of the companies offices in one of the Welsh valleys,  it was raining when I left home and then  as I travelled up the valley, gaining altitude, things got worse.  Things were getting a little, well, interesting, then I reached a stretch of road, I can only describe as a roller coaster, big dip, then a climb.  I made it about three quarters of the way up the incline, only to have the police turn me around having closed the higher section of road because it was too dangerous to pass. The return trip was actually harder than the outwards one because by that time the snow storm had returned and I was driving in near blizzard conditions.  I'd been able to drive in the 20s going up coming back it was 10 to 15 mph.

This doesn't sound like much of a blog about writing but it actually is.  I've been reading a lot about show not tell so while I was driving I also took a mental image of how I felt during the drive. What did I feel about being in a car in that weather;  what were my physical reactions to the effort of driving; how did I feel when I saw 4x4s over take me; what did I think when non 4x4s started having trouble in front of me; and why oh why did the guy behind have to drive quite so close to my back bumper?

All valuable knowledge if I ever have to write a scene of someone driving in bad snow.

More generally, I've lost the way with the romance I started this year, but I did write a completely separate scene which looks like it'll turn into chapter one of a book.  Unusually for me, this one, while still a romance has twisted into a bit of a fantasy tale with hidden truths which could go a number of ways so I'll just have to see where what happens.

I worked on the Pride and Prejudice update for that competition I thought I’d missed.  And I hated it - derivative drivel.  I still have two weeks to try again but it's not looking good.

Anyway, a million things to be getting on with, so I have to go.  Thanks for reading.

Technical Trouble

It’s been a very busy week, loads to do and loads done.  I’ve caught up with a lot of typing, a story that I wrote on holiday in August 2012.  Well the start of a story anyway, I’ve still some research to do before I can finish it.

            This week I’ve read a whole book, which doesn’t sound like much, but for the last few months I’ve not been about to settle on anything, I’ve about four books on the go, a Stephen Leather, an Ian Rankin, a Zoe Sharp, and a couple of others that just haven’t caught my imagination enough for me to get into reading them.  I’ve worked on a couple of shorts.  I’ve also been loosing time to geocaching and swimming, both in an effort to be more active and lose weight.  And in an effort to secure a work life, I’ve been applying for jobs.

            It was the applying for a job that gave me a little bit of a panic attack this morning, and the technical trouble. 

            Just before Christmas I brought OfficeSuite Pro for my Android phone.  This means that I can write
and edit while out and about without having to take my laptop.  Now my laptop’s great, but it’s a 17 inch screen with a full numeric keyboard. Great laptop, works well, does everything I need it to do, couldn’t be happier with it.  Until I actually have to pick it up and be mobile with it.  It quickly becomes heavy and awkward.

            When I brought the OfficeSuite, I stumbled over a great little gadget.  I have a Samsung Galaxy and the gadget I brought is a 4 in 1 Connection Kit, so I can connect my phone to a standard UBS or various SD cards.

            This means I can keep all my files on a memory stick and update them anywhere.  Great.  The bits arrived, they were all compatible and they all work together.  Fantastic.  Proud of this, I went home, told my husband who kindly pointed out that I could use Google Drive, then I wouldn’t need the gadgetry.

            There was a little grumbling about telling me sooner and my not mentioning it before.

            I gave the Google drive a go and it’s been great.  I do stuff at home on the laptop then I put it on the drive and can pick it up on my phone to edit at work in my lunch hour.

            Thing is, this use has been limited to open, amend, save, close and pick up somewhere else.

            So last night I completed the job application and saved it to Google Drive so I could pick it up in work and email it to the to the HR department.  It’s an internal vacancy obviously.

            But here’s the thing.  The company I work for is very security conscious and had restricted access to certain sites.  Yeah, you guessed it.  Google mail and therefore Drive, is one of them, except certain unrestricted PCs, but mine isn’t one.

            The application had to be in by noon, so I thought, no problem.  I’ll go to my phone and email from there.  But the weird thing is, I couldn’t find a way, either from OfficeSuite or my email to send a document.  So there I was, deadline looming and no access to the file.

            That’s when I remembered the 4-in-1 was still in bag.  So a bit of rummaging on my pantechnicon of a handbag, and found the converter and a memory stick and was, thankfully, able to transfer to the PC and from there email to HR.

            The second panic attach came when I thought, oh no, it’s the 16^th!  I was sure the competition I want to enter ends on the 15^th.  Oh bottoms (well okay that wasn’t quite the thought, but I can’t put what I really thought) I’ve missed it.

            But I had to be sure.

            Again because of the restrictions on what sites can be entered, I didn’t try to go through the works internet, and instead connected via my phone.  The competition does end on the 15^th, thankfully the 15^th February, so I have a couple more weeks to get things done.  Phew!

New Year New Resolve

And I'm not talking about the hang over cure, which I could probably do with getting some in just in case.

Like a lot of people at this time of year I have made a number of resolutions. I'm not going to go on about weight loss, though yes that's one, but I am going to tell you about my writing resolutions.  I made six:

1. Enter at least one writing competition a month
2. Get a second book on-line
3. Read each Writing Magazine (hereafter referred to as WM) issue fully
4. Complete one romance novel this year (separate from and in addition to all other work)
5. Write / update my blog at least weekly.

Okay, before you start screaming, I know that's only five and I said there were six, but I'll tell you about 6 later.

So far resolution 1 is achieved for this month.  I submitted an entry to a WM for a competition where the opening line was given.  I'm nearly there with a submission I have to make by post and I've found a couple more competitions I want to work on.

Have come across another competition for female authors which is a bit sexist, but since it's in my favour I'm considering entering all the same.  I'm not sure if I should go for the "noir moderne" I've done, or a fluffier, more romantic, feminine piece.  Not going to enter two pieces as the fee is quite high. Need to think about that one.

I've nearly finished this months WM. I'm making reasonable progress on the romance and this update gets my blog done for the week.  All good news so far.
Resolution 2 may be the hardest one to keep.  I really want to do this but negatives from previous experience are leading to self doubt.  If I could afford editorial services I'd go that route and worry less, but on a temping contract that's about to run out I need to be highly cautious when it comes to expenditure right now.  Either that or I need to be a lot less cautious about my writing talent.

Finally to resolution 6. This one was to re-write a series I’ve started about a character called Autumn Raine, a private investigator bumbling around Swansea.  When I made the resolutions, I thought that this would be relatively easy.  But since making that decision so few days ago, I’ve wondered if it even works.  The stories are all written in first person, which is not my usual thing, generally I write third person. But three literary agents have rejected the manuscript saying that it was telling not showing, hence the re-write.  But now I’ve been thinking that I could blog it instead.  Want to look more into the mechanics of that, be certain that I can in fact do the conversion before I try it.  So while, I will re-write it, it may not be the book I originally intended.  Best laid plans and all that.

Well now that I’ve done this, I need to go and get on with work on other resolutions.

Ta-ta for now.

Four Days Three Pens.

            Hope you had a good new year and the only hangovers were good memories.  I didn’t stay up to see the new year in on account my husband was on a day shift on the first so was up at ungodly o’clock (04:30), we did hear the fireworks though, sounded like we’d moved to Gaza there were so many bangs, you’d think we were under attack from mortar fire.

            Well, anyway, one of my Christmas Presents this year was a subscription to Writing Magazine, and February’s issue arrived today, haven’t had time to open it yet, that's next on the agenda after I've published this blog.

            Since last I wrote, I’ve written a second story for a competition where the first line was given.  I enjoyed the story and do like it, but my test audience, yes I do mean the long suffering husband, tells me that the first story is the better one, so that’s the one I’m putting in.  Both shorts were about Mc and Mac.  The competition closes on the 14^th, so I’ll be uploading that over the weekend probably.

            The timetable of competitions has come on well enough, though I’m not sure I’ll keep up with all of them, but I’ll give it a go.  I put it into Excel, rather than Access, in the real world I tend to design databases, so Access is usually my first choice, but this time I just went for the instant results of an Excel.

            Have got up to chapter five of the new romance novel, have in fact, managed to run three pens out in the writing so far.  I don’t know what method other people use for writing, but me, I start with putting it down in long hand, then I edit as I type up the first time, then I read and edit and edit and read and so on until I think the story is ready.  I haven’t found a title for this one yet, still I guess that will come in time, at least I hope so.  Still looking for a title for the last romance I wrote, thinking that MisDial might work, but not sure. 

Will keep blogging, write to you soon.

Well There It Was, Merry Christmas

            Well Christmas is now officially over, the mosh pits of the Boxing Day sales have opened and the New Year is just around the corner.  I hope you enjoyed Christmas, and you got what wanted, remember in the immortal words of Greg Lake, the Christmas we get, we deserve.  I enjoyed Christmas, cooked a turkey that’s still feeding us, drank, but slowly enough not to get drunk, and I got some fabulous presents, including a Scratch Map of the UK, which sounds weird, but given that I’m also a geocacher, gives me the chance to scratch off each of the counties as I cache in them.  Yeah, okay, I get that that’s a limited realm of interest, but it interests me.

            So since I last blogged, it seems my Muse has returned.  WooHoo!

            Over Christmas I have managed to finish the edit of Solution, a crime novel, and I’ve done a read/edit of a shorter romance novel which I still haven’t settled on a name for, also last night, I went to bed at 11:30 and after reading a couple of chapters of Siege by Simon Kernick, I finished Chapter 1 of the next new book I’m writing, another romance, the plot of which has been an idea kicking around in my head for some time with nothing to do.  Also, today I woke up with inspiration for another short story.  All evidence that my Muse has found her way back to me.

            The short is another competition piece, 1500 words themed on hot chocolate.  I’ve been trying to think what to do for this for a couple of weeks now, but this morning and idea came to me while I was still in bed and I quickly drew together the rest of the story.  On getting up and I went to the laptop and wrote the story, was 1512 words, so not too much agro to get back to word count. This story is romantic rather than criminal, those seem to be the two genres I skip between, nothing else seems to work, well that’s not entirely true, I have been known to work with horror occasionally, but not for some time now.

            Am going to spend some time tomorrow going through the various writing magazines and on-line sites to see if I can put together a timetable for what competitions are coming up, and do what I can to maybe win one or two this year.

            Well that’s it for now, will write again soon.

Muse Missing

MUSE MISSING

            Not the band, obviously, this is a blog, not a headline.

            No, my muse has gone missing.  I haven’t done anything new in days.  I have edited part of my next book, improvements I think, but not got anything new.  I’ve blogged before about two new characters, Mac and Mc, by the way not sure I’ve mentioned that before.  Well last week I wrote another short with them, and again it worked well, so well in fact that I think it’s better than the one I originally wrote for the short story competition that brought Mac and Mc into life.  That’s now led to me questioning how good the first story is and whether or not it’s worth entering in the competition at all.

            Oh, self doubt thou art the bane of my life!

            A couple of days ago – now wait – it was last Saturday (Thursday today) I finished The Impossible Dead by Ian Rankin.  I’m not the greatest Rankin fan, though there is a whole bookshelf in this house dedicated to his books, those books belong to my husband who is a Rebus fan.  I’ve given Rebus a go, but just can’t get into that series.    The Malcolm Fox books, however, I enjoy a lot.  I’m not giving anything away to say that I’ve brought my hubby Standing In Another Mans Grave for Christmas. Original idea was to surprise him, but we were in town a couple of weeks ago and he said he was going to buy it, so I had to tell him it was already hidden and ready for him for Christmas.  This book features both Rebus and Fox so it should be an interesting read, and I get second dibs on the book.

            What’s a bit of a coincidence is that since then I’ve started reading Siege by Simon Kernick, I’m only a few pages in, but the story includes a character named Fox.  I’ve also got a book by Zoe Sharp, Killer Instinct which is the first of her Charlie Fox series. And that’s before I mentioned Fox Mulder and Fantastic Mr Fox.  Doubtless there are other wilily foxes out there, but these are the one’s I’ve come across.

            You might wonder what any of this has to do with a missing muse, I did when I started writing this, well I’ll get to that.  But since I started writing, I’ve done a search on the names of the muses and what they are supposed to inspire, and I was rather surprised to see that there is no muse for literature, though there are two for poetry, Calliope and Euterpe, one for comedy, Thalia and one for tragedy Melpomene, so maybe writers have many muses.  By the way, I’ve checked several sites and they’re all slightly different and I’m no classics student, so forgive me if my interpretation differs from yours.

            But for now let us assume that either one of the muses, or a collection there of, are inspiring the writers of the world, does this explain the frequency of similar names or themes?  No, not really, it’s just part of the law of very large numbers, but that’s rather boring and scientific, so for the moment I’m going back to the fanciful.

            So my muse is missing, after all the centuries she’s been doing the job, she deserves a break, right?  Probably needs to catch up on some beauty sleep, though if the myths are to be believed, beauty isn’t a problem for any of them.  Oh well, that’s my rambling over, let’s hope the muses sleep well and awake refreshed ready to spread inspiration to us all.

            Night night then.

Write Here

            I read a couple of the letters in Writers Forum #134 today, talking about where people write; coffee shops and libraries featured heavily.

            At Crimefest earlier this year I attended a number of the panels and the topic of where writers write was a subject that was mentioned several times, sheds were talked about a lot in those discussions.

            All of this got me wondering "where do I write?"  Well I pretty much write anywhere and everywhere.  I have written both in coffee shops and in libraries, and I’ve enjoyed the different situations needed at those different times.  I can see the attraction of both locations.  I’ve never written in a shed, because I don’t have one and when I did have a shed, I was my husband’s province and full of tools, gardening stuff and bikes.  No room for writing.  Also, I feel the cold very easily so I don’t think sheds are for me.

            I’ve been known to write at my desk in the kitchen, my desk at work, lunchtimes only of course, laying in bead, soaking in the bath, sitting on a train, as a passenger in a car.  I’m often inspired while driving, but can’t really stop to write while controlling one ton of potentially lethal self propelled metal, not overly safe that option.

            I have, however, written in the driver’s seat while waiting to collect kids/husband/friends/colleagues, whatever.  Even while in the waiting room at the doctors, more impressively, I’ve even written in the dentists waiting room, but that was more to take my mind of the horror to what was coming.

            My favourite spot though, and where most of my writing is done, is curled up on the sofa in the living room, usually with the TV on for background noise.   But mostly, where I write matters less to met than that I actually get to do some writing.