Thursday 2 May 2019

Goodbye and Thank You!

I started this blog many moons ago and it has seen me through many difficult and magical times.  I have always enjoyed reading any comments and appreciate everything it has done for me.  Now, though, I feel it is time to move on.  I regularly write for Linked In and am about to set up a new blog with Wordpress, but this blog, bless it, is looking old and tired and it - like me - must be allowed to move on.  Or be put out to grass.

Moving house and living by the sea, with five adorable grandchildren just a few streets away,  and two more just a few miles up the road, plus the fact I have the part time job of my dreams as an Activities Co-Ordinator at a local residential home where I share my love of all thing creative, and leaving the Young Writer group almost a year ago ... I don't know...  I just feel on the verge of a new era and unfortunately, this blog will no longer have a part to play in that.

Many thanks to all those that shared and read my incessant meanderings.  This is not farewell forever; I am a writer and I will always find a way to get my thoughts out there.  But it is the setting of the sun on a valuable experience.

Many thanks.

Saturday 9 February 2019

At Last! My Book!

You may recall a few months ago that I wrote a post on here singing the praises of The Woman In Black by Susan Hill - first the play and then the book.  It brought to mind a supernatural story I have been wrestling with for decades, attempting numerous times to write or at least develop.  It is not your usual kind of supernatural story.  It is set in a new town house in the mid-60s rather than some dark and dingy manor house or abandoned ruin and it sprang from an image that came to my mind out of nowhere many moons ago of a huge protrait of a baby drawn on a wall.  Now I don't know if at some point I actually saw this portrait or if it just came from nowhere, but there was this baby, aged about eleven months, dressed in nothing but an old fashioned nappy (or daiper if you prefer), drawn on the wall so that it looked like it was looking directly at you.  That was it.  No history.  No explanation.  But for years that image stayed with me.  And every time I tried to write the story behind that image, I'd get so far then give up, no matter whose point of view I was writing from.  It never felt quite right.

Then, a couple of weeks ago, I suddenly saw a new way to try it and guess what?  I have just completed chapter two!  That is the furthest I have ever got with it, so I am beginning to think that - at last - I may have found the correct formula to take this story all the way.  Not only is it good to be properly writing again, it is great to finally be writing something I can barely wait to get back to.  The last time that happened was when I wrote My Writer, the first draft of which was written in six weeks in something of a fever!  I have been writing the new book - which, curiously is not a children's book - for about a week and so far, so good.  It has pace and some quirks and, already, an unexpected twist or two so if I can keep this up, who knows where it will lead.

After treading water in the proverbial sea of procrastination for so long, it has surprised me just how important to me my writing still is.  Losing my mun, moving house, settling down, Steve retiring, moving house again, getting things straight; all this has had a detrimental affect on my writing, with only the odd article, blog post or poem finding its way through the murk.  It is surprising how much better I feel now that I am back in my proper world, the world of the written word.  Suddenly, I feel completely whole again.  Wish me luck.  I will let you know how I get on.

Friday 18 January 2019

New Year, New Us ...

Hello everyone and a very happy 2019 to you.  I am sorry not to have been back since early November, but moving in and getting the house straight in time for Christmas quickly became a twenty-four hour a day job!  For a few weeks we were kind of stuck in limbo as we waited for a new storage shed to be delivered and erected, thus freeing up the two bedrooms that have now become our studies - I got the big one, but that was Steve's idea.  I must say it is lovely to be back at my desk and my beloved laptop, tapping away and befriending my Inner Writer all over again!  It feels great to have all my books back on their shelves and I have even made a great start of sorting all my writing, updating and listing work that easily filled two dozen box files, which are all smartly re-labled and standing in a neat row along the top of the big bookcase!  It all feels inspiring and incredibly right.  

We have been seeing a lot of our grandchildren which is great!  Three of the boys all had birthdays the first week in January which meant a family tea for the little one and dinner at Pizza Express with the whole family for the older two - and three birthday cakes in as many days.  We took the older boys to a football match and our granddaughter to see a show and this weekend will be the little one's turn, with a trip to the SeaLife Centre which is just half an hour away.  And yesterday we managed our first sea-front stroll since moving in, even though it was bitterly cold, but that takes nothing away from the fact that even a stroll along the high street involves the sight of the sea sparkling at the end of the road!  I can't believe how lucky we are!

I have just starting looking for a part time job again.  None too sure what I actually want to do, though.  I still might go back into a Care setting, but being off work has reintroduced me to the joy of full weekends at home again and I don't really want to lose that, so we shall just have to see.  In the meantime, I am writing - this is my second blog post today and  I published an article on  LinkedIn, earlier so I have been pretty active today!

I will try to get back with a Writing update before long.  I have just introduced one of my books to a potential publisher so watch this space!