Nah I’m grand.

Ah, the joy of this. We have reached over twenty-two thousand words. I’m seeing the characters all speak out in ways that I can predict and the way forward needs nothing more than time. I can see this doing really well, and the way is onward.

However, all this progress has a cost. I’m up at 5.30 am to do this. My little guy still doesn’t sleep through the night, guys. So at least twice I’m awake at 4 am. Add a 5.30 am start with hard work behind it, and it is hard. Hard. I won’t write it out but just, please, say that word out loud, slowly. I found myself Thursday evening over the stirfry dizzy. Nothing to do but serve up and keep going. (Sorry it was so bad, other half). And that has to happen if I am going to do this…

There really is something about this time of year that I love. I grew up in not necessarily lavish, but large houses, homes with a lot of grassland around them. My mum’s home was a farm in Tipperary, lots of walks around it. I’ve always pointed to that as the reason I love old things. Not even antiques, just old, really old. An old wall, ivy spilling over it, a few fallen stones for good measure, while above the sky is quiet and overcast, is the most soothing thing in the world to me. I was on the bus with Little Man today. He loves the bus, seeing the world from a different angle, and we passed all these old, hidden houses with their broken walls, the sky all quiet and soft with clouds, and the leaves falling like a silent ticker tape parade for us. I thought of how often the image of that old world would come back to me during my life, like some mental comfort blanket for my mind. I don’t live in an old house, or in an old world. But if I had my chance, I would find some place not new, or rushed, and just sit and look and let it age. And let time, like a slow, low, cello note, sooth and smooth and pour over me.

For some reason this is the most peaceful thing in the world to me.

Happy Sunday. Talk to you next week.

Writing and the writers writing it writes.

Greetings, mes amies. I write from a messy table in a messy kitchen in a messy life. Does anyone ever get this right? No one we’d like, any way. Had an interesting moment recently when on the top of the bus with little Man. There was just him, me, and another mum with her daughter. This situation, where female parents are in close proximity, tends to lead to one of them attempting a “Mummy Off”. It isn’t a smack down, with Ikea chairs broken over-pilated backs, nothing so honest. Instead there is a subtle testing of each other over the worth of little Sebastian or Cassandra. The problem for me is that I don’t care. Little Man does not speak French, nor do I wash his hair with homemade shampoo. The only thing he might win is, indeed, a smack down, and in such a comp I’d advise you to put a tenner on him, kid’s a scrapper.

I had to remove the ruder tattoos…

Anyways. Another week of writing done and behind me. It is Sunday, and I’ve been up at 5.30 am to go into work to write from 6.30 am. And while on Tuesday I got a mere two thousand words done, on Thursday I managed to get a whopping four thousand words done. Wow. Just wow. However, there is a problem with that. Because it was then 8.30 am in the morning, and everyone else was showing up and starting a day’s work. I had to go into a three hour meeting and I found that my brain had no intention of giving it any real effort. It reminded me of something…

Yeah. That was it.

Wishing you all a wonderful week ahead of you…

Le Writing Journal

Mon amies, bonjour. J’ecrive mon lettre dans l’cusine avec mon mari, et le file ete dormir in the sitting room, and that is about as much French as I can recall in my exhausted state.  Little man has decided again that early mornings are preferable, and I am killed all over again. Added to the wonderful person who decided that the best place to fly a large plane was over my house at 5.30am and I am actually not going to put myself behind the wheel of a car any time today. I’m in that tired state when if you close your eyes you automatically start dreaming. I don’t mean sleep, I mean you go straight to dreaming, so that when you are woken again you have to recollect that that you are the jowl faced old wan you are, rather than the lion tamer worried about the butter cream melting. Yeah. I don’t know what it means either.

It means you want to be a horse.

So, it is another Sunday. I’ve kept up with the writing and we have nicely broken the ten thousand mark. I am seeing the pace slow down, however, as I get better at the writing, rather than just the typing. You can see the seasons as the sky gets colder at that hour, and the moon shines high, and bright, over the insanity of walking across a dark campus at 6.00. I am loving it much much more than the swimming, but ironically the writing is much harder on the body than the exercise. At the end of one of the early morning sessions, I find myself easing myself out of the chair like a hostage without the ropes. Each limb has to be painfully stretched out, sloooowly, to get the blood back in there, and to remind myself that there is a life outside of these women, we’re done with them for now.

“Oh god me back.”

It is an amazing moment, though. It is a weird transition, going from the dark night, to reinventing myself as a worker in an office. It is like shaking off dust sheets while I try to convince others I’m kosher and above board.  Trust me!

Right. It’s Sunday, and I need to cosplay as an adult. Wishing you all a grand day.

Me and the Writing

So, first week down. I’ve been getting up at 5.30am to get into work by 6.30 am and write. It has been an interesting week, for several different reasons, but I will say that I have found it easier than I would have thought.

And… Up we go again!

Firstly, as to my security. I work on a campus, and so the place is open to the public. I’m also not terribly eager to explain myself to security each and every time. So I go in, and unlock the door, then lock the door behind me, thereby insuring I’m safe while I work, and not freaking out security who come to lock it at 7.30am.

Secondly, playing catch up. So far, I’ve made myself up to date on my list of submissions. It really is a wonderful sensation to do so. Most of these things require bios, synopsis and such, so even if the damn thing is written you have to supply ancillary text to back it up. And that is now done, two novellas submitted. I’ll hear about one in December and one at the end of this month, so I will get to stagger the rejection, if nothing else.

Finally, coffee. My veins must be made of it at this stage…

Also, I managed to plot out the novel. I’ve seen the characters change hugely even in the short time I’ve been writing it, and so I am pleased to finally get that acknowledged and get a new plot done. We will see what the next week brings.

Happy Glenroe day to the lot of ye.

A Note for You All…

I am writing this from the one bloody computer that remembers the blog log in details. I am somehow keeping going with this damn thing, but I am right now the equivalent of a rolled up piece of paper, sellotaped to a chair in an empty room in an abandoned building; no one is going to read this and it’s not clear what they are going to get out of it if they do… My blog stats are flatter than my wit, which is at half-mast as it is.

Anyway. To get you all up to speed, because it is my blog and I can if I want to; I am writing again, to the extent that I have submitted an entry to the Penny Dreadful novella competition. If it does well, I find out in December. If it doesn’t do well in December, you find out too, because I will put it out to sell electronically as an ebook, so I will. I worked on it since my maternity leave so I am eager for it to strut its stuff.

I submitted that at 7.30am last Thursday at my office desk. Which is where I will be for quite sometime. My usual routine is to get to a swimming pool before work, but increasingly the nagging voice on my shoulder has been asking me which is more important, writing or swimming? Usually followed with a sarcastic Hmmmmm? as nagging voices are oft to do. It also usually points out all the flaws I have as a worker, a parent, and so on, but on this point it has been getting louder. So twice a week I will be working solely on my writing. It is the weirdest thing, to do what I want. No doubt it will play out like the first fifteen minutes of Casualty and I will be killed in a car crash/left by my husband for a stripper/see a meteorite crash through the ceiling while a bunch of cardiganed middle aged women, standing a safe distance away, will watch the fireball unfold, fold their arms and purse their lips and say nothing more than a smug hmmmmm… Ah here!

“Good luck!”

I do have a novel that I have about 15k written about and most of the rest plotted out, and I want so much to write it I think I would enjoy doing it with Dolores Umbridge’s pen. It is about people who I love so much I think they are almost real, really, and I can’t let them not be read. Being able to get to a desk to discuss them is so wonderful I would do it at any time. I do not have that space often, very few of us do, so I am very, very lucky.  Really looking forward to it, am willing to dodge comets to do so.  I am to swim three days a week, and still try to get home at a sensible time to clean the house and pick up mah son and do all the other stuff.

I aim to write up again next week, next Sunday hopefully. Very much hope you’re well, reading this, and that life is all good and happy. Drop us a line if you can? Best wishes…

Oh, Thank You!

Oh, thank you, WordPress, for the privilege of being able to log into my blog! The sheer delight of not having my ISP address listed as suspect due to multiple log in attempts from someone else is just delightful. At least now I can get rid of that stupid washing machine gif that was up up without thought weeks ago.  Ye Gods…

So, how are you all? Everyone okay, still here? I’ve had a wonderfully busy two weeks or so, dealing with anonymous correspondence, hubby changing jobs, time off that wasn’t time off at all, a death of a relative, illness of a very close relative, and … life, really.  I have been busy, which is the excuse I’m giving myself. I am sitting at home at the moment due to the bus strike, a development that I only realised at the bus stop yesterday. It made me realise how little attention I pay to the outside world these days. I rarely seem to listen to news broadcasts, I never buy a newspaper, and most of the world seems to get by quite nicely without my concern. I am aware of the big stuff, the referendum on the 22nd, the need to check the register… But the day to day stuff is passing me by.

I remember as a kid riveted to news and current affairs, but since the collapse that interest has waned and gone. It drifted away on foot of my belief that my interest actually did anything, along with the expectation I can change things. Maybe that will change, but for now, and for a while, I’ve let them get on with it.

Anyway, it’s good to be back. And how are you?

 

 

My ‘I have no time to write’ Post.

I have zero time to write. I have, nothing, not a thing. There is about three minutes to do this blog and then I have to work on four other projects before going home and then the second job begins. Not a second can be wasted but I’m managing to do just that because of spelling mistakes and typos and ah here…

So how are you, reading all these fascinating words on the screen at a lightening pace? How is life, how is your times, are you getting enough vitamin C, enough sleep, eating enough? You calling your Mother, getting exercise, working hard? Get some fun while you’re at it, it’s later than you think…

And now here comes the last few seconds of my time to write, nothing left to do but wrap this up, so I wish you well all of you, hope that you’re good and that life is good. Stay warm and cosy out there in that weather, you’d never know what might jump up and get ya.

Puppies make everything better….

 

Parenting and Guilt

I have never felt guilt as a parent. Unless those delightful mummies were willing to help rather than judge, they could kiss my butt for all the guilt I was supposed to feel. None of them would be there to help in any real way so therefore they are not relevant. Mortgages have to be paid, sanity has to be maintained, I was always going to go back to work. As for breastfeeding, my body gets enough messages about what it should or shouldn’t be doing, ta very much. Unless you get to lactate with me, your opinion is just a leaf on the wind of my own way through life.

What about Shame?

Had plenty of that. I have felt ashamed when my son kicks up, or isn’t as great as little Caresse or Sky.  I have felt shame when I inconvenienced, or annoyed, or bothered, on account of my son. He is my joy and my responsibility, no one else’s, I wouldn’t and shouldn’t make other people’s lives harder on foot of his bad days, etc.  I am with the French on this one, my child gets to fit in with society, not the other way around.