Reading Richard Skinner’s “Fiction Writing” i just wanted to share with you a small idea that I love 🙂
Tag Archives: postaday
Tales From A Notebook Part 3
I’ve been indexing my notebooks *groan* No, actually it’s not been thatbad lol. A bit boring at times, but occasionally I’ve stumbled across something useful.
Here are some pages from notebook number 3. I was experimenting with Haiku’s at the time, gawd only knows why, I’m so crap at poetry lol
Classic Reads Blog Hop
Today, I’m taking part in a blog hop 🙂 it’s being hosted by Molly Greene Terri G Long Christine Nolfi and Rachel Thompson
The idea is for me to share the books that i think are classic reads, and to tell you what makes a read a ‘classic’ for me. Old, new, controversial, heartwarming – what are the things that catapult a book from a great read to a must read?
The minute I saw this blog hop mentioned there was only 1 book, for me, worthy of the title 🙂 It’s a book I read back in 2006, but the memory has remained. Unfortunately, it’s no longer available in printed form, (unless you buy a pre-owned copy on Amazon) but you can get it on Kindle.
My recommendation as a Classic Read is Emotional Geology by Linda Gillard
Let me share with you the blurb:
Rose Leonard is on the run from her life. Taking refuge in a remote island community, she cocoons herself in work, silence and solitude in a house by the sea. But she is haunted by her past, by memories and desires she’d hoped were long dead. Rose must decide whether she has in fact chosen a new life or just a different kind of death. Life and love are offered by new friends, her lonely daughter, and most of all Calum, a fragile younger man who has his own demons to exorcise. But does Rose, with her tenuous hold on life and sanity, have the courage to say yes to life and put her past behind her?
And now let me share with you my review:
OH WOW!!!!! I loved this book! I usually read a book a week, this one, i read in less than 24 hours!!!! When i say it was unputdownable…i am NOT joking! The setting is magical and i want to visit!!!!! No scrub that, i want to live there! I did find myself getting a little bit annoyed with Rose at one point, i mean there was Calum, dishy, kind, interested, available…and a poet….. What more could a woman want????? I’ve heard a lot of people who have read this book have been inspired to be creative…… Oh that is an understatement! I want to create something now lol
Can you tell I liked it? 😉 If you like a bit of romance with an incredible setting, you’ll love this as much as I did.
For me, a classic read is something that you fall in love with, and I definitely fell, big time for this! Even 6 years later I can remember opening the book to that first page and virtually not moving from my chair till I’d finished it. My husband went to work with me reading it and he came home just in time to see me finish lol 😉 There was just something magical about the characters and the beautiful description that touched my heart.
I have 2 spare copies of this book going begging (no, you can’t have my signed copy, that’s staying with me for life!) so if you’d like one (these are pre-read by the way so not brand new) please let me know and I’d be happy to send 🙂
So what constitutes a Classic Read in your opinion?
Happy New Year! & A Giveaway
Courtesy of Stuart Miles freedigitalimages
It’s 2013! Wow, how did that happen?
I hope you all had a lovely night last night 🙂
But it’s not only New Year I’m celebrating…on the 1st of January 2012 I gave myself a challenge, to Blog every single day for a year, and today, I have achieved that! GO ME!!!
So to celebrate my success I’m offering a giveaway. As regular readers will know I am a huge fan of prompts, so any books I come across that are full of prompts go straight on my shelf 😉 This one, is a gooden!
I’m offering a free brand new copy to one lucky reader who can complete the following sentence……
Vikki rolled over and squinted at the bedside clock, it was 4am, but she’d been trying to sleep for hours.
What did I do next?
Sooooo, leave your answer in the comment box (one sentence will do) and I’ll get the hubster to pick a winner. I’m happy to send overseas by the way and I might even slip in a little extra something 😉
Awwwww, I’m going to miss blogging every day….. But it’ll take the pressure off 😉 Thank you so much for all your comments and likes over the past year. I’ve had a wonderful time. And to all my followers, thank you, most of you I don’t even know! Please leave a comment every once in a while so I can say “Hi” 🙂
Tell me, what was i doing at 4am? Try to keep it relatively clean people Lol
Everybody’s Doing It!
Not one to be left out, heres a bonus post for you today, for those of you into stats!
The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2012 annual report for this blog.
Here’s an excerpt:
4,329 films were submitted to the 2012 Cannes Film Festival. This blog had 31,000 views in 2012. If each view were a film, this blog would power 7 Film Festivals
New Years Resolutions?
Or should they be called goals?
No, no To Do List today….this is my 2nd week off 🙂
Ok, I make a list every year (don’t we all?) but I can’t share with you last years list as I don’t know what I’ve done with it lol. I thought I’d stuck it on my blog, but I didn’t 😦 I think that means we can safely assume that I didn’t stick to them lol
So, what am I planning this year?
1. Read a fiction book a week/a writing guide each month. I’m so fed up not being able to find the time to read, well, that’s what I tell myself, that I don’t have time 😦
2. Have at least 1 writing session per week “out” somewhere. Go to a coffee shop, or the library, anywhere to get me out if the house to write!
3. Tidy and declutter the house. *groan* but it really needs doing.
4. Continue with the diet. I lost a stone, but half of that has gone back on (what can i say, its Christmas! lol) but I need to keep going to get back to what I was in 2008 🙂
5. Go to the gym more. Isn’t that on everyone’s resolution list?
courtesy of Stuart Miles/freedigitalphotos
6. Write every day! I’m use to this, I’ve done it for a whole year already. Plus I’ve joined Sally Quilfords 100K in 100 Days Challenge.
7. Get WIP finished by the end of Faber course. First 5000 words of The Last Word Cafe needed for February.
8. Go out somewhere once a week. We use to do this, I’m not too sure why we stopped lol
9. Cut down the smoking. *gulp*
10. Keep a “Writing Journal.” Like Jill Dawson described.
I have a few other goals like drink more water, have a Peter Jones style Boxing Day once a month, plus cook more lol. But the 10 above are the ones I really wanna stick to 🙂
Wish me luck! What are your Resolutions/Goals for 2013?
If you’re off out partying tonight, have a good one. It’ll be a quiet one here on the sofa as hubby’s not very well. Not that we’d planned anything anyway lol 😉
HAPPY NEW YEAR!
Related articles
- The Two Most Common New Year’s Resolutions and How to Keep Them (herfitnesshut.com)
- Goals and Resolutions…Part 1 (allthingsmidcoast.com)
- While Thinking Of New Year Resolutions (sunnysodday.wordpress.com)
- New Year’s Resolutions – think big and eat more chocolate (earlyinitiative.wordpress.com)
- Points I’m Taking Into 2013 (journeytomoksha.wordpress.com)
New Blog Schedule
As from the first of January I’ll be changing the blog schedule (and the layout) and will only be posting 4 days a week. It’s gunna feel weird, as I’m so use to posting every day, but, it will free up my time to do other things.
So the new schedule looks like this:
Mondays: Plans for the week
Tuesdays: Faber until April
Wednesdays: Nope, sorry, day off. Apart from one post once a month, IWSG!
Thursdays: Fraid not.
Fridays: A random post.
Saturdays: Faber once a month until April and random stuff.
Sundays: I’ll be chilling 😉
Some of the random posts will be fiction, inspirations, reviews and I’ll even share some pages from my journal. I’ve been working on a timetable (which I may share at some stage). And so far I have filled 12 hours every day with stuff I need to do *gulp*
Awwwww, it’s the end of an era! 😦 What will I do with myself? lol. Probably start wading through this lot and trying to write a novel *snigger*
I’d just like to take this opportunity to say THANK YOU to everyone who’s commented, liked, followed and read my blog. 2012 hasn’t been a bad year all told. There have been moments where I wanted to give up (blogging and writing), but I’m glad I stuck with it. I’ve met some fantastic people on this journey, and I’m so looking forward to sharing 2013 with you all 🙂
Don’t they say a change is as good as a holiday? 😉
Got any plans to change your Blog for 2013?
Don’t Break The Chain
Continuing on from yesterday’s post about committing to daily writing I thought I’d share with you this wonderful resource 🙂
Jerry Seinfields Dont Break The Chain which I actually discovered last year.
Seinfeld’s method for success: Each January, he hangs a large year-at-a-glance calendar on his wall and, for every day he writes, he has the pleasure of drawing a big red “X” over that day.
Drawing those Xs is fun and rewarding, so he keeps doing it. Soon he creates a chain of red Xs.
The idea is to never break the chain.
This programs your body and mind to sit down and write daily – but it also motivates you to continue the beautiful string of big, red Xs. If you don’t write one day, you don’t get to draw the X.
It doesn’t matter what you write. Blogs, articles, fiction, your memoir. It can be anything, as long as you’re actively and daily pushing yourself and more importantly, writing every single day!
So if you want to give it a go (I will be again this year) you can download your copy of the calendar from the Writers Store here! It’s free of charge and once you’ve downloaded it once, you can just print it off every year.
I failed miserably with mine last year (I think I got to March lol) but that was probably because I didn’t have a desk or a wall I could stick it on (I was using my dining room). But this year, now I have my own little corner I have somewhere to put it 🙂
Fancy it?
The Daily Writer & A New Challenge
Firstly, my apologies…..I am so behind with blog reading (about 3 days) but I will catch up over the weekend, I promise 🙂
On the 31st December I am due to finish using Judy Reeves book, A Writers Book Of Days which has been my companion throughout 2012. I’m a firm believer in a daily writing practice and I have no hesitation in saying that using Judy’s book has improved my writing ten fold. Yes, it’s been hard work at times. There have been days when I really haven’t felt like writing, there have been days when the prompt given didn’t really inspire me. But I still did it, and have written a piece for every single prompt in the book (well, ok, it’s not the 31st yet, but do you honestly think I’ll give up now? Lol). There are about 400 prompts in the book (the 365 plus bonus ones) and if you average it out as 500 words per prompt, plus my Nano work I reckon that in 2012 I wrote, approximately….220,000 words! 🙂
It was only after Nano that I realised that the book was actually coming to an end. When I turned that page and saw December. Now, I could just start all over again on January the 1st, but that’s not really a challenge is it? I want something new, something different. So, I’ve decided that during 2013 I will be working with this.
The Daily Writer by Fred White looks brilliant! I’m so excited to be starting another year round challenge (I don’t make life easy for myself do I?). I’m hoping there will be lots of inspiring ideas in this one that I can share 🙂
But to keep me on track with the WIP (The Last Word Cafe) I’ve joined Sally Quilfords 100K in 100 Days challenge. Which is to write 1000 words a day every day…piece of cake after Nano right? 😉 I did it last year but didn’t keep track of how many words I wrote every day, (and this year Sallys set up a FaceBook group!) so I’ll be more aware of my word count 🙂 It’s so hard when you hand write a lot though….so 2013 will see me using the MacBook Air for all my writing. I will kind of miss my notebooks, but I’m sure I’ll be able to fill them with lots of other stuff 🙂
Fancy joining me this year? committing to writing daily?
The Editing Process
To continue with the theme of editing this month I came across an excellent video on YouTube where writer David Farland gives a talk that describes his editing process.
Farland breaks his editing down into 6 separate processes/types of edit:
1. Triage
2. Voice Edit
3. Descriptive Edit
4. Shotgun
5. Syllabic
6. Line Edit
It’s a very interesting talk, and yes, it is long. So grab a coffee, your notebook and pen and enjoy. A lot of what he said made total sense to me, although the idea of editing my MS 6 times is a little daunting! Lol
I think I’m beginning to know where to start now. How about you?
Related articles
- Why I Use Kindle to Edit My Drafts (michaeljholley.com)
- Learning to Love the Editing Process? (cultofajracewood.wordpress.com)
The View Outside 