Christmas Thoughts

I was reading somewhere about how your family traditions anchor you in your society and culture. What traditions do you have at Christmas?

We put up our trees early in December and every bauble has a story or a memory associated with it. For example, the five glass icicles that my grandfather bought back from somewhere during the Second World War. There are more, my sister has some too. The Santa koala on a surf board that my mother bought back from Australia. The silver foil bells my eldest (now 26) made at nursery school. The glass candy cane my nan gave to me. The gorgeous baubles and wire hearts that belonged to my husband's late first wife - I think of her a lot when I'm decorating the trees, even though I never met her (she died aged 38). Numerous decorations made on creative evenings with my sons and friends. The glass balls that once graced the Christmas trees of my childhood.

As I decorate the trees, I have happy memories and tears. I remember the year our family Christmas tree was much too tall and my dad had to cut the top off to make it fit. The year the turkey my father was given was so big it sat on the fridge shelf and no one wanted to eat it. The little glitter house with Santa on the roof, which was always at the bottom of childhood trees – it had been my mother's when she was a child. My childhood concerns that because we hadn't got a chimney Santa wouldn’t visit - explained away by a book my mother found where Santa arrives in a helicopter and comes to the front door.

Childhood sacks were always put at the bottom of our beds. If we were lucky we'd wake to fantastical ice patterns on the bedroom window (no central heating of course) and pillowcases full at the bottom of the bed. We'd take them next door to my parents room to open. There was the one year my sister saw what she swore was a naked Santa - dad must have dashed in to leave our gifts! Another year, Santa was disorganised and our presents weren't at the bottom of our beds, but scattered all over my parents room and we had to guess which gifts were for me and which for my sister seven years younger - my parents must have overslept. 

My eldest son has now left home, but my little one, eleven and still, as far as we are aware, believing in the magic, will put his sack underneath the Christmas tree tonight with excitement. We always put out an alcoholic drink and a mince pie for Santa and carrots and water for the reindeer.

Merry Christmas to you all. I hope Santa brings you what you desire for Christmas. I'll settle for a peaceful family time. What would you like?

Strange Times and Successes

I haven't posted on my blog for a while. When I last posted I was doing well with editing one of my novels using a technique of analysing the text with coloured post it notes. Shortly after that I'm not sure what happened, but the doubt crows began to circle and I also started to have a lot of headaches. So, I stopped editing and writing for a while and wondered if I would ever start again.

Having always enjoyed the November novel writing challenge NaNoWriMo, to write 50,000 words of a novel in the month, I decided to clear my mind and start something new and different. It worked! I wrote with enthusiasm and completed the 50,000 word challenge in 24 days. This novel needs work, but I have a full outline of the plot, including the ending. It felt so good to get my mojo back.

I'm back!

Gathering Pace

Yesterday I showed you my scene pieces from my work in progress sorted into sections. 

After that picture, I bagged the sections up, so that they didn't get moved around and I can work through each one individually. I probably should have said that the story themes and scenes are drawn from a rather scrappy mixed up first draft.

Sections Bagged up

Working on Section One, I then split the pieces into themes used the colour coding and then put the theme strands in the right order.

Section One sorted into themes

Section One themes sorted into order

The next stage will be to interleave the themes to make a coherent story. Feeling quite surprised and pleased at this stage. Back soon.

Mmm maybe this can work

I posted last week about my experiment with printing plot points from my work in progress on colour coded paper.

Initially I didn't think it had worked in the way I expected, in that, I promptly ignored the cut out paper and re-wrote my first chapter in the first person. 

However, this morning I had the urge to sort the bits into rough sections of the book. I've ended up with seven phases and the bits of paper are in random order within those sections at the moment.

Below is the state of play so far. It looks a bit better I think you will agree... I'll post again as my project progresses.

Do Not Laugh

I've decided to try a few mini blogs, as I don't seem to be getting around to blogging very often.

The photograph shows the current state of my work in progress novel. Yes, it is in bits! I'd got rather bogged down in it and decided to try a new approach. The bits of paper represent each scene in the book and give me a key to where it is located on my computer. The colours represent the character or combination of characters in the scene.

Now I just need to put it all back together again.

Wish me luck and watch this space....

Rusty Blog

Where have I been all summer?

I slaved over my New Writer's Scheme manuscript, determined to make it as professional as possible. Rosie and Tanner is now with one of the RNA readers. Tick!

I went to the RNA conference at Telford and enjoyed blissful times chatting with other writers and attending fantastic workshops. A whole host of superlatives are not enough to describe the conference. Tick!

We had a fantastic holiday in Northumberland. The holiday barn was amazing, especially as I'd only booked it the week before! I then discovered that we were the first family to stay in it. A view of the castle out of the window - come on, every girl needs a castle outside of the window. We walked the beach at Bamburgh at least twice a day. I've even got a tan and I very rarely get one of those - in Northumberland! I really enjoyed being able to shop locally in the little shops too. The only slight downer was that my son and his girlfriend got stung by jellyfish. We counted 51 on the shoreline that evening, some bigger than dinner plates! Hubbie got a much needed rest, although with his pedometer he became obsessed with how many steps we walked. Tick!

Spending time with little son - he goes to big school in September and something tells me this might be the last summer he'll be happy for me to determine the summer timetable. He's growing so fast. Size 7 football boots at eleven! He grew a centimetre whilst we were on holiday. His dad is 5'2", so he is going to be a tall lad. I am loving our outings. Tick!

All of this means I haven't found much time to blog, but I haven't sacrificed my writing time and the new manuscript is coming along nicely.

What have you been up to this summer?

More Bird Talk

‘Aw, aren’t they sweet?’

Blackie spoke from underneath the bird feeder, where he was busy hovering up fallen seeds scattered by the little blue and yellow fluffy balls.’

‘Six this year,’ crowed Blue, puffing out her chest with pride.

‘I hope you know what you’re doing, Blue.’

‘Whatever do you mean?’

‘Letting your babies eat from bird feeders instead of teaching them how to forage.’

‘I’m giving them the best start, the best vitamins around.’

‘It’s spring! The hedgerows are full of nutritious shoots and insects.’

‘But it takes ages to gather enough food for the day. If they come here, they have so much more time to play.’

‘But you know, back in the day, humans hadn’t used to put seed out at this time of year, so that fledglings like yours would learn about natural food sources.’

‘Yeah, but since then Springwatch has been on the tele to raise awareness of us birds and what with the fantastic marketing of RSPB products and other wild bird food companies, there is never a shortage of seed.’

Blackie flew up and sat on the fence with a cackle.

‘Short-sighted, Blue. You mind my words, you’ll regret this faddy diet, they never work in the long term you know. What happens when the humans in this house go on holiday and there is no seed put out for two weeks? Answer me that.’

‘I’ll show them how to forage then.’

‘By then you could have flown into a window, been eaten by a hawk or a cat. What happens to your precious babies then?’

Blue froze, her beak set in a strange line.

‘Pessimist.’

Nevertheless, she turned to her fledglings.

‘Come on you lot, let’s go and investigate that damson tree. Lovely sweet shoots and loads of ants.’

The biggest fledgling flew over to his mum.

‘Mum, that’s so old-fashioned. Seed is best, foraging is boring. You said so yourself.’