A day at the zoo

I've sold a story to Woman's Weekly for the first time, so I'm Very Pleased Indeed.

It fair took my mind off traipsing round Cotswold Wildlife Park in the pouring rain and a howling wind (don't know what went wrong there - the weather forecast was quite good). The fellow above made me smile though. Looks rather like a cartoon guinea-pig.

I never did find out what he really is, and I'm not sure I want to.

And there were lots of things in threes ...


What's that all about??

8 things

The lovely Laura Cassidy recently tagged me to reveal "8 things" so to take my mind off the fact that my daughter, having passed her driving test, is now trawling the highways in her first ever motor-vehicle, being cut up by shouty men in white vans, and that I still have a way to go before meeting my self-imposed June 26th deadline, I'm more than happy to oblige. Even though I should be writing. My novel.

*Warning - some of the answers may not be true (don't sue me)

8 Things I look forward to

Making a cake and eating it (all)
Settling down to read a book
Settling down to write a book
Saddling up my seahorse (Riley) and riding the waves on a hot summer's day
The audience response when I play my trombone with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra (they often cry)
Playing in the sandpit with my meerkat, Thomas
Seeing my husband at the end of every day
Reading your blogs


8 Things I did yesterday

Combed my hair
Thought about claming my mortgage on expenses
Went to a Pampered Chef party and bought a bamboo spoon
Spoke to a policeman
Cleaned up dog sick
Wished upon a star
Wrote 1000 words
Removed a dead bird from the conservatory


8 Things I wish I could do

Sing
Dance
Fly
Make a cheesecake that didn't taste 'yuk'
Be 21 again and know what I know now
Get a novel published
Carry a moonbeam home in a jar
Build a time machine

8 Shows I watch

The Apprentice
America's Next Top Model
Lost
The Inbetweeners
Peep Show
Desperate Housewives
Mad Men
The Wright Stuff

And that's all folks!

I won't tag you in case you have tag fatigue, but do feel free to poach.

Milestones

If you'd care to swivel your eyes towards m'word counter you'll see that I'm now over halfway through the novel. These are the most words wot I have written since I managed a whole one a few years ago (when I was young and foolish) and I'm Very Chuffed.

Also I wrote the word Penis yesterday, without blushing. In the novel, not on the pavement or anything. It was in context, but quite humourous as I still can't write Serious Sex without imagining my mother's expression.

Which is totally unfair as she's probably more open-minded than I am.

Twelfth time lucky

Author Sophie King was signing copies of her new book The Wedding Party at an independent bookshop near where I work today, so I thought I'd pop along.

What gives me hope with my writing is that, despite being a successful journalist and prolific short story writer under her real name, Jane Bidder, Sophie wrote 11 (yes eleven) novels before finally getting published. One of them was rejected because her agent had taken on another novel that was too similar. How annoying must that be?

But she Never Gave Up. And neither will I - despite my porridge elbow giving me gyp (jip? gip?) grief. Although it's better than it was, so I can't complain!

Flying fingers

Excuse the lack of intelligent blog postings (not that they ever were) but I'm using all the words in my brain for my novel right now. Long words, short words made-up words and even clever words like Circean - which refers to beauty of a dangerous kind. I know that because I've just looked it up. I haven't really used it (I'm not that clever) but I think I will now, I like it.

To meet my deadline I have to write 833 words a day, which sounds easily achievable until you factor in everything else I have to do. Miss a day and suddenly I've got, er, 1666 words to do the next day - miss that and...you get the picture. 4200 words a week it works out at (don't sue me if I'm wrong, Maths was always a weakness) which sounds downright scary, but even so. I'm determined to do it. I'm enjoying doing it.

And if I don't do it everyone will know I'm an eejit, and I really can't have that.

It would make me feel like absquatulating.

Hot off the Press

Okay I probably need help, but I couldn't resist this -

The print's rather small so you might have to click on the image (don't bother it's not worth it) and it's here if you've not got anything better to do.

Now I really must get on with it.

Unbelievable

Stories in the news today that you simply couldn't make up ...

"Fir tree grew inside man's lung"

"Nine years for Tesco poo sprayer"

"Man shows off third ear implanted in his arm"

"Man bites snake on tail to escape its deadly grip"

"Man caught having sex with girlfriend while driving at 100mph"

"Bristol Crown Court closed after being overwhelmed by smell of garlic" (Probably put there by a man ...)

Okay there probably were some weird stories about women but none leapt out at me, honest!

Stranger than all that is how much writing I've done lately. I can't compete with Annieye's extravagant Easter output, but I've not done too badly at all. In fact I've rashly set myself a mid-June deadline for finishing the first draft.

There, I've gorn and said it.

Guilty as charged

The other evening I was on the computer (no wonder my elbow's still hurting) when a mini-kerfuffle broke out by the door as the Teens were instructed by Lovely Husband to vamoose. "Stop pestering your mother and let her get on with her writing," he said firmly.

He's very supportive and takes what I do seriously, which is wonderful, but dear reader I was actually on E-bay at the time. Sourcing a new toilet-seat to replace the one that's broken, while simultaneously tracking down a top I'd seen in a magazine. I was planning to follow this up with a raid on the BBC Good Food website in search of a no-bake cheesecake recipe. Not that I couldn't be bothered to bake one, I just fancied one there and then.

Thing is I felt so guilty as everyone shuffled off talking in exaggerated stage whispers, that I shiftily opened a document at random and discovered a short story I'd abandoned a while back. I read it through and it wasn't bad, but I'd clearly lost it half-way through. I'd actually typed "Blah, blah, so WHAT??" in brackets at the bottom.

Spurred on by my family's faith in me I racked my addled brain and shiftily finished it off and after double-checking it wasn't complete cobblers I sent it to a magazine this morning.

And there was I thinking that guilt was completely unproductive.

Maybe if I stand next to the washing-up and squeeze out a tear or two it'll have a similar effect on the Teens.

Porridge elbow

I seem to have developed what's fondly known in our family as "porridge elbow" - a rare form of repetitive strain injury. The term came about when my mum developed a painful elbow that needed treatment, but couldn't understand why. She doesn't use a keyboard, she doesn't play tennis and she's not on her hands and knees scrubbing floors all day long. Then it dawned on her. The reason her elbow hurt like hell was because she'd been stirring her porridge too vigorously every morning for years, to stop it sticking to the pan. Strange but true.

My injury is more obvious. Over-usage of the mouse. My left elbow is fine, but I'm forever scrolling up and down with my right hand on the critter; cutting and pasting and left and right clicking all over the place. When I move the fingers on my right hand there's a corresponding ache in my elbow that's not crippling, but niggling none the less. Like a toothache. But in my elbow.

I'm trying to navigate using the arrows on the keyboard instead, but it's tricky. I've tried using a cushion under my elbow, which made matters worse and using the mouse with my left hand but chaos ensued. I could stop using the keyboard altogether for a while and go back to the old-fashioned method of pen and paper, but the world might stop turning and I wouldn't want that to happen.

My mum solved her problem by putting her porridge in the microwave to speed things along. If only I could do the same with my novel.

And now for some library humour:

We got some new books in today. Do you want to know what they're called? (I bet you can't wait.)

The French Chef by Sue Flay
French Overpopulation by Francis Crowded
The Scent of a Man by Jim Nasium
Wind in the Willows by Russell Ingleaves
Look Younger by Fay Slift

Look, I didn't make them up okay?

It was an accident Officer!

I've read several author interviews recently where the writer claims to have fallen into writing by accident, conjuring images of them lurching around looking dazed having produced a masterpiece without noticing. Can this really happen?

Maeve Binchy apparently used to write letters home from a kibbutz in Israel to reassure her parents that she was still alive, and they sent them off to a newspaper because they were so good, sparking a successful career.

Jane Harris started writing a short story about an ex-boyfriend who happened to be a transvestite, to amuse herself while living in Portugal in the early Nineties, as there was no TV, books or money. Sparking a successful career.

Susan E Philips and her best friend decided one day - just for fun - to write a book together. After some months they apparently worked out a system. Sparking a successful career.

Catherine Spencer fell into writing as she approached the menopause, ready for a change of career, and after eavesdropping on a conversation about writing for Harlequin decided it was too good a challenge to pass up. Sparking .... you get the drift.

I don't completely believe these cases are accidental though. I suspect writing's not something you fall into unless you already have the urge.

Am I wrong?

Just tell the story woman

Things are moving along on the writing front (she says defensively.) I've sold a couple more stories, and I've started writing a new novel that I'm really excited about. It's a measure of how excited I am that I've written the equivalent amount of words as Novel 1, in about a third of the time. (I'm not very good with Maths so that might not make sense. I've written it quickly, let's put it that way.)

I feel guilty about abandoning Novel 1, though I'm hoping to go back to it at some point. It had got to the stage where some major things needed changing and I couldn't quite muster the strength. Plus I'd had this other idea you see, which wouldn't lie down and shut it's face.

The thing is, I keep remembering a quote I read on Gonna be a Writer's website - "you shouldn't practise writing you should practise finishing the writing projects that you start" - or words to that effect, and they keep tugging at my conscience. If I give up and start something new every time the going gets tough, I'll never get anything finished.

'Just tell the story, woman,' is a sentence I say to myself quite a lot. When I'm bogged down, or I've reached a saggy bit, or I've whittled away at the same paragraph over and over again until it's a completely different shape, to avoid Moving On.

But when the story won't budge and the whittling's out of hand, isn't it better to start something that feels like it might be the right shape already, with a bit of careful honing?

Okay, that's enough with the woodworking analogies.

Maybe I should have been a carpenter?

It's a Crime

One our library's best customers is a lady who's getting on a bit, likes a ciggie (judging by the smell of the books when she returns them) and reads a lot of crime novels. When I say a lot, I mean she takes out around ten or twelve on a Saturday and brings them back on a Thursday. Naturally, this means she's read just about every crime novel we've ever had in the history of crime novels, but she gets Very Angry when she can't find anything she hasn't already read.

'Utterly ridiculous,' she tutted and huffed yesterday, twirling the spinners round in an agitated fashion while I was trying to shelve. 'I've read all these, duck,' she said to me, when I accidentally caught her eye. 'I miss your table.' She looked longingly at the space that used to house a display of New Arrivals until it was deemed to be In The Way. Maybe she thought new crime novels materialised overnight, by supernatural means.

'Maybe you should try some of our other branches?' I suggested.

'I 'ave duck,' she said calmly. 'Read 'em all.'

'Would you fancy trying something different?'

'Like what?' She looked at me, outraged. 'I know what I like,' she said affronted. 'But it's very hard to find in this lot.' She gestured at the library in general and that, dear reader, is where I cut my losses and fled. I've had the conversation before, and it didn't end well then.

The fact is, she's read so many crime novels that the authors simply can't keep up with her.

I mention it on the off-chance that one of you might be writing a crime novel. Could you please finish it, publish it and get it to me by next Thursday please?

I'm scared she might be planning some crime of her own involving me, some handcuffs and possibly a couple of cigarette ends.

Red nose and cheeks

Saw this on lovely Debs blog and thought it was worth looking silly for a good cause. If you fancy a go you can download yourself a red nose here.

I'm blushing because I've received a couple of tasty awards. One is from that fine wordsmith Dumdad all the way from Paris, and I've been assured I can keep it all to my greedy self...

... and the other is from the the very writerly JJ in bloomin' Bangkok, so it's gone all International. This one I've to pass on to three worthy bloggers, so I hereby nominate Amanda, Anna Scott Graham and Lorna F.

I'm really chuffed. Plus, spring has nearly sprung. I've hung washing out today.