Tagged!

I seem to have been tagged by John! Apparently, this is how it works: Display the award. Link back to the person who gave you this award. Nominate at least 7 other blogs. Put those blogs on your blog. Leave a message on the blogs of the people you've nominated. You can only answer in one word.

So here goes:

1. Where is your cell phone? Pocket
2. Where is your significant other? Out
3. Your hair colour? (Dark)blonde
4. Your mother? Kind
5. Your father? Cool
6. Your favourite thing? Children
7. Your dream last night? Surreal
8. Your dream/goal? Published
9. The room you’re in? Study
10. Your hobby? Writing
11. Your fear? Swimming
12. Where do you want to be in 6 years? Alive
13. Where were you last night? Skeelly
14. What you’re not? Waterbaby
15. One of your wish-list items? Castle
16. Where you grew up? England
17. The last thing you did? Emails
18. What are you wearing? Clothes
19. Your TV? Panasonic
20. Your pet? None
21. Your computer? Acer
22. Your mood? Content
23. Missing someone? Yes
24. Your car? Polo
25. Something you’re not wearing? Ballgown
26. Favourite store? Book
27. Your summer? British
28. Love someone? Indeedy
29. Your favourite colour? Purple
30. When is the last time you laughed? Today
31. Last time you cried? December

And I will tag...

Erm...

SallyQ, Nathan Bransford, Uneducated Man, Magic Wanderer, Womens' Stories, The Raw Deal and Joe...



Have fun.

It's a start!

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Today went reasonably well. Despite the obvious hiccups, I was able to straighten out chapters two and three and I'm pleased enough with the results so far. I had come up with a few ideas on holiday which I managed to put onto the page today for the first time. I also came up with another brainwave re chapter two last night... I even refrained from writing it down until today, keeping it in my head until ready to work with it - so now I know it must have been a good idea because otherwise, I would have forgotten it.

The other challenge I have at the moment is that my better half is now at home. He suggested we go for a walk this afternoon, maybe call in at the tennis club to find out what's what (we played and enjoyed a lot of tennis on holiday). I'm happy with regular walking. I would also be happy to fit in a regular tennis session each week so, in keeping with the usual January stuff, that's another thing I'll have to keep you informed about.

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So... what happened to chapter 3?

...

Simple enough question - not sure what the answer is though. I was reading through the "story so far," as you do when you haven't looked at the thing for a while. When I came to chapter three, I realised straight away that there was a big chunk missing! Was it on an Alphie file waiting to be downloaded? No. Was it on the desktop version? No. Did I, in my attempt to make sure my flash stick back ups were up to date, inadvertently overwrite the updated version with an earlier one? Possibly... Damn! What to do next? Try and remember how that part of the story went I suppose... Grrrr...

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Getting There...

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One more day to go, the kids will be back at school and some semblence of normality can resume. I have the most up to date version of my manuscript copied to a flashstick (or two) and from tomorrow I am relocating to some peace and quiet (hopefully). I've even switched myself off from other distractions and have resolved not to get involved in any new versions. This is it now. This is me taking my life a bit more seriously with a self imposed deadline (Easter) to knock this thing into a publishable state. I'll pop back from time to time with a progress report, not because I assume anyone out there is interested but because I think it would be a good way to keep me on track!

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Happy New Year

...

Yep it's that time again. We came home from Cape Verde on Wednesday and I've been trying to get back into a routine since - never easy at the best of times. You spend a week or so getting used to the hot climate in some far away place, then once used to it, you have to come home to the freezing cold again pretty soon. It's a hard life!

Christmas was lovely. New Year was cold (we were back home by then). Anyway - enough about the silly season; it was escaped - yet again - that's all you need to know!

Far more important is what I'm going to do with this new year now it's here. Hmmm, well I could do what I normally do and start off with a long list of resolutions which I will gradually lose sight of or give up on altogether, slipping into old bad habits... Or, I can take stock of my dwindling life and make the most of what's left of it (which largely boils down to having a long list of resolutions - but ones I will stick to regardless).

Last years list went something like this:

Enjoy life more
Exercise regularly
Be more organised (where have we heard that one before!)
Spend more time with my family
Spend more time with my friends
Work harder
Be more disciplined (ha!)

I don't see anything wrong with this list so I will carry it forward to this year.

My personal daily "To Do" list last year went something like this:

5 pages of screenplay (I think I might have managed 5 pages - in total...)
Carry on with MD edits (I have carried on with these)
Finish GW and sub (well I did finish it - it just didn't get subbed...)
Try an exercise to a prompt or two... (I managed a few of these sporadically - just not daily)
Blog (ahem!)

Perhaps it is a tad unrealistic to attempt to write a screenplay and edit a novel at the same time so I'm going to revise this list to simply take into account the novel for now. I'm also going to remove the specific mention of GW for subbing and generalise by saying I will go through all my shorts over the course of the year and start subbing them.

So, new list:

Continue MD edits
Daily writing exercises (prompted)
Consider revisions to shorts and sub (over the year)
Blog 3+ times weekly!

I will put the screenplay on the back burner for now.


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Back to Normal?

It's been a funny couple of weeks. Half term has been and gone and I have had the urge to catch up with everything this week.

Part of the children's chaos is caused by not having anywhere to put anything. Clothes are an issue with our youngest in particular. We decided a chest of drawers would be the solution but could we find one? All the usual suspects were just ridiculous (pricewise); I mean, you could buy a Georgian original for less (not that we could find such a thing either). We ended up checking out the local auction room on Friday and they had a couple of options. I couldn't attend the auction itself so decided to leave a bid. We had a call late that night to say that "One of our bids was successful," and that they would be open between 9 and 11 the following morning. Ignoring the odd statement about "One of our bids," as we had only left one bid, N went to pick up the chest of drawers. It turned out that what we had actually bought was... a box of first edition comics! They had transposed the last two digits in the lot number and had us down for lots 269 and 296... Don't you just love the competance of these people!

My other bugbear last week was finding two recycling boxes left next to the dustbin. Now don't get me wrong, I have nothing against recycling per se. My issue here is that as far as I'm concerned, we are all already recycling our rubbish in a far more efficient manner - from the kerbside too! What happens is, the rubbish is collected each week from our dustbins and chucked into an incinerator. It burns and is then converted into electricity. This is brilliant - and so it should be when you take into account how ever many millions it cost to build the damn thing. Admitedly it's not a huge amount of electricity but it'll be even less if we all have to send our rubbish elsewhere. Also, by elsewhere, I mean off the island (probably at the taxpayers' expense) so we don't even benefit. Surely the government is going to get tired of paying for it all to be shipped off the island? Or maybe, they'll just chuck it back into the incinerator anyway? This is why I rang up the recycling department and asked them to remove my boxes.


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Life, what is it but a dream?

That's all very well, but whilst I'm busy dreaming away here, life is in fact passing me by at an alarming rate!

This is an(other) attempt to put myself back on track. How many times have I been derailed now? I have had a very strange three months in which I have given myself some very good advice and then promptly ignored it. I feel that the past four years has been a bit of a waste somehow and yet... I refuse to accept that it has all been wasted. I keep telling myself that I can use the experience, write it all out of my system. To be honest though, I would rather leave the internet behind.

Normally, when you get sucked into a system, there comes a point when you get spat out again. With me though, I feel as though whatever (whoever?) has sucked me in refuses to spit me out. I began to fear the worst some time ago but didn't want to admit to myself, least of all to anyone else, that I might have a "problem." It was when I started to google "internet addiction" that I had to admit to this. I now have to take steps to undo bad internet habits: not logging on until I've written at least 500 words; not checking my emails for the 100th time before lunch; not logging on to forums or message boards; winding down any Facebook activity. Yep, all these are time wasters. They aid procrastination. They suck away any real productivity. This is where the last four years of my life have disappeared to and it's shocking!

I would like to whittle all internet stuff down to blogging but I don't know how realistic that would be. I mean, how can I withdraw from the internet and blog my progress? How ironic would that be? Of course, there's the trusty paper journal (and yes, I do keep a "real" paper journal); there's no real need to make it electronic. Hmmm... I could waste some more time wondering about this - or I could just shut up shop and move on.

Whose dream is it anyway?


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