Month: February 2012

Pinteresting

I have a new cyber love.

Having lately discovered Pinterest, and raved about it on twitter (as much as you can rave in 140 characters) I thought I should devote an ENTIRE blog post to the subject. I’d also refer you to this post by Jane Alexander.

First off, I DON’T think it’s yet another social networking thing. Well, it is of course, but I’m not using it for that really. You can use it for social networking if you’re really crafty and arty and have lots of pretty work to show off and sell; it’s a great showcase for that.

I like it for two reasons though. First, it’s BRILLIANT if you need to procrastinate and you’ve been pressing refresh on twitter for the last ten minutes. Get stuck into Pinterest and you could easily fritter away an hour or so without even breaking a sweat. Take your pick of cute kittens in funny poses, inspirational posters prettified up, a FABULOUS collection of forgotten houses which are very atmospheric, dream up a house of fantastic staircases and massive rooms (a stair case that has you going up stairs but down a slide! WANT!) and drool over the most amazing libraries and bookshops in the world. Fashion, craft, DIY projects, hairstyles, etc etc etc. Seriously easy to lose time without even noticing.

The other reason I love it, a slightly less frivolous reason, is for inspiration. As a writer, you can find photos of people to match your characters or settings which can both motivate you to keep going and spark something new off. I know lots of people like to have that visual cue and I do at times, though it’s not my particular ‘thing’. And those abandoned houses I mentioned earlier? Fabulous story prompts! It’s not just writers who can find inspiration, either. Designers, crafters, artists –  there are a million ways to use Pinterest to get project ideas, share tips, make mood boards or pin colour combinations for future reference. You organise your pictures into boards – imagine you have a series of corkboards that you’re sticking these pictures too, each with your own focus. As far as I know you can have as many boards as you like which means you can organise your pictures whichever way suits you. I have 21 boards at the minute but I’m sure I’ll add to this continually. I also have my twitter and Facebook accounts linked in so I can, every now and then, post a particularly good picture to my usual networks too.

In case you’re a particularly conscientious person, the owners of the images do not lose out, as the ‘pin’ is only a link to the original work. It’s not removing the original image or copying it but bookmarking it. Which, by the way, means you can very often find new blogs to read or artists to follow. And there the link back into social networking; even if you’re not using it to extend your network it’s still very social and another way of linking up with people who like the same things you do. This is, in my opinion, why it’s not a tool like google+. I tried Google+ and yeah, it was cool, it was a mix of twitter and Facebook and I could see why people liked it. But I stopped using it, because at the end of the day it didn’t really do anything that twitter and Facebook weren’t already doing. Pinterest is different because I’m not using it to network, I’m not trying to gain followers or get more people to listen to me, and it is adding a new, visual dimension to my online activity that wasn’t there before. Whether I need to use Pinterest or not is a different matter, but I like it and as long as I continue to like it I’ll keep using it.

Here’s me on Pinterest, if you fancy seeing what sort of things I like and the boards that I’ve made. If you don’t have a Pinterest account or invitation then leave a comment and I’ll send an invite to your email address. Because I’m THAT nice… 😉

 

Spring

I hate February. I’m actually beginning to really hate February. Last year and the year before Andrew lost two of his grandparents; my maternal grandmother died at the end of January nearly twenty years ago, and Andrew’s other grandad fell ill in February several years ago and died two months later. Now my own grandpa is dying, my grandma is struggling with dementia (not to mention losing her husband of sixty-something years) and I’m starting to think February is cursed.

It’s grey and cold, neither winter nor spring, and any foolhardy plants that spring up are quickly frostbitten and put in their place. I’m amazed they still keep trying every year; I’m seriously considering hibernating next February and urging everyone I love to do the same. All the energy I was finding before Christmas has been hit by the mess that is January and I can’t quite summon it back, not properly. Although happily my writing doesn’t seem to be taking the same hit. If anything, it’s helping.

Daniel’s class have been studying growth. They’ve brought home little pots containing cress seeds and grass seeds. I’ve eyed each of these warily as I’m not what you’d call green-fingered. I kill off almost any plant within minutes. As we have a first floor flat with no possibility of a garden this isn’t TOO much of a problem. Not much call for a gifted gardener up here, but these school projects have needed to be done so like a good mummy I tried to forget about my Kiss of Death to plants and take care of them. They didn’t do too badly. The cress lasted two weeks; the grass is still going.

Then last week he brought home a pot with no shoots or signs of life, just thick, black soil in a pot with a coloured label that he’d drawn himself.

‘It’s a sunflower, Mummy,’ he said proudly. ‘We have to give it sunshine and water and measure how it grows.’ Oh, no. This isn’t grass or cress, this is, like, a real flower. It needs to be looked after and there’s a real chance it will fall victim to my curse and never even shoot and then he’ll have to go into school and tell his teacher and all the other children whose mummies probably have beautifully cultivated gardens that his mummy killed his sunflower and… ok, I’m rambling. But I did fret, just a little.

So I took it home, put it on the kitchen windowsill with the grass and the cress and watered it. I watered it whenever the soil felt dry but to be honest I didn’t expect much. And sunshine? It’s the North East of England, in February, which as I’ve already explained is cursed. Put together with my napalm touch, the sunflower was doomed before it even got to the kitchen windowsill.

But.

Last week a tiny little green-white shoot peeked up out of the soil. Then it grew- it actually grew! Now it has four little leaves, a strong green stalk and it’s still growing.

It’s like a reminder that life does actually go on. I check it everyday – heck, I check it everytime I go to the sink and marvel that despite everything, the sunflower is growing and stretching up, seeking the sun just as it’s supposed to.

It’s suddenly, the last day or two, become desperately important to me that I don’t let the sunflower die. Daniel’s still vaguely interested but I have put all my hopes of a happy spring on this sunflower. I don’t know why – it’s silly. My grandparents are old and frail, and I know everyone has to die sometime. And life isn’t too bad aside from that – Andrew’s business is going really well, the children are happy and healthy and my writing is progressing nicely all things considered. I’m just not very friendly with February.

But March will come soon and the sunflower will keep growing.

FINISHED

This morning I finished my first ever draft of a novel. A WHOLE novel. What I wrote. Me.

Ahem.

I know that for real, proper authors this isn’t a big deal – and maybe it shouldn’t be such a big deal? But it really is. Not only am I a bit of a procrastinator, and have all the usual writerly hangups about fear of failure, etc etc, but I have genuinely struggled over the last year or so with life in general and self-doubt and all the rest of it. Anyway, no more, I have achieved my next writing goal and finished an entire novel, and I’m blooming proud of myself.

I’m not sure of the exact word count because a) it needs quite a lot of rewriting and knocking into shape and what have you. It is the epitome of Anne Lamott’s “s****y first draft” but it’s definitely got a decent novel in there. And b) because the last leg was all done longhand in my cheapy, scruffy, beloved reporter’s notebook, so I’m about to start typing it up ready to print out. And from there, I’ll leave it for a few days before attacking it with a pencil and red biro. In the meantime, donning a Real Writer’s mantle, I have a competition entry to write, a new ebook to plan (my first is HERE in case I haven’t mentioned it before…) and  my nearly-finished historical to get to the finishing line. And, by the way, this is HUGELY more likely having finished one first draft. So it’s more than likely that in a couple of months I will have TWO finished first drafts of novels and in six months I will hopefully have both rewritten, polished, and out on submission. Which will probably mean many, many anguished blog posts and practising gracious responses to rejection.

So, because I know EVERYONE is agog to know the details of my masterpiece, here you go…

It’s a YA thriller, aimed at the younger end of the age range (around 11-16), and the working title (thanks to the very brilliant MarshallBuckley) is SKIVE. The pitch, developed a little from the one I gave my twitter pals this morning (and, btw, trying to get across the point of book on twitter in as few tweets as possible is brilliant practice for pitching), is…

Nicky skives off the school trip to Newcastle & ends up on a quest for a mysterious artefact, involving supernatural villains & a ghost who can’t quite get over his death.

I have practiced my award acceptance speech and put the champagne in the fridge. All of which are, as well as this blog post, quite obviously new avoidance tactics for starting the revision…

 

Write A Great Synopsis

2012 is the year I finally finish off my two ongoing WIPS, then begin the ordeal of putting together a submission package and sending it all off. With that in mind, it’s perfect timing that I’m helping Nicola Morgan with the blog tour for her new book, Write A Great Synopsis: An Expert Guide. This short ebook has got some brilliant ideas in for turning said ordeal into something manageable and even exciting. No, really!

Without further ado, let me hand over to the Crabbit One…

Hello, Becca, and thanks for hosting me on the Write a Great Synopsis (WAGS) blog tour. Not that, *cough*, you had much choice…

I thought a sensible thing to do for my lovely blog hosts who want an actual post would be to give each one a different extract from the book. (There will be links to the whole blog tour on my blog sidebar.) So, what will I offer to your readers? Well, in WAGS I have a whole chapter devoted to answering actual questions from writers. I thought I’d give you three of them here.

What if your novel is exceptionally long?

It doesn’t mean that the synopsis should be or even needs to be. If you’ve written Anna Karenina, leave out the farming stuff and that should help a lot. A book that is very long is usually so because there are many obstacles or incidents to get through, in which case not all need be mentioned individually: “Seraphina spends fifteen years on the ranch, working her way through a series of increasingly unsuitable men” is a perfectly adequate way to convey a whole section of your saga. If your book is long because of rich description or characterisation, or farming, that is stuff which doesn’t appear in a synopsis anyway.

Do I really have to include the ending?

Another blog-reader, Laura Mary, wondered whether this is necessary if the ending gives away a vital twist, the knowledge of which will spoil the enjoyment for the reader. Yes, almost everyone agrees that endings must be given in synopses for agents and editors. Yes, it may remove some of their anticipation while reading the book, but they are professionals and they will survive the pain. Besides, if you write your synopsis well enough, they will still get that “Ahhh, clever ending!” feeling when reading the synopsis itself.

What’s more important: content or style?

Neal wondered whether it’s a “judgement call between content and style.” He says, “I’m struggling to work out the balance between making a synopsis a proof of the structure as a viable vehicle for a compelling story, and it giving an idea of style and tone, which seems to me needs a slightly more expansive approach.”

I don’t think the two ever have to be mutually exclusive. I certainly don’t think style and tone require a more expansive approach: they can be conveyed with no extra words, just well chosen words. I do understand the question, though, and can see why writers might ask it. I just believe that a writer who is even asking the question most likely has enough skill to tread the balance and satisfy the needs for both content and style. However, you cannot hope to achieve a piece of flash fiction; a synopsis is a functional exercise, little more.

(Extract ends)

Hope that was useful!

Write a Great Synopsis covers everything about synopsis-writing, clearly and reassuringly. At the end of it I believe you truly will say to yourself, “Don’t panic – it’s only a synopsis!” That is my aim.

All commenters below (by Feb 15th) will be entered into the Big WAGS Competition, with chances to win a critique of your synopsis by the Crabbit Old Bat herself! One comment per person on each blog – though you can add to your chances by commenting on the other posts on the tour. Details of all stops on the tour will appear on my blog (Help! I Need a Publisher!) as they go out.

Thank you for listening and I do hope I can help you write a great synopsis! For details about the book, including buying options, go here.  The link direct to Amazon UK is here.

Thanks again for letting me visit!

Pleasure! Now, off to write…

Love is in the Air

Crikey, where did January go??

So, I bet you’re all on tenterhooks wondering how the happiness project is going? Well…

January’s focus was on energy and having fun. Now, I didn’t get very far with ticking things off on a resolutions chart, and I didn’t change my whole style of life to suddenly have bags of energy. I think my family would actually have been terrified if I had, to be honest. And I didn’t have the big cull that I’d wanted to have to get rid of all that draining clutter. BUT I did make some small changes, and big changes can’t happen without small changes first, can they?

I wanted to exercise more, eat more healthily (more about that in a sec), try new things, cull, organize and laugh more. I have started regular exercise (I’m not going to keep saying “not as much as I wanted, but…” Just add that onto all of these things, please? ta) in the form of Pilates – I can’t afford to go to a class but fitness tv and a couple of DVDs from eBay have been my rescuers here and I’ve got a couple of routines and videos that I love now and that really push me. I never, ever thought I’d find a form of exercise I not only enjoyed but looked forward to, so this is a HUGE lifestyle breakthrough. Eating healthily – I don’t do diets. I like food too much and the risk of doing a diet is that I fall off the wagon, hate myself and end up eating to make myself feeling better. Er, no thanks. What I am trying to do is reduce portion sizes and try to choose healthy options at mealtimes, cutting out snacks or replacing with low-fat ones. My rule of thumb is less than 5% fat and I’m doing pretty well at sticking to that. Luckily I’m not fussy and do really enjoy salad so that helps. The other thing with making it a generally healthier lifestyle is that hopefully it will give me better eating habits for life and surely no-one seriously expects me to have no chocolate or cake ever again?? GAH!

A word about “healthy choices” though. In many, many diet books they will try to convince you that it won’t cost you any more than your normal shopping to eat healthily. Um. This is (how can I put it?) misinformed unless you are in the lucky position of genuinely not noticing everything that you spend on your shopping. Fruit and vegetables and low-fat yoghurts and healthy cereals etc etc etc DO cost more than junk. They do. It’s a fact. Rubbish food on the other hand costs relatively little and bulks out four good appetites cheaply. A sponge cake for 6 for example can cost 50p. Seriously. You can’t buy 6 bananas for that. And that’s if you’re doing a straight swap, unhealthy for healthy. If other members of

the family are not giving up sweets and biscuits etc you still need to buy at least one or two things for them. Swap white rice for brown or white bread for wholemeal? Great, if everyone is happy about that, otherwise it’s just double the amount of bread. Anyone with genuinely helpful suggestions on this subject, I would seriously love to hear them.

So, to sum up, I’ve done a few changes for the better, I’d say I do have more energy than before Christmas. And I did lose 4lbs, hooray!

 

February, now. Following my mentor’s advice (The Happiness Project), I’m focusing on my marriage this month. I am incredibly lucky to have a strong and meaningful relationship that’s going strong thirteen years on, since I left school. But in Gretchen Rubin’s book, she sums up February as “Remember Love” and that is always good advice, no? So I’m making a conscious effort to try and work on my little negative traits and remind my gorgeous husband how much I love him. One of the resolutions she makes which I love is to “Give proofs of love”. This is is biggy for me actually – you remember when you first get into a romance and you do silly little gestures, just because you love someone? After thirteen years, especially thirteen years of life as a grown up hitting you round the face with a wet kipper, you let those slide and work everyday on dealing with the big monsters together (too many metaphors? Tough, this is MY blog post). Well, we deal with those pretty well together now. So there you go, that’s February… Oh, and by the way. If you want to follow my lovely husband on twitter (he doesn’t tweet often but, and this is in no way biased, he’s funny when he does), try here.

 

 

PS I also read a very inspiring post on exmoorejane’s blog the other day, about why writers blog. Mine has been rather neglected lately but Jane’s post reminded me that I just love words and writing and my blog isn’t about being a mum or a writer or whatever, it’s just about being me. I need to remember that more, and so MY blog will be more of MY ramblings and less about building a platform or trying to force a post into narrow categories and hopefully it will also be more frequently updated! Thanks for bearing with me (again) so far. You rock!