Every now and then I like to get out of my cave and meet people face-to-face – especially writers, naturally! Today I went to the Leicester Writes Writers Meet Up (see, I resisted the temptation to insert an apostrophe and/or a hyphen there!) and saw a few familiar faces from the festival back in June, as well as meeting some new people too. I always find it inspiring to hear writers reading their work; this evening was no exception.
I have to big up Farhana Shaikh from Dahlia Publishing for organising these events – she does a great job.
If you live in the Leicester area and are interested in attending writing-related events, I recommend you join the Leicester Writing Events Facebook group, which pulls together everything writerly that’s happening in the area.
I don’t have any photos from this evening, so here’s a completely unrelated doodle.
I don’t like the term ‘won’ for NaNoWriMo, but if you got your 50,000 words down by the end of November, congratulations! That’s quite an achievement. Even if you didn’t make it to 50,000, it’s an achievement to have written anything. I hope by this time you’ve had a well-deserved rest.
I wrote a blog over at Help For Writers about what to do now you’ve done your first draft, or even just the skeleton of the first draft. Getting it from first to final draft might be arduous and it might be time-consuming, but getting words on a page for the first time is the hardest part in my opinion. It’s the same with drawing and painting – blank page syndrome. You have to get something down before you can see where you’ve gone wrong and start correcting it. I hope you find my tips helpful!
“Join the Triumph of the skies…”
I don’t usually feel Christmassy until the week before Christmas, but this year, because I’ll be overseas for Christmas, I’ve had to start all my preparation early, which has put me firmly into the spirit of the season. My Christmas cake is marinating in brandy, presents are wrapped and I’m looking forward to holding a belated celebration in the New Year.
I’ve been accepted as an Intermediate Member! I danced a little happy dance when I got the email.
If you’re thinking about using a copy-editor or proofreader and for some inexplicable reason you don’t want to use my services, I recommend you look for someone who is a Society for Editors & Proofreaders (SfEP) member. You have to prove a certain level of competence – including training and experience – before you are accepted as a member.
The SfEP has a great set of FAQs about using copy-editors and proofreaders – if you’re sitting on the fence, you might like to take a look.
I was worried that they’d be printed upside down or that the colours would turn out looking completely wrong, but never fear. Printed.com did me proud. Now I just have to get on with writing them!
Finally finished my Christmas card 2015! I’ve sent the file off to the printer now, crossing my fingers that I’ve got the file setup right and it doesn’t come back printed on the wrong side of the fold or upside down or just plain weird.
The Apprentice is my guilty pleasure and I’m not ashamed of it! (Well, says my inner copy-editor, that would make it not a guilty pleasure, then. Or not a guilty pleasure. Wherever you want to put the italics, that’s fine by me.)
Last week the candidates had to write, produce and sell a children’s book in three days. That’s right – one day to write it, one day to get it made (complete with illustrations and design work) and one day to sell it into stores large and small. The tasks on The Apprentice are getting a bit tired and samey after ten years of the same formula, but this one was right up my alley.
(Photo courtesy of pixabay.com)
At first I was cringing as I watched Sam wax lyrical about Aristotle and the Snottydink, but by the end I wanted his team to win as I liked his enthusiasm and creative spirit! At least he was thinking about the plot and the overall ‘message’, unlike the other team who did have a plot, but one that wasn’t accurate in the information about honey production that it was trying to convey to its young audience. Nothing gets my goat quite like a children’s book that is wrong, wrong, wrong about something factual.
Sam seems like such a nice guy, I want him to do well in the process but usually it seems that the most horrible characters do the best on The Apprentice so I fully expect the final four to be Richard, Charleine, Selena and Vana, or possibly Brett.
I think the episode went a good way towards illustrating why writing a children’s book isn’t just as easy as A, B, C. I definitely have a lot of admiration for the graphic designers who came up with the visuals in just a day!
That reminds me, I need to finish off – start, actually! – the artwork for this year’s Christmas card… I got off to a good start with my watercolour sketch, but my first full size effort was doomed to failure after the masking fluid didn’t behave quite like I thought it would.
Halloween marks a turning point in the year; in England we’ve recently put the clocks back and the nights start to arrive earlier and last longer. The spirits of winter are breathing down my neck, so I thought it was time to get the watercolours out for the first time in years and have a little practice before embarking on the larger painting that will be this year’s Christmas card. So, without the aid of masking fluid, we have my first attempt at a snow scene…
I’ll be a lot happier working on a larger scale, but the snow fits my mood.
It’s almost NaNoWriMo time! If you’ve never heard of it before, that’s National Novel Writing Month. The aim is to write 50,000 words during November, which will hopefully form the first draft of your novel.
I’ve gone down the rabbit hole which is the internet and emerged, bleary-eyed and cramped, with my top tips for NaNoWriMo. I hope you find them useful!
After so much reading about NaNoWriMo I almost feel inspired to have a go myself, but not quite inspired enough to actually have a go. After reading tales from the coalface – people who work 60-hour weeks and look after kids and pets and elderly relatives and pursue other hobbies and still find time to hit the 50,000-word target – I’ve come to the conclusion that I’m a wuss. One thing I do have, however, is this:
I bought it on impulse earlier in the year and the pages are still virgin. If I can at least write in that every day during November, I’ll consider my writerly itch scratched.
On the shore of a different creative sea, I’ve started sketching out this year’s Christmas card. It involves a lot of snow, and I’ve run out of masking fluid, so I’m wondering whether I can get away with a blank piece of paper (it’s a very snowy scene).
I already wrote a summary of my experiences at the Cheltenham Literature Festival; now I’ve gone into a bit more detail over at the Help For Writers blog.
I didn’t mention my coughing fit in the middle of the Simon Armitage event. The woman next to me looked very disapproving indeed and offered me a cough sweet (I’d already had three, but perhaps they were too rustly for her comfort).
During the Alexander McCall Smith event I was sitting on the left hand side of a lady with her left arm in a sling. I spent the whole hour trying to sit as still as possible for fear of knocking it.
I found the audiences very genteel. Hardly anyone seemed to take photos or use their phone during the events – which was nice in a way, but made me feel very conspicuous. I always keep my phone on silent in events and turn the flash off, but I’m surprised there weren’t more people live-tweeting – at the beginning and end of events, at the very least. (I try to be polite and considerate and restrict my phone-fiddling to the first and last couple of minutes. I’m not a total philistine.) There was much less activity than I expected on the #CheltLitFest hashtag. Maybe I should be thankful for small mercies, but I don’t think it has to be an either-or between highbrow literature and social media – I enjoy both!
In Cheltenham itself I recommend the Queens Hotel, which is right next to the literature festival and has a great bar with very friendly staff and loads of different gins, as well as amazing wallpaper designed by Pugin in the stairwell. At the time of booking it was the same price as the usual ordinary chain hotels!
I also highly recommend John Gordons whisky bar. If you love a good single malt you’ll be in heaven.
Last week I went to the local Society for Editors & Proofreaders meet-up. It’s only the second time I’ve attended; everyone seems very friendly and keen to talk shop. There was a debate about whether eggs Benedict need a capital ‘B’ and, if not, whether eggs New York should therefore take lower case. I was surprised that people talk so much about work at these meet-ups, but having just read the last sentence back to myself, perhaps I’m not all that surprised. Every now and then you need people to talk to about capitalisation and apostrophes!
At the weekend I went to the thirtieth meeting of the W. E. Johns Appreciation Society. For those of you who don’t know Captain W. E. Johns, he was the author of well over a hundred ‘Biggles’ books. Many people don’t know that he also wrote other series – not only the ‘Worrals’, ‘Gimlet’ and ‘Steeley’ books for young people, but a science fiction series, romance novels for adults, and nonfiction books on aviation and gardening.
I’m too young to be part of the ‘Biggles generation’ – the biggest W. E. Johns fans tend to be around the age of my parents or older – but my parents enjoyed the books and read them to me, and I became a fan in turn. I also find the geekiness of the true Biggles fans fascinating, and on Saturday, among other topics I enjoyed talks about Tierra del Fuego (the scene for Biggles at World’s End) and the role played by an obscure Leicestershire aerodrome – now disused – in the war effort (it was an important ferrying base).
A shelf of vintage children’s books at the W. E. Johns Appreciation Society meeting last Saturday.
