Kite Flying

We went down to London at the weekend, to visit some friends who have just moved to Black Heath. It was a wonderful, lazy time, incorporating roast lamb, pub lunches, good wine and kite flying - as you can see (just about) from the photo.

My husband keeps a kite in our car at all times, just in case the perfect kite-flying opportunity should occur, as it did on Sunday. It's a great kite for such a thing - you just toss it up there, and it flies. No fancy string work, no running starts, no hassle. It's like taking a bird for a walk on a lead. And it has a very pretty tail.

I, on the other hand, keep a notebook on standby at all times, in case the perfect idea arises, or I see something interesting, or I want to look busy so that the woman sitting next to me on the train doesn't try to start a conversation. It comes in handy a little more often than the kite.

The only problem, really, is that it's not just one notebook. It's dozens. And many of them have a few pages of scrawled notes, then lots and lots of blank pages. Or shopping lists.

I am currently spring cleaning the study. This includes emptying the filing cabinet of the piles and files of paper that have been dumped in there, randomly, over the last year, and sorting them all out into a coherent system. I'm almost done with the household stuff, but there's still a vast pile of paper on the sofa.

That's right. Writing notes. Reams of them.

Notecards, pads, paper scraps, receipts, notebooks, pages torn from notebooks, pages of diaries, things torn from magazines, photocopies, folders, envelopes (backs of), files, printouts, charts, family trees, and pages and pages of A4.

I have hanging folders. I have square cut folders. I have plastic wallets. I am (normally) very good at organising things.

I will find a way to make sense of the madness.



And then I'll start on the computer files.

Winteriness

We had our first snow of the winter here today; all gone by lunchtime, sadly. I had an email from a delegate for a conference in February asking if it would be cold - it's 25 degrees Celsius where he is.

I don't think I'd like a warm winter. Much as I may complain about the cold, it still seems the designated order of things, to me, and I'd be absolutely bamboozled by warm sunny days in December. I like my seasons, and I like them at the correct times, thanks.

For anybody counting, I've now gathered four rejection letters for my novel. It's not actually surprising, and I can't really be upset by it. More a feeling that this is the process, and it's a learning one. I like the idea that I'm still taking steps forward, however small they may be. Actually submitting anything at all was quite a reasonable one, in fact, and I'm still a little bit proud of myself for it.

Anyway, I have new and better things to work on. So Far and Out of Sight was proving particularly stubborn with regards to POV. After a few attempts at the opening, I stepped back, and am now scribbling away in long hand. Somehow I've found the tone I want much easier to reach if it's handwritten. Perhaps it's something about the story. Or perhaps it's something about my beautiful fountain pen and new ink...

While I was trying to fix whatever it was that had gone 'bang, crunch' with that story, I started absently writing another one that was hovering in the background, and that's chugging along at a reasonable clip. Also a couple of articles, and a short story. Sometimes I forget that I get much further, overall, if I can shift my focus when something isn't coming together, rather than just staring at the screen and waiting for it to right itself. Often, when I come back to the problematic piece after working on something else, everything is miraculously resolved. I think it must be pixies, or aliens, or something.

Thanks, guys. New hats with bells on for you for Christmas.

Tagged

Bonnie tagged me, so….

5 Little Known Facts About Me

1. I was born in the United Arab Emirates. My Dad was working out in Abu Dhabi, Dubai and Sharjah, and my parents moved over there for a couple of years. The day they flew out, they discovered that Mum was pregnant with me. My Mum’s parents flew out for my birth and stayed for about a month. In 2001, I went back out there with my Dad, on my way to Singapore and Australia, and we found their old flat, and the hotel where my Grandma would drink triple gin and tonics at lunchtime (that she thought were singles) and wonder why she felt tipsy.
2. I have a weird obsession with spreadsheets. Whenever I’m faced with a problem, I usually decide that the best way to deal with it is by making a spreadsheet. Every story I’ve written has a spreadsheet. As does every story I’m ever going to write. I find it impossible to keep going if I don’t know where I am, where I’m going next, and what else needs to be done. Admittedly, they do change hugely once I’ve started writing.
3. When I was twelve, I read Tamora Pierce’s In the Hand of the Goddess fourteen and a half times in two weeks. Then it had to go back to the library. Some time later I bought my own copy, and have read it many more times since then, along with most of the others in the series. When I was younger, I really thought that Alanna and Jon belonged together. Now I see that she made the right choice. Being old and sensible is boring.
4. One day I’m going to learn to speak Welsh. When we moved to Wales, I was almost nine, and all the other kids had already been learning for years. No one really bothered trying to teach me any Welsh until I hit secondary school. I’d just started to get into it when I had to choose my options. Welsh clashed with Drama, so it got cut. Now I can only speak half-remembered phrases and mistranslations. My Mum teaches junior school Welsh, so I can understand it at around that level. My Grandfather was a Welsh speaker, and so is my Uncle. And one day I’ll learn too, even if only a little bit. On the other hand, I did do my Paleography and Codicology coursework at university in Welsh; we had to make a book and then fill it with text of our choosing, written in a certain script. I chose a Welsh text; it was harder to see the errors that way.
5. This morning I went to the Post Office and sent my query and sample pages for Saving the Unicorns to a selection of ideal agents. I feel very courageous about it, too.

Snowdrops

The snowdrops aren't actually out here yet, lest you be all excited. But I am patiently waiting for the bulbs to sprout. The picture is to keep me going in the meantime.

As usual, we've planted bulbs all over the flower beds, and no longer have any idea where they're going to come up. It'll be a nice surprise, I think, and at least I won't notice if any don't make it.

With the New Year comes the New Novel. I'm patiently polishing the synopsis and first three chapters for Saving the Unicorns, and will be sending them out to prospective agents over this month. But I promised myself that come January 2007 I would start writing So Far and Out of Sight, and so I have.

Over the festive period, in the hour or so I had to myself during the week and a half spent at my parents' house, I set out my vague outline, splitting the major events of the novel into the relevant time frames. And when I say 'vague', I mean 'smoke-like in its ability to slip through my fingers'. But, it's there, and I've worked with less. I know that once I get into it, things will start firming up, and becoming clear.

I'm aiming for 1,000 words a day, averaged out, and am on target so far. I like my beginning. I'm becoming interested in my characters. I'm unsure as to why Saskia is staying in the Yellow Room, but at least it's over the Rose Garden, even if the colour is going to give her a headache for the next 100,000 words. And Edward's looking pretty cute already.

I've been thinking about this story for about the last year, so even if I don't know exactly how I'm getting from A to B, I do know the heart of it, which helps. I put together a sparse storyboard of pictures for it last month, a triptych of images that define the three parts of the story, and it's hanging over my desk. If I remember, I'll take a picture tomorrow to post here.

This story is my snowdrop; a sprouting idea of a thing, and I'm unsure where it will emerge, bright green against the backdrop of the everyday, and growing, growing, growing. But soon it's going to start to flower.

2007

It's only just 2007, and I already appear to be having posting issues. I had this fab, new year, new start post all done, and now it's missing.

Anyway, the decorations are down, the tree dismembered, the holiday spirit abandoned. In their place, a fresh, cool new year, full of opportunity and wonderment. Lots to do, see, achieve in 2007, which I'm sure I'll discuss as the year progresses.

In the meantime, this is Dinas Bran in North Wales, where I got engaged, just over a year ago. This photo was actually taken by a friend of my father on that very day, just a few hours after the momentous event.