New Year Resolutions

I will get back to blogging and pray someone reads me, responds and generally persuades me it is really worth doing

I will find/make/borrow enough money to update my website so that it doesn't look as if I've only ever written one novel

I will get into Twitter

I will SO follow other people's blogs, tweets and facebook posts - slavishly

I will get to grips with my new phone and use at least 10% of its mind-blowing potential

I will silence the voice inside me that says all this is a waste of time - procrastination, even - and that I should be getting on with WRITING

I will agressively market my new novel A Good Time for Miracles * - buy it and read it, you scmuck, GRRR! - something like that??

I will diligently pursue a publisher for my third novel, Eleanor's Journey

I will crack on with the research for my fourth novel (which will be set in the Inner Hebrides) and have a plot outline and some characters in the bag by March and the first few thousand words written by June so that my annual holiday on the isles of Iona and Mull will be very productive

I will do all this as well as: coordinating a weekly youth cafe; leading a weekly church house group; heading up the writer's corner on the website www.thedreamhouse.co; writing weekly gems for my writing group and monthly meanderings for the church mag; reading monthly novels for my book group; interpreting dreams with my monthly dream group; having a go at the odd short story competition; raising money for the Life of Christ promenade play in Princes St Gardens, Edinburgh on Easter Saturday; organising stalls and exhibitors for a big Christian women's conference in September; making soup for the village lunch club; keeping in touch with a wide circle of friends, old and young; being a wife, mother, sister, grandmother and dog-owner; doing the shopping, washing, cooking, entertaining, dog-walking and babysitting; having a monthly muscle massage, six weekly haircut and a shower/bath at least once a month whether I need it or not (that last bit's to see if anyone reads this . . .)

Yes, this will be the year I become a SUPERPERSON . . . or something.

*available only for e-readers at the moment (from the e-publishing website link and also in the Amazon Kindle store) but will be out as a paperback soon.

Too Young for Glory

Today was writing group day and February's topic is family history. Group members had brought along some fascinating items to get us going on the theme.

A bill from a 'Household Furnishings' shop with items like a crumb tray and brush (for the table), a black-lead brush (for cleaning the kitchen range), oilcloths for the floors, brass and iron bedsteads and lots of 'axminster carpets', enough to furnish a whole house - all for one hundred and sixty-two pounds and ten shillings. A letter from Australia written in 1937, a mother telling her daughter, who was at Oxford Uni, all about the family's Scottish connections and encouraging her to go and visit Scotland. And the fascinating life history of an indomitable granny who died not so long ago, aged a hundred and one.

My contribution was this photo of my Grandfather: he's fifteen years old in it, the year is 1916 and he has just lied about his age and enlisted for the trenches of WW1. Story goes that he went home to be told by his father: 'Yer ower young. Yer no' goin' ower there tae get yersel' killed!' He was then marched back down to the army recruitment office and made to give all his finery back.

I'm chasing up more details from a Canadian cousin who is into all this stuff and thinking of writing a wee story based on this snippet of our family history. Maybe from point of view of the recruiting sergeant... Hard to believe they didn't even ask for birth certs as proof of age. Perhaps they were just too desperate for more cannon fodder. Perhaps he was under pressure to meet a target - x number of new recruits each week.

P.S Granddad did manage to get to France the following year when he turned sixteen and, obviously, managed to escape getting himself killed.

'Tales' on the website at last

Last summer, my daughter, Faith, set up a charity, Love Ghana, to raise money to help some of the poorest people in the world whom she regularly visits . What could/would I do to help? 'Not another sponsored something,' I groaned. I don't mind walking the Forth Bridge, swimming endless lengths of a pool or keeping silence for a whole day (all of which I have done in the past for sponsorship). It's just collecting the money afterwards that is so tedious and always feels like scrounging..

So I decided to do what I like to think I do best - write. I already had lots of stories of various lengths in faithful Laptop (and backed up on sticks as well - don't fret, techy folk). So was born the concept of 'Tales to dip into' which came out at the end of November.

The dire snowbound conditions of our roads in December prevented my webmaster from coming to update my website but at last, this very day, it has been done! So: relax, uncurl your toes and dip them into this little book. Meet a mad woman in Florence, a nonagenarian going courting and a baby speaking from the womb; watch Facebook friends at the Edinburgh Festival, go to garage sales in Toronto and attend the last performance of a stage legend. It's all there and lots more.
Funny, sad, romantic, dark and quirky stories - three of each!

£5 a copy and every penny of that goes to Love Ghana. Just click on the picture of the book to find out more and how to buy it.

Then relax and enjoy - come on, you know you want to ....

Dignified Understatement

Don't you just love dignified understatement? Just got my regular St Andrews Uni alumni
e-newsletter and the first snippet of news (no bigger or more trumpeted than any other) reads: 'The University would like to extend its congratulations to two of our celebrated alumni on the recent announcement of their engagement'. No names, no pack drill. The only give-away is the heading to the clip: 'Royal Consent'. Though I'm not sure if that doesn't imply that William consented to marry Kate - which sounds a trifle ungallant. Still, nicely done St A's, especially as the uni must be rubbing its dry old hands in glee at the publicity and kudos. But no unseemly exploitation, please. Dignity - especially of the 600-year-old variety - must be preserved.

Had hoped to be introducing my latest literary offering to those persevering enough to follow this increasingly sparse and erratic blog. In fact, I've been holding off blogging until I could. However, although the book (fifteen short stories) is ready (as my Facebook friends know), the website has yet to be updated on account of my webmaster being unable to come to my snowbound residence and do the business.

As anyone who's heard any recent British news knows, Scotland is under attack from the worst winter blast for xxx years. Actually I can't remember ever seeing snow quite this deep here. I cleared a wedge off the top of my car that was over two feet high. My dog has been up to his shoulders in the stuff and he's fed up with it (no decent smells). Stunningly beautiful, of course, but very hard work.

Next time, which will hopefully not be too far away, I will tell you more about my 'Tales to Dip Into', how to get your hands on a copy and what a jolly good read it it. I shall do so, of course, with dignified understatement as befits a not-so-celebrated alumna of St A's.

Motor cars in the bible?

Just got back from 3-day writing retreat on the Isle of Mull. What does one do on a writing retreat? (several people have asked, eyeing me curiously, if not suspiciously).

Well, the first night we settled in and recovered from the journey (it's a long way to Mull especially when you miss the ferry from Oban and have to hang about for 2 hours till the next one). After a big meal (a portent of things to come) and plenty of wine (likewise) we came up with an idea to get us started next day: everyone (there were 5 of us) to write down the first word that comes to mind when we wake up in the morning. These five words on folded scraps of paper to be put into a box. Each person to draw out a word and start writing for 5 minutes on whatever the word sparked off for him/her. Someone suggested all five words might be a variation on needing the toilet but this didn't actually happen although my word (which I had no idea of the meaning of) turned out to mean 'attracted to water' (hydrotrophic). What kind of person wakes up with that word on their mind? I wonder...
Well, it was the oldest member of our group, a lovely personality and actually the owner of the beautiful old house we were guests in for the retreat. So for all three reasons, I refrained from wondering out loud. And, yes, I even managed to write for five minutes before I found out what it meant. Not sure what that says about me as a writer.

Next exercise was to be given an abstract noun and have ten minutes to write a short piece that illustrated it without using it, any form of it, any synonym or even opposite. My word was indifference. I wrote a dialogue between an teenage boy and his maiden aunt.

After coffee and cake, we had a game of Scrabble. The difference was we did not score the points. Instead we made a note of each word that appeared on the board in the order they appeared in. After a wonderful walk in the beautiful, soft air of the Western Isles in autumn and a big lunch, our task for the afternoon was to write a short story using all the scabble words, preferably in the right order. As the first word was sling, I embarked on a tale set in biblical times about David (who slew Goliath with a stone fired from his sling - a sort of catapult). I went great guns at speed (I had wasted the first hour having a post lunch pass-out and time was running out) until I got to the word car. Stumped! No motor cars in the bible. I had to cheat and go for a word incorporating car (poor old David had been sitting on the rock looking after the sheep for so long that he had a car-buncle on his bottom). Needless to say, this met with the derision it deserved when it came time to read out our efforts.

The evening was spent eating (roast leg of lamb with all trimmings and a huge fruits-of-the-forest pavlova) and playing trivial pursuit. Eyes drooped and mouths yawned before we were finished so it was stowed away to be continued.

Next day, we felt ready for a meatier challenge. Each person had to create a character using five adjectives and three actions, habits or expressions that demonstrated why the character was the adjective. All five characters were then read out and notes taken. After lunch we had the afternoon to write a short story with all 5 characters in it. We soon realised we had material enough here to lead to a full novel so our pieces of writing were openers, rather than completed stories. We plan to continue with these pieces over the next few weeks at our weekly writing group meeting.

Trivial pursuit was duly finished off after another remarkable dinner (chicken saltimbocca with asparagus and lemony pudding with blackberries). We all went off to bed in high good humour (finishing off the wine probably helped). The 'triv' winner was Meyer, the owner of the house (he of the hydrotrophic word), which was only fitting, we all agreed.

The journey home looked like being efficiently accomplished (unlike the journey there on Monday) until Tom, my driver, missed a fork in the motorway and ending up heading west instead of east. We got home eventually and Tom and I agreed we are clearly not safe to be let out in a car again together without a carer!

All in all, lots of fun. Others in the group were grateful for the kickstart it gave them to get into writing again after a long break over summer. That wasn't my problem as I have been flogging away at the novel. But, as I have at last finished it (well, a first drafty draft...), it was lovely to have a clear head to write other things. I fed one of the characters from my new novel into the characters exercise and was very interested to see how the other writers responded to and developed her.

Of course, as always, it was lovely to come home to an uproarious doggy welcome. And John was pleased to see me too, I think.

P&Q

An unearthly calm prevails and I am all alone. All visiting children and dogs gone, neighbours on holiday, husband at work. What is that unaccustomed sound? I do believe it's silence. I can hear Tucker snoring gently in his basket, birds singing in the garden, the fridge humming off and on. And Laptop sulking reproachfully in the corner: so just when is this novel going to get written?

So I have dutifully risen with the lark for the past several mornings and have now written another couple of chapters. Yes, it did feel like duty at first. the struggle to reconnect with characters and plot, the effort to squeeze out more words, words, words. I actually found myself stopping to count the words I'd written and thinking 'Good. 800. Only 200 to go' since I'd promised myself at least 1000 a day. But - joy! - yesterday, I found myself sneaking back to Laptop several times to add to what I'd written in early morning. I am back with it and missing it when I have to leave it, wanting to get down the stuff that is coming into my head as I cook, hang out washing and dog-walk. Oh, now that's a good feeling! And a great relief. There's this nagging dread - when you're too busy or too caught up with other writing - that the novel will get away from you, grind to a halt, become a maze you can't penetrate again.

So I have a couple of weeks of P&Q (peace and quiet) before the next rush of busy-busyness with visitors and festivals. Off to make the most of it. To work!!

Doing my stuff

So this my July: four days of two octogenarians; four days of two teenage boys; five days of two under eight girls; and a week of two under thirteen girls plus a one-year-old puppy. 'Tis the (summer holiday) life of a grandmother of six and a stepdaughter who loves her widowed stepmother of forty years who lives with her equally elderly sister... Are you keeping up?

I have found myself :walking so slowly that I was almost going backwards the first week plus organising a family BBQ and (just) getting away with it before the rain came on; preparing endless food for teenage boys with hollow legs the second week plus getting a chapter and half of the novel written while they stayed glued to their computers, skyping away to their pals (whatever happened to real human contact?); probing the mysteries of Little Mermaid computer games and serving up a stream of kiddy meals this week plus answering unrelenting questions about insects, birds and the habits of the human race... and all to an equally relentless background of the Open Golf Championship in St Andrews. I flit in and out the sitting room at the beck and call of my granddaughters, catching nostalgic glances of my alma mater town as my husband remains glued to scenes of the R&A and the Old Course. I remember serving Bing Crosby while doing a brief stint as a waitress in the R&A during my student days. He gave me £5 tip which was A FORTUNE in the sixties (like a week's rent).

My fridge is currently full of tiny yoghurts, full cream milk and ice poles... plus energy drinks (and plenty of wine) for me. I can do this. I know I can, I know I want to. August will be mine: Edinburgh Book Festival and Fringe time. Meanwhile, I must go and recover the bathroom which has kiddy clothes and wet towels all over the floor and the bath full of toys. It takes me back: plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose.