I’m writing a book on my phone

The subtitle of this post should be: “How parenting a high needs child is completely at odds with being a writer”. I made the excuse a while ago that I hadn’t been blogging because I was busy transcribing my granddad’s memoirs. And that was true, a while ago. I got to the end of the first 90-minute recording which equated to about 10,000 words, and discovered that the other three even longer recordings are barely intelligible. I scoped out some software to fix the sound quality (turns out we already had it on the computer). But before I could do anything, the Dude decided to mix things up a bit. No more going down for sleeps! Therefore no more uninterrupted showers and no more computer time. We soon got the stroller on his first birthday so I’m now taking him for walks every day and he usually sleeps then. I’m pretty sure this is some kind of premature transition to one sleep a day. And he’s close to walking and talking, plus his molars are due any time now. So I can forgive him for being out of sorts.

The problem is, I can’t sit at the computer to write for more than ten minutes. He hates it! And that’s fair enough, in basically ignoring him. But the fact remains that I no longer get any writing time. I’m writing this on my phone. It’s frustratingly slow as I’m a touch typist so can more or less type fast enough to keep up with my brain.

I know this may be a short period, and it’ll pass soon enough, but I’m finding it very frustrating. I must have a dozen posts half written in draft, and all these ideas punching me in the head every day but I just don’t get any opportunity to write.

How do others tackle this? I guess the majority of people have babies who actually fall asleep fairly predictably.  Babies that calm down and relax when given a bedtime routine and lots of milk. Babies that don’t smack you across the head and then laugh within two minutes of waking up.

So instead of wallowing in misery (not really, slight exaggeration there), I’m going to think positively about this. Perhaps I’ll be the first person to write a 50,000 book entirely on a hand-held mobile device!  Imagine what Dickens or Tolstoy would think about that!  They’d probably think it was nonsensical and ridiculous. Aside from being confused as to how one can write a book on something the size of your palm. Technology is pretty cool, let’s face it, and I can safely say my iphone (actually Samsung Galaxy SII now) has saved my sanity millions of times while I lie for hours trying to get the Dude to stay asleep.

But the fact remains, parenting has gotten in the way of my writing, my passion.  And it’s not just general parenting, it’s the kind of child I have, his personality, mixed with the way I’ve chosen to parent.  Oh God, should I really say it, should I really attach that term to myself? Shit, I think I already did. Yes, Attachment Parenting.  I’d never heard of it until after I had the Dude, and frankly I thought it was all a bit of a wank.  Not the principles of AP per se, those make sense, but more that people are yet again being sheep and just going with a certain theory or way of doing things.  Of course many so-called AP parents will tell you that they just do what comes naturally and have fallen into the AP category.  I’m one of those.  And I actually refute the assertion that I’m AP.  It’s a label. We know how I feel about those.

I had the Dude at home, as readers of this blog may be aware, and I had no interventions in pregnancy and birth.  Well actually that’s a lie, I had three ultrasounds (all of them completely unnecessary) but yeah, no real interventions.  I’ve still never been to hospital in my life, apart from when I was born.  I plan on keeping it that way!  I don’t vaccinate my son, never been done myself actually. He has only ever drunk breastmilk and water.  We know about nutrition and natural ways of helping the body thrive. We don’t take drugs like paracetamol and ibuprofen. We like homepathics and they work for us.  Dude enjoys the ergo regularly, and previously enjoyed the Hugabub and even a ring sling for a short time. We generally like to avoid regular mainstream doctors as our experience has been that they have little idea what they’re talking about and recommend toxic chemicals that just cover up symptoms and don’t help the body heal. Oh and we co-sleep.  Now I’m sure I’ve said before, co-sleeping was not really my plan.  I was totally against it when my midwife first mentioned it, but once the Dude was here it was the only way I ever managed any sleep.  He’s a crazy dude.  His cot has been side-carted to our bed for the last nine months but he’s pretty much never slept in it.  Occasionally he’ll squirm into it half asleep and pass out there, usually with half his body still on the bed. But generally speaking, he is right next to me; taking up half the bed to himself. He’s beautiful and I love having him right there but I would LOVE to have my own bed again.  I am very touch sensitive and find it hard to be comfortable with someone right up next to me.  I even push my husband away when I’m going to sleep sometimes.  I like my space.  Which was the whole reason I had an issue with co-sleeping in the first place.

Anyway, because of this attachment style parenting we practise, and because the Dude is so full on, I don’t get a lot of time to myself. Now let’s be clear here: if I was into letting the Dude cry it out and leaving him in bassinets to go slowly insane or fobbing him off to childcare centres, I’d be in a worse situation.  Yes, okay, we might have more money because I might actually earn some, but the Dude would be miserable, we’d be sleep deprived and he’d probably be sick a lot. I’m sure about my choices. And I’m not asking for sympathy for them or for my predicament. I just think it’s ironic that I slacked off for so many years, sat around watching Seinfeld repeats and eating Sarah Lee Honeycomb and Butterscotch icecream instead of writing my heart out when I had the chance.  Things will change. This will pass. Before I know it this little crazy blonde dude currently sitting on the floor next to me destroying daddy’s uni notes will be asking for lifts to concerts and sneaking vodka from our liquor cabinet like we wouldn’t notice half a bottle of it slowly but regularly disappearing. The old ‘evaporation’ explanation never worked.

I’m such a bloody sensitive mofo!

Another one of my ranty rants, just pre-warning anyone reading…

Do you ever post something on a social media site in all innocence and then someone comments, completely slamming you down and taking offence? I just did that and it’s making my tummy do somersaults. That horrible, gut-wrenching feeling, I just can’t.shake it! I don’t agree with the response, I don’t understand why what I posted was so offensive and ignorant, and I replied to explain my thinking, but that doesn’t change how I’m feeling about being slammed. Social media is just so icky sometimes, so cringe-worthy.

I care if my friends get pissed off with something I say, it churns me up. I have a few friends, or perhaps more accurate to describe them as social media connections, whose opinions I don’t really rate, or I guess don’t really respect. But the majority of friends I’m connected with online are intelligent, interesting people whose ideas and opinions, while they may differ from mine, I really respect. Even people I don’t really have much to do with both in reality and online. So when one of them objects to something I love, and provides a good argument for the objection, it just kills me. How do you respond to that so you feel okay? I’m just too frigging sensitive. And too opinionated to boot!

The problem is that people are always going to have different viewpoints and interpretations, and people make mistakes too, say the wrong thing in the wrong way at the wrong time. Shit happens. But I just hate the fact that once it’s done, it’s done, and you can’t go back. Oh I hate it! Makes me never want to say anything ever again! But how can I? I’ve got to talk, got to write.

I’ve read a fair bit about bloggers and getting shit for saying stuff people object to. In fact those kinds of posts usually attract the most readers because controversy is interesting. Look at that English chick who wrote that Daily Mail article recently where she was banging on about how hard it is to be an attractive woman and how much other women are intimidated, bla bla bla. Everyone jumped on that straight away to tell her, um, excuse me lady but you’re nothing special, get over yourself! She might have seemed like a total dick, but she got people talking and now she’s on frigging TV crapping on about her hardships as a result of the backlash to that article! See? She might be a bit of an idiot but she is pretty thick-skinned to deal with the huge berating she got. And let’s face it, the whole thing was most likely a massive publicity stunt (success there!). But regardless of whether it was or not, even if she knew full well everyone was going to laugh at her and call her ugly, she still has to deal with that. She may have craploads of publicists telling her it’s all good and partying it up with her over the success of the campaign and her new-found fame; but at some point, she will read or hear something about what people think, a put-down or a joke, and when she climbs into her king-size bed in some exclusive hotel after a day of champagne and shopping, she’s going to have to deal with that. She’s going to think, crap, people think I’m ugly and stupid. And the money and fame just don’t fix that emotional response. Because everyone is human. And humans feel.

I guess I’m probably selfish or self-obsessed to say this but I sometimes feel as though that human, emotional response just sticks with me so much more intensely than it does for others, cuts me so deeply, and I can’t just process a confrontation and move on. I dwell more than others. Or at least because I’m having the reaction, it feels like I do. It’s all just perception in the end really.

But you know the worst part? I can be really harsh. I often have no regard for how others might be feeling and I can cut someone down so harshly if I’m really riled by what they say. So on the one hand I want others to go easy on me because I’m so frigging sensitive, but on the other I disregard people’s feelings on a regular basis. Damn you, humanity, why do you have to be such a contradiction? Stop the world, I want to get off!

Dynasty (aka why I have slacked off on blogging recently)

Today my grandad would have been 86. The fifth. Always the fifth in our family, so many of us born on the fifth of the month for some odd reason. Grandad died in 2003. On the fifth. In fact it was on my birthday. I turned 25. My boyfriend at the time and I we’re over at my mum’s place feeding her dogs when my dad called to tell me grandad had collapsed and this was probably it. He was crying. As soon as I got off the phone, I burst into tears. Weird, as death usually doesn’t make me cry. It was just so sudden, but that’s grandad, we all knew he’d just pop off one day when it was time. He was 77. Doesn’t sound very old but considering his own father died at about 60, it’s pretty good going.

About a week ago, my dad mentioned he’d drop by to bring me something. It was a memory stick. And on it, are four sound files, between 90 and 120 minutes each. My uncle had digitised them from tapes my grandad had recorded. Finally, I’ve got his story in my hands!

I knew grandad was writing his memoir and I remember seeing a huge ream of typed pages once, which he said was his book. He had an old typewriter, and he’d type with two fingers. There we’re always murmurs about the book, but none of us ever read it. Grandad’s book. After he died, I asked around the family to find out who had it. Denial from all parties. People in my family tell tall stories and are terrified of the truth. Harsh, I know, but it’s genetic, we can’t help it!

Finally I discovered my uncle had the book. But when I quizzed him about it, he said it was just a bunch of silly stories we’d all heard before, nothing really interesting, just a few pages of ramblings. I was disappointed. And angry! I knew that was bullshit. I knew because I’d seen the book and somehow I knew my grandad had something important to say. He never wasted time. He wouldn’t have sat around typing away on that old typewriter, and later an old PC he got from the Salvos,* if there was nothing to be achieved.

But what could I do? I’m one of at least a dozen grandchildren, I love hundreds of kilometres away from my uncle and I seem to be one of the only people in the family who believes grandad had something important to say, was worthy of a voice. I thought about the book and I never lost hope that one day I’d read it and perhaps edit it so it could be published.

And now I have it, in sound form. He recorded it at Christmas in 1996 and he mentions the number of times he’s already written it out. “This is my story.” That’s how he begins. I was going to listen through once and then transcribe but I’ve decided to just transcribe straight away. Lord knows how he typed it out with two fingers! I touch type about 65 words a minute and I’m still not finished the first recording of about 90 minutes. It’s already nearly 10,000 words! There are stories within it that I’ve heard a few times and it’s nice to hear them again after nine years. There is a lot I’ve never heard and it’s giving me such an insight into who my grandad was. And it’s a good story!

So that’s why I haven’t blogged in a while. Every spare moment I have on the computer I use to transcribe. It’s compelling, addictive, and I can’t wait to hear what happens next. I’m right at the end of WWII now, about 1944, so I figure there’s lots more to come in the next three recordings. So exciting! What a story!

*Yes, you read that right, a computer from the Salvos. It actually worked, even though it was some kind if old skool Windows 3.1 OS and grandad couldn’t get the concept of saving stuff to the hard drive, so he became fixated on floppy disks… I wonder what happened to that computer?

Bloggity blog blog blog

So this is hell late, but I really wanted to share my favourite bloggers, as requested by Eden and her Fresh Horses thingy.  I’ve had no time to blog recently, and there’s no reason in particular, I have just been doing a lot of stuff with the Dude, getting new routines in place, going to appointments and mothers’ groups, bla bla bla…

Anyway, so yet again Eden speaks my language; shit, my shit is on the shitting internet, shit! It’s forever, it’s the internet, shit! And so on. Meh, sometimes I don’t care, sometimes I wonder if it will come back to bite me.  But I keep doing it.  Why? Good freaking question.  It’s about writing for me, my writing.  I guess at some level, every writer wants an audience, even if it’s totally self-indulgent (like this blog malarky).  It’s this odd contradiction.  On the one hand I feel like I have a heap of stuff to say about, well, stuff, you know, myself mainly, let’s face it, and I HAVE to get it out.  And my husband doesn’t want to hear every little stupid idea or rant I have.  I kind of feel like the internet cares, just a bit.  And of course I’m under no illusions that most of the internet doesn’t give two shits.  But yeah, there’s something cathartic about throwing all your stuff out to the world and letting it settle wherever and however.  I like that, it’s so random and yet I don’t believe in random, so it’s so serendipitous.  If that makes sense.  I write because I’ve been compelled to write my whole life.  I used to sit at the table with my mum before I could read or write, before I went to school, and copy out the newspaper headlines in crayon on my big sheets of old computer paper (remember that stuff, with the holes down the sides and perforation so you could tear them off?).  I have piles of these things with sometimes confusing but often interesting headlines scratched out in green and blue.  For some reason it’s usually something about the Raiders… which means I was probably copying the sports section.  Hmm.

Anyway, I always wrote stories, and more importantly I always wrote diaries; to the point of obsession.  I have this fascination with documenting everything, so even my to-do lists are dated, and sometimes even have the time written at the top.  Pointless?  Yeah, perhaps, but there’s something oh so cool and time-travel-ish about finding a random little scrap of paper with a list of ‘what I have to get done next week’ from ten years ago.  A little snapshot of my own life, a moment in time captured, however mundane.  I used to make myself time capsules ‘to be opened no earlier than 5 October 1999 when you are 21′, envelopes sticky taped up with wax seals and warnings of ‘do not open yet’ scrawled across the back.  I recorded tapes of myself talking about my life, where I was at, what I hoped and dreamed, who I liked, what I was struggling with, where I expected to be when the tape was listened to again in however many years.  Sometimes they were only short periods of time.  I once went through a phase of doing monthly time capsule notes to myself on the first of every month, then at the end of a year I read back through them.

I can still remember my very first official diary entry: ‘Dear Diary, I got you as a Christmas present from my mum…’  In fact I can tell you the exact date that entry was made: 25 December 1988, age ten.  At the time I thought starting a diary at ten made sense, seemed like the next phase.  My second entry was a lamentation about being made to give away one of my Christmas presents to ‘the poor children’.  I’m still angry that I never owned Cluedo but for those five minutes after opening it under the tree, only to be told I had to choose which present to give away.  No idea what moral lesson my mum and her asshole boyfriend at the time were trying to teach but all it did was make me bitter about not getting to play Cluedo.

I discovered blogs ages ago, but didn’t actually start blogging myself until probably four or five years ago. I didn’t really know what my blog would be about, in fact I still have no idea and have changed the name more times than I can count.  I used to have two blogs, one about baby/parenting/birth stuff and this one, which was more about writing and general crapping on about me, but then I decided it was better to just lump everything in together, so I actually moved all the posts from my other blog to this one, changing to dates to when I originally posted them (yeah, again with the date thing).  I have this weird thought that people might try and stalk me or whatever, like I wonder how other, more prominent bloggers do it, talk about their personal home life, where they live, and use their full names and those of their kids.  I don’t know.  I’ve written about this before anyway.

My favourite blog of all time has to be Soulemama.  Gawd she is awesome!  I so want to go live in Maine (I think that’s where she lives) and have snow and knit things.  That is almost my ideal life.  I save up her posts and then read eight or nine at a time, so I can get lost in the awesomeness of it all.

Recently I’ve been enjoying the hilarity of The Bloggess, and although I don’t get to read it as often as I’d like I think it’s pure comedy gold and I’m still laughing about her tweeting celebrities to ask them for pictures of themselves holding twine. Twine! See the comedy?

And I’m not sucking up or anything but I have to say my number three (in no particular order) favourite blog is Edenland.  Truly!  I just like the way she writes, I like the stuff she talks about, and so many of her musings really resonate with me.  Her stuff inspires me and makes me think and want to write more on my blog.  She doesn’t mince words, she doesn’t talk shit or be pretentious and she is funny and insightful and intelligent.  And she rarely lets spelling and grammar mistakes get in the way, which makes her writing even more pleasurable to read.  Thanks dude, you rock!  And by the way, a cache is the memory of your computer.  So if you went to a page, it caches it, remembers it, so if you’re offline and you go back it’ll show it, whatever it’s remembered.  But I actually prefer Eden’s definition: the collective noun for blog posts. eg. ‘Today I read a cache of posts.’  It works.

Here’s a button thingy that lets you see what other people said about this if you click on it.  Or you could just go to Edenland and read.  Yeah, I know, I don’t get it either, but here it is anyway.

For Christ’s sake, learn to spell!

I’ve been more than a little put off recently by all the spelling mistakes and typos in blog posts I read. Okay, I admit it, I’m a Nazi when it comes to spelling and grammar, it’s in the blood! And being an editor it’s just what I do.

I’m the first to admit my writing has plenty of mistakes scattered through it too, don’t get me wrong. But I hate text speak when it’s not in a text message, and I hate made up words. Yes, alright, I can hear the counter argument already: aren’t all words made up? Of course. I studied linguistics, I understand how languages evolved, and I’m fully aware that English is the most made up, random, inconsistent language of all. So I’ll narrow down my gripe a bit. What really shits me are words that sound like they could be words but really aren’t. “Agreeance” is a prime example. Dude, the word is “agreement”, there’s no such word as “agreeance”! It’s like saying something is “beautive” instead of beautiful, or that you felt “confusement” instead of confusion.

I guess I’m also kind of annoyed at bloggers who don’t proof read before hitting publish. Not to say that I expect no mistakes or typos – it’s a blog post, it is spontaneous by its very nature and you can’t expect some expertly-honed piece of literary genius. But I notice a significant variation between posts, to the extent that I enjoy some authors’ work less because it’s full of typos and mistakes. What really annoys me is when those bloggers are being paid to blog! I just think it’s sloppy and dodgy.

I’ll leave you with some new and wonderful words courtesy of Gertrude Perkins, aka Mr E Blackadder.

I always get myself into trouble

Reading Lori’s post about her thoughts on blogging and how much one should reveal got me thinking. Again. I struggle with how much to divulge and how to do it. Yeah so no one reads my blog. Or at least no one I know that might be offended by what I’ve written. But let’s face it, that’s because I don’t tell people about it. If I facebooked all my posts I’m sure I’d get a few more people skimming and maybe a comment or two. But I don’t publicise it because I’m scared I’ll say something or there has been something I’ve already posted which would really offend them. I’ve written about friends and family, always using pseudonyms of course, but what if that isn’t good enough? What if I’ve said something to upset them? Or maybe they don’t like being mentioned on a blog, even if it’s not by name… That freaks me the hell out. And here’s why.

I’ve gotten myself in trouble with my big mouth so many times! I’m terrible! My family are really easily offended and even though I don’t have anything to do with most of them, I am terrified of pissing off the ones I do stay in touch with. I’m so judgmental at times, so cold and cutting, I don’t give people the benefit of the doubt, I just harshly cut them down. I don’t mean to. I just tend to be trying so hard to see everything objectively I guess and I have high and confusing standards. I also say too much. A lot. I can’t keep a secret.

Here’s an example: I had a friend at uni who was very bubbly and sociable and somewhat vacuous, or at least I had labelled her that way. She wasn’t unintelligent, but she was a social butterfly who liked sparkly things and would go out of her way to request extra froth on her hot chocolate. And would justify this by explaining to the waitress that she liked froth. I viewed her as someone who had friends just for the hell of it; if someone sat next to her in a lecture and said hi, that was her friend. I didn’t think she really had close friends, they were all acquaintances. Because how deep a conversation can you have about glitter and cupcakes, right?

Anyway, this friend, let’s call her Froth Chick, would organise social get togethers constantly. She’d send out emails to the world about parties or dinners or trips or other events. My small circle of uni friends were on her list and we’d often have a joke about the latest thing she was planning and whether we could be bothered going and potentially having to deal with her boring airhead conversations and giggling and odd science nerd friends. One day, Froth Chick sent out one such invitation. I think it may have been to her birthday. There were literally a few hundred people on that email list, it was insane! Remember the old days when you’d have to scroll down past the block of email addresses of other recipients? This email required about 10 seconds of scrolling just to get to the message! So I made a rude comment about how she’s invited anyone and everyone she’s ever met and most of them probably have no idea who she is nor she them. I didn’t think much about it and hit reply all, carefully deleting her and the few hundred randoms, but leaving my little group of friends. Including her boyfriend. I knew they were about to break up and in fact I’d been in conversations with the group where he’d inferred he had the same opinions of her, so I didn’t think to delete him. I should have. Next thing I knew I had an email from her, showing that the boyfriend had forwarded on my reply. She was understandably upset, saying thanks very much and how offended she was and yes she actually does know everyone on the list and just has a big group of friends etc. I was momentarily in shock. But what did I do? Yes I apologised for upsetting her, but I actually gave her what I considered to be some home truths. I told her she’s too obsessive and clingy with friends and has to stop being so superficial and needy. I can’t remember exactly what I said but would you believe she actually agreed with me and took it all on board, despite how harsh it was, and from that moment on she was significantly more sincere and down to earth. To the extent that I’m actually still in touch with her 13 years later. And I also once joked, right in front of her, about how you don’t need a law degree to do conveyancing and any idiot can do it, having just listened to her go on about how great and challenging her new conveyancing job was. And yes she has a law degree.

The point of that story, though, was not to demonstrate how good I am at mediating and confronting and helping people develop personally (I think I was just lucky and really deserved a slap for being nasty!). The point was, I can’t keep anything to myself, I speak before I think, and I’m really judgmental to the point of unfairness at times. So how can I ever blog and be me without getting myself in a huge pile of shit? Am I overreacting? How will I stick to the rules? I’m pretty sure I’ve already written stuff on this blog that would offend and upset friends or family. I don’t much care if I upset people I no longer have anything to do with and I don’t think I care so much about offending randoms across the interwebs, that’s just how being online is. But that excuse doesn’t fly with my nearest and dearest…

I didn’t finish NaNoWriMo… again…

Ah dear. I tried, I really did. But I got to nearly 7,000 words and that was it, I was done.  It didn’t help that my little Dude decided to get six teeth from 30 October all through November, which meant he was more restless than usual and therefore even more difficult to help sleep.  And there was some real tough shit going down in the Curiosikat house that needed some serious attention, heated discussions about moving house and just general adjustments to having a child… yes, still.  So I bombed out with NaNo again.

The fridge where I used to live in London

I’m disappointed, but there have been some positives:

1. I realised that my ‘idea’ is very different in theory to what it is in practice. That is, when I wrote, I found myself just telling a long-winded story about myself and what happened and never really even got to the stuff that the actual main bit of the story was about! I kept rabbiting on… ‘and then I did this and that was pretty awesome, but then I did this other thing and that was also awesome…’ bla bla bla bla bla… So all it really became was a glorified hindsight diary entry.  It wasn’t good writing at all.  There were some good memories there, but that wasn’t why I decided to write about this idea.  I had grand plans, to come up with a really unique yet marketable real life story of… well, I don’t want to talk about it too much.  But suffice it to say, it’s a pretty awesome idea.  Or at least if I could write it, it would be.  I found myself absolutely hating what I was writing, as it was just ‘and then…’ over and over.  There was no real story there.  Frustrating, yes, but eye-opening.

2. I actually did manage 7,000 words, which for me, with a baby, is pretty good.  And some of those words were written 2,000 at a time, which means I’m more than capable of making that 50,000 in the month.  It was refreshing to just let myself blurt out words, even if they weren’t that wonderful, and I’m glad I did actually manage something.

3. I now know my idea a lot better. I know that there’s heaps of memoir type stuff floating about in my brain in amongst the ideas, and I think I got a lot of those out, which leaves more room for good ideas.  I also know that what I was planning on writing wasn’t just another boring self-indulgent diary entry; it was actually a good story, worth writing and worth reading.  So I will attempt it again, one of these days.

4. I can give some other ideas the go ahead, now I’ve done a bit of work on that one.

All in all, yes it was a failure, but not a dismal one.  And I will be back with a vengeance and some new ideas next year!

A gargantuan decision

So I’ve decided.  I’m amalgamating my blogs.  Why, you ask?  Well, I’ve been thinking on this for a while and I realise that it’s better for everything to be in the one place – that’s what categories are for, right?  What really made me decide to amalgamate was this post from The Pioneer Woman, who I’ve recently begun following – she makes a lot of sense!

So Cocoon Moon is now just going to be the ‘Birth and parenting‘ category in this blog, and I’ve started a new ‘Making stuff‘ category which is going to be about, well, making stuff.  You know, crafty stuff, creative stuff.  I’ve got a post in the pipeline about my projects coming up and ongoing, and I’m even going to post some photos (shock horror!)

Anyway, if by some miracle you are an actual human reading this and not some bot about to spam me up the yin yang, just know that this blog won’t just be about writing and books and stuff any more.  In fact all that has its own category now – ‘Literary leanings‘ (yeah I know it’s bollocks, gimme a break, I was always crap at those punny tabloid style headlines, what are you going to do about it?)  Oh and if you’ve discovered this blog because of an interest in Genealogy, never fear, I still do some stuff with that too… or at least it has its own category.

I’m even considering mentioning my blog on facebook!  I know, scary, right?  Because I struggle with the idea that I might have occasionally mentioned someone I know in a blog post and then they might read that blog post and get upset or something… Not that I go on about how much I hate people I know, it’s just that, yeah, I respect people’s privacy.  Then there’s also the whole thing about identifying myself online.  Because, and now I might get in trouble but what the hell, I have lots of relatives that I don’t talk to any more and that I want nothing to do with. And some of them are psychos.  Yes, I’m not joking.  Well maybe a little, but you know what I mean, they have issues, and they have no lives, and they want to stick their noses into my life and spread shit and all that.  Not that I care, but still, I don’t really want any of those people seeing my stuff.  And yet I put it online… Hmm, gotta think on this one a bit more…

Anyway, for now, this is a revised space!  I’m also considering changing the name, but that needs some more thought…

NaNo: the idea

So November is here and despite only having written 535 words, I’ve actually begun NaNoWriMo for the fourth year running. And for the first time with a very full on baby taking up all my time!

But I’m pretty pleased with myself because, unlike the other years, I’ve got myself a very clear novel idea! I actually know what I’m writing for once!

Wanna know what it is? I feel a bit odd divulging my plan on such a public forum, but who am I kidding, no one reads my blog anyway so I may as well indulge in some crapping on about my idea.

This one has been in the pipeline for a couple of years now. It’s nothing that spectacular when I describe it but I think it could be freaking awesome. The story is about London and the rite of passage for most antipodeans that is going there to work and live and get perspective. Or whatever reason seems feasible. There’s more to it, but that’s the gist.  I think I’ve actually written about some stuff on this blog, stuff that actually happened, but my NaNo novel is a fictionalised account.  I’ve got ideas for about half a dozen key characters and some storylines, but I’m not sure how they all fit together yet.  Because it’s NaNo, I’m just going to write whatever and see what emerges – no time for editing!

My NaNoWriMo challenge

So it’s NaNo next month.  And I’ve decided to do it again.  After a few failed attempts in the last few years, I still think I can do it!  I always remind myself of the time I wrote 12,000 words in a night and think, yes I can!  Not that those words were actually any good.  I read back through some of that story a while ago and… well… wow.  It’s shite.  I mean really, really shite.  There are some bits that are salvageable but overall the story is total crap.  Anyway, I digress…

I have no idea what I’m going to write about, but I don’t remember what I wrote about the other times I did NaNo so I’m just going to go with the flow.  Gotta do some thinking over the next couple of weeks, start forming some ideas in my head.  I am totally sticking by the rules though, no starting writing until 1 November.  And this is the first year I am attempting NaNo with a child in tow, Lord help me!

I’ve got a book review due on 2o October, so stay tuned for that, and once that’s out of the way I can begin to really think about my NaNo ideas.  I’ve got three novels in  my head (well, let’s not exaggerate, three novel ideas in my head) but for some reason I’m hesitating about using any of those ideas for NaNo.  I think I need to rethink that.  Hmm… Ooh, baby crying, I’ll be back with more later!