Aspiring Author & Life Juggler
This is easier said than done, but not unachievable (is that a word?).
I’m over 68,000 words now and want to hit 70 by the end of today, so my deletion of the FB app once again today is my equivalent of this mantra.
Love a bit of Buddhism in my life
🖌🖌🖌🖌🖌🖌🖌
2pm update…. 👏🏼💫
70,147
Your comments yesterday helped me feel more positive; thank you!
Daughter has decorated the table beautifully and I’m enjoying lashings of butter on this crumpet with a milky cup of tea just before I make the trifle. I located the tablecloth in the barn amongst the dusty boxes of detris and washed it last night – phew! (I say tablecloth… it is merely a 3m length of cotton fabric from a haberdashery which I never got around to hemming, but we won’t worry about that – even if mother does 🤣).
Man of the Woods is excelling himself in the kitchen today – he’s made one of Jamie Oliver’s stuffing dishes and the house smelt divine as he was doing so. We both enjoy watching all the Christmas cooking programmes but whereas I forget the content the minute the credits have finished, he makes mental notes and re-creates some of the masterpieces.
Rather than worry he is taking over my space or role in the kitchen, I have found being his sous chef a most agreeable pastime 👏🏼
When he not on a tractor, he has cooked me many a meal this last year, with words like “No, it’s ok, I want to – you keep writing.” … I don’t think it gets any better than that for support does it?
I’ve enjoyed wrapping presents for the parents… and cleared the kitchen of clutter and discovered a whole windowsill underneath!
😂😂🙊
In the absence of sherry, I’ll use toffee vodka to soak into these blueberry muffins. I’ll cheat with tinned fruit and carton custard because my second of four dates with Daniel Craig is not far off and I wish to give him my full attention… one each of his four films on consecutive nights, starting last night with Casino Royale …
I’m an emotional soul and know that many of you have followed my ramblings for a year now and have not left my side and I feel grateful for that and have loved getting to know you. It is my ambition to present to you a fiction novel at some point and I make this pledge that alongside my writing buddy over at ALittleBookProblem I shall continue my efforts to finish the first draft and edit it to the best of my ability before submitting it throughout 2019. If I get no nibble with a traditional route, I will consider self-publishing but won’t be rushing into that as would want to get it right first time.
His stuffing is cooked and will simply be heated up tomorrow – it smells amazing 🎄👌🏼
I wanted to send you festive wishes from a more positive place and hence this extra post! Have a wonderful 25th December everyone and let’s not forget what we are celebrating 💫
(It’s ok, Joseph is round the back, cooking for his wife and son)
xxx
PS Bollocks. Don’t get side-tracked on social media when you’ve got pigs in blankets in the oven 😂😂
Or blogging, or Facebook, or Twitter.
It’s time to make a stand. Against myself!!
When he asked me to dance, I had no notion whatsoever it would become our lives.
We were both nineteen and enduring our first year of University. Well he was enjoying his but I couldn’t bare the lecture schedule which was sparse and scattered without thought through the week, the windows of time between being too short to get away. I wanted to be travelling and was regretting not joining Ruth on her year-out adventure.
So when the quiet boy called Henry asked if I would audition with him, it sounded fun and a contrast to why we were really so far from home. We were instantly accepted onto the course; we had ‘poise’ she said (the funny elderly tutor who still wore the brightest red lipstick in the palette).
Every Tuesday and Friday evening in the old music hall next to the university chapel, she followed us closely, her arms outstretched and her body keeping close to our own as we moved around the parquet floor. Without fail she wore her tap shoes and black knee-length floaty dress,. It was as if she wanted to dance with Henry, or perhaps me.
‘Bravo!’ She would call and as the weeks turned into months, Ms Ketch taught us the dances of her youth while an unexpected connection between Henry and I blossomed. We were entered for a competition and delighted to win it.
It was the first of many spanning twenty four years dancing together. No-one has since held me on the dance floor like Henry could. Many are technically brilliant and we carry out the routine in a skilled fashion, but there is a spark missing.
His finger tips would talk to my spine mid-tango, he would catch my eye during the Foxtrot and no words would need to pass between us before any dance. We just knew how to bring the best out in each other, whatever mood we might find ourselves in.
When Henry died last year, my husband was wonderfully supportive and encouraged me to get back out there. I’m not sure he quite understands though, what it is that I have lost…
💫💫💫💫💫💫💫💫💫💫
A piece of flash fiction to break up my housework… I keep walking past the December print on my Jack Vettriano calendar and realising I’ve not given you a piece to go with it. Deary me… I am slacking!
(But you should see my kitchen – it’s unusually spotless)
When you walk into a room, the world stops and yearns to be part of the presence which you bring unknowingly with you.
I know that girl is no good for you, who you go back to again and again hoping she will one day feel the same as you.
She has not noticed the details about you as I have, because she puts herself first always. And you second.
But you refuse to see that. She is yet to be conquered and you’ve never been turned away and the challenge has crawled under your skin and now commands your every waking hour.
I bide my time and nod as I pass you, your eternal friend who is there in the background. I see her at the bar all eyelashes and cleavage, holding court.
You are on the sidelines, hoping she will tire of the iron filings drawn to her magnetism. She does see you and flutters, the men close ranks against the God they see before them.
She is flattered and pearls of heat shine from her naked collarbones. I watch you notice them, your wishes to be touching them. I see it in your eyes yet I feel it in me, for you.
I must take myself away now, no longer will I wait and hope. I must not fade along with the dream because that is all you really are, my love.
As I typed another 800 words this morning – and then decided I ought to get dressed – I realised what re-reading SK’s ON WRITING has been doing for me.
Mid-NaNo is the perfect time to be reminded that all sorts of writing styles have made it through the traditional publication process.
Stephen tells us to write the story we want to write, then put it away and go back to it. He says while we write the first draft we are analysing each tree, but at the end we need to step back and take in the whole forest.
Have a great day – I’m off to plant more trees 🌲
60,000 words reached 💃🏼
