Tag: Creative Writing

Romantic poetry shall never die – it’s what makes our hearts beat on 💔

September 13, 2019

Ideally with ‘Arrival of The Birds’ playing …

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I did it again.

I left you with no more than,

A kiss to the cheek.

A polite hug.

Within hours I am gripped,

By a panic.

It’s a feeling of loss.

Of being too late.

And the cruel consequence,

Is having to relive the moment.

I see sands of opportunity,

Slip through my fingers.

And I watch it fall away.

Staring eyes.

Memories of you jostle,

In my conscience.

The skin on your neck,

Where the shortest hairs start.

And become the place,

Where my fingers feel at home.

Pulling you closer,

Smelling your clean clothing,

The bottled scent I gave you,

Warmed by your body.

Too late to tell you,

That I’ll be yours forever.

Even though our paths,

Shall never cross again.

There were connections before you,

But none so deeply powerful.

You change me.

You changed my world,

And I wanted you in it.

But a free spirit is one quality,

You illustrated so well.

Showed me how to become one.

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Hello my gorgeous lovelies … I’m on a train, with my earphones in and was inspired to write you a little cuddly poem. It’s been far too long that I’ve ignored you all. Forgive me…

I read a poem recently by our great blogging friend Patti at Lovenlosses and I do hope she stayed safe during the recent hurricane.

I’ve also said hi to Mike, over at ReadafterBurnout who continues to entertain daily and I’ve downloaded his book which he released 9 August this year, so many congratulations on achieving this 🎉

A dystopian world awaits the reader and what little time I’ve had to read it so far has given me no less pleasure than I expected from this very talented author. A teacher on the surface, a storyteller in ‘real life’ … I shall be review and starring it once I’ve finished 🙏🏼

Another supporter of mine is the wonderful Joseph at FlowersinBloom who appears to have had a blogging break of a similar length to mine. Totally unplanned, that, but I think of him from time to time as it was his recommendation of a Gail Tsukiyama novel which started my love affair with all things zen and bonsai trees (don’t ask to see mine 😫 I’ve yet to discover the art of keeping them alive).

I continue to chat also to my fellow writer, the beautiful Italian living in Ireland, Sabina at Ortensia72, whose posts always have me laughing out loud at family life, and nodding with recognition… her Book 1 is also on my kindle and it’s appalling I’ve not yet come to it.

But.

I do have good reason.

In the time it’s taken to ignore you for the best part of the summer, I’ve somehow managed to edit my novel. On a structural level I’m talking now. I think I finally have something I can send out!

I’ve simplified the plot in some areas, because guess what? I wasn’t actually required to write the next instalment of Luther after all!

I sent my manuscript off to be critiqued by a Reader for the New Writer’s Scheme; part of the Romantic Novelists Association, and boy, did it need it! My Reader was kind. But honest. I don’t know who it was (their identity is kept on a need-to-know basis, and we don’t need to know).

However, I’d love to hug and assure them I was not in the slightest offended by any suggested change. I utilised about 97.8% of them in fact because the new words and grammar and alterations changed not the plot, but the tone. The maturity of the prose. It’s still my story but it’s got High School clothing now, rather than the rather shabby primary wear it had been used to.

I like it. And so did two agents at the annual conference. We must not get too excited because agents love ideas – it’s their job to find new authors’ books enticing. Once they read the whole thing, as opposed to those first three chapters we all work so hard to perfect, their enthusiasm could easily wane.

I decided I needed some serious help at this point. My first book. My first time digging up the roots of my literary baby. So I employed a mentor!

For six weeks (and we are four weeks in) I have an expert at my beck and call, someone to bounce ideas off, someone to moan to, someone to share excited moments with. She is paid to respond to me, which is great.

However.

My mentor is also very honest. Calls a spade a spade and wouldn’t choose between two sentences I emailed one day when I was stuck. I had to choose myself, can you believe it 🤣

It was the best thing. My mentor asked me to dig deep and think about which of the two would have a greater emotional impact on the character at that point. Genius. I knew the answer, and went ahead and implemented the correct choice.

I’ve re-written my synopsis with her guidance and now am in the process of researching agents with a view to start submitting from the end of the month. I’m a big girl and am aware initial interest does not always lead to offers of representation, but wow, I’m having fun! I’m also going to find a spike to stick the rejection slips on – Stephen King did that. I read his writing journey in ON WRITING and fell a little bit in love with him to be honest. That book in itself is a masterpiece, let alone his novels, of which I know own six.

If we were to look back to this time last year (which we won’t bother doing) I suspect my blog posts were all about …. well, I can’t even remember. What I do remember from that time is only having 24,000 words!

I’m on my second high speed train of the day, en route to York. Attending another annual event run by the RNA means a chance to catch up with published authors and other hopeful authors-to-be 🖌🥂

Enough about me. What are you all up to?

In the meantime, excuse me while I start this book.

When all you want is a friend, but all you have is imagination

June 5, 2019

So that’s my new shout line for Book 2.

The one line eye-catching piece of prose at the top of your synopsis, before the thing starts, in the hope it catches an agent’s attention. We were taught about them on my recent CBC course. Some even make it all the way through the process and appear on the front cover of a book!

Taylor Jenkins Reid’s book, ‘After I Do’ had a great shout line, look..

It’s at the top; FALLING IN LOVE IS THE EASY PART. When I read that, I hear an enormous BUT THEN ….

I finished reading it two days ago, with tears steaming down from behind my sunnies. I was sat on a bench (dedicated to somebody who enjoyed years of holidays in this area) as the two main characters re-built their crumbling marriage. An intense, emotional and gritty read about the realism of taking your partner for granted and about what that can lead to. I actually sent Man of the Woods a text immediately I’d finished it. It’s the little thoughts that can go a long way when you’re apart…

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Yesterday we padded around Padstow and ate pasties from the famous Chough bakery and lemon meringue pies from Stein’s Patisserie.

There is no photo of the Cornish pastie as we had to eat them sharpish before the seagulls succeeded in their efforts to swoop in and win a mouthful.

By ‘we’ I mean myself, my young adult offspring and their respective partners. Gone are the days when holidays with children mean holding their hand, watching them jump and down at the sight of blue ice cream, and dealing with over tired whiny pleas of ‘when can we go in the sea, mummy?’.

Now, it’s a delicate balance of suggesting loose plans, being flexible when those fall apart, watching your daughter decide whether she wants to be a fisherman’s wife as her eternally patient BF prepared his various hooks and baits them with now-disgusting pieces of fish from the not-so-cool box he has under his landrover 🤣🤣🤣🐟🐟🐟.

Then you’ve got the clown of the family – the happy-go-lucky son who still eats babybel cheeses and pretends to cry for our entertainment when he can’t find his whatever it is he’s looking for. He’s 6’4″, and I think gained an inch since New Zealand!

On the phone yesterday, MoW told me it rained more than 9mm yesterday in East Anglia and hence he and his father are stopping irritating (that’s not a typo; it’s how farmers refer to irrigating!). So we are holding our breath today for their arrival later. In my experience, the chance that something else can happen on the farm to prevent them making the 7-hr drive is quite high. I won’t believe he’s coming until I see his dad’s car pull up. (All the other cars in the family are here already 😂).

Anyway, back to books. We like a book don’t we. And we like a book shop, especially those cute independent ones, yes? Here’s a cutie – Padstow Bookseller.

This cover caught my eye, as did Julie Cohen’s words upon the front. oooh, I thought. I know and respect this author and if she says it’s great, I might just buy this. Then I opened the dust jacket and saw Susan Elliot Wright is a fellow RNA member, so the connections got even better and I opened and read the first page.

Yup, that was hooky enough for me to get my purse out!!

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On our return from Padstow, being sure to leave the ‘kids’ some space, I retreated to my room with my laptop. After choosing how will spend my sessions at the conference next month, I went on to type up those penned-words I created last Friday towards a synopsis for Book 2. It’s the first draft obviously, but it’s a mini map of the whole idea. On paper/screen it now exists and is not simply only a notion inside my head. I’m excited by it. I even re-watched the Hidden History episode of Michael Portillo’s series which inspired this story!

Then we went in the sea ….

I finished the day studying the list of agents and publishers who are attending the two days of conference … just for us New Writers Scheme members! I mean, just how amazing is that? A chance for us to sit in a one to one meeting, the profressional having read the first 5000 words and a synopsis of our novels, yet knowing we are newbies and don’t really have a clue. It’s their opportunity to find a new voice, a nugget amongst the mountains of debut manuscripts!

I shall enjoy the weekend, the meeting of fellow authors, the standing in line for lunch with famous writers like Katie Ford, Jill Mansell, Julie Cohen, Rowan Coleman .. so many, too many to mention 🌸🥂

If anyone likes my work, it shall be icing on the cake ….

The farming calendar does not pause to fit the whims of its human caretakers. But the writing goes on …

June 1, 2019

… and so I find myself here without Man of the Woods. He is back in East Anglia, irrigating the potato crops which become ‘Charlottes’.

The science behind the ‘new’ potato’s nurture is surprisingly exacting. It is not a question of the agronomist instructing the farmer to: “give this an inch of water any time in the next three weeks.” whereupon he could hurl it on and then leave for his holiday.

No. It is more along the lines of: “These will be sprayed Monday morning, and will need 20mm of water within a 3-day window of that application.

I used to stamp my feet and look surly that I was married to someone who put his job before his time away with the family. Many friends used to raise their eyebrows – while eating potato-based products – and insinuate he was being awkward and boring. What’s more, I’d often agree 🙈.

Now I’m just proud. Speaking to him for half hour a few minutes ago, sat on the floor nursing my now 3/10 migraine (in what is a stunning holiday apartment that he would love) I can hear in his voice the acceptance that this time he cannot join us.

And although his 72 year old father tried to persuade him to drive down and that he would cope with the irrigation alone, MoW will not leave his father with that worry. Machinery has a habit of breaking down, pipes become blocked, the irrigator can sink into the mud just before you’re due to move it twenty yards along the field for the next ‘pull’. It’s hard physical work and while MoW’s father is relatively strong and fit, I know it would worry my husband to leave him to it.

So there it is. The reality of a farming way of life when you don’t have farm-workers; no-one to do the work when you’re not there.

Enjoy your crisps today and give a thought as you crunch that real people produced those for all of our pleasure 🤣

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Meanwhile, in other news, I brought with me a journal for notes to develop my Book 2 idea.

‘Save the Cat’ was also packed because I wish to plan this novel with more care than Book 1! I’ve studied for over a year now this art called fiction writing and while I shall never know all there is to know, my goodness, I have a greater understanding of what makes an okay book into a really good book. (Whether I’ll be able to transfer that knowledge onto the paper remains to be seen but I am excited for the process of Book 2).

Yesterday, as the sun burned away an early haze, I set to work on a synopsis and a tag line.

I had always believed you could never write a synopsis until you’d written an entire novel, because how would you possibly know what to include? The chapters will jostle for position, as we know they always do as we write, and therefore a synopsis surely should not be contemplated until after the book is written to at least a first draft?

Well …

For those of you who have been reading my posts for a while, you’ll remember I attended a course in Devon at RetreatsForYou to study alongside the talented Julie Cohen who has written over twenty books; here are just a few:

Many of her tips have stayed with me, but one particularly.

She asked us all to pause and think about the theme of our novel; the thread of aim or goal for the protagonist through the pages. Without one, even with quality writing, we simply end up with prose about things happening. Julie went even further and encouraged us to think about narrowing it down to a one-word pitch!

It was a hard exercise as we all grappled for words that narrowed our story down but the lesson has stuck. As I contemplate Book 2 (even while Book 1 is in the ‘system’ and being critiqued right now) I find my approach is completely different this time.

I know roughly my story outline but before I type a word, or even map out the chapters I wish to narrow it down to a synopsis, an elevator pitch, a tag line and even one-word. Without telling you yet about Book 2 in detail, let’s look at what I mean in regard to this exercise. Below is a potential 3 star piece of mini fiction;

She walked to the beach and dipped her toes in the Atlantic water. The icy chill took her breath away.

However with a theme, we have heart and soul. For example, let’s give the previous sentence a one-word theme and re-write it slightly;

‘LONELINESS’

The knowledge she would be alone when she had least expected it cut through her plans like a sword. The laughter she’d known they would share was silent before it had chance to exist and as the icy waters stole the warmth from her feet, so too did the wind her hopes. She pulled the jumper closer to her skin in a desperate attempt to protect the shred of courage her journey there had given her ….

We have a real vision of someone now, and how she might be feeling. We have a question – why is she alone yet wasn’t expecting to be so? That’s the hook.

Do excuse me while I pause for a coffee. My migraine is receding and usually around now I can eat without feeling nauseous.

I’ll be back!

Tuscany, reading, writing and archery – so much common ground! #RNA

May 28, 2019

Found this Christmas card in the cupboard when I was tidying at 3am this morning, five months too late to send. It depicts Il Duomo in Milan and when I spotted it, it took me back to my weekend with my travel buddy Hannah last March. I knew she’d appreciate the card – so perhaps you’ll remind me to send it this coming December 🙄

Italy Italy is everywhere it seems .. and a very popular location for romance novels. I give you this link … 💒 … in which you should find the wonderful blog by Angela Petch. A fellow-RNA member, writer and all round kindness-filled lady whom I met and clicked with at last year’s Conference near Leeds.

In this post Angela chats to Daisy James, author of the Paradise Cookery School series and now the Limoncello series, published by Canelo Escape Publishing.

I enjoyed reading about Daisy’s writing day, seeing her summer house where she writes when it’s warm enough. The archery link is something I’ll bring up when I see her next time at an RNA event. (We sat next to each other last autumn at the York tea ☕️)

Perhaps now is the time to submit my Tuscan novel to these guys at Canelo to see if they fancy a little romance/mafia 🖤😅

No. For now, we wait. The manuscript is with the New Writer’s Scheme for its read-through by one of the multi-published authors of romance. Receiving the feedback report will be a double-edged sword; petrifying and exciting! To see what the reader thinks works or not. eeeeek!

Have a great day folks!

Game of Thrones…. I’m going in. What’s all the fuss about??

May 28, 2019

I mean, really. An author pens a story, some screenwriters adapt it, and the world goes mad!

Yesterday, after the first episode:-

Man of the Woods; “So, what’s it about?”

Me: “Well … seems there’s this sister and brother and their other brother – a dwarf – and they’re all a bit … interesting.. And in another kingdom there are five siblings; all children of the baddy from ‘Goldeneye’ but one isn’t the main mother’s actually although there’s a mystery surrounding that. There are five cute wolf cubs and some people with blue eyes in the woods. Oh … and the dragon eggs.”

MoW: “Right.”

The brother and sister with almost white hair must be important. Great contrast, obviously, with the dark (sort of Greek) people of the island across the ‘narrow sea’.

I’ve so got this.

We watched three episodes yesterday in the end and have become intrigued, I admit. I started quite liking the blonde Queen but now don’t trust her .. and as for that terrible twin of hers. He’s an arrogant ****.

The character of Tyrion Lannister is growing on me – I think he’s a sharp cookie.

We are going on a mass family holiday this Friday, to Cornwall but first I have a few horse rugs to process!

My daughter, now 21 (literally last Friday) accompanied me on my rug collection in Kermit. She hates dust and muck and the smell of horse wee, so this was a big deal for her. People have asked me in the past, when she was still a young teen, whether she would take over my rug-cleaning business and I’d laugh, “I doubt it!”.

Anyway it was nice to have her company. I barely see my son these days. He works along my father in law daily, tends to eat at their house for convenience (and they probably have better meal selection anyway because my mother in law is organised and has time to buy things like food).

He comes in to sleep and his 6’4″ self moves around the kitchen opening cupboards in a morning searching for something he’s not communicated to me that he’d like to see. As a modern farmer’s wife I was encouraged to work and bring in a contribution. Oddly enough, with a sole-trader business which somewhat took off faster than we anticipated in 2007, I can’t be in two places at once. And I struggle with the guilt that sometimes wafts around me like mist on an Arthur Conan-Doyle moor. I try and fight it, and the verbal tirade which can accompany it, leaving me feeling bereft of self worth. But I often don’t succeed.

On the plus side, we have our own ponds to play round. I even caught my first fish with the help of daughter’s boyfriend this weekend!

We plopped then back in the murky water each time and after washing my hands many times, I laid back and tried to read my book.

There were lots of distractions; the ever-changing sky, a notepad asking for more details to be added to the plot of another story idea, MoW coming to show me handfuls of maggots…. and then laughing when I legged it away from him. I don’t trust him.

He’s always been a practical joker.

This one time (at Band Camp) he grabbed a harvest spider while I was washing up and had my hands full. He pushed it down my shirt and I went nuts banging my chest in a panic. I was hyperventilating by the time I failed to undo the buttons and ripped the shirt from me instead. As the dead spider dropped to the kitchen floor and my eyes blazed up at him through the tears, he stayed still only for two seconds. Then he ran…

Boiling phones, Ireland and submitting to agents

May 15, 2019

Best not to leave iPhones on the car seat behind glass on the (private) driveway at a friend’s for two hours.

But do grow climbers along your washing lines as they look pretty against an azure sky..

Final week of the Curtis Brown course … eeeek; had to post first 3,000 words plus synopsis and example letter to an agent of our choice!

Now I shall wait for any feedback from fellow students. I’ve filled a ring binder with course notes from the previous six weeks and simply need to get on with making some scene changes in the middle section of the book. Then I can do that thing we’ve all been waiting for – submitting to agents for real 😳

I keep getting side-tracked and exploring though. I’ve been to Ireland these last four days but sadly was too far to meet up with WordPress writing buddy Sabina over at Ortensia72 .

Pop over and check out her interview following recent publication of her first novel – woo hoo 🎉

It’s got 5 star ratings so far and I’m so please and proud. I’d been hoping to pick the brains of this author who went ahead and became an indie author. She bit the bullet and is already writing Book 2 🥂(I would love to have that faith in myself…)

On arrival at Maryborough Hotel & Spa, we were greeted like old friends and told we’d been upgraded! (I’d mentioned it was my birthday weekend at which Man of the Woods was unable to join me so I was dragging a friend along, kicking and screaming).

We had such an amazing time, and we were really rather sensible and did grown up things like visit the Queenstown museum in Cobh…

Oh my word. What history this place has. This statue is Annie Moore, aged 15 with her brothers. The first emigrant to be registered on Ellis Island.

Over 3 million people left Ireland from this port once called Cove (then named Queenstown after Queen Victoria visited) and then re-named Cobh in 1920s by the then government, who wanted it returned to Cove but the Irish version.

The cathedral! The blue sky!

And my travel buddy choosing menu options with an ocean liner in the background, docked for the day mid-cruise.

This was also the final docking venue for the Titanic on that fateful maiden voyage. My brain started doing somersaults over fiction ideas and on the last day I actively wrote out a whole but basic plan of a brand new story!

I was, at the time, relaxing in the Airbnb for our final night. The Lux Bus can only be described as the cutest conversion ever … if you visit Southern Ireland, I highly recommend staying in it!

Anyway it’s back to business, and I’m sorry I post so infrequently at the moment. I trust my absence will all have been in a good cause 🖌🖌🖌🖌🖌🖌🖌