Welcome to my blog - a collection of thoughts and musings on the world of writing, books and all those wordy type things.

Sunday 21 April 2013

More Notes!

Writing is a little samey at the moment as I continue with the typing up of the various notebooks I have made so far for my non fiction self help book. We're getting there though. I hope. I've felt I had to force myself to carry on for longer than I really wanted to today. This could be just tiredness (late night last night - rather fabulous fancy dress party to attend!) or it could just be a bit of burnout after working at it solidly yesterday.

Either way. I've been at it since early morning so I'm giving myself permission to take a break. In truth I'd like to think this was to go off and do something fun and delightful. In actuality, it's to go and hang the rest of the washing out and then make a start of the European Ironing Mountain which has built up in my lounge having been laid low all week with a stinker of a cold. Not exactly fun but there we are. If anyone has any ironing fairies they're not currently using, please do send them my way!

Have fun in the sunshine (at last!) and happy writing!

Sunday 14 April 2013

Twitter for Writers

I like Twitter. I find it fun and the short attention span it requires suits me down to the ground. I have interesting and fun interactions with other people, many of whom are writer-ly types and it does rather make you feel as if you are not totally on your own after spending hours writing/researching/making notes, etc. You can just drop in, say hello, see what's going on, then come back out again.

What I don't like is being bombarded with messages to buy someone's book all the time! Tip: This isn't fun, it's not interesting, it's not polite and mostly, it's just annoying. It is also the surest way to get me to unfollow you, or not follow you at all, if I look at your tweets and see that this is all you do.

Someone put it well the other day when there was obviously a bit of a blast of this sort of behaviour going on, when she said 'Twitter this morning feels like walking through a market with all the stall holders shouting at you to buy something'.

As I say, I do like a bit of Twitter. It keeps me amused when I'm in a queue and can often give me a giggle when I'm least expecting it (like on a train whilst sat on my own yesterday...a little awkward!) and I like that. I don't like those who use it for ranting and vitriolic messages to people - whether they are well known or not. If you don't like someone, ignore them. There's no need to be nasty for the sake of it.

And by all means, feel free to mention your blog post - but not ten times a day! And feel free to let us know you have a book out - again, not ten times a day though. All this does is irritate us and make us less likely to even take a look at it, whereas a gentle hint occasionally can have the opposite effect entirely.

So, if you don't partake, you may want to give it a try. But if you do, be yourself and only let the salesman out every so often. It's much more fun that way!

Happy Tweeting!

Sunday 7 April 2013

Reality Blogging

The lovely Carol has kindly nominated me for the Reality Blog award.



She actually did it a couple of weeks ago but I've been trying to think of answers to the questions that accompany it! They are the type of questions that could have a myriad of answers, depending on your mood but I'm reluctant to leave it any longer so here goes!


If you could change one thing, what would it be?

I'd love to be the kind of person who never worries about anything. I, on the other hand, worry about everything, so being able to change that would probably have a lot of good repercussions.


If you could repeat an age, what would it be?

This is a tricky one. I'm going to cheat and mention two: First I'd like to repeat the time I left school and take a different job to the one I chose to take, and also have the confidence to believe that writing could actually be a real possibility. I'd also like to repeat the few years which encompass our wedding day and just after because I'd love to live that over again, aswell as the fabulous travelling we got to do with the company my husband was working for at the time.


What one thing really scares you?

One? You want me to narrow it down to one? Ugh. Ok, well, serious illness for me or those I love.


If you could be someone else for a day, who would it be?

I think it would be fun to be some sort of extremely highly paid actor for a day. I think a job that pays horrendous amounts of money to play dress up all day can't be too bad.


Thank you so much, Carol for the nomination. It really does make a difference when people do interact on a blog and prove you're not just talking to the air!

And now it's my turn! (mwah ahh ahh!) So, the bloggers I nominate for this are:

Dean H
Kristah
Laura

I'm now off back to the oodles of notes I'm in the process of typing up for the non fiction book I'm working on. Seeming like a rather never ending task at the moment! Wish me luck and enjoy the weekend sunshine (at last!)