A to Z Blogging Challenge

G is for – things in my lounge?

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Yes. Just when you thought I could scrape the bottom of my barrel no more, be reassured. I’m still a’scrapin, particularly when it’s late, I’ve had a very busy day and I’m a couple of posts behind.

Of necessity, the things in my lounge that begin with G reveal things about the family, not just me. I wonder if you could guess who owns what? You have the choice of me, nearly, ahem, 30-10, Techy Husband who is nearly 42, Arty Daughter who is nearly 15, and ConstructoBoy who is nearly 11.

Here goes:

DVDs – The Goonies, Garfield, GI Joe

CDs – rather depressingly we don’t seem to have any CDs in here whose titles begin with a G, so I’ve been forced to list artists for whom we have a Greatest Hits album But I’ve been scrupulously fair. I haven’t included ‘Best of’, ‘Ultimate Collection’, or – horror of horrors – just plain old ‘hits’. Oh no no no. This is quality.
So – Greatest Hits of: Duran Duran, Queen (I, II and III), The Bangles, Cher, Fleetwood Mac, The Kinks, Bruce Springsteen, Will Smith, Carly Simon

A Glue stick

A pair of gloves (waiting to be repaired)

Sadly, that’s it for objects beginning with G in my lounge.

Scared of leaving you feeling bereft, I shan’t leave you wihout revelaing that if you put Runham and g into Google, the first two pages of hits are all about Runham Garage in Great Yarmouth.
I have nothing whatsoever to tell you about this, except my ponderings –
1) they must get a lot of attention to have 2 pages of hits (possibly more – I got bored)
2) I wonder whether they would give us a discount on an MOT. Bit of a way to go though.

File:Grafham Water - geograph.org.uk - 1552523.jpg
Grafham Water by Shaun Ferguson

G is also for Grafham Water, which we live just a couple of miles away from, and the G is also for the large Geese that live there (purely to terrorise my daughter when she’s there for a picnic).

F is for Fun

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And fun is something (contrary to the popular saying) that you can never have enough of.

Last year I went to a conference for Equality & Diversity Named Co-ordinators (because I am one. Not because I snuck in at the back for the free sarnies and fruit salad). There were some general talks & activities, and a choice of four workshops from which we could select two.

For some strange reason (!) I chose Storytelling with the inspirational Marion Leeper and Drama with Chris Manville, who trained and worked as an actor  on stage and screen before training in Early Years.

Both sessions were great, but during Chris’s session he discussed an idea that sounds obvious yet is really very profound – that when we are children we do creative things as and when we want to. We don’t worry about whether we’re any good at them; if we enjoy taking part in the activity, or find pleasure in the end result, we do it. So why is it as adults, we tend to think that it’s silly to do something unless you’re good at it?

How many adults paint or write without the notion – however misplaced it might be! – that they’re at least passably talented at it? How many adults do something creative JUST FOR FUN?

Not very many. So my challenge to you – this week, doing something you have enjoyed, secretly enjoy, or have always fancied having a go at. And if you enjoy it – Carry On Doing It. Just For Fun. Even if your cross-stitch teddy looks like a dog, your story makes no sense, your twisted-leg table looks like an accident in a B&Q power-tool demo or your watercolour inspires someone to remark sympathetically, ‘oh, what a shame you water pot spilled over it!’ No matter. Carry on anyway.

Of course, sometimes a surprise can be fun. That’s why this weekend we’re taking the children to-

Ah, sorry. If I told you I’d have to kill you. 🙂

D is for Daughter

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I thought today was the perfect day to blog about my daughter, although she doth protest 😉

I refer to her as Arty Daughter because she is…arty. She is a very talented artist who doesn’t have enough faith in her own ability. Her DeviantArt account is here (on DA she is TheDarkfellProject) and although she has protested that she’s ‘only uploaded one piece of her art to her online gallery and it’s nowhere near her best work’ (exhibit A, below) – I’m still posting the link because she is someone to keep an eye on (particularly if manga and graphic novels are your thing), and also because She Is My Daughter & Very Talented.

We often talk about what inspires us, and even though superficially art and writing seem very different mediums, it’s surprising how often we have similar problems, ideas or sources of inspiration.

She also deserves a pat on the back for listing me on her DeviantArt profile as her favourite writer 🙂 Cinders, you shall  go to the ball.

The Creepy Way To Create A Character

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I say Creepy, because it may seem slightly stalkerish to some of you. I am, however, just leading your metaphorical horse to water. You don’t have to let it take a drink… 🙂

In Louise Doughty’s excellent book A Novel In A Year (which may or may not help you write a novel in a year, but will definitely give you a lot of excellent advice, strategies and inspiration), she often presents her readers/writers with a situation to thrust a character into (even if it’s not one they envisage being in the completed novel), or to write about a time a particular situation happened to them, such as: having an accident, getting lost, feeling trapped (emotionally or physically), being of a different nationality from your own, being a character from the past, and being an inanimate object.

Of course, these exercises are designed to generate plots and characters, and she then helps you assemble this generated material into a novel. I found those chapters fascinating and incredibly useful (Big Respec’, Louise). And it’s sparked my own ideas on ways to create a character – or to get to know an existing one better.

My Writing Idea of the Day is:

Make your Character walk in your Shoes
(because actions speak louder than words)

Walk your character through your day (or even week). Lterally, if you want; think about your character wearing your shoes! Would they? Imagine your character living through your day. Would they be good at your job, more or less patient with your children/ mother/ dog/ boss? Would they have gone for coffee with that friend? Would they walk the children to school or drive? Bus or train to work? Would they remember to send that birthday card as you did, or are they forgetful/ lazy/ inconsiderate? Would they be a blogger or do they not know their Mac from their PC?

Or perhaps walk them through days in the lives of people you know. I have a female friend who is a bouncer. This wouldn’t be every woman’s cup of tea, but what kind of woman is prepared to do a job like that? (One who is also a black belt in Karate, if you must know!).

Look out your window – is your neighbour off to a club or their work? Would your character be there too? Karate or WI? Or both? And if you have no idea where your neighbour is going, use your imagination – where could they be going, why, and would your character be likely to be there too? Asda or Waitrose? Deskbound or a landscape gardener? Would they have waited patiently in that traffic jam or would road rage have taken over? What might have resulted if they had lost their rag?

Now prepare for boredom.

My uneventful day: Took son to school, spoke to Mum on phone, emptied & refilled the dishwasher, tweeted, revised opening of my novel, researched readability score/reading age of a few novels using MyNovel software, had text conversation with my boss and agreed to increase my hours, drank tea, coffee and a double chocha mocha, ate a chicken and coleslaw sandwich, picked up the post, did some more writing, emptied the bins, went to village shop to buy chicken, bread and fruit juice cartons, collected son from school (delivering two papers from my daughter’s round on the way), spoke to my black-belt friend and another who runs a natural beauty products company, filled in a school form to say yes, son & I would love to go to the Royal Wedding barbecue at school, emailed Techy Husband holiday dates, spoke to Arty daughter when she got in, spoke to Techy husband when he got in, deleted 4 spam comments awaiting moderation on this very blog, read a few other blogs, spent ages converting file type & reformatting text of the work newsletter so I can put it on the work website (which I run), dispatched my family to karate (yes, they go to classes run by black belt friend!), and then wrote this post.

Now your answer may be similar, or completely different – but ask yourself:

What did your character actually DO today?

 

A to Z Challenge: Come Hither To Feed Your Brain

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Yes! It’s here! The challenge 800+ bloggers (many of them writers) – and their hangers-on (sorry, followers) have been waiting for. It’s….

THE A TO Z BLOGGING CHALLENGE! 

DAY ONE. Brought to you by the letter – A.

Last night I was pondering my first post. I enjoy the quirky randomness Google can bring to the proceedings, and thought I’d see what the hits were for…a. All by itself. Excluding hits for the same/ very similar things, the first 5 were:

  1. A (Wikipedia article) – an article all about the letter A.
    “the first letter and vowel in the basic modern Latin alphabet. It is similar to the Ancient Greek letter Alpha, from which it derives.”  So now we know.
  2. Youtube – including ‘Noah takes a photo of himself every day-‘
    Well I had to look that one up, my writer’s curiousity was burning like, like… a chicken curry that’s being ‘kept an eye on’ by a 14 year old (bitter voice of experience). Now I suspect I may be late to the party here, but that intriguing sentence in full is: “Noah takes a photo of himself every day for 6 years. ”
    Yep, that’s right, it’s a 5 min 46 sec video of photos that Noah Kalina has taken of himself, every day, between January 11, 2000 and July 31, 2006. Noah is a photographer from Brooklyn. To see the photos individually (perhaps a good idea, the video is quite fast and makes you feel seasick!) go here. He is still taking a picture, every day, of just his head and shoulders – boy, there’s a book in there somewhere!
  3. A dictionary of slang  http://www.peevish.co.uk/slang/a.htm
    The first entry in this fascinating dictionary is abdabs: noun Terror, the frights, nerves. Often heard as the screaming abdabs. Also very ocassionally ‘habdabs’ [1940s]. This site is well worth a visit – great stuff!
  4. HTML a tag
    a is an anchor tag in HTML. This is not interesting unless like me you like to walk on the wild side and play with your HTML. ‘Nuff said.
  5. The world’s rubbish dump: a tip that stretches from Hawaii to Japan – An article from The Independent
    This is a genuinely interesting article from 3 years ago about ‘A “plastic soup” of waste floating in the Pacific Ocean’. Back in Feb 2008, it covered ‘an area twice the size of the continental United States’. I’ll be looking this up later to see what’s happened to it since.

I can only hope you find this randomness as  interesting as I do. Or perhaps, like Elizabeth Crieth, I’m just ‘interested in too many things’ – this is what her careers guidance person told her at school! Doread her excellent post on ‘composting’ your mind. This in particular is sterling advice: “I’d encourage every writer, or would-be writer, to cultivate a compost heap in her mind. Learn something new every day, even if it’s only a bit of trivia or some Believe-It-Or-Not oddity. Read widely. Talk to people. Ask questions.”

Hear hear, Elizabeth!