Wednesday, December 19, 2012

Summertime and Nearly Christmas

Its summer holidays, the kids are underfoot, the weather can't decide if its going to be overcast and cool or eleventy billion degrees - so it usually does both in the same day, the tree is up and decorated, pressies bought, menu being decided, and its all coming together.

Though, given the awful news of earlier this week, a pall has been cast over Christmas for me.  I know it happened thousands of miles away, a different country, a different culture, but since I saw the first tweets in my tweet stream my heart broke.  We decided at the outset that for our girls there would be a media blanket.  If they hear about it, it'll be when they get back to school at the end of January, it won't be front and centre in the media, and hopefully we will be able to lessen the impact it will have.

I'd be interested in hearing what others have told their kids, especially ones still at school (mine broke up an uncivilised two weeks early - something I'm deeply glad about now).

I've never felt so protective of my girls, I can't let them out of my sight at the moment and keep getting in trouble for too many cuddles :)  I'm so appreciating spending time by the pool or having excursions to the mall or the beach.  Keeping the radio off means its non stop carols in the car, and no commercial tv means we're working through the backlist of kids movies. We're watching Despicable Me right now!

I've started my next novel.  Working title is Jewels of Deception, which I'm not entirely happy with, so expect it to change.  I actually haven't written anything new in the last year, I've spent the whole time editing! And I've still got 12 unfinished novels on my hard drive, so there's much editing to come. But I wanted to write something fresh and new.

I thought I'd blog about my writing process (expect tears, self doubt, loud young person music, and a lot of comfort eating, yes its going to be very messy).  My plan is to get 50K down by the end of January, and given that I've managed to write 2,500 words in a week, I should easily fail completely to reach that goal!  Oh I kid. You know I'm a goal obsessed Capricorn. (Kid, Capricorn, Goat, did you see what I did there?? No? You're not actually reading anymore are you...)

Sadly blogger still hates my photos. But I've managed to back up the entire blog now (all nearly 6.5 years) so hopefully I can start to get it sorted out soon.

Dont forget the sunscreen :)

2 people love me:

Veronica Foale said...

I did a media black out with our kids too and AFAIK it wasn't discussed at school. Amy hasn't talked about it so I hope she's still blissfully unaware. That's the benefit of younger children I guess.

Go you with the writing! I'm basically happy with my first draft and am now re-writing the entire thing to make it not shitty. From the perspective of a formerly minor character I should add, just because, turns out, she's way more interesting than my previous MC and I get to tell the same story. I'm enjoying it in any case.

Also reading a lot - calling it research (it's totally research) but with some stuff going on here, I need the mental break of someone elses life for a bit. You know how it is.

Caitlyn Nicholas said...

I really enjoy editing too, apart from the deleting lots of awesomeness bit! So interesting that your protagonist switched around :) I'm thinking about a couple of my stories and which sub characters I could re-write as the main one, would be so fun as you've got the nitty gritty of the plot sorted out, but can really play around with point of view. I like it.
Hugs for stuff at home, and I agree, reading it totally research. Totally :)