I don’t make New Year’s resolutions. It seems rather bizarre to me to suppose that my will and determination would be significantly stronger on any given date over any other. Neither do I see the point in waiting until the New Year to begin something – if one has already decided to do it, why wait?

The closest I came to a New Year resolution was to have a dry January, for economic and detox reasons to recover slightly from the excesses of the Christmas holidays. I admit I have fallen off the wagon to the tune of two pints thus far, (I made it six days, including New Year’s Day) I will not go in to the reasons, but I’m fine with them and still broadly sticking to the alcohol-free plan, despite continuing to be sorely tried by ongoing and, as yet, unresolved plumbing issues.

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My enthusiasms tend to wax and wane like the moon (yes, OK, so I’m a looney and after stalling on DH’s Kilt Hose earlier this year, my knitting muse left me in disgust. I lost track of where I was in the pattern and had somehow ended up with a stitch short one one sock, so when I volunteered to knit Hestia a pair of new bed socks to replace those tragically murdered by Tartarus, I  decided it was easier to just frog it all back and start from scratch rather than trying to work out what was going on. I quite enjoyed making them and found myself at a loss as to what to do next when they were finished. (I haven’t sent them off yet, so no spoiler pics yet, I’m afraid. They will be in the post tomorrow, promise

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Ok, so I’m no Dickens, but I am officially, as of last night 28th November, a bona fide novelist! See the badge? See it?–>

I won! I wrote 50,000 words in less than one month for NaNoWriMo. See me jumping up and down with excitement? Go me!

I won’t say it wasn’t hard work… umm… well, actually, it wasn’t hard work to be perfectly truthful. It was an enormous amount of fun and I enjoyed every minute of my fantasy world playing out its story in my head. Now, my head is often usually a jumble of half-baked, incomplete, bizarre and random bits so you won’t be surprised that the novel is in much the same shape at the moment. There is still a long way to go before it’s likely to be even remotely worth reading, but riding the crest of this incredible wave of achievement and momentum, I have every intention of completing the 75,000 words needed to make it novel sized, (and fill in the huge gaps still in the story). I am hoping that my fellow winners, Ali and Sara, will also persevere with their own great works (I have read excepts, trust me on this one). It has been good for me to have that element of challenge and mutual support. Long may it continue!

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The trouble, I have discovered, with writing fictional characters is that they have a habit of trying to take over.  Like Pinocchio, they all yearn to be real, to cut the strings by which you control them.

It starts off well enough, you write something to define who they are, what they look like, how they fit into the story and that’s straightforward enough. Great, you think, this is easy. So you sit down and  write some dialogue for them and suddenly they are saying all sorts of things that never entered your head. You think, fine, enough dialogue, lets do some action, may be a description of what’s happening, a bit of ordinary stuff, scenery and that. Next thing you know, they are trying to muscle into the limelight and if that’s not enough, they have you writing all kinds of salacious and other nonsense. Then there are the characters that have no business being there at all and just wander in off the street for a look around before disappearing again.

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Of course, it would make far more sense for me to be making a contribution to my NaNoWriMo word count, rather than this blog, but I thought you might be interested to hear how I’m getting on.

I started this report to find a bewildering array of numbers, so have decided to borrow from Hestia a rather more economical style of relaying the statistics.

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Hallowe’en or Samhain marks the end of the old year (pagan style) and the start of the new. Whereas the start of the calendar year proper, i.e., January, is for me normally full of post-Chrimbo lethargy and the strong urge to hibernate until Spring, next month is going to be active to the point of insanity.

In addition to some tight deadlines for commissions, I start NaNoWriMo tomorrow (gulp). 50,000 words in 30 days is just short of 2000 words a day that I have to squeeze in to my already busy, family and work-filled life. Witchfest is coming up next Saturday and I’ll be reading Tarot all day, so that is one day less already. I must be insane!

On the plus side, the plot is coming together nicely, although I hope nobody overhead DH and I discussing the best way to murder someone in the pub yesterday

Happy Hallowe’en /Samhain!

No, it isn’t the sound of a police car crashing. It’s the annually held National Novel Writing Month and I’ve signed up! Mind you, it may well end up being the sound of the ambulance bearing  men in white coats coming to scrape up what is left of my sanity in December. OMG! What was I thinking? 50,000 words in 30 days is a totally mad idea.

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I went to the library on Tuesday, primarily for the children, but I always enjoy a good browse and while I was there I popped upstairs to the non-fiction section to look at the crafty books. This is probably a bit sad and middle-aged, but I was really excited to find both this and this. (more…)

I think I may have missed my calling. It is increasingly apparent that I have healing hands. Sometimes just one touch is enough, for other patients major surgery may be required to deal with the damage, but the result is always a new lease of life and thisI find deeply satisfying.

And who are my patients, you may wonder. People? Animals? Plants, perhaps? Nope…

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