I love this picture. I think it sums up the essence of what our Chinese New Year celebration was about.
We had emergency chairs and borrowed chairs. We had guests bringing starters and desserts. We didn’t stop eating till almost eleven pm.
I didn’t write anything all weekend and it doesn’t matter.
Or Gong Hei Fard Choy. The house is almost thoroughly cleaned. It’s going to be a busy day today. The kitchen gods will be appeased, I hope, by my efforts with the sizzling beef and ginger. I’ve put my red top ready to wear tomorrow so the monster doesn’t come down from the mountain to eat me. There will be no mention of that number, the one that comes after three and before five and we will not talk about negative things nor buy new shoes. Tomorrow we will eat without knives and using scissors will be banned.
I’m a Rat. An Earth Rat, to be exact.
In western astrology I’m a sea goat – the true meaning of Capricorn, Oh, 2013, bring on the Good Luck!
Here’s the proof. I’m actually going to place a link within this post, I might be green and cabbage-looking on a bad day, but I consider this new knowledge no less than a triumph.
I’m picking up on the subject matter of Holly Lisle’s tip of the week at http://hollylisle.com
Today she’s answering a query about ideas and it got me thinking about my own ideas and where they come from. I have a page on here dedicated to Inspirations. Take a look while you’re here – drop me a line if you like.
So, can you turn on ideas like a tap? Or fawcett, depending on where you are. I can’t. I have no control over them. I could sit in a specially designated ideas room with an extra comfy ideas chair, drinking a specially brewed cup of ideas tea and nothing would happen. I know for a certainty that nothing would happen. I’d be wasting my time. You can’t force ideas. Well, I suppose some people can, but I’m not talking about them. I’m talking about what works best for me. Letting it happen is what works for me. Not trying to force it. Not beating myself up if it doesn’t happen.
Here’s an example of what I mean. Sometimes, it’s a visual motivation: a mountain, a lake, a celebration. Sometimes an idea comes from something I’ve heard someone say. I’ll be right there, in the middle of a conversation and . . . bang . . . I have a new title to work with or a situation ready-primed with emotional conflicts.
On a coffee break with friends, the subject of planning meals came up. It was one of those light bulb moments to use a cliché that are supposed to be forbidden. The idea stuck with me and another short story came into being. I wrote it in a matter of hours, sent it off and the editor liked it – except for the ending. A quick revision solved the problem.
This morning, I happened to catch a UK television programme I hadn’t seen before. Artists went before a hanging committee to win a place at an exhibition at the prestigious Tate Gallery. Three judges sat on the panel and contestants needed a majority vote to go forward.
A young photographer made it through and said she’d charge three hundred pounds if somebody wanted to buy her exhibit. That would cover her costs. On exhibition day, prospective purchasers were requested to put in sealed bids for work they wanted to buy.
There was only the one sealed envelope for this young woman’s work. She sold it for nearly three THOUSAND pounds.
Now then, what if one more judge had given her the thumbs down? What if that particular buyer hadn’t attended the exhibition that day? Might that talented young woman have gone home thinking that nobody liked her work? Might she have been so disillusioned by the whole experience that she simply gave up?
Here’s the thing. You can’t please everybody, so don’t try. Stick with what you know you do best. Make sure it is your best. Don’t be put off.
Waiting. Waiting. Drumming your fingers on the desk. Making another hot drink. Not being able to settle. Can’t read. Not even a newspaper.
I hate waiting. So, I don’t. I write instead. Actually, I blog and network and do some writing. Maybe a bit of editing, too. I go outside with a coffee and do A LOT of staring into space. Walking helps with the waiting thing as well. We have plenty of places to walk – mostly through the vineyards surrounding the village. I take my camera and see what’s new for the upcoming Wednesday Vine Report. The whites have begun sprouting leaves already.
So, my time is filled productively without too much waiting. And a very strange thing happens while I’m out walking along the lanes. Ideas arrive! They pop up from behind a bush or they streak across the sky with Ryanair on its way to Beziers airport. My feet crunch through gravel and here’s a tale of lost luggage and a mix-up at the car hire desk where a kind person offers the lost luggage person a lift home. Hmmm. Romantic interlude or Samaritan from Hell? I think that’s already been done. Left, right, swishing through the grass and here comes another idea. Fast on its heels there’s an answer to that question I had about a character in a short story. I meet a couple walking their dog and now I know exactly what my elderly male character ought to wear on his head. I climb towards home. There’s a young man sitting on a bench by the side of the road. He has his mobile phone to his ear. Hang on a minute, goes the old grey matter, that there is an old folks’ bench. What is a young man like him doing sitting on an old folks’ bench using his mobile phone?
And before you know it, another short story is bubbling like Evian, featuring the very handsome young man, a distraught, wronged lover and a victorious wife biding her time for the killing. I dash indoors for my notebook. Then, I come back to my garden for some more staring into space.
Outside on my baby lime tree there are mature fruits and fruits barely formed and flowers waiting for the bees. A bit like my writing really.
I have three completed novels. Let me rephrase that. I have one novel under consideration at the moment and I consider that one finished after two rewrites. The other two novels need complete, hefty editing. They’re all different genres. One’s a family saga and at 140,000 words needs the heftiest axe. Another’s a psychological drama and needs a restructure. The third’s a book club read and at 86,000 words is close to optimum. I think. I’m waiting to find out. I’m also waiting for feedback on two short stories submitted to Woman’s Weekly. And the serial. So, that’s four pieces of work I’m waiting to hear about.
Then there are the flowers waiting for the bees. Two half-written novels, umpteen short stories and a file called Ideas which keeps growing longer every time I go out for a walk and see handsome young men on their mobiles in the wrong place.
By the time my limes fizz at the top of a clinky drink of Gin and Tonic, I’m really going to need it. Make it a big one. Easy on the tonic!
See, I don’t understand the language. Did I mention that before? I thought I had to put the widget thingy in the widget area for the static front page option as my site doesn’t open with the blog page. So, I fiddled. I got hold of my trusty mouse and dragged the little bugger into the sidebar. Nowhere, in all the FAQs in the world did it point that out in simple terms people like me could understand. Yeah, yeah, I know there are WordPress for idiots books out there. But that involves READING and, as I already said, my eyes are shot, bloodshot. I can’t actually see what I’m writing here.
And now, tah-dah, we have the Celia’s tag cloud.
Tomorrow, I’ll have another go at linking to other sites -if I can see – if my head hasn’t imploded.
I said I was green at all this stuff. I told you I didn’t have a clue. So far, the learning curve has been vertical. My knees are grazed; my fingers keyboarded to the bone. Don’t even ask about my eyes. Alright then, okay, my eyes hurt. They’re so tired they feel as if they’re all dried out.
I can’t read any more Help forums ( should that be fora? forii?) See what’s happening. My brain’s giving out. Cache memory full and spilling its grey matter. I CAN’T HOLD ANY MORE INFORMATION. I only wanted to drag and drop and click once every so often. I didn’t want to have to read the equivalent of the Encyclopaedia Britannica.
And now, my Tag Cloud isn’t showing itself. Maybe the Tramontane blew it out to sea. Maybe it’s raining all my nice tag words in a village in Provence. Look, everybody it’s showering WRITING in Nimes and SHORT STORIES in St Tropez. So here’s an image of a tag cloud, just so we all know what I’m talking about. If you see mine hanging over the coast somewhere, drop me a line.
But, there is an upside. All this thinking and reading about tag clouds has seeped into the subconscious mind and presented me with another idea for a short story. C’est la vie.
Who’d have thought it? We have a road named after us. Most people know it as the Garden Route. It runs along Sandown Bay in South Africa’s Cape region. Here’s proof.
Naturally, I’m fascinated by this. Naturally, I want to find out more. I’ve emailed a local school. Get this – the Micklefield School. Jeez, the synapses are firing now. Guess where I want to go?
We’ve got the Tramontane today. It blows over the top of the snow-capped Pyrenees and circles around rattling shutters and stabbing you between the eyes – a perfect afternoon for staying indoors and watching the start of the Six Nations.
I won’t beat myself up if I don’t do any writing today. That’s how it goes. Sometimes I write two or three thousand words; sometimes I struggle to get down five hundred.
It has to be done. The thing’s too long. I have to bring out the edit knife and chop.
My serial is set in the French village of Bugarach. On the night of twenty-first December 2012, Bugarach was at the centre of international media interest over the coming end of the world. This remote village in Languedoc is the location of the magic mountain. Its rock formations are upside down; the oldest rocks are at the peak rather than at the base. Legend has it that one day the rocks will part and aliens will arrive to save believers.
Where better to hold an end of the world party? Where better to set a story about struggling relationships and people who want to make changes in their lives?
But it’s too long. Pass me the light sabre.