Tag / #weekendcoffeeshare

by Carol J Forrester

New Year, New Posts, Same Old Me

If we were having coffee, well firstly I would have to apologise for the mess. We’ve got the builders in downstairs putting a roof on the sun roof [which now has an RSJ in it at last!] and the fiancee is busy ripping up floors and carpets upstairs to try and find the end of a cable so we can plum in new light fittings. It turns out that all the electrics for the sun room ran off a single extension-chord so we’ve got to sort those out as well.

So, as you can guess, the house is a bit upside down. Things are moving fast though. Building work started on Monday, the old roof is that pile of scrap on the decking, the new roof is going on as I type this, and by the end of next week we’re looking at being done.

My house will be functional once again, and more importantly, no part of it will be structurally sound. Cue mini-happy parade.

Aside from the obvious structural improvements to the house, 2017 is already shaping up to be a year for positive changes.

This week I started a new weekly feature for the blog, something a little outside of the normal scope for Writing and Works. The series is called Giggle Fit, which is something of an in joke between my fiancee and I. Part One went up on Tuesday and Part Two goes up next Tuesday.

I’ve decided that I’m going to be better about working out at home. Of course this week has been somewhat off-putting. Nothing like trying to do yoga while all you can think about is the building dust beneath your hands and knees, but I’ve managed a workout each morning since Tuesday so I’m pretty chuffed with myself.

Writing wise, this week has been relatively productive. I haven’t been able to get myself back to Shadow Dawn yet, but I’m hoping that this afternoon will change that. I have four writing goals for today:

  • Write a post for the Weekend Coffee Share
  • Finish Part IV of Solitary Creatures [mostly written just needs tweaking]
  • Complete Chapter Twenty-One of Shadow Dawn
  • Schedule the post for the Poetry Anthologia Part VI.

I’ve got quite a list of writing tasks that need sorting out but those are the three I’m most keen to get sorted today.

While I haven’t worked on Shadow Dawn as much as I would have liked, this last week has produced a lot of poetry, some of it a little more racy than normal. I managed to write a new poem for each weekday, and on Thursday I even wrote two:

Summer Girl and Midnight are the two that ended up being somewhat steamy, Midnight more so than Summer Girl.

Overall I feel like I’ve moving into the new year with a more positive, and motivated outlook. You can change for the better at any time of the year, but 2016 was a year that was tainted with loss for me. With my Great-Grandmother’s death at the close of 2015, and the death of a close friend in August, the year was one of grief. 2017 hasn’t made those emotions vanish, but it does feel like a new chapter has started and I can move forward a little better.

That doesn’t mean 2016 was a complete loss of course. I made great headway on my novel, and I grew as a writer. The end of the year also gave me a chance to look back at my blog and see how things have progressed since I started it. Looking at my posting schedule, [which was non-existent] I can see why my stats suffered. For a few weeks I would post daily and then there would be nothing for two months, and then another flood of work. Therefore a resolution for the new year is to come up with a posting schedule that allows for dips in creativity and protects me from having large gaps between posts.

If you would like to have a look at some of my favourite bits from the last couple of years you can find them on my post Going Through The Highlights.

I’m afraid that’s all I’ve got to say this week. As always I’d love to hear how you lovely readers have been? Did you New Years go well? Did you make any resolutions or do you chose to avoid them?

Let me know in the comments below.

Happy New Year to everyone, and all the best for 2017.

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by Carol J Forrester

Nightmare Before Christmas – Surviving The Weekend

15338643_10155547663678012_4293679249890200497_nGood Afternoon lovely readers. This week we’re still on spiced apple cider instead of tea and coffee I’m afraid. There are six bottles of the stuff still in the kitchen and I’m trying to judge if they’re anywhere close to going off? I don’t suppose you fancy taking one home with you?

This weekend has been something of a trying one and no, I’m afraid I’m not talking about the Tim Burton movie though I will have to watch that at some point in the coming week. This weekend has been a nightmare for some much more mundane reasons.

Firstly, I managed to smash my passenger side wing mirror on Friday evening, we came home to find one of the fish trapped in the tank filter [it proceeded to die the following day], Fiancee accidentally doused the kitchen in soapy water after trying to clean the blender without putting the lid on, and upon pouring water from the kettle into a mug for a relaxing cup of tea to recover from all this, the mug cracked in half.

Things have not been going my way.

But on the bight side, walking in to find the kitchen and my fiancee covered in water was fairly amusing so I might have to count that on the other side of the tally. The blender was on the stop/start setting so it went off again after he thought he’d managed to switch it off.

Luckily, no Christmas decorations were harmed in the process.

Last night I managed to turn things around on the writing front somewhat. I’m finally getting over the stomach bug which struck mid-week and I wrote part three of Solitary Creatures : Monsters Love A Church.

 

‘Well we’re not dealing with Ancients just yet are we hmmm? We’re dealing with something that’s stirring up the Ancients and that’s a whole different kettle of fish because we both know how uppity those bastards are and let’s be honest, it doesn’t take that much to get them muttering in their sleep.’

‘It takes a massive natural disaster, like the one that killed the dinosaurs.’

‘We that’s a bit of an exaggeration if you ask me,’ Edwin shrugged. ‘They’ve made themselves known now and again in the meantime.’

‘There have only been four recorded incidents of the Ancients showing signs of waking,’ growled Sammy. ‘All of them have preceded death tolls that totalled in the millions. Whatever it is that’s got them uppity is bad news and that isn’t an exaggeration.’

Edwin tutted and shook his head. ‘Sammy, Sammy, Sammy. What will I do with you?’ …[Continued]

 

Unfortunately it looks like I’ve lost of the momentum that I built with the blog a few months ago and my daily stats are lucky to spike above twenty recently so despite getting down to some writing I’m aware that things are now how I want them to be. I need to get things back on track.

With 2017 just around the corner I’m starting to make plans for what I want to get done in the new year. January and February will be pretty much dedicated to finishing my AAT qualification but for the rest of the year I want my writing and blog to come first. That means using the next couple of weeks to line up some posts for those two months so focusing on my studies won’t turn Writing and Works into an abandoned husk with tumble weeds bouncing through the posts again.

Solitary Creatures looks like it will become a running series for 2017. I feel like it’s got more body to it than Headquarters and there is the opportunity to work some of my older flash fictions into it as I progress. I’m really looking forward to bringing back some works from a few years ago such as a piece of flash fiction from July 2014 called Mist.

 

“We don’t enjoy being summoned by your kind Grail.” Pulling herself from the mist Merida pressed her fingers to the rickety table-top of the patio furniture and leaned in. “We are not your servants,” she warned.

Grail lowered his morning coffee and pushed it away. It had turned cold the moment the mist crept into his garden. “Why do they always send you,” he frowned. “Is there no one else?”

“No one at all,” said Merida, scowling impatiently. “ The council is less than forgiving when it comes to your crimes.” … [Continued]

 

Aside from that there isn’t much to tell you this week.

Let me know what your plans are for the new year. Is it time for a revamp on your blog? Are you having another crack as last year’s resolutions? Will this be the year that you finally get on and write that blook/short story/play?

Let me know in the comments below.

Happy Holidays everyone.

weekendcoffeeshare

by Carol J Forrester

Christmas Just Regurgitated Itself Over My Kitchen-Or- Why I Smell Like Apples

If we were having coffee, well this week I’d ask if you’d rather try a glass of non-alcoholic spiced apple cider. I’m emphasising the non-alcoholic side since I’m English and cider is normally assumed to be alcoholic here.15338643_10155547663678012_4293679249890200497_n

Anyway, this weekend one of the neighbours caught me on the way to buy my Christmas wreath and asked if I wanted any cooking apples. He’d been lovely enough to bring by some beans earlier in the year and he thought I might have some use for apples too.

I was going to make a crumble until the lovely fiancee suggested mulled apple cider. In the end I bastardised a few recipes, hurled some apples, an orange, nutmeg, cinnamon, cloves, and allspice into the slow cooker and left it to simmer along for eight hours.

After straining the result was what you can see in the photo. I need to reduce the amount of cloves I’m using, and amp up the cinnamon a tad, but overall it tastes pretty scrummy and super Christmassy. My kitchen is also covered in the evidence of my multiple attempts at working out how to strain boiled down apples.

Tip: Never assume that you don’t need muslin cloth and a sieve with small holes will work just as well. It doesn’t. It really doesn’t.

Aside from throwing myself into Christmas and the wonders of my slow cooker, I’m starting to kick myself into gear for 2017. I’ve now hit the half way point of the current draft for Shadow Dawn, and even though I didn’t manage to win NaNoWriMo, 50,000 words of the draft are down on papers and I’m loving what I’m writing. The rest of this month will be about finishing the current draft and getting ready to re-instate a blogging schedule come January 1st.

With the end of my AAT course in sight, there will soon be nothing in the way of me finding time to write outside of work. I will probably still find excuses, but they’ll be ever so slightly less valid.

So with that in mind I will wish you a happy holiday and goodnight. It’s a short post but I’ve not got much to say.

Let me know, are you making anything special for Christmas? What is your signature dish? Any tips on apple cider?

I’ll leave you with an extract from the current Shadow Dawn draft. Happy reading.

‘What on earth is going on?’ Tara asked. Becket had disappeared to find out what all the commotion was about and was yet to reappear.

‘Your Highness, what an unexpected pleasure.’

Tara turned.

‘Frenrick, how… nice.’ Despite trying to maintain her calm Tara felt the heat rushing to her cheeks.

‘Did you get my flowers? I was afraid that the lack of response meant that had somehow gone astray in this huge palace of yours.’

‘No, I got them,’ Tara said. Ilia was frowning beside her and behind Frenrick one of his envoys sniggered into his gloved fist.

She was not punching anyone Tara told herself. No matter how much they may deserve it, she was not going to punch someone today. She caught the envoy’s eye and he turned the laugh into a polite cough.

Becket chose that moment to reappear, stealing Tara away before Frenrick could reveal anything about the flowers, or their note, to Ilia.

by Carol J Forrester

Ten Thousand Words And Counting

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It’s just turned afternoon here in the UK and instead of planning my evening for bonfire night, I’m staring at my NaNoWriMo word-count, wondering how much more I can get written before I need to leave the house. After all, I need pesky things like food and the kitchen is looking a little bare at the moment.

I’m going to keep this week’s Weekend Coffee Share short as I really do need to keep my attention on finishing the current draft of Shadow Dawn. Over the last five days I have written 10,128 words to add to my book, taking the current draft total to…

bum-ba-da-dum:

27,812

I’m currently working on chapter ten of the book and I’m really proud of how much I’ve written over the last week. Writing the synopsis for Shadow Dawn really helped with motivating me and keeping me from going off track during the last few days.

I’m not quite hitting the same daily word-counts as I was when I blasted out the last full draft of Shadow Dawn, but I’m managing at least 2,000 words a day, and yes, I’m writing each chapter over from scratch.

Reading back the stuff I’d written from about chapter five onward, it was clear that my story had taken some very weird tangents to the point where none of the characters were heading in the direction that they needed to be.

We are now on track.

Mostly.

I’ve cut away most of the old draft and I’m starting afresh.

In December I will have to go back and lengthen a lot of the chapters, and I’m starting to come to terms with the fact that I’m crap at chapter endings. I really struggle to create a final paragraph that doesn’t feel too sudden or cliched.

But! That is all a December problem and right now it’s November so I need to get back to writing. Best of luck to anyone else who’s also trying to complete NaNoWriMo this month.

Happy writing!

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by Carol J Forrester

November: There Might Be Time To Save This Year Yet

If we were having coffee then the first thing I’d be telling you is that this year has not gone to plan, but then again, no year ever goes to plan and I suppose that’s part of the joy of life.

It’s the end of October and with only two months left in 2016, I’m trying to work out what exactly I have achieved for myself over the course of this year. In all honesty, it’s nowhere near as much as I wanted to, especially when it comes down to my book and my blog.

Featured Image -- 4666At the beginning of this year I wanted to revamp Headquarters, but it quickly became apparent that I didn’t have the time to do this without taking time away from my AAT Qualification or my book. So instead I decided to focus on those two things and leave Headquarters for another year.

Then in June I moved house and further delay was added to everything on my to do list as the mania of shifting my life from one property to another took over with all the wonder of solicitors, estate agents and mortgage advisers. My time was spent looking over surveyor’s reports and decoding the cryptic foreign language of contracts. For a few months, there was room for nothing else and the book, my course, and my blog fell by the wayside.Whereas 2015 saw significantly more views and visitors than 2014, it looks like 2016 will only just manage to catch up with the 2015 numbers. Which seems a little strange as I posted over 100 more posts this year compared to last.

All in all, 2016 hasn’t been the year I expected it to be, and moving into 2017 I realised that I won’t be in the position I wanted to be in. I will still have my AAT qualification to complete, Headquarters is still languishing semi-complete, I haven’t had the time for things I wanted on Writing and Works, and there’s that little event called a wedding that I need to plan for 2018. So what am I going to do? I’m going to re-evaluate.

 

It’s important to set yourself goals with a timeline. They help to propel you forward and give you a finishing line to aim for. But remember, if you suddenly realise that you won’t hit that goal it doesn’t mean the end of the world. You just have to re-evaluate where you are, and how you get to where you want to be.

 

As I said, Shadow Dawn is not where I wanted it to be by the end of 2016. My motivation has slumped and died with no signs of reviving any time soon. Finishing by the end of the year looked impossible. If I throw myself into blogging every day I could possibly bring the site stats up, but I would burn out and not have time for anything else. No doubt the content would suffer and instead of enjoying writing posts I would stress about them. Along with everything else this dilemma started to send me into a tail spin.

So I took a step back. I asked myself ‘what is the thing I really want to see finished by the end of the year? Why is this not where I want it? What’s holding me up?’

The answer was my novel. The reason it wasn’t where I wanted was because I was still trying to write bits of the story that I didn’t properly understand. I had a beginning and an end but the middle was a sort of mushy mess that didn’t make much sense at all and the ending was more of a wistful hope than a solid finish.

So I closed down the document holding my draft, and I opened a fresh one.

Instead of spooling out another chapter that seemed to be heading towards a cliff of empty, black nothingness, I wrote a synopsis.

Well I say a synopsis. It was my version of one. My 2,000 word, broken, jumpy, question riddled version of one. But it’s done the trick.

 

Going back to the drawing board can be tough, but remember, without strong foundations the whole house ends up collapsing.

You need foundations, even if they’re made of post-it notes.

 

I now have a four page document that details my story from beginning to end. It tells me how and when the characters interact, where in the time line they are and how I get from beginning to middle to end.

I’m not going to lie. It wasn’t easy to write. At times I wanted to smash my forehead into the keyboard and give up entirely. But in the end it was done and I had something that I felt proud of. Something I could use to finish Shadow Dawn before 2016 comes to a close.

Which is why I’m doing exactly what I said I wouldn’t do two weeks ago. I’m going to do NaNoWriMo.

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You’ve heard the phrase ‘kill your darlings’? Well completing this draft of Shadow Dawn means rewriting most of it and adding in a huge amount of content. At least 50,000 words worth. So NaNoWriMo seems like a great motivational tool for getting that done as forcing myself to write every night for a month is how I got to the end of the last draft.

I’m not going to put off writing until November as I’ve got the first six chapters under my belt already and I want to get chapter seven done this weekend. This will mean that I start NaNoWriMo with about 20,000 words and I’ll then add another 50,000 words on during the month. Those 20,000 words won’t be included in my word count for NaNoWriMo as that would be cheating and I want to prove to myself that I can win NaNoWriMo if I put my mind to it.

Right, now that I’ve said NaNoWriMo so many times that the word no longer holds any meaning, I’ll finish up with this.

2016 has not been the year I expected. It’s been filled with excitement and it’s been filled with sadness as well. However, I have survived and I have got to the end a better person than I started. Even if I don’t hit any of the goals I’m still aiming for, I know that I at least got half way there.

This blog and my book are two things I feel passionately about. The book because it’s part of that dream I’ve had since I was five, and this blog because I’ve been able to explore other styles and forms of writing while meeting amazing, supportive people who inspire and motivate me.

2017 will be a new year with new challenges, but I will be the one who chose how I face it, and I still have time to change how I feel when this year ends.

weekendcoffeeshare