As I sat on warm sand after swimming through freezingly clear summer water yesterday,
myself and the other women I was with started talking about bones and age-ing. We then talked about shrinking and it turns out we’ve all lost height. Someone made an idle comment about being as small as a midget and I found myself saying that little people don’t like being called midgets…
Today I read a sharply written post on the role of Dorothy Dunnett in many writers’ lives.
http://www.npr.org/2014/12/27/371710986/all-the-writers-you-love-probably-love-dorothy-dunnett
And it was this below statement in particular that would cause me to wonder how I have been influenced by her…
Earlier this month, Joanna Penn wrote a blog post on the need for a writer to have a solid mission statement. I gave this some hard thought and have answered the questions she posed.
Question 1: What do you do?
Driving to a beach down the road from House the other day, we met a mob of sheep being shifted to fresh pasture.
This grazing property is my all time favourite. If I won a lottery and the owners would sell, I would buy it yesterday (that’s not to say I don’t love our own farm with it’s wonderful old stone barn and ruins of stables, bakehouse, smithy’s and more).
I’ve been invited to be part of the Tasty Summer Blog Hop by historical romance writer Lucinda Brant. You may remember that Lucinda sat in my Big Red Chair some time ago.
Since then, her books have gone from strength to strength, culminating in her being nominated as a 2013 finalist for TWO books in the highly respected Readers’ Favorite Book Awards, with the results to be announced in September. You can read about her books, awards, reviews etc at http://lucindabrant.com and about her latest release Salt Redux
As I attempt to re-brand myself, changing myself from http://mesmered.wordpress.com to https://pruebatten.com, I have been looking over everything required to create a brand.
While my book-sales take a Springtime nosedive, and I spend more time in the garden or working around the farm to worry about my failing writerly profile, or even how ill-disciplined I am toward my writing (to give myself a pat on the back: I did write from 11-12.15PM and reduced myself to tears as I wrote), I came inside this evening to find a link sent to me by my daughter for the most delicious and witty blog called Faux Fuschia.
I had crept into the laundry and divested myself of sheep-poo encrusted clothes, scrubbed my mud-filled nails, brushed out my seed filled hair and hauled myself to my wardrobe to climb into trackie bottoms and a polar fleece top. Flung tiny new potatoes on the stove to boil, made (gorgeous) mayonnaise and pulled Creole smoked salmon out of the fridge to eat tonight with white wine alongside. It’s all my aching hands, body and mind could manage.
And then I opened the computer and clicked on the link and stared at this divine woman’s slick home which was overflowing with colour, at her perfectly manicured nails, her beautifully applied lipstick and miraculously tied Pucci scarves – and thought how far removed from her I was at that moment.
That said; I vicariously enjoyed her perfection knowing I’m too tired to find my own. I also love that the Universe Talks to Her. To be frank it talks to me too, but it obviously says the same things in a different way.
BUT … I loved reading this blog tonight. It absolutely hit the spot because I needed the escape and sometimes things like picturesque blogs and Pinterest are the best medicine.
And tomorrow, if the Universe Talks To Me in the right way, maybe I shall pull out the gorgeous Gucci scarf my children gave me last birthday and try and tie it at least a little bit perfectly and maybe I shall even paint my toenails…
As a reader, I love descriptive narrative. I welcome the chance to create an image in my mind with the author’s words.
Rosamunde Pilcher springs to mind:
‘As usual, Elfrida was the first downstairs. At the turn of the stair she threw back the curtains (a marvellously grand threadbare pair she had bought in the market in Buckly) and gazed out at the day. Actually it was night because it was still dark, but it had stopped snowing and by the light of the street lamp she could see the garden, all shape and form obliterated. Bushes and trees dropped under the weight of the snow and shrubs, pillowed, had lost all identity. It was still and quiet.’ Winter Solstice. The description is so plain, so perfectly understated, so very comforting. It is why Pilcher will always be a number one favourite.
Whilst away last weekend, I read an interesting article on solitude in The Australian Weekender magazine, by writer Nikki Gemmell. She says: ‘aloneness can have a vast restorative power … it’s a space for your mind to uncurl … in the lovely, glittery alone, a door opens to a possibility and it’s when novel ideas sneak in, titles roar with their rightness and surprising character arcs veer me back to excitement over a project that hasn’t been singing.’
Earlier this month I was interviewed by Shéa Macleod and one of the questions she posed was ‘Chocolate or parma ham?’
Shea isn’t the only one who mentions chocolate… the more I wander amongst my favourite blogs, the more I find that chocolate is an absolute essential for the writer. I even found this http://bit.ly/fjaCn5 on a new blog today.
