Souls

What ever souls are made of

His and mine are the same

- emily bronte

Mum’s place

You can spell it mom is you want to,  I’m an international girl.

I’m talking about a place just for girls.  Somewhere just for mum’s or even the mum’s to be  to curl up and reenergize.

What would be in your ultimate mum place?

Mine would have a place to write,  somewhere to read and  a sign on the door saying no dogs or kids.

It might be a corner or a closet.  It doesn’t have to be a whole room as that’s a bit too much luxury for most of us but even a chair can be just for you.

The dream crafters closet

The mum cave.

Pink passion

Her own desk – no kids allowed

something blue

If you really can’t get away, lock yourself in.

I’ve been busy all day fixing up my own girl space.  I’ll take a picture when it’s done.

Happy mother’s day to all the mum mom’s

The Write lunch

What does a writer need for lunch?  Brain food. Something not too heavy, not too light but just right for this Goldilocks.

I foraged around in the kitchen and came up with the following.

Kate’s kitchen

Here we have Helga’s sandwich thins with a light spread of cream cheese, lashings of smoked salmon, grape tomatoes off the vine, baby spinach from my garden, and a tiny bit of cheddar on top to make me smile.  Under the grill for a few moments and there you have it,  the Write lunch to make my brain feel good.

What did you have for lunch?

 

Close and personal with brain food

the Follow comments anarchy

 

jmmcdowell has saved my inbox.  Literally.

I’m a creature of habit and so getting use to unchecking the follow comments tag at the end of each comment I made was driving me nuts.  More often than not, I forgot.  It’s not that I don’t love to read all the comments on the various blogs I comment on,  it’s just that my inbox objected.

Here is what you do to stop other people being spammed with your comments.

Go to your Dashboard, and under Settings, click on “Discussion.” This will bring up a page with various options. Scroll down and you should see the following options:

Comment Reply Via Email — Enable sending comment replies via email
Follow Comments — Show a ‘follow comments” option in the comment form
Follow Blog — Show a ‘follow blog’ option in the comment form

Uncheck each box and then click save.

To stop in box spamming of comments,  you will need to uncheck the box each time you make a comment on another blog.

If you do forget to uncheck that box, look at the email message you get from WordPress telling you there was a new comment on that post. There’s a link where you can change your subscription options. Click on it. When the new page opens, be sure to click on the “comments” tab. It’ll show all the blog comments you accidentally subscribed to. You can delete each of them there.

Some people have noticed that if you unsubscribe from one comment on a blog, it will “uncheck” the follow comments box on future posts from that blog. I hope that’s true. But I still try to remember to see if it’s checked or not.

Thanks very much to JM for this info.  Spread it around.

 

Resuscitation of a novel.

One of these might do

My novel has very bright police tape across it. A crime has been committed here and we’re not leaving until we figure this out.

There are plot holes in my WIP.  Really big ones.  Getting all the pieces to meet and get along  has been a challenge and I couldn’t concentrate on moving forward until everything made sense. It bothered me too much to leave and come back to.

I dedicated many days to sorting out this problem and have managed to stop this ship from sinking -  I hope.  At least I’m not so wet.

Bucket anyone?

With some motivation from of a certain man, I combed through the thing and highlighted all the places where I had gone off the beaten track and pulled my characters back onto the white pages. They were wondering around lost by themselves. They were terribly frightened.

This morning I spent a solid hour on one scene in particular, spackling away with plaster so that it linked like a bridge. It’s not perfect, but it’s there, like a suspension bridge to somewhere rather than the  chasm of death. It’s horrendous to delete massive amounts of text isn’t it.  They were hard spent hours but they were dead ends and had to go.  As someone said “kill your darlings.”  It was carnage, I tell you…blood everywhere.

http://michellehodkin.blogspot.com.au

My problem was I had two strategies. Planning and pantsing.  I was following both and turning around in circles.  I had a plan but I  didn’t trust it and went where my happy fingers took me.  That’s fun and fine, but none of it made any sense.

I either need to be a planner or  a pantser as being both doesn’t suit me.

Which are you, or are you one of those lucky people who can do both?

Too Ugly for TV?

You might remember my post awhile back,  Good looking  where journalist Samantha Brick labeled herself too good looking and told us all about the hardship she endured because of  her condition.  Now she is labeling other women ugly; in particular,  Mary Beard, a BBC presenter and Classics professor at Newnham College, Cambridge.  Professor Beard is a well respected classicist and a bit of a controversal figure.  This comes off the back of a TV critic’s (AA Gill) opinion that Professor Beard and several other middle aged women were not fit for TV based on their looks, but he makes a career of that sort of thing.  Samantha Brick has picked up on the  opportunity to be foolish and run with it as well.

Now, what ever you think of Mary Beard, be it her views which are not always popular, or her ramshackled appearance,  is it ever alright to label someone ugly?

Personally I think Professor Beard has an engaging face and I would much rather look at her, a true expert in her field, than a styled presenter chosen for her looks. It’s about time TV was realistic.

Mary Beard, from her College home page.

She has what I consider, a very British look.  I’m British by birth, I can say such things.  I don’t really know what ugly is, it’s such a subjective thing, but to me, Mary Beard is not ugly.  Is it because Professor Beard is an extremely intelligent women that I think she has an interesting,  excellent face?  Maybe.  I should also disclose that I studied at Cambridge and perhaps some bias of my dear university is involved. Only a little, I assure you.

Professor Beard appears on BBC2 in a program called Meet the Romans. It’s a wonderful series if you care to watch it.  Professor Beard is not by any stretch of the imagination, a fashionable women. She dresses practically and cares nothing about hair and makeup.  But goodness is her mind sharp.

Why does it matter what Mary Beard looks like?  Why does Samantha Brick care?  I shall not put up a picture of Ms Brick. She likes to look at herself too much  and in my opinion, pictures of her are too plentiful as it is.  I would much rather look at Professor Beard. There is a beautiful honesty in her face.  There is nothing put on about her. Nothing fake.  To me this is an inability to assess women in an intelligent way.  A true inability to look behind the surface.

Mary Beard herself has called it  a “silly fuss.”  Good for you Mary.  She said the real stars of her work are the Romans and her only aim is to bring attention to them and how they are still relevent today.  My own classicist, SBM, would agree with that.

MasterChef is on. shhhh!!!

I love Masterchef. Really love it.

The new session is about to begin.  Any moment now. OK After this ad.  Now,  maybe this one.

I love to cook, so watching other people, who are not professional cooks, fumble around under pressure makes me excited.  I love to see the beautiful plates they serve up. The different cultures coming together over food is inspiring and my little boy loves my attempts to replicate them. We get our hands dirty together and come up with some fun and sometimes terrible dishes.

I love Gary, George and Matt.  They are so supportive and fun.

George, Matt and Gary

It’s on, it’s on.  Grab a cup of tea and enjoy people crying and laughing over food.

I have nothing to wear!

Actually I do but how many times I have said that.  “I have nothing to wear.” Thousands.  I have loads to wear. More clothes than I actually wear. How many times have you said it?

www.project333.com

Stephanie  is participating in project 333.  This is an experiment in living with less. Wear 33 things for 3 months. I love this idea as it reminds me how much I already have and how I don’t need anything else.

I’ve been doing something similar.

At the beginning of the year I decided to find out exactly what in my wardrobe I wear and what I don’t. I followed Peter Walsh‘s advice and turned all hangers to face the back.  Once I wore something, I returned it to the wardrobe with the hanger facing towards me.  Four months later I can now see that I have only worn 1/4 of my clothes.  This doesn’t include the things in draws.

Now that the new season is there, it’s time to get out my winter woolies and coats.  I love switching over my wardrobe between seasons.  I go through them and gasp in delight “Oh I’d forgotten about you,” I coo.

The summer clothes that did not get worn were put into a box today and I put them in the car, ready to donate tomorrow.   I’ve packed up the summer clothes I did wear, ready for next summer. Now I can start again, and do the same hanger trick with my winter clothes.

Wardrobe heaven

Next time I say “I have nothing to wear,” I’ll go to my wardrobe and look at all the backward hangers and wonder why it is that I say that when I have all those poor neglect fashion finds.

Where did I put that idea?

I’ve been doing well with my writing this week.  I’ve been getting about 500 words a day down and I’ve also rearranged some plots to fill in the gaping holes I kept falling into.  I’ve been pleased with what I’ve done so far.

Last night I was snuggling down to sleep, feeling very good. It was cold outside and warm in my bed. I had enjoyed the most fantastic conversation with SBM and I was lapsing into NREM and my theta waves were pushing at the tides of sleep.  That delicious feeling of active sleep was not far away and I was excited. My brain began to formulate a fantastic piece of  dialogue out of nowhere and I thought to myself, that’s fantastic, but I was so cozy and warm and I’d found just the right angle of the pillow. You know the one with the perfect softness.  I’ll remember this little nugget of genius in the morning I said to myself as rolling over to get my pad and pen was just too much effort. Paradoxical sleep was taking over fast and the next thing I knew it was morning.   I stretched and opened my eyes.  That was an amazing sleep.

I got up and put on the kettle, shuffling around the kitchen before the wee beastie was awake, and enjoyed a cup of tea in the cold morning sun.  Now what was it I had to remember.  It’s right on the tip of my tongue.  Damn.  It will come to me.

Let’s move onto lunch.  No still nothing, but I feel like I was supposed to do something.

Dinner time.   I’m eating a delicious bit of salmon smothered in mash potato when suddenly I shoot out of my chair.  Damn  ( in my brain it was a much more pungent word.)  I have forgotten that whole exchange of dialogue that my heroine exchanged with her arch-enemy.  Think brain think.  It was fantastic. It was spicy. It was everything you need it to be and it’s gone.  Like yesterdays dinner scraps the dogs have scoffed up. Gone!

Fill in the blanks.

The motto of this tragic post?  Never, I mean never,  let your brain waves convince you that you will remember that great scene.  Your pillow is never comfortable enough to not roll over and grab your pad and pencil.

Excuse me while I get my ruler and slap my knuckles.

May Day

Lovely people of blogworld.  Yes you with the bedhair and you with last nights mascara on the pillow. I am taking a wee break from posting, but not reading. I shall still be enjoying blog with my cup of tea in the morning  -  that sounds deliciously dirty doesn’t it.

Appropriately scared and snuggly at the same time.

I’m going to concentrate on writing my book for a few days and see where I get with it.  I wish you much productivity with your own progress and I shall let you know how I did when I return.

The headache should be gone by then. Fingers crossed.

Oh, and I watched a fantastic movie today.   Outcast.  Horror, magic, demons, spells, lots of scares and from Scotland.  Everything I love. I highly recommend it.   Thanks to SBM for watching it with me.   Love him most of all.

Happy Birthday SBM  and Happy May day everyone else