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Friday 30 December 2011

Oops!

Oh dear. I've been very lax with the ole blog this month. I blame Christmas. It doesn't half take up a lot of time. Researching presents (a printer for my dad), buying presents, baking Christmassy goodies, writing cards, doing the Christmas visits, wrapping presents (this seems to take an extraordinarily long time for some reason and I didn't even go all Kirstie on them...). It was never ending. 

Anyway, now that it's all over for another year (almost - there's still New Year and taking down all the decs and cards), I might, just might, have time to finish that final edit. And then, I will finally start submissions. Scary. 

I'm hopefully off to see Sherlock Holmes 2 later on. I adore Robert Downey Jr so am looking forward to it immensely. I watched Tropic Thunder yesterday - well, I say watched. I'm sure there is a name for it that some clever young person has come up with - I skipped through all the boring bits to the good stuff. So, I basically watched the RD Jr bits and the hilariously brilliant Tom Cruise bits. That man seriously redeemed himself with his portrayal of the fantastically loathsome Les Grossman. I particularly love his dancing. Genius. 

So, now I am just listening to my father-in-law and the Chardmeister trying to clear up my old laptop which runs at the speed of a snail. Maybe they'll get it to run faster, maybe not. I don't really care too much as I use my netbook all the time. The old laptop is a beast of a Dell - it weighs more than Lady M  and takes an eon to load anything. Doing the NCT newsletter on it via MS Publisher is quite the frustrating chore. But now, thanks to my wonderful brother, I can load MS Office onto my netbook using my new external CD drive - yay! 

Ooh, looks like they are wrapping up - better get my coat and boots on ready for a quick trip to Oxford to buy some notebooks and spend my £5 Warehouse voucher plus some Next gift cards me and Lady M received for Christmas. And perhaps a Starbucks skinny Chai Latte for the way home - yum.

Tuesday 6 December 2011

It's crunch time.

I have a strange attraction to ever moving goal posts. I seem to remember that last summer, two of my writing buddies and I promised each other that we would submit work by the end of the year. Ummm. That didn't happen. So, then I was going to do it by the end of the summer. No. Didn't happen. Then, I thought I would do it by the end of November. Silly, silly me. I do know why I keep doing it though. I'm not good at dealing with rejection. Which, y'know, is monstrously stupid because I have to learn how to accept rejection gracefully if I want to be a published author.
I need to go and read my last post and just man up, don't I?
Luckily, I use this same set of goal posts for losing weight, so they're multi-purpose. I suppose I could use them for other things too, like sorting out the loft and doing a car boot with the multitude of things gathering dust and mould up there or watching the third season of Dr Who so that I can give it back to the friend who owns it and wanted to watch it the other day but couldn't. Oh and many, many other things. I told you I have big to-do lists... 

So. My new set of goal posts for submitting to agents are... drum roll - by Christmas. This year. Now, don't scoff into your mince pies and mulled wine. I've written the Christmas cards, the presents are (mostly) being organised by my wonderful siblings (yay siblings!) and Christmas is at the parental house so there's no agonising over what to cook for how many people?!!? 

The soon-to-be-submitted MS is mostly ready. I need to do a quick run through for grammar, spelling, continuity and go over the edited first few chapters but after all that is done - I will have no more excuses. None. Apart from, no, I'm just kidding. *not really though. Yes, really. Honestly. I promise.*

In other news, I went to see Daniel Sloss on Saturday at the lovely Didcot Cornerstone. Didcot is very lucky to have this wonderful facility in it's midst and if you live in the South of Oxfordshire, you really should check out their programme - here  

Daniel was supported by Kai Humphries and they were both very, very funny. I laughed until I cried and, although some people weren't too impressed by the battle-rapping, I thought it was pretty cool! I would definitely recommend you see either or both of them - word of warning, if you don't like your comedy with a large side of swearing or anti-God jokes, these two are not for you! 

Here they are, signing stuff and cosying up to the teenage girls who made up a large part of the audience (well, Daniel Sloss in only 21 - yes, join me in weeping at how much of an old, underachieving loser you feel now).





Oh yes, I almost forgot! I have declared myself a NaNoWriMo rebel winner. I do feel a bit bad for including to do lists and suchlike in my word count but whatever. A winner I am!
Well, what with the whole 'submissions by Christmas' thing, I really had better get cracking on the final edit! I may well have a new writing project to start too - a friend of mine wants to use her experiences to write a book but says she isn't a writer, so we are thinking of collaborating on it. Should be good fun and the subject matter is right up my street! It will have to be put aside until the New Year, of course...