The Week That Was #1
I didn’t get a lot done this week. Mostly because I went on holidays and to make sure I finished my current WIP by 31 January, I took NO books. A bookless holiday is a totally foreign concept to me.
I tried hard. I tried really, really hard. I survived two bookshop visits but on the third one, to Sussex Inlet’s second hand book store – I caved. It’s one of those stores you can browse in for hours. No internet presence, you must seek if you wish to find.
So what I did this week has to – due to my lack of willpower – begin with the books I bought.
I Bought – Foal’s Bread by Gillian Mears. The excerpt on the dust jacket was so beautiful – and I remembered a review I had read … and there went my bookless holiday. So I quickly followed up with the Yandilli Trilogy by Rodney Hall
I read – in addition to the illicit purchases above – just two books for review – in the Sunday Telegraph. Holiday mode is the excuse again. Isabella’s Garden by Glenda Millard & Rebecca Cool and Snot Chocolate by Morris Gleitzman.
I discovered – when I attempted to score a point for my 2017 goal of checking Facebook more often – that in my absence Facebook had changed the rules (again) and deleted all my Interest Lists. These lists took me hours over years to compile and meant I could read posts in manageable chunks. Now my interests are submerged in the mire that is Facebook’s opinion of what I want to see. This would not happen on Twitter, people! So a change of tack is now required, as I attempt to work out how best to reconstruct the data I lost.
I was invited to the Story Arts Festival in Ipswich which is exciting and nostalgic for me. It was the first children’s literature festival I attended way back in 2009. I was very green then (and younger and thinner!)
I smiled at this post Agonising for Authors at Picture Book Den.
I learned two new words. I swapped ECLIPSE (of moths), which is my current favourite, for PRESCIND and EXSCIND. Any word with XSC in the middle is very cool. Thanks Bill Condon.
I edited the first 6 chapters of Blue Boy, Red Day for the very last time – edit no #28 (21 chapters to go and I’m finally done). I wrote another chapter of my new MG WIP Algernon and the Outside Girl and I even pulled out my YA WIP and edited a few chapters of that.
After writing it all down, that doesn’t seem like nothing after all. I guess that’s the point of my The Week That Was posts. They make me feel like I’ve achieved something in between the dramas and demands of real life.
