About reading, writing, life that gets in the way.

I'm unsure why but today I had the need to blog. So here I am. Blogging. I think it's because of the snow. I have a friend who lives in Thailand and has as such never experienced snow. For most brits this seems incredible, something inside me stirred and my fingers flew across my keyboard. 
As a native of a very hot country, she is naturally averse to the cold, but would still love to see snow even just once. This was my starting point.
"To see snow you can be toasty warm inside, but there's nothing like the childish joy of picking up the icy, crunchy fluff in your fingers and feeling it, the weird sensation as it starts to dribble between your fingers. The shocking stingy start of a lump of it splattering across your skin as a frozen snowball explodes across your face. The full thud as one impacts against your coat, cushioned by the layers below. The creeping numbness in your fingers as your gloves get soggier the more snow you roll, sculpt, and mould into projectiles, or an army of behatted, scarf wearing humanoids - clearing the grass as you do so bringing green back to the blanked out landscape. The horrible tickle of cold water that runs down to your undies when the inevitable stupid boy dumps snow down your coat for a laugh. The way your bum gets wet as you make angels in the snow. A seraphic crime scene of body outlines sunk into to the snow. The adrenaline rush of flying down the hill in your sled, followed by the hysterical laughter when you fall out face first into the snow as you tumble down the hill. Perfecting the art of bum sledding, laughing at that friend who gets it wrong and ends up on their front snowploughing with their face. Pure joy, relief and delight when the news trickles through that school is closed and you are free to play in the snow. The bliss of warming your numb fingers around a hot chocolate, putting on fresh fluffy socks and dry clothes and your slippers, before snuggling up beneath a blanket and feeling the warmth spread through you. I love winter there's something about snuggling up in lots of layers and cuddly jumpers wearing fluffy socks and really appreciating the warm. The contrast between the outside and the inside. Feeling like a dragon when you breathe and your condensed breath spirals up in front of you. Although when you're wrapped up right in your layers outside, there'll be a part of you that the cold nips at: the tips of your ears, your nose undergoes an identity crisis and believes it belongs to Rudolph, your toes when your shoes aren't as waterproof as you thought they were. 

But it's all part of the fun. It's a different kind of cold, it's one that's not so awful because it's so much fun. Unless you have to go adult. Then it's just a pain in the arse you really don't have time for as you struggle to work slipping and sliding around every bend. Keeping the blinds closed to prevent the kid tsunami in class as they flood to the window to yell about the snow as if they didn't see it only last year. Being drowned in brown muddy slush as a car travels to close to the kerb and sprays a fanned wave of half melted snow into the air. Scraping mounds off the stuff off your car, the delight as typical British service resumes and the rain washed the whole nasty mess away. All the while there's a part of you who misses the childish glee every time it snows. The part of you who despite being stuck in a traffic jam because some idiot flipped their car driving too fast round a bend in icy conditions that appreciates the frosted majesty of the landscape,the way it glitters in the light, the ethereal effect it lends to the trees decorated in a coat just as impressive as the green one they carry in the summer. If only you didn't have to go be a responsible adult. If only..."

The only reason it comes up is because it felt good to write something. To set the word junkie free. It doesn't get much chance these days. Teaching is not a profession that is exactly conducive to having hobbies. I miss being able, having time to work on my book, I miss even having the time and brain power to read a book. My work leaves me exhausted, which is why I'm sat in front of my TV watching Bond, typing up the words that burst out of my head earlier because you have to take what you get, it's why my notebook is full of a chapter from a book, a sequel to another I haven't written yet. I'd love to have more time to write but I need to pay my bills. I'd like eventually to afford a place to live, but writing doesn't pay my bills or buy houses, or even food. And this rate it never will because I have no chance to hone my craft, to finish what I started and it's really bothering me.

I've always wanted to write.

I've been doing it since I was little and only had enough concentration to write mere sentences and then draw terrible drawings, to go with them.(Terrible drawings are acceptable at that age but when that's the peak of your artistic talent, terrible is the best word.) It never stopped, never went away, it kept escaping whenever it had the chance, in my diary, in my many notebooks, in my blogs, in the stories I tell myself when I just need a headspace that isn't mine. And now, just as I'd let it flourish rather than doubting if I could really do it, I feel like it's being squashed again.


So I'm in a fuddle.

Bethx

Hello again!

Hello blog fans.

It's been rather a while. For which I am very sorry, I should keep you guys in the loop more. The truth be told I have rather a lot to catch you up on. So, first things first; life on Planet Beth!

We are now a teacher!  And probably ought to stop discussing ourselves in the royal third person...

I say teacher, what I am is a stressed, harassed, and overwhelmed trainee. Despite this I do love my job. I'm on a School Centred Initial Teacher Training scheme which means four days a week I work in a school teaching, observing, lesson planning, dealing with children that puke up during my lessons, marking, and generally being badass and awesome making languages accessible to all abilities. No, that's the job description not bragging. I'm based at an Academy near where I live, it's a great school and the kids are lovely. It is a whole world away from where I worked last year!

On Thursdays we go to training which is where we do all the theory, procedure, and protocol gubbins. Sometimes it's fascinating other times it's mind numbing but that's just life. The course however is superb, really supportive and helpful. Superb is my new word by the way. Everything is "superb".

I have begun to annoy myself, try to say superb without sounding sarcastic?

You can't can you!  This is why I worry about how my students react to it being written all over their work...

Other than my current attempts to teach Spanish to kids whom I'm only really a page ahead of,(I feel a permanent fraud), there's nothing much to report on the personal front. I am after all a boring person with lots of opinions, as regular readers already know. Basil continues to break every six weeks, my room is still too small for my library as I'm still living at home annoying my parents. Proximity ensures that we all rub each other up the wrong way at least once a day. Such is life.

Right. Ok. Have I covered it all? Can I talk about the cool stuff now?

Yes?

Good.

BOOK STUFF!!!

Depending on how you came here, you are to some extent aware of my little side project.

I say little.

It has somehow reached in excess of 92,000 at the time I write this. This is not including the stuff I've written non chronologically and needs to be inserted.

Thankfully at this point I'm almost finished. My upper limit is 120,000, but I'm hoping to bring it in under that when it's edited and re-drafted. I think I can do it.

Writing has been a joy I never expected. It's frustrating when words and these annoying fictional people that have taken up residence in my head refuse to cooperate! Seriously a sixteen year old throwing a strop in your head because she has fictional angst is hideous. I'm not crazy I know these individuals aren't real, and I tell them what to do. Sort of... in terms of narrative they develop and write themselves, most writers have arguments with their characters. I am assured that this madness is totally normal.

Which would help if writers were normal people. We're not. We're bonkers. But it's a healthy form of bonkers that I heartily recommend.

It helps if you have similarly afflicted friends. Which I do and they are wonderful and the amount of spam I send them over Facebook messenger is testament to how much they love me that they have not blocked my ass yet.

Thank you Kit and Lydia for having the patience of saints. I platonically love you guys.

Having people to listen to my madness has been integral to my process I crave feedback and praise, teachers are fuelled by it, authors even more so, Kids with ADHD? Well it's the only way we ever get anything done.

But I've taken it a step further.

I've gone and thrown myself in the deep end and got involved in the community.

And acquired myself a lovely pair of crit partners.

A critique partner is a person you haven't really met but who also writes who can give you objective feedback without worrying about ruining a friendship if they tell you your work is terrible.
This is by no means belittling the role of the wonderful people who have been involved from the start. It's adding an extra layer of quality control and making new friends with the same interests.
Everything I've read has recommended that if you want to write you should find yourself an objective crit of your work. I feel a little bit nervous still about sharing my work but I received a lovely email from a Mailing Lister today that has spurred me to keep writing. Particularly as I'm so close to the end. I wish I could be insightful about my process for you guys but really as my friend Scott said really in the end it comes down to nothing more than drive. The determination to write a manuscript.
Tell someone what you're up to, ask them to keep you accountable, join a forum and find a crit partner if that would help you.
And believe in your story.
Let your characters breathe and grow and let them surprise you. Mine do endlessly.

They also wake me up demanding attention at 3 AM demanding attention like a nursing infant.
That's about the time I start plotting horrible deaths for them.

Yes that's why your favourite characters die, they wake the author in the middle of the night and make them grumpy.

Anyway I had better go write me some book.

Much love,
Bethxx

A Wordle of the book so far!

Blood Ties: The Future.

So the big announcement is this: Monday will be the last chapter update on Wattpad for a while. 

A really long while.

I keep getting distracted from actually writing Blood Ties because I’m worrying about its online reception, or how many people are reading do they think its rubbish, why on earth am I bothering, Arghh what if someone steals my manuscript, the list goes on.

So I’m gonna leave you hanging off the proverbial cliff.

Sort of.

If you care enough about the book that you’re reading this in the first place then fear not, I am still writing it. I will still be posting updates on here maybe even snippets and such like and as ever tweeting my writing tribulations.

 I also will be starting a mailing list. For those who want to get story bits. Exclusive looks and maybe even chapters!!!! There may even be artwork to come if a friend follows through on a remark she made. Anyone who wants do artwork of stuff from the book is more than welcome to!

I’m determined to get this Manuscript finished by the summer. I know I have many miles of words yet to go and I can work quite slowly for various reasons but I want to make it the best I can make it, just ask the very forbearing Kit, Lydia, Emma and Hannah who I keep bombarding with crap and bellyaching. 

If you’re here and you’re feeling sad because you’ve really been enjoying it, I’ll take that as huge compliment! This is a labour of love and a dream project that I’m going to be working so hard at. If it all works out there will be way more to come. The future is full of opportunities and possibilities.

In regards to the manuscript I’m purposely not mentioning the big “P” word because it’s a heavy laden word full of hopes and dreams that are so very easily ripped to shreds.

So if you want more chapters and such email planetbeth91@gmail.com with your name and email and I'll get in touch

Thank you for your time,

Bethx

ARGH! IT'S LIVE.

That's right folks Just in case I haven' overloaded your social media feeds enough, Chapter One of Blood Ties is now available on Wattpad. I made a cover. Its ridiculously beautiful.

The link to Wattpad is HERE! Click the underlined word!!!  You know how hyperlinks work.

I shall also post it on here, and more updates on how the book is going.

Currently it's stuck in the middle of chapter six going nowhere fast. *facepalm*

But enjoy the first chapter :D

Bethx

Reading and Writing.

Here's a thing. When you start writing your own stuff you suddenly pay much closer attention to the way other people write.

Jealousy becomes a serious problem. Sometimes you read material so good the envy overwhelms you and you have just sit there for a moment grousing that you didn't come up with the quote about electro music sounding "like a robot having a seizure".

And then you read the scratching you made on the paper in front of you, and end up feeling like you've read better worded, more complex, more gripping thrillers scribbled on a sheet of A4 by a hyperactive 5 year old with a dinosaur obsession and access to the wax crayon tin.

Then you let other people read your stuff because, hey misery loves company. but they tell you that have nothing to worry about. So you believe them. Until you have to sit down and try and write more at which point you remember you really can't write. Let alone in two different voices.

I have two main characters. two twin girls creatively named Aleksis and Aleksa who share very similar names for reasons that become obvious during the story,   There are other key characters. But none of them have really come out of the woodwork yet.

The story is written from the girls perspectives, which will serve to illustrate the two different sides of the story and explore the goings on much more widely. Despite this I'm hoping that the reader will still never be in full possession of all the facts at any one time.

I have already posted a snippet from Lexa. Its totally unrelated to anything much. But its a something. I may drop more little bits at other points.

It's hard to know what to do properly until I decide about trying to publish it. But then I'll need more than 6 chapters to know xD.


Anyway that's the news for now

Bethxx

Snippet

because sandwiches.


"Sir Gravel doesn't bother speaking to me just shoves me forward. Somewhere in the back of my head I remember Norton saying he had an actual name. I focus on trying to remember it as I'm propelled down the corridor. Something to do with ham? Ham... ham...hungry. No. As much as I'd like a sandwich he didn't have anything to do with lunch. It sounded sharp. Point? no. Knife? something to do with knives? Daggers? That was it! Dagham. Sir Gravel was actually called Dagham."

Err Hello...

So its been awhile...

I've been busy, Graduating, Job getting and trying to make out like I'm a responsible adult.  The last one being the hardest of course.

I've also been busy cracking on with realising a life long dream. Writing a novel/book. In my last term of Uni I was finally struck with the lightening bolt of inspiration. It took long enough. So I wandered into the Union shop and picked up a large black notebook, which I imaginatively named "The Big Black Book", and started scratching out my idea. And idea that grew into a world, a world that I then had to shelve because Exams and job hunting then became a thing I had to worry about.

A few months later, when the world had settled down a bit, I got out the Big Black Book, my mechanical pencil and got scribbling again.
3 1/2 chapters later I'm still going. Its not easy, sometimes it's not fun because translating what's in your head on to the page is really hard when you can't get the words right, but there's an immense feeling of satisfaction when you get it right. The only problem is  that  to get any idea of how good it is you have to A) be brave enough to let other people read it (because they might really hate it) and B) have some really honest friends, brutally honest, because if it is really rubbish then as heartbreaking as that might be it's time to A) give up, B) start again or C) Serious rewrites.

So far I've no need for A, B or C.

I'm about 4/5 chapters in at the moment and working hard. I might post a few snippets on here when I'm further along with the manuscript, as well as character profiles and the like if people would find that interesting. If any arty types want to draw any of the things in the book at all, I'd love it. I can't draw myself, and seeing characters come to life outside the page is always fun.

Anyway that's what I'm up to other than being a Teaching Assistant whose maths skills are slowly improving.
Gosh actual real world work is hard. Getting up in the morning is even harder and being a professional sensible adult? AHAHAHAHAHAHA. It's exceptionally difficult.

It's quite hard remembering that you're not a kid any more, and that you're not supposed to laugh at their antics when they're playing up in class, because they're being disrespectful.



Gosh.

Anyway till sooner rather than later,

Beth xxx