Packing the Tent Pegs,

I'm currently sat in my bed with aggressively ginger hair, wearing a sun dress and a fez. I'm trying to figure out if it's worrying, or if this is exactly where I thought my life should be right now.

It's the first day of camp and I'm still trying to decide exactly what I'm going to do, other than procrastinate, of course.

Part of me would really like to finish the novel that I started in November but I'm not certain that I will manage to get that done.

The other options are obviously writing something new, focusing on the blog or finishing something else and starting to edit it. Any of them would be a good thing, but I'm still not sure which would be the best thing at the moment.

A couple of weeks ago I turned 24 and it has made me make a few changes that I'm hoping are helping. I'm trying to exercise more, eat less rubbish and get my life going in the right direction. It's very slow, very difficult and very strange, but I also know that I am committed to it, so that is good.

Anyway, I had best get on with whatever it is I'm doing. Catch you later.

In Too Deep,

I can already tell that this is going to be one of those blogs that I write more for me, and then look at and think, okay, maybe don't publish that, because of the fear that it leaves me feeling a little exposed. 

I'm sat here listening to what can only be called Romantic Ballads (no, seriously, that's what the Spotify playlist called them) and I can't say that it is helping with the whole effort of not getting emotional. 

Almost a year ago, a relationship that I had been in for a long time, and which I had emotionally committed to in such a thorough way came crashing to a not so abrupt end. It had been a long drawn out process that I can genuinely say wasn't helpful or healthy for either of us, and the truth is that it took a very long time for me to pick myself back up after that. A very long time.

Despite that, I worked on building the life that I wanted, which is an ongoing goal, but I am in a much better position now that I was 12 months ago. 

Now, I'm not going to say I'm over it, because I don't think I could commit myself to that, but I have got to the point where I could be happy, and that's dangerous.

Dangerous? Well, yes. Despite the fact that I can be alone, I can do things by myself and only be mildly uncomfortable, I am happy with my own company and don't really need to leave the house at weekends if I don't want to, the dangerous thing is, I like being in a relationship. 

I like having that special person I speak to all the time, that I can feel close to and that I can laugh with. I like having that commitment to that person. I don't know why, I just do. 

And danger occured. 

Out of nowhere - I wasn't even looking for once, appeared this man. In my usual styling, I'm not going to put his name on here, but C walked into my life quite casually, and then that was it; he was there. 

I'm not going to say that meeting him felt like nothing I had ever been through before, because it was like something I had before, and maybe that was part of the problem. In the space of when I stopped writing these blogs and when I started again, I met him, I started dating him, I stopped dating him and I realised I had fallen for him. And I also realised how much I hated that I let myself fall for him. 

Now, I know it's not like you get a choice in it, but really, I should have known better. He's in a place in my life that it will be a while before he will be gone, or I would have to do something drastic to get rid of him, and I don't want to do that. Partly because I don't want rid of him from my life. The beautiful thing about it has been that despite the fact that there have been tears, there has been pain, and there has been a bit of heart break, on my side at least, it's been pretty amiable. Most of my breakups have been screaming arguments or accusations and all that sort of thing - this has been a very polite, I guess. 

So, why am I mentioning this? Well, because, right at this moment, I don't want to write anything to do with romance, because it makes me want to tear my own eyelids off. I also don't want to ruin the thing that I wrote for NaNo by writing something stupid like, and they broke up because happy endings are for Disney and everything sucks. But where would we be if I didn't have an excuse for not writing? 

Catch you later.

Does It Feel Like a Tuesday?,

My very simple answer to that one is no, it does not feel like a Tuesday. 

My university timetable this year means I have a three day weekend (Saturday to Monday) and so the start of my week (Tuesday) is where I get 'that Monday feeling' aka the first day of the new week where pajamas are banned as a wardrobe option and you have abandon your duvet and hope it will take you back later. Normally, it doesn't really bother me so much, but today, it's driving me nutty. 

Part of that is due to the fact that my Tuesdays are normally a reasonably easy day. Come in, sit through two hours of lecture and then go home, but today I have a meeting at lunch and am working this evening. And I spent the weekend in Budapest. Yeah, that makes 'that Monday feeling' even more sucky than a hangover.

For those of you who didn't already know this, I turned 21 just under a week ago, and after puzzling for a long time as to what I did actually want for my birthday, my parents and I agreed that a little weekend city break was the perfect option, and Budapest held some kind of appeal even though I had less than no idea what was there other than the River Danube. Even so, the trip was booked, we were packed and ready to f*off to another country for a few days - the only obstacles being getting up at 3am and driving to Stansted. Ugh. 

What I found amazing - other than the pilot not knowing that in order to land, we must first take off... - was that when we landed, the sun was bright and the temperature was creeping it's way up to 22◦ and then it stayed there for most of the day. I was as pink as one of the Care Bears that evening. 

It was a weekend of a lot of walking - a lot of the interesting architecture and the shopping district is all down by the river, which we were staying about 2miles from - but the chimney cake and the views definitely made up for it, and even the Terror Museum was well worth a look, even though there wasn't much of it actually translated into English (and where it was, the mistakes were kind of distracting!) 

Something that was more interesting (as in, well, that's odd) than interesting (as in, ooooh, that's catching my interest) was the set up of our room. I haven't quite figured out why the bathroom had a window that looked out into the bedroom, but perhaps I don't want to know the reason. Don't get me wrong it's frosted up to normal human shoulder height (so up to the level of my nose) and there is a blind over it, but the design flaw to that is that the pully for the blind is on the OUTSIDE! It's rather peculiar, but as long as you are sharing with someone you trust or don't mind seeing you in the shower, it's not too odd I guess.

I can't decide if the best part was that I got to spend so much time with Ben (sorry, I know that's cheesy :P) or the fact that he ordered breakfast in bed for us on our last morning there. Drinking Hungarian fizzy wine and having dippy eggs and pancakes was a pretty special way to start our last day out there, and shopping was obviously the best way to end it. 

Something to keep in mind is, if you go to the same shops we have over here, the pricing is going to be the same, but it doesn't require going off of the beaten track in order to find something local and a lot cheaper. I was really surprised by the relatively low cost of food, and even cheaper cost of alcohol, though I wouldn't have been quite so surprised if there were the same amount of stag parties on the plane out there as the plane coming home. The fact that you can get a shot of Jaeger, or Unicum for as little as 290Ft (about 80p) in bars on the main street makes it pretty attractive for such events. 

If you want to take a look at some of the photos, you'll have to check out my Instagram or Facebook. :) 

Lent(ils)

So, for Lent Christians often decide to give something up. Others choose to dedicate more time to something, and some just choose to try and do something better.

I'm choosing option three and trying to be a better vegetarian, so that means no more Haribo, no more non-veggie mozzarella and I'm also going to spend a week trying to live with a vegan lifestyle. It means that I have to read all my clothes to see what contains wool or leather and then I can't wear those. :/ also, giving up cheese for a week. :(

I see Lent as a challenge, and I want to. I think I can do this, and I intend to keep it up afterwards - the good veggie thing, not the vegan thing...

Keep an eye out for the posts as to how it's going!!

So Yesterday,

I got up at half five..okay, twenty to six, and went to Manchester on the coach. My intention was to go and see one of my tutors from my sixth form, but just as my luck goes, he wasn't there. On the plus side, I did get to do the rounds of my other tutors, say hi to everyone and get my hair done!! Oh, and spend some money in The Bead Shop, but we're just not going to talk about that one...

On the way back I decided that I really can't stand the majority of Lawson's songs, and the irritating thing about that is that they make up about half of my Kindle playlist!!, so I spent the five hours it took to drive back listening to Ben Folds Five, Emeli Sande and Fun. (I've linked you to my favourite songs) and then sat there editing Yours, adding some more bits in that were meant to be tehre and playing spot the typo, which is like a crap, easy version of Where's Wally.

I also spent most of the day spamming my Twitter with basically everything that I wanted to say. It was good fun. Admittedly it's mostly random stuff, but it's good fun, and sometimes it can help you see where my inspiration comes from, which I've been told is reasonably interesting. So if you have Twitter the link is up there, or you can find me by searching @CharliesWrite. If you don't have Twitter, you can still keep up with all the latest news and such by "Like"ing my author page on Facebook - search Charlie Yarwood - Charlieswrite or click on the linky here Facebook Author Page Linky :) I use Twitter mainly for Instagram posts and also when I'm out to be all 'hmm, isn't this interesting/annoying/odd/I'M BORED!', but the author page tends to be more like, 'Here's what's going on in my life&writing! ...'

Both of them will also let you know when I post new blogs, so if you like the ones prior to this one, because let's face it, this is more of a publicity blog entry than anything else (for which I apologise, but it's good to get it out there!) then it'll let you know when there is more of the same. Or you can follow me on here. That's cool too...

Anyway, I'm off to work. Yays and happy joy joy.

Charlie x

:{P

EDIT: I just realised that I made no mention of the big old house move which is pretty atrocious!

I've moved to the wonderful and lovely Roehampton, so finally out of Elephant and Castle!! :) It took my parents, me and a van to get my considerable amount of stuff over to the new house which I'm sharing with three lovely ladies. Most of that stuff is still sat in boxes at the end of my room, because I'm yet to have a spare minute to figure out where the bloody hell all of it is going, but I'll get there I'm sure. Not tonight though, since I'm going to be in late again. Anyway, yes, work time. x

FREE Stuff!

I think that the end of NaNo is a little bit devious. It sort of hides itself in this idea of long hours in bed doing nothing and the idea that your novel will - if you so wish - be published in some form with no other amount of work from yourself. Sit back, relax, it's over and it's done. 

THAT IS NOT HOW IT WORKS, unfortunately.

Of course it's not. There's editing and formatting and more editing and then design work for the cover and then a whole lot of online forms to get even access to the proof. After that you get the joys of it arriving in the mail all bright and shinny and telling you it loves you because you created it!!, then you go through it with a fine tooth come because you want it to be just PERFECT, or as close to as possible. So the proof gets passed on to a friend or a colleague or a general waster with some time to kill (otherwise known as other students :P - kidding) and it comes back a big dog eared and with post it notes all over it where people have suggested changes. I can guarantee that people will tell you to change the same bit in at least four different ways before you're done. 

Well, when you're through with all that, and the new baby arrives in the post and you think yeah, this is it, this is as close as it gets, you put it forward for sale - is now time to chum up with your pillows and have a long, well deserved hibernate? Not quite my lovely,or at least not if you want to actually sell some of them. 

Here's the part where you post it all over Twitter, Facebook and blogs. You might ask your friends to cover it on similar channels just to spread to a larger base. If you've got a spare fifty quid in your pocket (first off, share, I'm a poor student) you can pay to get a few printed and send free copies to the local newspapers and pray someone gets the runs and that they take it into the bathroom with them. (Bathroom reading material can say a lot about a person). 

This here is the part where people are going to get sick of you, because for people to know about something, you have to tell them, and tell them a few times over. You need to email them links, plug it into their news feeds and throw business cards around like you're a flower girl sprinkling confetti. Your job now is to get your novel out of it's little corner of the massive online book store, because the chances of someone falling over it and picking it up are VERY VERY SLIM!

You're going to have to give it your time, maybe throw some money at it and you're definitely going to need to think. If you wrote a kids book, offer to go into a couple of schools and do a few free readings or something. Donate copies to your local library. Whatever you do just find your book a place in the world, because it's an inanimate object. It only moves when you move it, it only speaks when you turn the pages. You are the game master, you are in control. Put ass in gear and get this thing GOING. Whatever you do, don't just curl up into a ball and let your genius be forgotten - you wrote a novel for Christ's sake. 

So in the spirit of putting ass into gear, Yours, is going to be edited for the first time in the next few days. This makes me both really nervous and ridiculously excited. Also, the Kindle version of Fairies is available FREE tomorrow, so download it and have a click through it if you've got a spare few hours.

Anyway, since sleep is being evasive (one hour sleep in the last forty eight - healthy) again, I'm going to finish my mug of Sunshine Grey tea (Earl Grey with lemon, no milk) and get on editing. 

Charlie x 

:D