Butterflies,

So, occasionally there are things I want to do, and I make a commitment to them, and then life doesn't pan out the way I think it will and so things go slightly off course. Or very off course. 

I had committed myself to the idea of writing every day in June, and I wanted to stick to that, but I haven't. In many ways it has been a difficult month. Finishing university felt like such a flooding relief because I didn't have such an amazing time of it, as has been evident, but the thing is, my expectations of myself were really unreasonable and I felt as though I would have all of this freedom and not know what to do with it. The actual fact is I have been run down and exhausted from going back to working full time and it's all felt pretty none stop. I have made myself feel quite ill by just throwing myself at it at full force instead of allowing myself to just stop and just be for a bit.

The good news is I have been writing, just not on here. 

I'd love to say that I have got a new novel finished or been editing or something, but the fact is that I am struggling. 

I'm tired and I'm not doing great at being healthy - in the sense of eating three proper meals a day and sleeping properly and making sure I'm taking all my vitamins and such. More than anything, I've been coasting myself along a little in lieu of a major kick up the arse. 

The fact is that at some point I need to accept that I'm 22, not 17. I'm not on a summer away from college and I don't have a separate study where I can hide out, not eat, work frantically from when I wake up at 10 in the morning and only hear my stomach yelling "feed me!" at something past four in the afternoon. If writing is something I want to do, and it is, I need to get my life sorted and be able to accept that things are different from before. I am no longer able to throw all my time at it, because I have to keep a job, pay bills and all that sort of thing. 

Saying that, there is a lot of things I could learn from 17 year old me, and I'm trying to.

Despite a habit of being something of a jeans girl, I put so much effort into how I looked at 17, not because I needed anyone else to tell me I looked good, and not because wolf whistlers don't piss me off, but because it's something of an ego boost when you walk out of the house thinking, everyone else can think what they think, because I am happy with how I look today.

On the other hand, 17 year old me is just going to have to accept that maybe Scivener isn't as bad as she thought. 

The overarching thing that I am trying to emphasise is this - the somewhat constant state of flux which my life is currently in means that I am kind of awful at making concrete plans for what to do with my noveling career, but the fact is that I am no more willing to accept that it's a pipe dream than I was at 17. If anything, the last few years have taught me to respect the fact that I can't change who and what I am, and an integral part of that has always been, and will always be, the dream of being able to write, and publish and anything else is just a bonus.

Everything In It's Place, Even If That Does Mean The Floor,

Generally, if someone asks me where something in my room is, the answer is preceded by a lengthy erm, and normally sounds something like, I last saw it on the floor near the... Currently that is not the case, and no, it's not because I have started believing in all that tidy room tidy mind ----stuff (really trying not to swear at the moment and it's really difficult!!) that other people spout. No, it's because I am moving out of my current abode into somewhere new, in another different part of London.

As much as it's really exciting, but also really stressful because of the actual physical transportation from House A to Flat B, what I find more frustrating is that because the majority of my stuff has already been boxed by a slightly over-enthusiastic Ben and myself yesterday, I keep thinking oh, I could do... oh, no I can't, it's in a box, or I could wear, ... no, also in a box. It's only those times where you can't get to them, such as when you're moving or on holiday that you think of those really obscure pieces of clothing that live at the back of your wardrobe on any normal occasion and you think, yeah, that's what would make me the happiest person I can be right now. I think my brain actually like me being like, well, that sucks. 

Another fantastic example of this is thinking about novel notebooks that I haven't touched for so long that they required dusting before packing - and yes, there is a point to that, and it's so you don't transport the old dust to your new place der, I am not the weird one here -.- - and they're now in the bottom of a big box, which is at the bottom of a big pile and behind a stack of other, let's call it what it is, crap (and no, that is NOT a swear word, just FYI) so of course my brain now goes, here are all the wonderfully magical things we could do with this... And I end up being like, Dear Brain, Hold your horses, Chill your bean and Keep you ----socks together for just a week and then we will make all of these magical dreams come novelliciously true, but I already know that is not going to happen, because using the words Calm down to my imagination is like telling me Don't stress, and if you want to know how pointless that is, speak to my boyfriend, because he really knows. Yeah, if my brain and I had a contract, I would be seriously trying to renegotiate it's concept of when it's acceptable to be thinking about novels, because this flexitime nonsense that it has going on at the moment is just not really working for me. I genuinely worry that I will be in work at some point, someone will tell me about some vicious ailment they have and I'm going to spout some glittery garbage about how I'm dispatching the unicorns to fix it. As much as it would probably be amusing for a few minutes, I'm pretty sure that I would end up some combination between sectioned and fired, and none of those look too pretty from where I am sitting.

So, I have a to do list longer than any piece of string, and it seems to casually keep getting bigger, I have two Orchids to attempt to move without inducing plant-y panic attacks, and my very antique typewriter is currently in quite a lot of bits across my coffee table, which if you follow me on Twitter, you will have seen. As much as the many parts are now a severe amount cleaner than they were when he was all together, he's not quite as easy to put back together as I thought/hoped, though I'm pretty sure that I have it in theory now, it's just the actual practical getting all the screws back in the right place, but I've felt that way about driving for a while - as in, I'm well aware how to do it, it's just actually getting my brain to stop going ARGGGGGGH, I DON'T LIKE THIS!!! WE'RE BEHAVING LIKE TOO MUCH OF AN ADULT!! MAKE IT STOP!!! and to actually engage with the task at hand, aka not crashing, is a "little bit" more difficult than I have ever hoped for.

Basically, the upshot of all of that is that the novel that was meant to be edited by the end of last year might end up getting put off until the end of this year... I don't know. It'll happen when it happens, and I'm far too comfortable with that fact quite frankly. It also means that I'm probably not going to be posting blogs as often as I would like, and I am attempting quite loosely to aim at once a week this year, and if I could set aside an hour, of one day every week then I would be like 'here's the day I will attempt to publish it on' but considering how chaotic just everything is, I don't really think there is much point. But, the good thing is that the a forenamed 'computer which potentially works' ought to now be known as 'Zeus' because he's fast as lightening, has a funny symbol on the front that looks like Zeus' headdress and also because he is basically the God of all my writing machinery, so might as well be named such, so when he and I move into our new place, we have no worries of major technically hiccups getting in the way of dissertationing, blogging or general wordsmithy, so that is a major plus.

So, essentially, follow the yellow brick twitter page....

90,

So, after reminding myself with my last blog that I need to stop procrastiKNITTING, I have since managed to finish editing roughly half of the novel - content, not formatting unfortunately - watched far too many episodes of Grand Designs, come up with yet another design for the house I would like to build one day, which of course made me wish all over again that I was studying to be an architect and also managed to finish the back, the front and almost a full sleeve of a new jumper (baby sized). 

Whilst I know that my Knitsmithy ought to take a back seat to my Wordsmithy for a little while, it's more difficult to convince yourself to go on to review what you have previously done than it is to either knit more of a cutesy little hoodie or to stitch it together, and I think the reason is this. 

When it comes to Wordsmithy, it takes a lot of time and effort, and once done, you are best advised to leave it alone. When you have finished knitting something, you can give it away as a gift or just torture stuffed animals with what you have produced, and you can do it with the TV on without knitting the characters from The Big Band Theory or doing something equally ridiculous. In the space of a couple of weeks will have managed to produce three baby jumpers, two of which are adorable, one of which was my first attempt at knitting something to a pattern and there was more than once when I threw it on the floor and complained that I wasn't playing anymore because it was too big of a pain in the ass. Yes, I am a grumpy fool.

Even with half done, it is really difficult to focus on editing Yours, at the moment on account of the lack of sleep in my life, which is being caused by the really uncomfortable mattress. As is a custom with rented accommodation, our mattresses are at the point where they are sagging as you sit, so until the arrival of the new ones which have thankfully been ordered, I am resorting to sleeping on the airbed that I keep in case we have house guests, because my back doesn't take well to springs poking it at random intervals. 

At least it's now half way there...

Conducting the Internal Orchestra,

Whilst NaNoWriMo was rolling along - by which I mean my own submission, as I know the competition continues for another 7 days - I was attempting to write a blog every day, however I obviously failed in this endeavor. I should also admit that I failed to write anything towards my NaNo project every day, however the important part to me is that the 50'000 word target was reached, and it was reached in 19 days, because I had a bit of a roll. 
I managed two days that were over 10k and one day that was only about 90 words short. Trust me, that's pretty special after I didn't have a 10k day last year. 

Granted, this is not the standard of Yours, which admittedly I do still need to finish editing, and I was sort of distracted by the fact that all I wanted to do was sit down and write more of my new favourite project, Dreaming in Colour, but the beauty of it was this. I proved that I can force myself to sit down and write 1667 words+ in a day. I proved that I can function within my friendships and my relationship and, in some ways, in my studies whilst also working on a novel which has taken over 99.9% of my brain. It's just a shame that that can't continue after my piece of writing is finished. 

Most of you probably get that my life is a very fast paced mash up of a lot of things. At the moment, I feel like I'm trying to perform the circus trick of spinning plates on the top of sticks, but instead of performing it like a total Master of the Trade (Mistress sounded too suggestive...) I'm letting my very Greek inclinations come out and instead of spinning the plates, I'm dropping them or throwing them to the floor, then dancing around clicking my fingers in this sort of fashion. 

In a way, getting through life is like conducting this internal orchestra, getting all the timings of things right, telling which voices in your brain are allowed to pipe up at what time, because it's slightly ridiculous to be worrying about certain things now when they're bloody months away, right? But currently, I'm trying to do this conducting with a tea spoon and a bar of chocolate, because it's about the only way I can stop myself blowing a fuse of biting people's heads clean off.

The fact is, university is stressful, even when you only have lectures for six hours a week, there is more to it than that. Work is stressful, especially retail towards Christmas, and having to think about all the things you have to do for the role you're currently doing, and a role you may be looking at, and fitting it around everything else in your life. My health is currently stressful, and I can't wait to see if and when my medication kicks in and I start feeling less ill and sleeping better without taking Nytol. Being in therapy is really stressful, because things that are wrong with you now are mostly caused by things that happened in the way back when of your existence and going back over that isn't something that's easy. 

Do you know what else is stressful? Writing. It is really stressful, because you'll be constantly thinking your're spending too much time on writing or observing and not enough time on the other. Even when you've finished something, you have to think about editing it, what you want to do with it next and then getting it through a whole different process, which in itself is another stress, because it's like a birth, but you have a choice in it. Mother's have no choice in giving birth to the baby they have been nurturing, but as a novelist, you have to bring yourself to give birth to your creation, to give it life and let it leave you, and let the world think what it will. When your writing is your art, that is a very difficult thing to do. 

The point of this blog is more than venting, in a way, because I want anyone who is still battling through the trials of NaNo and all the lovely winter diseases and distractions and procrastination stations to know that it is possible, whether it's your first or your fourteenth, it's easy to think of this as one of the labours which Heracles was spared from, but it's not.
It would also be nice if some of those annoying people who bitch about students without knowing anything about how trying it can be read it and either shut up or lowered their voices a little bit. It also might be nice if the same happened to a few of those lovely buggers who don't think of writing as a profession. 

But even if not, I've done something today. After a day with my boyfriend and a shift in work, I've sat down and I've written something, with imperfections, and given it out to the world. Today, for the first time since I published the last blog on here, I gave up something I had written, because it's not just for me. 

I can't wait to be ready to do that with Yours,, and for other people to be ready to do that with what is their's. 

From October,

I do realise that's been almost an entire month since I've posted anything on here and for that, you all have my apologies. I've been having some pretty awesome adventures, been spending some quality time with the loved ones and have also encountered a couple of health problems, but I'm now on the mend, and just in time, as NaNoWriMo2013 starts at midnight tonight. Are you excited? 

I KNOW I AM!! 

I'm also petrified. For those of you who don't remember, I was a stroppy little sod last year after not achieving my favourite 'I have no life' goal of completing a 10k day. It is quite literally as the name suggests, a day where you write 10,000 words. I took three days off last year and finished on the 20th of November - definitely an 'I have no life outside of NaNo' achievement, but I couldn't quite feel satisfied. This year my goal is to have that 10k day. Maybe even have two, one for this year and one to heal my wounded pride from last year....I'm kidding. I think....

I've already had one of those nutty 'OHMYGOD IT'S NEARLY NANO; IMMA DIE!' moments yesterday, so it's probably a good thing that my housemates are in Portsmouth and there's possibly a strike of our uni lecturers, because I don't cope with people very well the day NaNo starts and I get the same sort of look as a piece of flat pack furniture with no instructions. (The best description of it is, I don't know what it is, and I have less idea of what to do with it. That kind of a face.)

On the plus side, I have an idea, a vague form of a plan, and a freezer drawer full of homemade ready meals, so that I don't just resort to pizza and coffee. I am also, because of my recent health blip, required to eat at least once a day so I can take my medication. It also requires me to consume vast amounts of orange juice, so maybe I won't end up with too dreadful of a NaNoFlu this year - trust me, it's a thing - but then again, who can know what November will bring? 

I have two gigs planned, can hopefully throw in a trip back home to see Jamie, Dean and their lovely cohort of Manchester WriMos, a rugby game this weekend (no, I'm not playing, look at the size of me for Pete's sake. :')) lectures, assignments, my family, my friends, my job, my amazing boyfriend :), and the general things of life like cooking, cleaning and the wonders of the ASDA weekly shop. There's Christmas shopping, sending Christmas cards and all manner of stupid things to think about, but they can wait, because it's coming, it's starting. 

REAL LIFE ENDS TONIGHT, 

Welcome to NaNoWriMo2013

Welcome Back to the World,

I got back from Greece on Sunday to something amazing. 

God knows I have complained enough times about the state of my laptop - teetering on the edge of existence ready to fall off. I'm not sure if I actually informed you all that a week before I went away, it fell rather violently. The hard drive stopped playing dead and instead was dying rather rapidly, and there was seemingly nothing I could do about it. Admittedly, that is partly because I'm not an IT genius, but thankfully, I know someone who is. :)  

Not only did he stop the hard drive dying before the only existing copy of the novel I was trying to write to NaNo targets was destroyed - it was the only thing which wasn't on the back up drive, since I forgot to turn the computer on to do it's scheduled back up - he also got me a new hard drive that will probably outlive the rest of the laptop by a couple of years, which is pretty awesome. 

Not only does this mean the Craptop is back in action; it also means that it's not acting like a craptop. It's running faster, it hasn't crashed since Sunday and it almost looks prettier, too. Probably because I'm not directing my hatred at it anymore.

Admittedly, this means I no longer have the excuse of "the Craptop" as to why I'm not getting things done towards publishing the next novel, but I have the excuse of uni has started up again and I'm in lectures for a while SIX HOURS A WEEK (that was sarcasm by the way, but uni does take up more time than just the lectures) and I also have a new job, which will be keeping me pretty busy. 

It is however, only 27 days until my favourite day of the year - the wonderful launch day of National Novel Writing Month - and as usual, nothing will get in my way of celebrating that joyous event, so at some point during the time between now and then, Yours, needs to be edited and emailed to the two lovely people who have agreed to read it, and tell me how much they either love or hate it. It's a pretty scary moment when that happens. After that, it's ready to go into print and a touch of reformatting will make it ready for being an e-book.

Lots of Swear Words,

I'm a grumpy sort of person anyway, but when I have to be a rain soaked grumpy person and the rain soaks through to my pants, you're really going to know I'm in a bad mood. 

Anyway, we went to watch the Rocky Horror Picture Show at Kew Gardens as part of the summer screenings and if nothing else it came as a confirmation that summer is most definitely over. It was cold and wet and rainy, so the only time I felt like I had any life in my limbs was when the Time Warp came on - I could be on my death bed and I would still get up and jump to the left. We were all in agreement that had the ticket prices not been so expensive we would have just gone and got on the next bus home, but after paying nearly £17 excluding the booking fee, we all took the British approach and just got on with it. Thankfully the girls and I had pizza and the heating to come home to. 

As if that wasn't great enough, the Craptop is once again playing Knock-a-Door-Run on death's door and thinking it can win, when it so clearly can't. I know it's four years old, but the hard drive being knackered is about the last thing I need right now!! Thankfully though there are almost an infinite amount of tech savvy people in the world who know far better than me how to fix these things, and one of them in particular likes me enough to help - even though I turn into an insufferable B1tch when this sort of thing happens. 

Despite best efforts, I have unfortunately lost some of the novel I was working on, though due to my worst efforts towards a NaNo style deadline in the past four years, it thankfully wasn't that much and there are still roughly 5600 words to work from, which is pretty good. 

Anyway, I'm apparently having a social life tonight, so I guess I better sign off and get back to writing, although even I admit that my original deadline is making very pretty circles in the toilet bowl right now... 

2617~

For those of you who don't follow me on Twitter (@CharliesWrite), I decided on the 9th September to start my own little thirty days of writing, using the word count targets which are set in NaNo. 

It works out at 1667 words a day, and while I managed Day 1, Day 2 has been a bit of a flop. 2617/3334 words is still 2617 words, but falling behind in the early stages never bodes well for a participants prospects of finishing. The first few days should have a heavy momentum - but if that lapses by the middle, that's okay, because it's pretty normal. 

Also, it seems that there are just millions of things to do at the moment. Today, my house mate and I tripped to Asda - we wanted to get paint, but they didn't have the colours we wanted - cooked twice, washed the curtains in our new house mate's room and started to touch up the painting with the paint we did have before ordering new. I even went to work in the evening. 

Even still, a packed day doesn't have to mean no time for writing. I have this amazing habit of writing whilst on buses or generally when I'm out an about, either on the notes section of my phone or in an email and then I can just send it all back to myself and paste it in. In a way it's like I never left the house. Anyway, before I need an almighty ass kicking, I'm going to hop to and get some work done this evening as tomorrow looks as though it will be equally fun packed!! 

~

The Lone Ranger,

I meant to write this the day after seeing the preview, but things happen, don't they and I was editing a novel, so with my mind a little fugged with cava, I'm going to write it now. 

Apparently the critic reviews from this film haven't been amazing, but personally I don't understand that one bit!

Johnny Depp is, in my humble opinion, a phenomenal actor and I love the range which he has. Admittedly, the character whom he plays in The Lone Ranger is Jack Sparrow kind of crazy - he keeps trying to give bird seed to a long dead bird after all - he still plays the role in a different way. 

There is nothing serious about the film. It's exactly what it looks like - Pirates of the Caribbean do a Western - but it is hilarious. I genuinely don't think I have laughed so much at a film in a long time, and some of the detailing is just amazing. I was watching it thinking that the music and sound effects were pretty immaculate. 

The clever planning of some sections reminded me of the first (recent) Sherlock Holmes movie - the one before Game of Shadows which I still need to watch again as I slept through it... It's almost as though, you think you have it all worked out, but then you see something different and it all changes again. 

I was impressed with Helena Bonham Carter, and I think I prefer her in this to Sweeney Todd since, even though she is still that strong, quirky female character that she just can't help but be, there is definitely something stronger and less dependent about her and it just amazes me.

If you enjoyed the Pirates of the Caribbean, there is no way that you could hate it. In fact, the only way you could is if you take Westerns - and life - far too seriously. It's jovial, it's well put together and it's something I could easily go and see again without getting bored.


There is also a great moment where you can make a crude joke about the main character being able to find a cat in a whore house, but I'll leave that one to you guys to figure out...

NaShoStoMo,

Any of you that have been anywhere near me in the month of November will probably remember that I turn into a coffee fuelled, pizza loving nutjob with essentially bi-polar levels of energy. For those of you who don't know why, it's because of the beautiful thing which is NaNoWriMo. Unfortunately/thankfully the calendar of writing competitions is not complete, i.e. there's not something going on every month, which is good because I could quite easily die of heart failure within six months if it did, but these are the ones I know.

January - NaNoEdMo (National Novel Editing Month)

April - NaShoStoMo (National Short Story Month) + ScriptFrenzy (Dear Grant Falkner, you cannot kill that which we keep alive!)

June - Camp NaNoWriMo 1

August - Camp NaNoWriMo 2

November - NaNoWriMo!! (National Novel Writing Month)

December - NaNoFiMo (National Novel Finishing Month)


A few years ago, I made an attempt at Script Frenzy, but since I favour description more than dialogue, it didn't really work out overly well (I still keep the spirit of it alive though and believe that the competition should be continued for those who wish to participate.)

When NaShoStoMo was mentioned, I shyed away from it, thinking I didn't have enough ideas for short stories to complete one a day for a month, but since it's only 200 words (min.) per story, why not give it a try, hey?

So, instead of editing my novel today, I'm going to attempt to catch up with NaShoStoMo. 17 short stories in one day. Possible? I think so. :P

Manchester Part 2,

Now that Craptop is behaving itself I can finally get this written, but first, a couple of moans:

1. The transport system in Manchester is a pile of ___________ (insert favourite profanity)
2. I think I need a children's Snuggie, since the sleeves are too far apart in mine 
3. My laptop sucks 

Anyway...since I've been back in Manchester, I've been meeting up with a lot of my old friends, and also running into people I haven't seen in years, which has been pretty odd, but ultimately interesting. Yesterday, I saw one of my old friends who essentially looks like he has a whole new face (it has been AT LEAST a year and a half, probably more like two years, since I've seen him though) and it was like, oh, hello beautiful. Interestingly though, I feel like nothing has changed. We still play video games together, I still suck at them, and they still - very accommodatingly might I add - set up the game in a different way so that it's almost impossible for me to lose. By the way, I love you guys! 

Today then brought about my very geeky side. Since the destruction of the blanket I have been OBSESSIVELY knitting to try and replace the patches that were essentially mashed and had to go in the bin, but that does mean I do things like knitting on the bus to town or in the cinema or watching the TV (or all of the above....guilty) I also hang around comic book stores and spend too much money on graphic novels, but if you've ever seen how beautiful The Watchmen and Kingdom Come are, you'll have to understand. 

Even better, Josh and I both proved our age (in our heads, somewhere between 62 and 90~) by sitting through another film, verbally tearing it apart and then admitting to having thoroughly enjoyed it. Jack the Giant Slayer and Warm Bodies (it's really odd that both films we've chosen to see recently have the same male lead) have both received the same treatment, but as I said, we really enjoyed them. 

Now if only I could find some time to edit that blasted novel!!!

P.s. CELEBRATING THE 1500 views!!! :) 

Writing Restraints,

In theory, the novel entitles 'Yours,' was meant to be coming out on the 7/3/13, which for those of you who don't know, is the two year anniversary of the CharliesWrite blog being up and running. There's a new problem with this though...

Well, no, it's not a particularly new problem really, it's an old problem revisiting.

Some of my joints (mainly my wrists and my knees) have a pretty bad habit of playing up, and rather than accept that, I just try and get on with things as I would without it happening. Now that would be fine, if I wasn't changing keyboards every five minutes and doing extra damage to my wrists.

If you've never used a manual typewriter, take it from me - DO NOT START! They have very powerful mechanisms in the keys, which you won't be used to if you use a computer or laptop. (I, of course, swap between the two). Then there's the keypad on my iPad - whole new kettle of fish, the time I spent testing Aphri (one of the electric typewriters - who lives in London) and then also Hephi (the other electric typewriter - who is currently living in Manchester with my mum). PLEASE NOTE - NONE OF THE TYPEWRITERS ARE CALLED CLICKY!

Anyway, the last few days my wrists have been in and out of compression bandages and I've been in and out of pain with them. They seem to have cleared up now, so I'm going to spend the next few hours trying to get some work done and see how far I can get with sorting out 'Yours,'. In theory - and this one really is just a fleeting theory which may not happen - all three of the books COULD go into paperback this year, but I don't know. I'll have to think about it and see what else comes up.


UPDATE: Well, that was the theory, but as I'm sure most of you know: theories evolve!

Unless I was willing to stay up all night today and tomorrow and live on coffee, ignoring everything else on my social calendar, there is no way that Yours, would be edited in time for release on the Kindle on 07/03/13, which I do apologise for. However, as a treat for those of you who do want to celebrate the birthday of the CharliesWrite blog, Fairies and Insanity Breaks will both be FREE on the Kindle again from 07/03/13 until 10/03/13.

You're welcome :P

That's Kind of Gross,

This whole thing with finding horse meat in Beef Lasagne makes me really glad that I don't eat meat anymore. Also, just so that you guys are aware when I get really grumpy - and it will happen - my intention for Lent this year is to be a proper vegetarian (Oh yeah, I'm going to become one of those annoying as packet readers!!) and to attempt to spend a week being vegan. I don't know how well it will go, and it definitely won't stick because I Love cheese and milk and eggs too much, but perhaps I can manage a week?

We'll see.

Also, I figure I should let you guys know the date of this, because it is what I am working towards. 7.3.2013 will mark the two year mark from when the CharliesWrite blog started (originally over on webs, before I realised this was infinitely better). I'm intending that day to be celebrated by the release of Yours, onto Kindle and also - possibly - into print. It all just depends on how all the editting and such goes, but keep your fingers crossed. Since Kindle Select gives you the option of five days free out of every three months, I think it might launch with a couple of days being free on the Kindle, but we'll just have to see about that one. :) I'm actually a little be excited. The problem with sorting out the print version is going to be writing the dedication, I feel. There are two different ones I want to write and I don't know which to choose! Argh. As the Platypus says, deal with it. (The Platypus is, of course, SpoonThePlatypus aka Sophie Greene)

Now I'm off to look into buying some of the new make-up I want from Illamasqua. Why is everything that is so beautiful, also so expensive?


P.s. Started writing the sequel to Fairies. This is going to be fun!

On Tone of Voice,

One of the things which people always comment on about my writing is that I apparently have a strong narrative voice. I do have a list of habits as long as my arm, including (my very favourite) a tendency to describe the mundane, but here's the reason. You know all that time we spent talking about how English teachers make too much of what an author  meant by something? This sort of idea: 

 I've found that they can, to a certain extent anyway, be right. 

If you ever decided, for what reason I don't know :P, to read Insanity Breaks then you'd see that throughout the book the character explains different things to do with her smoking habit. The same is true of Iris' (the main character from the soon to be released novel Yours, - more details coming soon) love of drinking tea, but here's the thing - when I write, I'm writing what is pretty much a dramatic monologue of a characters life, so the things which have importance in their lives will be included, and the things which don't will be left out. Pretty simple, right? If I've put it on the page, there is generally a reason, and granted that reason is sometimes just a vast description which some might call unnecessary, but mostly there is a reason. 

I will just point out that until midnight on 10/2/13 PST (8am 11/2/13 GMT) Insanity Breaks is available to be downloaded completely FREE onto Kindle or any Kindle app compatible device. For those who don't know what it is, it's the first novel I ever finish (Fairies was just the first I had the balls guts to self publish) and from start to finish it took me about 9 months. Fairies was written in one month and Yours, was written in 20 days. Those three, plus a monstrosity named As Yet Untitled (which went straight into my computer's recycle bin!) which took a month to finish, represent my four NaNoWriMo years. :D Useless piece of trivia...

Back to what I was saying about voice: I write what I know, from the perspective I know. All my characters are different, they do have different attitudes, different beliefs, different experiences, but their fundamental nature, THEIR VERY EXISTENCE, comes from the noise in my head. I would agree that my characters often speak from a very similar perspective - they tend to be lower middle class, reasonably well educate women who are either on their way to university or have been to university, they're normally some form of creative and they pretty much always believe in love. Now, I don't see this as a bad thing, because the fact is that most authors do it. Nicholas Sparks makes millions from writing pretty much the same novel over and over with different characters, in a different city and with a slightly different ending. His lead male tends to be a poor boy, with intelligence, but the girl's parents always see him as a whim, because he's sexy and from the wrong side of the tracks. The women are always beautiful and unobtainable creatures, but they have a young summer romance anyway -Yeah, this is the trash I read in the bath :) - and then they get separated. John Green (maybe I'm just a reflection of a teen cliche but I do love his writing at the moment) tends to write from the perspective of a fringe dwelling, witty teenage male (except A Fault in Our Stars, which pretty much made me cry all through it, but then the difference is only that the character is female...) My point is simply, if you like one of the novels, you're likely to like all by the same author, because it's from a perspective you can understand or relate to. Is that so bad? 

I will say one thing, author's voices develop and change over time. Our narrative voices are shaped by our experiences just the same way that we are. Things which seem of an immense amount of importance in what we write when we are sixteen (Insanity Breaks) will look quite different from the things we write at nearly twenty (Yours,) and everything that comes after will be different because every day that we open up our senses to the world, we see a little something we never saw before, or we hear something, or we feel or understand something in a different way and it's important for that to happen, because otherwise, we're not learning anything and if we're not learning anything, what do we really have left to say?

Emails

I was going to start this off by saying 'Virtually everything these days involves,' but that just made me laugh too much, so instead, I'm going to say this:

I SPEND MY FOREVER WRITING EMAILS!!

And why is it that we understand now that that is shouting?

I keep in touch with a lot of friends via either Facebook or email, but it's not that which makes me slightly like Blahhhh, why are emails controlling my life?!??!?!?!  It's more that my email account - the main one - is attached to my iPad, my phone and is pretty much always open on my computer. Most people, or rather my mother, would probably see that as a little excessive, but actually, I get emails from the company which I used to self-publish, I get emails from people regarding editing things, I get emails from company mailing lists, telling me when things I want are cheap (so I can actually afford them) and I get the general spam. And that's just ONE of a few inboxes which I have, although the only one with real deviation is my university one, because that is just stuff from tutors and TFL warning me when there are tube closures which are completely irrelevant to me.

I do also kind of have an official CharliesWrite email address (charlieswrite@hotmail.co.uk) but the amount of people who actually use it at the moment mean that I only check it about once a week, so it's not as bad as the others.


My issue with the thing is that I seem to spend more time writing emails to people than I do actually writing anything else. Between essays and lectures and emailing the world and his wife, I wonder how on Earth I still have time to be obsessively reading John Green/Nicholas Sparks novels, let alone be writing some of my own!! But write I do. In theory, the first edit of Yours, would have been finished by now. The reason it isn't, is because my laptop is both a slow little Craptop and also an exciting treasure trove of pictures and music and GENERAL DISTRACTIONS TECHNIQUES, which mean that I waste hours watching things like...Ed Sheeran interviews... Oh shush, I like his voice...and his hair...

Anyway, going to cook myself some lovely dinner and then maybe get back to trying to get this novel reading to come to life on the Kindle. I already have a release date in mind, but I'm just going to have to see how it goes to be honest!

x

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

2 Months, 2 Days

In 2 months and 2 days, (19th of March for any of those struggling... :P) I turn twenty, and that's making me look at everything going on in my life and wonder what on Earth I'm doing. 

I just managed to punch my ceiling and skin my knuckles (thankfully it was my left hand again so not the world's biggest catastrophe really, in fact, something of a regular event) while dancing on my bed. I know, stupid, right? I need a trampoline to get rid of my energy...

I wish that was the most silly thing though, because it's really not. 

Each time I get into writing or editing, something else in my life seems to pop up and scream at me that it is meant to be higher up the priority list, and while I am good at putting the novel down and getting on with whatever else is required of me, it's a pain!! All I want to do is focus on what I love, and when I have time, I can't focus and when I can focus, I have no time. I'd call it a catch-22, but it's just life really, but I don't want to be only able to produce a novel every November. I want to do more than that. Even if everything I write is romantic-y trash written from the same perspective, I DON'T CARE!! 

What would be really nice would be getting other people, as in people other than my friends, to read my stuff. I don't even want there to be a lot of them, just a few would be really nice!! After writing that I decided to see the results of having put Fairies on the Kindle FREE for a day and have subsequently found out that roughly 183 people took advantage of that offer. THAT IS SO COOL TO ME!! Seriously, thank you all so much.

 That has actually cheered me up quite a lot. 

What I had been planning to write was something along the lines of how daring I think some people are to just jump into things when they know what they want. I have so much respect for people who didn't choose to follow a path they were sort of channelled to, who went off and carved their own damn path. For now, I'm happy to be living in London, thankful I have my job and supportive parents and sort of mildly entertained and motivated by my degree (although not motivated enough to actually spend an indecent amount of time studying to ensure I leave uni with a First. New things have become important now.) 

Anyway, the way forward is going to come in pulling my head out of my ass and actually paying attention to whatever is going on in the world around me, and maybe even going back to having COFFEE SHOP TRIPS with all that beautiful people watching and writing and editing and lattés and ahhh, it's going to be soooooo good. 

I guess I should also divulge that I am also planning a couple more days of the FREE download promotions for both the novels which are currently residing on the Kindle, and also getting them both redone into paperbacks asap. I can't decide whether that should come first, or editing Yours,

It's a bit of a chicken and egg situation, but then I would first concern myself deciding which one is in fact the egg....

Whatever.

Night-y night my currently pyjama clad readers!

Charlie x 

:)