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

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!! 

~

My Teddy Will Protect Me,

...and unfortunately I'm not talking about a tall, masculine hottie who accepts the wild things which go on in my imagination. Perhaps one day. 

Anyway, today my flatmate and I had a lengthy chat about the film The Woman in Black and which bits scare the living crap out of us. Since I was already scared of the dark, it was NOT a clever idea to watch such a creation, because ever since then I have been more on edge than ever. This is the reason I would probably struggle to live alone.

I'm going to define the terms of being scared of the dark. I'm not scared because there is a lack of light in the room - I'm scared because my spidey sense or whatever you want to call it likes to tell me something is there, or rather my imagination wills me to believe that something is. 

My peripheral vision is not the best. In an exam where a boy was kicking his orange trainers under his desk, I would have sworn on the Bible that there was a ginger cat walking around, because my over active imagination likes to go cloud watching (or rather, blur watching - making shapes out of the flashes of colour I see) and it's really annoying, and can freak the day lights out of me. 

For as long as I can remember, I've always had a night light on my landing, or I sleep with the backlight for my iPad or my laptop on. I very often have soft acoustic, classical or jazz music on too, just to keep me calm. 

After dark, I really have a problem with windows, mirrors and our bathroom's skylight - plus any funny noises that sound like banging or footsteps. Horror films NEVER FLIPPING HELP!, but some of them aren't really horror films. 

Anyway, after mutual admittance of still being nervous in our house after dark, I was putting away shoes in the hall closet, when I noticed our security light go on outside our front door - twice. 

The first time, I calmed myself saying it was just the fox/badger/mole thing which got into our rubbish last night (we still need to sort out the garden, so it would make sense that it came back, since the split bag is still there) but when it came on the second time, that was scary. 

Since we'd been watching a film, Eeyore and Teddy had been downstairs with us - there is nothing like being comfortable - so Stevie still had Teddy in her arms and the strawberry condom that we had just found at the bottom of our cleaning cupboard in the other hand. Slowly, she approached the door, making to open it. 

"STEVIE! Leave the chain on!" If there was someone behind there, or even a fox or something, I didn't want it in our house! "Wait, wait, I'll get a stick." After checking behind the cupboard door - because I had gotten paranoid by now - I grabbed the solid hose of the end of the hoover and readied it for hitting the fox or whatever came through the door! BUT THERE WAS NOTHING THERE! The looks on our faces were pretty priceless though. To be fair, we're the sort of people who have to have the curtains in our living room closed after dark and I tend to sit with my back to the wall or I get a little edge-y. 

Anyway, in all the panic, I've gone and left Eeyore and my blanket in the living room. A rescue mission would involve turning on all the lights in the house, but I'm not sure I can leave him down there alone...

Nothing News,

Until I moved house, I was pretty oblivious with the news, because I don't have BBC News as my homepage any more, I didn't own a radio and I pick up the Metro or the Standard, but then I just don't really read it, since nothing really draws me into it. When I moved to Roehampton though, I became more into listening out for what's going on, because we have a radio in our kitchen which we have playing BBC Radio One pretty much all the time. I've just turned it off though, because I don't need "projections" of what the closures of HMV stores and Blockbuster going into administration is going to do to the film industry. 

What's basically being said is that film industries rely on the idea that they are going to make X amount of money from DVD sales, and the lack of stores on the high street offering these may reduce the amount of DVDs sold. If I'm honest, I think that is a dreadful pile of poo, because if you WANT the DVD and the DVD is still available through other channels e.g. Amazon then you're more than likely to still buy the bloody thing, right? I'm not saying it's an ideal situation, but it's not quite the dire straits that they're implying. Also, one of the reasons that rentals with Blockbuster are declining is because of the existence of other companies e.g. Netflix and Lovefilm who offer roughly the same service, but you don't have to try and run to the shops after work. Either they are delivered straight to your door and can be posted back, or they are just there on the internet in a beautiful, easy to search online library. The issue for Blockbuster is that they were overtaken. They could have, if they had realised how lucrative this business idea was, still been the big name with it, but Netflix and Lovefilm have developed their own reputations now, and would almost certainly be seen as the better alternative as they've had years to build, while Blockbusters have been declining.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not Amazon's biggest fan - the fact that they make the KDP website so difficult to FIND let alone actually NAVIGATE is something which is particularly annoying about them - but the fact is that when it comes to expanding the business to be more convenient for it's customers, hell, they do that better than anyone. I don't know if any of you have seen these new Amazon lockers - I know there's on in West 12 and Hammersmith Bus Station in London - but they're fantastic. If you live somewhere that isn't great for post *cough cough* Elephant and Castle *cough* or the package that you want would be too big to go through the letter box, you can just get them delivered there and pick them up in a couple of days. Simples. 

One of the things which did worry me though was that if there is seen to be a decline in DVD sales, then film makers will have to look for other sources of income to foot the costs (investors won't put money into it if they won't see a return after all) so whether we like it or not, I guess that means there's going to be more product placement in films from now on. Great. As if it wasn't weird enough to see James Bond drinking Hieniken. What the heck is going to be next? It just reminds me of a line from a truly underrated film called Catch and Release with Jennifer Garner in it where the guy describes movies as Sell, sell, sell, but let's kid ourselves and call it art, but advertising is Sell, sell, sell, and we all know that we're going to hell, so here's a big fat check to smooth out the ride. 

Anyway, with that and the horse meat scandal (which let's face it, most people are only throwing a tantrum about because they didn't know, and if you buy things like Findus anyway the only surprise should be that there's actually meat in it at all) I don't know why I'm paying attention. I don't know if it's that bad news sells better or that there's nothing happy going on in the world right now, but it almost makes me want to bake an absolute --- tonne of cake, take it down to the BBC and London Standard offices and tell them to cheer the hell up. 

Tell me something nice for once. Stop giving people reasons to think everything is crap.

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