I'm Not Actually As Disorganised As I Look,

 It would be very easy to walk into my house, you know, if you were invited, and think, jees, you have no organisational structure to your life at all, and honestly, you would be forgiven, at least to some degree, for thinking that. I am a bit scatterbrained. I forget things a lot, I get confused a lot and inevitably I walk out of the house with the feeling that I'm going without something literally every time I go anywhere, and sometimes, it's a whole list. Most of the time, that is okay, because for most things you can replace them pretty easily where you're going. I regularly get to camps early because I know I will need to drive off and find something that I have realised I have forgotten. I'm also good at remembering things other people will have forgotten and other people do that for me and generally, we all muddle along pretty well. There will always be a time when you forget mugs, well, there was that time I forgot mugs anyway, there will always be someone who forgets a chair. There will always be multiple people who forget chairs.

Organisation is something I try to achieve but unfortunately there is no one linear way to do things, so inevitably things go missing not because they're stored illogically or in the 'wrong place' but because I can't remember what I thought the right place was when I actually stored it. You know the old joke of keeping something so safe even I don't know where it is, that's me, a hundred percent. I was recently looking for the other book by Dr Richard Shepherd 'Unnatural Causes' whilst reading 'The Seven Ages of Death' - ridiculously I started reading this because I had to wait for Christmas to get the next Bridgerton book, and this was the next "logical" choice - and I was somewhat obsessed with the idea that it was on one of the bookshelves, effectively filed with other books which were the sort that aren't best sellers, but almost like current W H Smith most recommended or something, which would have put it in the same place as 'The Hate You Give' and Hibo Wardere's 'Cut'. I kept looking in the same place, partly because when I last thought I had lost a book, that was where it turned up. Annoyingly, I could see the previous missing title - my beloved 'Before I Go To Sleep' by S J Watson, but I could not find 'Unnatural Causes'. I'm pretty impressed though because I knew I had it. Like, I KNEW. There have been multiple occasions over my life where I have ended up with two copies of the same book because I forgot I had it already, so I impressed myself knowing I had it, even though I was irritated as fluff that I didn't know where it was.

This isn't just some lengthy thing so I can go on about all of the wonderful books that are taking up the shelves of my library guest room merge storage area, but just simply trying to explain that I was looking in a very logical place for it, not just for one reason - it was one of those books that was highly recommended at the time - but also because it was a place I had previously located something which had been missing. It turned out that the damn thing was in the equally logical position of being the opposite side of the room in a stack which sits atop the books which are properly shelved - I refuse to believe I have too many books, I just don't have a proper way to store them - with the likes of Adam Kay's 'This Is Going to Hurt'. Why? Because I sorted the books on that side of the room by genre, or at least started to, and so there is a whole section on crime fiction, there is a whole bit on serial killers, there's all the war time stories like 'Bread, Jam and a Borrowed Pram', everything animal related, Jojo Moyes has her own section, there's the LGBTQIA+ fiction stack and there is the pile of medical books. There's a few different nurses' stories, there's a prison doctor's story, and there is one of the most recent books that ripped my heart out, 'When Breath Becomes Air'. 

Somehow, despite the fact that there was some emotional turmoil deciding where 'When Breath Becomes Air' should live because I was torn between putting it with 'The Fault In Our Stars' to have a little epic books that made me cry hysterically section, having it with the other medical books where it ended or putting it on one of these gorgeous house shaped shelves that are above the guest bed, because that's where some of my very favourite books are. A few NaNo novels live up there - yes, including the proof copy of mine - 'Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy' is up there, there's a few Jodi Picoult's and the only reason Jojo Moyes didn't end up there is because she's written too many books for me to put them all up there and I can't bare to separate them. 

Okay, that did turn into a bit of a tangent. 

The point is, even when I am very deliberate and very specific with trying to be organised, it doesn't always work, particularly when it comes to issues with object permanence; if I can't see it, it doesn't exist, but it becomes an, if I can't see it, I can't find it, because who knows what system I filed it by. So many things come into this and it's also one of those 'if I put it down it is lost' situations which is why I need to figure out what I'm doing with something when I'm looking at it, or I need to do a task when I pick it up, because if I put it down, God only knows when I will find it again to sort it, and some things just don't work like that, do they? 

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....

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... 

5053~

I could have given myself more time to write today, but I didn't need to as far as goals were concerned, and I did have a lot of other fun things to do. In our usual style, my house mate and I managed to continue our breakfast conversation until lunch, even with the arrival of the new paint - because adding bubble wrap just made it more fun! 

It's been a busy day and I'm finally starting to feel better from my chest infection, which can only be a good thing, surely. 

After a wonderful day of painting and cleaning, you can imagine it was tempting to vegetate on the sofa with Stevie and Grand Designs, but instead I went out on a date :) to see Kick Ass 2 - before you judge, I chose the movie and I loved it. 

 After that, we went to Zizzi for dinner. Seriously, it was a lovely evening. 

And I even had time to get to 53 words above my goal the for the day. Let's see how tomorrow goes.

~

Running With It,

I'm starting to wonder if running in the mornings is detrimental to everything else I do in day, because it seems as though I'm so knackered that all I want to do is crash on the sofa watching television for the rest of the day. It's gruesome, because I spend only half an hour running and then it becomes something which takes up my entire day. I'm glad that I only go running once every two days, or I would get nothing done. 

I've just had a look over the old blogs, because I knew that when I had got through formatting the latest novel, I had put down a provisional date (two, in fact) as to when it would be released, the first of which was going to be on the two year anniversary of the CharliesWrite blog (7.3.13) the second being my 20th birthday (19.3.13) neither of which actually happened - obviously. Anyway, for those of you not connected on Twitter (@charlieswrite) or Facebook (search: Charlie Yarwood Author) I'm now not working to any sort of provisional dates, BUT the initial formatting is now done and so is the first edit where most of the problems have been ironed out. All that needs to happen now is a little bit of moving words around and then a proof read and then it will be arriving onto the Kindle AND Amazon.com AND Amazon.co.uk (+++all of the European Amazon sites!!) Everything is designed and ready to go when the content is ready! 

Anyway, I'm going to make myself another mug of tea and start work on something different, because I would rather avoid having a typo on the front page of the first edition this time, because that would upset me...

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?