Coastal Girl to City Girl

Credit OK I shall allow all my readers & followers to kick my butt. I've been away for far too long & have not even had the chance to reply to the lovely comments that my readers have left. Last month I started a new job in a local charity shop (I'm now the new assistant manager) & to be honest this is the first time I have felt human enough to sit at my poorly missed netbook & write. (big awww). It's been great starting the job & I'm loving every minute of it but my poor brain & energy had sizzled. I don't think I have ever slept so much on my days off lol! It's physical, fun & i get to meet lovely but interesting characters. But by starting the job I have neglected my writing & those who read this blog. So this was my way of saying sorry & to let people know I haven't disappeared lol. I have also, in between working, managed to finish my degree...woohoo!! I should get my final result for the honours c...

Another prompt on:  http://nablopomo.blogher.com/ was: Would you rather publish fiction or non-fiction? Fiction. Hands down every time. I had thought one time ago about trying my hand at writing non-fiction but I couldn’t get my real thoughts/feelings down onto the page. Then two years ago when I was doing a creative writing course I had to do a piece of non-fiction writing. It was the hardest piece of written work I’ve ever completed. Yes I did complete it & received quite a good mark for it but I changed my mind so many times on the subject matter as I couldn’t decide what I wanted to write about. I wanted a story that held my tutor’s attention but one that didn’t feel too cliché, even for non-fiction. I was going to write about my grandfather but every time I tried writing it I became stuck. I couldn’t get the right words down on the paper. I couldn’t structure the sentences to how I wanted them written. It was just too tough to write. I remember even ringing my dad to c...

One other prompt on:  http://nablopomo.blogher.com/   was: What do you think about the act for banning books? Why would ‘higher authorities’ ban books? It actually annoys me that they think books need to be banned. Surely if they ban books it will actually make people go out & find that book. If they publicise the banning of certain books that it will make them all the more popular as readers will be intrigued as to the reasons for banning it in the first place & they will therefore find it, buy it & read it. This defeats the idea of having a book banned. It’s just the same as when they try to ban films, people go out of their way to find banned films which then makes them popular & years on they show them on TV or bring them out on DVD. So why go through all the trouble of banning books? It seems a pointless task to me & involves unnecessary paper work, laws etc. So why bother? It will only make people discover the books either in other formats or from...

Another prompt on: http://nablopomo.blogher.com/   was: Do you prefer paper books or e-readers? Seeing as I do not own an e-reader device I have always stuck to reading paper books. I like the idea of holding a book & flipping over the pages. I like browsing charity shops for books I may not have read or want to read & forgot to buy when it came out new. I like the idea of knowing that others have enjoyed reading the words on each page before me & that when I take it back to a charity shop I know that someone else will go on to enjoy it. As a writer I love dreaming of one day having a book published & seeing it with my name printed on the spine sitting in bookshops for people to enjoy. But I am beginning to understand the digital age & the idea that many things can come from e-publishing. I was reading an article the other day about the opportunities for authors to now publish their short stories/poems/articles through the kindle store so that more readers...

Another  http://nablopomo.blogher.com/ prompt for this week is: Where is your favourite place to read? My favourite place to read would have to be one of two places: I normally read either curled up on the sofa, feet tucked beneath me with a good book that completely captures my mind whilst I block out the surrounding sounds around me. Or the other place I read is tucked up & snuggled up in bed. I rest the book on my body or hold it way above my head, my arms ending up at odd angles whilst trying to turn the page. I end up twisting & turning trying my best to get comfy as I become engrossed in the story unfolding. Reading in bed is more relaxing I find but it’s not good for my body, as I lay in the most strangest of angles to get the best light & to make sure my arms don’t go dead as I turn another page. But I will not be persuaded by getting a Kindle yet though. I still love trying to balance a book on my arm or above my head & I love trying to be quite as ...

One of http://nablopomo.blogher.com/ prompts this week is: Do you prefer to own books or borrow them from a friend or the library? This is quite easy for me to answer actually. I love owning books. I have to stop myself continually buying more books. The bookcases are full at the moment & I’ve read nearly every one of them, some even more than once. I think I have a book addiction. I am a book addict! If there’s a book that I keep seeing reviewed I have to have it. If one comes free with a glossy magazine then it’s mine. The trouble with this though is that I have problem getting rid of books. Ones I haven’t enjoyed I’ll happily give away to a charity shop no problem there, but ones I’ve enjoyed or perhaps having got pass the first chapter yet I won’t get rid of. What if I want to read it again?  My partner keeps saying “you’ve got too many books, you won’t read them again.” But my answer is that I might. One day. You never know. What if we had a power cut or if I was la...

Best first sentence you can think of off the top of your head. is the 5th prompt on http://nablopomo.blogher.com/ Ok my head needed a little bit of help with this as I remembered the first couple of words of the sentence I’m about to write but for the life of me I couldn’t remember the rest. So I turned to the book & got the next bit… ‘It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.’ Of course it is from Pride & Prejudice. I have no idea why that sentence sticks in my mind but I know that when I hear it or read it I know it’s the beginning of what I believe is one of Austen’s best novels. I love the book & how that first sentence leads you straight into the story. I think it’s a widely known quote & one that speaks for the novel at that time. It lets us into the story from the offset; it grips us, holds our attention & we escape into the Elizabeth/Mr Darcy saga from then on.

Which character would you most like to meet? is the 4th prompt on http://nablopomo.blogher.com/ As a TV character I would love to meet Jessica from Murder She Wrote & ask her ‘why is it every place you go to there’s a murderer that follows you?’ & to also say ‘I’d never invite you to a dinner party or a holiday!’ Ok so I’m joking with that one as I know its part of the crime genre to have a killer wherever a crime novelist goes in order that she can write her next novel by using those characters & solve the crime. So I guess I don’t actually know a serious answer to this question. I’d love to meet many different characters from the numerous books I’ve read but I suppose more recently in a novel it would have to be Mrs de Winter in the novel Rebecca as I would want to honestly kick her butt & say ‘hey pull yourself together & be stronger from the start. Be a woman, show strength, wisdom & individuality.’ However that also wouldn’t work because if that actua...

  Have you ever wished you could enter a book? is the 3rd prompt on http://nablopomo.blogher.com/ All the time! I love escaping into the pages of a good book & being able to explore the world the writer has opened up for me to indulge in. I enjoy sensing & realising the smells, feelings, emotions, tastes, the hustle of being on the street, the thrills of speeding in a car chase or trotting along in a horse & carriage down an isolated country lane, actually hearing those sirens in the background or the seagulls soaring over the crashing waves etc. Being able to search deep into the characters mind, touch what they touch, sense what they sense & feel how they feel when embarking on each step within the novel… …It excites me, lets me escape & allows me to enter a whole new world, one that I never knew existed or could only exist in your imagination. Even 10 years ago when Harry Potter came out I wanted to be one of those older wizards… …Swishing a wand a...

I have a week of catch up posts to be done. I joined NaBloPoMo  http://nablopomo.blogher.com/ a while ago & never got round to completing their prompts…you are meant to write each day based on a daily prompt. As a writer I have been bad in that respect as I haven’t written anything at all relating to the prompts. So I now have to combine 5 days worth in 5 different posts! So for the first post the prompt is: What is your favourite book?   This is actually very tough to decide on. I tend to read way too much to make a definite decision and plus with my courses for my degree & the set books they insist we read makes it even tougher to nail down one favourite book. However having just read for the first time EVER Rebecca I must say I loved it…apart from the ending that is, where I felt disappointed as a reader & felt I’d been left out to dry. It didn’t end in the way I’d expected & to be honest I even turned the page thinking there was a final missing chap...

As someone who loves to write & read I have been thinking quite a bit about books vs. technology. Having recently started to subscribe to a writer’s magazine there’s been a lot of topics & debates surrounding this certain topic. Will technology take over the need for us to buy & own books? Will we become a society addicted to reading e-books rather than physically browsing, buying and then opening up a good book? What will it mean for authors if all novels become digital instead of witnessing their words on a page being thumbed over for many years to come even when it’s falling to bits? Surely that is a sign of good book! I can see the viewpoint though of the digital era. It makes sense when say for example you’re bedridden or before you go to sleep to pick up an e-reader & read ‘a book’ on one screen instead of trying to balance a book while finding the right position to lie in, it makes life easier. But surely that could also equal laziness? Just staring at a scree...

Success comes to us all in many different ways. It could be getting your first car, passing exams, completely a degree, getting your dream home, finding your feet in a new job, even getting that first job or ones after that, perhaps for some just being able to get up & out of bed in the morning is a success. Success can take many different shapes and for some it might not even be welcomed into their lives. For others though success can mean a great deal, for instance take Shakespeare: a man no one really knows anything about, he grew up in a world surrounded by illness & disease & yet that didn’t stop him doing what he loved best….acting & becoming a playwright. Now his success is one of greatness really, producing a huge amount of work that is studied again & again, writing by hand each word, line, sonnet, script & not using his ‘celebrity’ status to take over his life, hence no one really knows much about the ‘mystery man’. Amazing! But if you look at today’...