Our snow (such as it was - it never got beyond about an inch deep) has gone and today's predicted fall never came, so my hope that I would be able to sit at the table and gaze out at a beautiful winter wonderland somewhat fell through. It's probably a good thing though as the more my eyes are looking out the window, the less they are looking at the laptop!
Kicked off today with some studying - I was able to finish the first section of the 'Fifth Century Athens' block, which seemed to go on forever, so am now only one week behind schedule instead of two (argh!). Refueled with a sausage butty and it was on to some writing. I was hoping to re-channel my 'NaNo' frame of mind and put myself Into The Zone where the words just flowed, but it didn't quite work out. I suspect that my husband going through the TV listings magazine for the Christmas period and asking me whether I'd want to watch this, that or the other did not help. Seriously, I love him and all, but he does not assist with getting the creative vibes going in the room. I need to be alone to write! :oS
Anyway, that aside I did manage to get about 400 words down towards Project NaNo, bringing the new total to 10,471. The next 10k day has been scheduled for next Wednesday (15th) so I will definitely take that up again (it was great fun last time, as well as productive!). I just need to remember to send hubby off on some sort of mission for the day. Perhaps he could do his Christmas shopping?
Wishing you a warm and productive week!
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Showing posts with label winter. Show all posts
Showing posts with label winter. Show all posts
Wednesday, 8 December 2010
Wednesday, 1 December 2010
The results are in...
As the UK is in the grip of what seems to be The Worst Winter Ever And It's Only The First Of December, I write to you from within a huge jumper, thick trousers and fingerless gloves. No, I'm not outside, I'm in my living room (with the fire on!) but once my fingers get cold it takes an awful lot to bring them back to life. For every ten minutes I sit here writing, I feel like I need to spend five minutes huffing on them. But enough about my rubbish circulation...
Yesterday was the final day of NaNoWriMo and as you can see from my little blue box on the left, I did not make it to the 50,000 finish line. I'm very happy with just over 10k though as it's much more than I've ever been able to produce in such a relatively short space of time before now. The feeling that all you need to do is just sit and write whatever comes out of your head is really liberating and on the sessions I was able to sit and do it, I did get quite swept up in it. Now I have eleven months to think of an idea that I can use for next year's NaNo... ;o)
Today I've been catching up with some studying. I got the mark back from that last essay that I was stressing about - 72%! Hopefully for the next one I'll have a bit more confidence, given that my tutor obviously thinks I'm better at this than I do. We've moved on from Homer now to fifth century BCE Athens - the foundations of democracy and all that kind of thing. I've been reading about Athenian theatre and listened to a play called Persians by Aeschylus. It's not a cheery way to spend an hour, I can tell you - there's a lot of wailing and lamenting and 'aiaiai'-ing! I'm sure that once I get a bit further into the study block it will become more apparent how this links to Greek society and so forth.
Persians and the associated coursebook reading has taken up most of the day, but I've also been doing some tweaking to the blog, trying to make it more what I would want to see if I were a reader. I hope it doesn't feel too cluttered, I don't know how (or if it's even possible) to make the main section wider so that things would be more spread out. Hmm, maybe I need to add Blogger for Dummies to my collection...
Lastly I just want to share two links with you. I saw them while browsing some other blogs today and they just made me laugh, hopefully you will too!
Nine Circles (credit to Nathan Bransford as it's his blog)
Awesome Bookshelf System (credit to John Baker as it's his blog)
Best wishes - stay warm!
Yesterday was the final day of NaNoWriMo and as you can see from my little blue box on the left, I did not make it to the 50,000 finish line. I'm very happy with just over 10k though as it's much more than I've ever been able to produce in such a relatively short space of time before now. The feeling that all you need to do is just sit and write whatever comes out of your head is really liberating and on the sessions I was able to sit and do it, I did get quite swept up in it. Now I have eleven months to think of an idea that I can use for next year's NaNo... ;o)
Today I've been catching up with some studying. I got the mark back from that last essay that I was stressing about - 72%! Hopefully for the next one I'll have a bit more confidence, given that my tutor obviously thinks I'm better at this than I do. We've moved on from Homer now to fifth century BCE Athens - the foundations of democracy and all that kind of thing. I've been reading about Athenian theatre and listened to a play called Persians by Aeschylus. It's not a cheery way to spend an hour, I can tell you - there's a lot of wailing and lamenting and 'aiaiai'-ing! I'm sure that once I get a bit further into the study block it will become more apparent how this links to Greek society and so forth.
Persians and the associated coursebook reading has taken up most of the day, but I've also been doing some tweaking to the blog, trying to make it more what I would want to see if I were a reader. I hope it doesn't feel too cluttered, I don't know how (or if it's even possible) to make the main section wider so that things would be more spread out. Hmm, maybe I need to add Blogger for Dummies to my collection...
Lastly I just want to share two links with you. I saw them while browsing some other blogs today and they just made me laugh, hopefully you will too!
Nine Circles (credit to Nathan Bransford as it's his blog)
Awesome Bookshelf System (credit to John Baker as it's his blog)
Best wishes - stay warm!
Picture from here
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Sunday, 14 November 2010
Booklog #3
I hope you've had a good week...the weather here has really gone downhill, with gale force winds, driving rain and all the fun that is winter in Wales. What better excuse could there be to stay in of an evening and curl up with a book? Not that I need an excuse of course..!
This week I have a sneaky surprise 'started it and finished it' entry for you in the form of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon. It's a former Whitbread Book of the Year and is well-known for its autistic teenage narrator. I'd always thought that I wouldn't mind reading it but never got round to buying it, or knew anyone who had it that I could borrow it from, but on Friday a chance discovery brought the two of us together!
For my day job I work for our local police force - as a civilian, not as an officer - and my department is within one of our main divisional HQs. While lunching with a friend on Friday she asked if I'd seen the library yet. Library? What library? It turns out we have a sort of 'trust library', where people donate books and they're stored in the atrium (where some of the lunch seating is) for anybody to take, read and return (that's the trust part!). And fair dos - there are three units with five shelves each and they're not only full but also neatly arranged into genres...someone has been busy! We browsed the shelves and my friend recommended Curious Incident to me and I recommended The Ice Cream Girls (Dorothy Koomson) to her. I started it on Friday evening and was hooked - had I not had to go out to a university tutorial on Saturday I probably would have finished it that morning! As it was, I finished on Saturday night - possibly a new record, as although I do read fast I'm not usually that fast.
I won't drop any spoilers here as I really do recommend it to everyone, but I will say that it is funny and sad and moving and educational (both about autism and about maths!) all at the same time. It's very cleverly written, in such a way that you recognise various things happening slightly before Christopher, the narrator, does. I felt that this was a good thing as it meant they were still a surprise to you, but that you also then got to witness his realisation and reaction separately to your own, so that becomes part of the story too. He's a very interesting character and you really do want everything to work out for him. Though of course I won't say here whether it does or not... ;o)
I give Curious Incident... 5/5. Everyone should read it!
And now for this week's 'I'm still reading' list:
The Redbreast ~ Jo Nesbo
The Children's Book ~ A.S. Byatt (up to chapter 20 now, following a massive push!)
Angels ~ Marian Keyes
Pillars of the Earth ~ Ken Follett (I decided to start reading it rather than watch it on TV first)
That's all for now - thanks for reading, have a great week!
.
This week I have a sneaky surprise 'started it and finished it' entry for you in the form of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon. It's a former Whitbread Book of the Year and is well-known for its autistic teenage narrator. I'd always thought that I wouldn't mind reading it but never got round to buying it, or knew anyone who had it that I could borrow it from, but on Friday a chance discovery brought the two of us together!
For my day job I work for our local police force - as a civilian, not as an officer - and my department is within one of our main divisional HQs. While lunching with a friend on Friday she asked if I'd seen the library yet. Library? What library? It turns out we have a sort of 'trust library', where people donate books and they're stored in the atrium (where some of the lunch seating is) for anybody to take, read and return (that's the trust part!). And fair dos - there are three units with five shelves each and they're not only full but also neatly arranged into genres...someone has been busy! We browsed the shelves and my friend recommended Curious Incident to me and I recommended The Ice Cream Girls (Dorothy Koomson) to her. I started it on Friday evening and was hooked - had I not had to go out to a university tutorial on Saturday I probably would have finished it that morning! As it was, I finished on Saturday night - possibly a new record, as although I do read fast I'm not usually that fast.
I won't drop any spoilers here as I really do recommend it to everyone, but I will say that it is funny and sad and moving and educational (both about autism and about maths!) all at the same time. It's very cleverly written, in such a way that you recognise various things happening slightly before Christopher, the narrator, does. I felt that this was a good thing as it meant they were still a surprise to you, but that you also then got to witness his realisation and reaction separately to your own, so that becomes part of the story too. He's a very interesting character and you really do want everything to work out for him. Though of course I won't say here whether it does or not... ;o)
I give Curious Incident... 5/5. Everyone should read it!
And now for this week's 'I'm still reading' list:
The Redbreast ~ Jo Nesbo
The Children's Book ~ A.S. Byatt (up to chapter 20 now, following a massive push!)
Angels ~ Marian Keyes
Pillars of the Earth ~ Ken Follett (I decided to start reading it rather than watch it on TV first)
That's all for now - thanks for reading, have a great week!
.
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