Sunday 27 February 2011

Booklog #14

And so another weekend has zipped by already...

This week I've finished:

* Murder on the Flying Scotsman ~ Carola Dunn
Well, let me just tell you that it's a good job my two book club buddies and I aren't actual detectives...we were hopelessly wrong with our theories as to who the murderer was in this!  It's very much Agatha Christie-esque, but seems somewhat less substantial - as though the characters are less fleshed out and more like comical caricatures.  It doesn't really matter though as it's an easy read and the fun part is trying to pick out the clues from the red herrings.  There are lots more in this 'Daisy Dalrymple' series and we've already picked our next one...  4/5

* Manifesting Change ~ Mike Dooley
If you've ever read the best-selling blockbuster The Secret then you'll be familiar with the ideas behind this book.   Essentially, Mike Dooley's belief is that 'Thoughts Become Things', so think positive thoughts and your life will be blessed with positive things.  Obviously that sounds ridiculously simplistic when I sum it up like that - but he does go into much more detail, explaining the reasons why he believes this, why bad things still happen in the world and how to apply it all to your own life.  I did feel that it was a bit 'hippy-trippy' in parts - such as where he's explaining how time doesn't actually exist in a linear way and so we can make anything happen because it doesn't happen in a certain point in time (???) and suchlike - but for the most part it's pretty easy to follow and quite thought-provoking indeed.  Certain sections really resonated with me and I will definitely be putting his suggestions into practice to bring about the changes I want in my life.  For more info see his website: Tut's Adventurers Club  4.5/5 (half a mark off for the bits I didn't understand!)

* A Room With A View ~ E.M. Forster
In the spirit of continuing to try classics that I've never found time to read in the past (especially if I can download them for free now!) I dabbled in a little E.M. Forster.  I'll be honest - perhaps revealing a new level of ignorance - and admit that I knew nothing about Forster or this book before starting it.  I couldn't have told you a single thing about it.  So I was pleasantly surprised to find that I rather enjoyed it!  It's about one Miss Lucy Honeychurch, a young lady who, while holidaying in Florence with her chaperone, not only witnesses a murder but also has her heart awakened by a fellow tourist.  We then follow Lucy back home to England and through the troubles she faces when that same man moves into the village just as she accepts a marriage proposal from a local gentleman.  It's a fairly simple story but beautifully told - both Italy and England really come to life on the page, and the interplay between the characters as they dance around their feelings is subtle yet complex.  There is a good amount of philosophising about choices and life and the ending is both expected and yet still surprising in one way (I won't ruin it by telling you why).  4/5

This week I've started:

Nothing new this week, I've been caught up in Pillars of the Earth when I wasn't reading the 'finished' books above! 

I'm still reading:

* Pillars of the Earth ~ Ken Follett (74%)
* Picture Perfect ~ Jodi Picoult
* The Parthenon ~ Mary Beard
* The Diviner's Tale ~ Bradford Morrow

Have a great week!  :o)
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Wednesday 23 February 2011

Romans and ruminations


I can't begin to describe to you how much more interesting the Romans are than the ancient Greeks...  Somehow time has flown by and I'm already at the end of the third Block (first Roman one) in Exploring the Classical World, but have covered so much!  I think it's the fact that there is so much more physical evidence for the Romans - the things they invented (in true "what have the Romans ever done for us?" style) that we still use today, the Roman alphabet letters that we use every day and so on, while the Greek legacy is more conceptual.  Democracy, for example.  I find it hard to get really interested in it because it's abstract - I can't physically see it like an aqueduct or an unbelievably long straight Roman road.  To me personally, even though I've learnt about their military exploits, building programmes and achievements, the Greeks still feel like a sort of mythical race that never actually existed (I know, it sounds stupid!), while the Romans seem so much more alive.  Maybe it's the fact that I've been to Rome, but never to Greece?  It's hard to put into words - all I know is that this one block with all its information on the political hierarchy, temples and tombs and so on has been a joy to study in comparison to the parts of the Greek blocks which were something of a slog. 

But anyway!  I'm off to see King Lear at the theatre with my dad this evening, so am squeezing in a bit of writing this afternoon, now that I'm all up to date with where I should be with the lovely Romans.  I'm writing this post before I start (so that I don't forget later) so rather than tell you what I have done, this is what I will do.  

After the huge success of interviewing my Crunch heroine last week, I plan this afternoon to look back at her answers and consider what sort of scenes I could use to work these facts about her into the story.  Not by dropping a deliberate speech about x, y or z into somewhere it doesn't sit right, more along the lines of 'what could happen that would make her react in a way that shows she feels x about y?'.  I already have the basic skeleton of the plot sketched out, so I see this as starting to put meat on those bones (ew - not the nicest metaphor, but it does sum up what I'm thinking most accurately!).  

So I'd better go and get on with it hadn't I?!  
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Sunday 20 February 2011

Booklog #14

Before I begin, I must offer the humblest of apologies for missing last Sunday's post.  It feels like an eternity ago already, but to look on the positive side, I now have lots to talk about today so every cloud has a silver lining! 

Since the last Booklog I've finished:

* White Fang ~ Jack London
This is one of those stories that I've always had a vague awareness of, but never known anything about, other than it's about a wolf - so when I saw it for free within the 'Aldiko' book reader app on my Android I thought I'd give it a try.  To be honest I was a little sceptical - how good can a story told from an animal's point of view really be?  Especially when White Fang doesn't actually have a 'voice' of his own (not even an internal one), it's all told as description of what he perceives through his sense and instincts. 

I felt that the start was a little slow for my liking - it concerns his mother, who lives with a pack of wolves despite being half domesticated dog and takes you from a time where she and the pack are facing starvation through to where she gives birth to White Fang and his siblings.  From this point it gets a lot more interesting as White Fang is a real character!  He's more fearless and feisty than the other cubs, and this gets him into quite a few scrapes from the off.  Even from such a young age his life is rather eventful, so I can't really say much more without giving away spoilers, however I will say that there is a significant amount of violence throughout.  If you're very sensitive to the thought of animals being harmed or harming each other then you might want to steer clear, as Jack London doesn't hold back with his description.  Despite this, it's a very well-told story with a lot of twists and turns, White Fang himself is very cleverly characterised and overall I really enjoyed it.  4/5

* Cleanskin ~ Val McDermid
One of the 'Quick Reads' shortish stories on Kindle.  Though I enjoy crime fiction, I've never tried any Val McDermid so I thought this might be a good place to start.  As you might expect from such a star of this genre, it's an intriguing tale of murder and mystery (and gore - there's been a lot of violence in my reading this last couple of weeks!), told, as usual, from the perspective of a detective with flaws and unresolved issues of his own.  The daughter of a well-known-but-never-able-to-pin-anything-on-him crime lord is murdered and soon after other members of the criminal fraternity start showing up in gruesome crime scenes.  But 'Mr Big' has disappeared - is he dead or is he out there getting revenge?  Our detective has to try and find out...  For such a short piece the characters are really well developed and there are a couple of huge and unexpected plot twists that really surprised me (I'm still shocked now, a week later!).  If you like crime dramas, you'll almost certainly enjoy this.  4/5

* The Middle Passage ~ Julia Golding
A nice bit of historical fiction now!  This is another short piece - a sort of after-story to a series which was set in the Caribbean.  Set in 1792, it follows a feisty young woman named Cat Royal as she journeys home to Britain, accompanied by one Billy Shepherd (who you might say is a bit of a rogue).  On the way they stop off at the Azores islands and get involved in a solving a mystery. 

I just checked the Amazon write-up to remind myself what year it was set in and was surprised to see that it is 'perfect for girls of 9 and above'...oh!  I  hadn't realised it was a children's story!  Which is testament to Julia Golding's writing I suppose - they do say that when writing for children you should never patronise or 'write down' to them and she certainly doesn't do that.  I thought it was just solid, descriptive, pacy writing.  The characters are brought to life very well - I would definitely like to read about their other adventures - and the mystery plot is built up steadily and resolved neatly.  All in all, an enjoyable novella-length read.  4/5

* The Crying Tree ~ Naseem Rakha
Last but not least for this week is the story of a teenage boy's murder and the after-effects it has on his family.  It explores some deep subjects - capital punishment, forgiveness, family bonds and hidden secrets - and though some of it makes for uncomfortable reading, it is all very compelling reading.  The crux of the plot is essentially 'will the murderer's execution go ahead or not', but the detail and all the emotion relates to how each member of the family - mother Irene, father Nate and daughter Bliss - deals with their grief.  They are very different characters and we journey with them over the twenty years that follow that fateful day, seeing them change and learn things they never knew about one another, as well as about the son that was lost.  Pulls on the heart-strings, but not in a twee way and really gets you thinking about subjects that aren't often discussed.  4.5/5

Since the last Booklog I've started:

* The Diviner's Tale ~ Bradford Morrow
* A Room With A View ~ E.M. Forster
* Manifesting Change ~ Mike Dooley

I'm still reading:

* Picture Perfect ~ Jodi Picoult
* Pillars of the Earth ~ Ken Follett (60%)
* Murder on the Flying Scotsman ~ Carola Dunn (it's our final book club meeting about this one this week!)
* The Parthenon ~ Mary Beard

This puts me at 14/100 for the 100 Books In A Year Challenge

Phew!  Time for a lie down I think..! 
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Wednesday 16 February 2011

Interview with my imagination

Firstly I must apologise to you dear readers - I wasn't able to post a Booklog on Sunday (I won't bore you as to the reasons why).  On the bright side, the next one will be extra long...  ;o)

Did you have a nice Valentine's Day?  Or if you think it's a overly-sentimental waste of time that's favoured only by florists and card shops, did you have a nice Monday?  Hubby and I always get each other cards but we held off on presents this year as a bit of a money-saver.  We also stayed home and cooked a meal (tarragon chicken, potatoes and beans) and watched a film (Troy) instead of going out - more money saved!  I don't like the overtly commercial side of the whole thing, but then Christmas, Easter and Halloween are exacly the same aren't they?  I guess it's just the way things are these days.  He and I know how we feel about one another and that's all that matters at the end of the day.  :o)

And so on to today.  My 'Romans' studying is ticking along nicely so I've been free to write - hurrah!  It always feels like a little oasis of time when these days come round, as though the rest of the week is the metaphorical slog through the desert.  I felt drawn back to Project Crunch and, inspired by this blog post I read over at Fear of Writing and also an article in Mslexia magazine, I decided that I would interview my leading lady.  Might sound a bit weird?  Surely I should be getting something down in the actual story to push up the word count?  Well yes, that's true - and the obsessive word-counter/graph-maker in me desperately wants to force the Crunch line in an upwards direction - but I wanted to follow up the character profiling that I did a couple of weeks ago.  I did that in bullet points as things occurred to me so it was a little haphazard, a cloud of random facts.  It didn't give me her voice. 

So I wrote down 'Tell me about yourself'.  And she did!  Tentatively at first, just the facts - height, build, age, that kind of thing - but as it went on, and more probing questions occurred to me, I found that she was gaining a voice of her own.  I asked her about her job and what she was aiming for, why that was important, how she met her fiance and what she felt when he proposed, all sorts of intimate details.  And she answered everything completely candidly...even questioning me back when she didn't like what I was implying!  It was a lot of fun and pretty revealing - I've learnt things about her that I had no idea of before, so she definitely feels more like a real person now.  And the best part is that although I did it most of the day, I didn't run out of questions, there is still more to find out! 

One interesting thing to note is that I did all this with pen and paper, not the laptop.  I read a while back on a blog (I forget what it was called, sorry!) that a study had been done comparing two groups of people - one writing and the other typing - to see how much time in a given period was spent writing, how much editing, what the end word counts were, that kind of thing.  The typing group spent a lot more time editing as they went along, while the pen group wrote more and did one edit at the end (I'm paraphrasing/summarising greatly here of course!).  I read that and thought 'ah, so that's the reason why I can't seem to stop myself self-editing as I go along - because I'm on the laptop and the ability to do is right there in front of me within a couple of clicks'.  It makes it much too easy to make changes. 

I hate crossing things out when I'm writing on paper (too much of a neat freak) and when I did this work today I found two things: 1) I chose my words more carefully, so as to minimise the likelihood of wanting to change them and 2) once I got into the magical zone where the right words were flowing and crossing out was not necessary, it really was as though I was just writing down what somebody was telling me.  The feel of pen on paper and the fact that I wasn't making the odd unavoidable keyboard typo meant it flowed better...though my wrist was aching a bit towards the end - it's been a long time since I did a lot of hand writing! 

I wrote 24 and a half A5 pages, so at about 110 words per page that's approximately 2695 words altogether.  Not bad at all!  Though I can't lift and drop it into the story as it is (that would definitely be a case of telling, not showing - a Very Bad Thing!), there will almost certainly be snippets that can be incorporated into conversations between the characters.  And the rest...well, I'll save that for an 'interview with our heroine' blog post once the book is published...  ;o)
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Wednesday 9 February 2011

A lost day...

Uggggggh!  Sorry for uttering something so unprofessional, when the title of my blog has 'Professional' in it, but today has been a complete write-off and I've achieved nothing.  I shan't go into detail as to why because I know I'll probably say something I'll regret - and what with this being the big ol' World Wide Interweb it is bound to be seen by someone it shouldn't - so I'll just say that it feels very clear that what is precious to me (my time on my Wednesdays) isn't viewed in the same light by others.  Just because I'm at home, apparently it means I'm free to do whatever other people want.  It's clearly okay to monopolise my time with other (trivial) things, indirectly implying that they are more important and consequently that my whole writing thing is a waste of time.  And if I try to make the point (however tactfully) that these days are for me, for my writing, for what I'm trying to make into my job, then it's also clearly okay to dismiss that as if I was just being awkward and had said that I'd prefer to stare at the wall instead of go along with their plans.  As I said: uggggh

So in the absence of any progress whatsoever to report on (can you tell that I'm somewhat narked?), I thought I'd show you this:


It's today's page of my '3650 Things to Make You Happy' calendar.  Check out item number 2 - 'easily digestible chapters' (there always seems to be something specifically related to me on this calendar - it's a bit spooky!).  This absolutely sums up the problem I had with The Children's Book (see Booklog #12)...it was completely undigestible!  Like chewing your way through a huge and really tough steak - takes ages, isn't enjoyable during it and at the end you're left unsatisfied and overwhelmed. 

Musing on why this bothered me so, I realised that 99% of the reason I read is for entertainment - it's rarely to give my brain a serious workout (that's what puzzles are for!).  I don't want to have to work hard to empathise for the characters, or constantly have to try and decipher why they're doing whatever they're doing.  I want the author to make that relatively easy for me, by giving me digestible chapters to work with.  I might make this my own Golden Rule, if I can think of a catchy name for it.  Any ideas? 

Oh and also - what's the deal with 'waiting for tree sap' (number 8)?  Waiting for it to do what?  I don't really get that one! 
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Sunday 6 February 2011

Booklog #13

Ooh - number 13, will this be the unluckiest Booklog..? 

This week I've finished:

* The Golden Acorn ~ Catherine Cooper
This is, admittedly, a children's story, and when I say 'children's' I don't mean that Young Adult sort of group that Real Adults can just about get away with enjoying, it is properly for children (perhaps 10-12 year olds?).  But it was a free (I think) Kindle download so in the spirit of trying things, I tried it.  It's actually very well-written...even though it is relatively simplistic, the plot is solid, the characters are charming (mostly, there are one or two less pleasant ones!) and the action is well-paced. 

It's the adventure of a young boy called Jack, who turns out to be The Chosen One to fulfil a prophecy which will save some supernatural beings (water nymphs, faery folk, dragons etc) and the forest they live in from fading away and dying.  Essentially the message is about bravery, standing up for your friends and that kind of thing - Jack has to take a leap of faith more than once and must learn a lot, but by the end he's a better person for it.  One thing that did annoy me was that the ending is very abrupt - I suppose it may well be preparation for a sequel.  For that reason: 3/5

* The Library of Gold ~ Gayle Lynds
Ah, I do enjoy a good historical-artefact-chase-thriller!  And when you mix in a mythical library (a library!  A book about books - what could be better?!) I'm sold.  Luckily, the characters and the writing also lived up to the high quality of the promised storyline and once again I found myself engrossed in a book that I just didn't want to put down.  It's a thrilling chase around the world (including Athens and the Parthenon, which was nice after having just studied it) with assassins, gunfights, spies, double-crossing and clues aplenty.  I won't spoil anything for you, but will just say that if you enjoy Dan Brown you'll enjoy this.  4.5/5 (half a mark deducted as I feel that a perfect book has re-readability, and of course this doesn't because by the end you know the answers to everything)

This week I've started:

* White Fang ~ Jack London

I'm still reading:

* Picture Perfect ~ Jodi Picoult
* Pillars of the Earth ~ Ken Follett
* Murder on the Flying Scotsman ~ Carola Dunn
* The Parthenon ~ Mary Beard

This puts me at 10/100 for the 100 Books in a Year Challenge

How's your reading going this year? 
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Wednesday 2 February 2011

OneNote after another...

I spent almost all last weekend buried in the new Romans block of my course and it was totally worth it - I actually managed to get ahead of the schedule!  So as a result I've enjoyed another study-free day today and decided to spend time working on Project Crunch

Instead of writing the main story I've been doing some character profiling, building up the details behind my heroine to make her more real in my mind.  This is advised in many of the writing books, magazines and websites that I've read, so I figured that it must be worth a try!  I think that the better I am able to get to know her as a person, the easier it will be to make sure I write her consistently all the way through.  Not just in terms of hair colour, eye colour and details like that (though it has been handy to write all that down in one place!), but knowing what she feels about various things.  Is she a TV addict?  Does she want children?  What are her flaws?  Does she like her appearance?  And so on...all sorts of different factors which build up together to make a real personality and (hopefully) not flat and lifeless. 

Because she will go through some pretty big changes during the story, I'm conscious that I can't just have her flick from being one type of person with a certain set of values at the start to someone totally different at the end.  She will change (I know she will - I know how it ends!) but my challenge is to manage it carefully, pace it and make it realistic.  I'm actually looking forward to this - though she's not the most loveable at the start (nothing horrendous, just not your average bubbly ditzy chick lit heroine), the various plot points I've planned out will gradually turn her into someone that I hope readers will like and emphasise with.  I can't wait to see it unfolding before me! 

Just to explain why I titled this post the way I did...I want to advocate the wonder that is Microsoft OneNote.  I'd never heard of it before I got my laptop last year (perhaps it only comes with Office 2007?) and didn't really know what to do with it when I first opened it, but now I love it!  It's like a virtual filing system - within the programme you save separate 'Notebooks' (essentially a ring-binder - I have one for each of my writing projects).  Then within each Notebook there are tabs, which split the project into sections.  Within each tab are Pages into which you can type or paste anything you want.  And unlike MS Word there are no restrictions as to where you can type - you literally click anywhere on the page and just start typing.  There are also Sub-Pages in case your main Page covers a wide range of information. 

So, for example, I have a Notebook for Hitched.  Within it are two tabs labelled 'Planning' and 'States'.  Within 'Planning' are Pages titled 'Introduction', 'Legal Stuff' and 'General Travel' - there will be others as I progress with working on it.  Within 'States' are Pages titled...well...each US state name (yes, all 50!) and within each of those are Sub-Pages for 'Basic Info', 'Significant Landmarks' and things like that for each state. 

It's an incredibly easy and customisable way to organise a lot of information so that you're able to go straight to whatever you wish. I'm still experimenting and tweaking to find the best way of using it for my other projects, but if you have it I would definitely recommend that you check it out.

Thanks for reading - till next time!