A-Z Challenge

So today I’m starting the A-Z Challenge.  I did it once a couple of years ago and then let my blog slide.  I’m giving it another go, and trying out a theme this year.  Follow Angie as she negotiates being 14 in High School and all that comes with it…..

Handwriting – will it become obsolete?

I read an article that was banging on about handwriting becoming obsolete.  What a load of crap and here’s why:

I love writing. I write all my short stories by hand, and all my drafts for my blogs as well. There is still something lovely about the flow of the words coming out of my head, down into my hand and onto the paper. I get immersed in the story, I am physically writing it and watching it unfold. I can see the work I’ve already done out of the corner of my eye, the scratchings on the page, the blue and black ink mixed in together. The side-notes I’ve made when a new idea comes in or an alternative if this current paragraph doesn’t work. I can’t make those notes easily when I type it out – I’d have to make a conscious effort to create a box for comments or change the colour of the text so I could easily find the notes again. If I make a mistake or change my mind i quickly scratch it out and write over it, it doesn’t break my concentration in the way that stopping and back-back-backspacing over a wrong word does.

I can pick up any piece of paper and write down what my child has just said quicker than finding the app on my phone and typing it up. It also means my kids don’t think I’m paying more attention to the phone instead of them. I can sit down with my kids during craft and while they draw I can join in and use paper to write a letter to them telling them what funny/bad/wonderful things they did that day and I can put that letter away for when they grow up. They think I’m doing craft then too.

I have notebooks full of stories for my kids, things they have said, worn, and done along with the fiction I have written.

One day my children will find all these books and letters and notes and read them. They can sit down on the floor with these things all around them and read them straight away. They won’t have to plug anything in, look for a password or a software hacking program for my blogs, they won’t have to find technology compatible to play the discs I save the work on, they can just read my stuff straight away.

That’s why I love writing and that’s why I’ll keep doing it.

What do you think?  Do you love handwriting or receiving handwritten letters?

Writer’s Block

I finally, mentally got off my apathetic arse and prepared myself to go straight into the study after putting the girls to bed to write.  I was also mentally congratulating myself that I was on the way to being productive and would get a good few hours in before giving myself a semi-early night.

That was before my daughter did this…..

This is my writer's block

Something Wicked

There’s something bad happening to me. I bought hand cream the other day. Not the supermarket, my-hands-are-dry-this-will-do brand. No. This was the duty free, my hands are looking old, very expensive brand cream. So I bought the same cream my mother used to use because she always complained about her hands looking old. Shit!

I’ve watched The Glee Project for two nights in a row and I like it. I look at the kids on that show and instead of seeing a jumped up two face bitch, I’m thinking “oh, they’re young, they’ll grow out of it. Aren’t they talented?”

Now, I’m watching the movie Old Dogs with Robin Williams and John Travolta and I actually think it’s funny. Well some of it – I’ve watched some more now, but still….WHAT’S HAPPENING TO ME?

Distracted

It’s been a while, so I thought I’d dazzle you all with something profound. Then I got distracted by this…

and this….

and this…..

They are all here plus more:  http://awkwardfamilyphotos.com/category/photos/awkward-hall-of-fame/

Happy Monday.

Cholesterol

Cholesterol.  It kills you.

It kills your arteries.
It kills your heart.
It kills you dead unless you fight it.

Fight it with your clogged arteries struggling to pump blood into your struggling heart.
Fight it with exercise which kills you in its boredom.
Fight it by reducing your alcohol intake which kills your sense of humour, adventure and fun.

Fight it by reducing your fat intake. No full fat dairy foods.  No cheese platter with your wine.  Oh sorry.  There is no more wine.

No more creamy sauces.  Wholemeal pasta from now on.  And legumes and beans. And brown rice. Don’t forget the brown rice.

I might as well stop washing my hair and tie dye my clothes now if I have to eat that shit.

No more snags on the barbie! No more barbeques. What’s a barbeque without beer anyway?

No more mounds of mashed potatoes, baked potatoes, boiled potatoes.

No more cakes or biscuits. No more sugar in your tea. No more chocolate. No.

No more love in the kitchen.
My soul has died.
I can’t go on.

Cholesterol. It kills you.

Happy Father’s Day

Dear Daddy,

I love your smile, I love your kisses
Even with your scratchy whiskers
I love it when we laugh and play
I love you every single day

Do you like it?  Mummy helped me with the words, but I told her what to say.  She gave me the money to buy your present too and said I could pick whatever I wanted.  I know you like ice cream and chocolate so that’s what I got.

We forgot to get you a card, but Mummy said that you wouldn’t mind.  Well, she said that because you were in America for work on Mother’s Day you wouldn’t have a leg to stand on if you got upset.  But I don’t get that because I know that you’ve got two legs and you stand on them all the time when you get up off the couch.

I like it you knock on the front door when you come home from work.  Mum used to tell me when you were coming home and I’d get pretty excited just waiting for you, but I’m bigger now.  She just stands at the door and pretends not to know who it is, but I always know that it’s you because no-one else knocks on our door at night time.

I really love your hugs and horsey rides and cuddling up with you on the lounge.  How come you don’t hug me in the middle of the night when I wake up?  Are you scared of the dark too?  Mum always comes in then but she doesn’t play with me and I get too bored with her so I go back to bed.  That’s okay though because I know you will wake me up in the morning when you get ready to go to work.

Mummy doesn’t like that, does she?  I hear her say “shhhh” to you all the time when you drop stuff.  I just wait for you to make some noise and then I yell out to you and you come into my room and get me out of my cot and give me big kisses before you go to work.  You know, sometimes it’s hard work getting Mummy out of bed when you go early.  Maybe you should give her lots of kisses before you go to work too.  I’m sure she’d like that.

It’s great when we make a fort in my igloo tent in the lounge room.  Remember when we built a fort on the couch with the cushions while mum was trying to wash up and pick up stuff and tidy the house and then we jumped into the igloo and she came over and picked up all the blankets really quickly like she was mad and we didn’t know what she was going to do and all of a sudden she put the blankets over the igloo and made it all dark for us?  She really surprised us that day, didn’t she?  We stayed in there for ages.

I miss you when you go away for work, but Mummy talks about you all the time and she tells me how many sleeps there are until you come home.  She gave me a photo of you too and I take it to bed with me.  Can you hear me talking to you in the dark?  I just tell you what I did during the day and then I hug my teddies until I fall asleep thinking of you.  I really like it when you come home again because there are lots of cuddles and you talk to me heaps and we play with nearly all my toys at once.  Then we both get really tired and fall asleep on the lounge and when we wake up we have the house all to ourselves because Mummy has gone out.    She’s funny when she does that.

It’s great at the park when you come on all the slides with me and help me climb up the ladders and stuff.  Some other Dads just read the paper but you chase me all over the park.  We’re like big kids together, aren’t we Daddy?

I’m helping Mum cook dinner tonight and we’re going to make your favourite dinner.  Then we can have ice cream and chocolate for dessert if you want.

The biggest kisses and hugs for you

XXXOOO

Solving for X

At my writing course the other day, we had a bit of fun with an exercise called “Solving for X”. The idea is to write a short story with the following conditions:

• it is exactly 26 sentences in length,
• each sentence begins with a word which starts with one of the letters of the alphabet.

You can either decide to use the letters in order, or randomly, as long as each is used just once to start a sentence.

It was great fun to do and didn’t take that long really (around 20 minutes at the most), considering we jumped straight in. The best part about it was that because you are prompted around a letter, the worry about where the story is going, what is the plot, are you following the rules correctly, are thrown out the window and you just get  into the writing straight away. The results from everyone in the class were funny, clever and surprising.

Have a go, it’s good fun. Here’s mine, unedited. It’s not a masterpiece by any stretch, but I recommend it as an exercise if you’re getting a bit down on yourself in regards to your writing.

Thick Australian accents at the ready:

“Ahoy there matey!”
Brian looked up and saw the boat approaching the wharf where he was waiting.
“Christ you two look a bit rough this morning” Brian shouted. “Did you go on a bender last night?”
“Ernie bought over a bottle of bourbon and Lee got in some beers as well.”
“Fair enough mate.”
“Give us a hand with this would ya?”  said Harry throwing a rope to Brian. “If you keep pulling the boat in we can get close enough to tie her up. Just like that, yeah, good mate. King tide yesterday, so we should be good to go today.”
Lee looked up from inside the boat and came out to give Brian a hand. “My arse we will be good to go! No-one goes fishing on a king tide ya dickhead.”
“Oh for fuck’s sake Harry” Brian said. “Please tell me you didn’t plan this trip around a king tide?”
“Quit ya crying girls! Relax those mouths of yours and settle down. Some of us do have half an idea you know. The tide going out will be perfect for us. Under these conditions we can trawl for everything going on out on the tide and we won’t have to go that far neither.”
“Very well mate, now where should I put this?”
“What, the beer? X marks the spot.” said Harry grinning as he pulled back a tarpaulin to reveal a flash new esky.
“You’re getting a bit fancy mate!” the men laughed.
“Zip it boys and lets go” Harry growled.

Wednesday again

I had been feeling unhappy with the regularity (or lack thereof) of my posts. I was sporadic at best until, in a light bulb moment, I realised that I was on a run of posting every Wednesday (I had done it two weeks in a row) and so I thought that I could do that. If it became a regular thing – a post once a week – I’d be happy. I would stop berating myself for not posting more often and slip back into writing enjoyment mode. Cool? Yeah, I thought so.

I had been getting inspiration from my Wednesday dance class and I thought why stop a good thing? Unfortunately, I left my dancing mojo at home, still in bed, curled up in a little ball under the covers. I was tired, lethargic, uninspired and full of don’t-fuck-with-me-ness. My single clear thought amongst my mind-numbing mind-whinging was that I was dancing like Liz Lemon.

I didn’t write that day. Clearly, I was uninspired. I signed up for a writing course. Stay tuned dear readers. In the coming weeks you are going to be blown away with what I can do.

PS. I reserve the right to go back on my word at any time and present to you absolutely nothing.

Lethargy

My writing friend Damyanti wrote of Writing Blues:  http://damyantiwrites.wordpress.com/2011/05/17/of-writing-blues-and-lalwant-singh/ (my linking skills leave a lot to be desired).   This was extremely timely as I seem to have got myself into a writing funk at the moment:  I’ve posted 3 times in 3 weeks since the A-Z challenge – I don’t even know how I posted every day then; I’ve barely written anything in my notebook; and I now have two dreams floating around in my head that I must put onto paper.  Then there is the looming deadline for a writing competition that, if I don’t enter into, I will kick myself for being so lazy AND I haven’t read a book for two weeks.  Isn’t that terrible?  Reading is important.  Reading is wonderful and I haven’t done it.

Why the lethargy?  I’m not sure really, but, I am tired and a bit busy at the moment and when I’m tired I feel that anything I write would not be remotely interesting to anyone else.  Consequently I have lots of blog drafts that even I got bored with and have left unfinished.

I don’t read because I think I should be writing instead (and yes, I know that reading is an essential part of writing) and I like to be able to concentrate on my book.  So I try to have a nap but then I find I can’t sleep because I’m thinking I should be writing, reading or getting on top of those other things that are keeping me busy at the moment.

If only I could get to bed earlier.  To get to bed earlier however, I have to be organised and I am not organised.  At all.

Whining much?  You betcha.

And so it is that I am venting to you dear readers in the hope that I shame myself into being more productive.  Stay tuned to see if it works.

If nothing else, it’s galvanised me into writing this post really quickly before I have to pick up the screaming child from her cot where she is refusing to sleep.

There’s always something blocking your way isn’t there?  How do you get around it?