The logistics defeat me

Working hard on novel so too exhausted to say much here.

Got in a panic about everything that stops me writing (family, friends, dog, house, garden) but feel better after two days on my own with Dog at dogminder.

Sometimes I just want to run away and live by myself on the top of a mountain. But the logistics defeat me. I don’t have a laptop. I have an old-fashioned computery thing with lots of heavy bits and plugs and leads. Frog usually deals with it and it would take me forever to unplug and replug, and how could I carry it in my backpack? And what about all my notes, and reference books, and previous drafts?

Computery bits, and piles and piles of paper (and shredder)

Shelves and shelves of reference books

It's all about confidence

Well, I’ve got my YouWriteOn ratings now. My overall score – from five reviewers and one person who read the book extract just because they wanted to – is 4 stars out of 5. I’m really chuffed.

Breaking the scores down by category, my highest marks are for setting. Next highest are dialogue and character. And lowest is plot – which I already knew was my weak point.

What’s great though is that, as a result of the detailed criticisms in the reviews, I now know what’s wrong with the plot and have more idea what to do to put it right.

I never expected to get such a high score, and it’s fired me with new enthusiasm for The Novel and new confidence.

And writing is so much easier when you feel confident.

Thank you YouWriteOn and your diligent reviewers.

Favourite Walks in Devon

Culm Valley Publishing is a small newish Devon company that produces top-class books on walks in the West Country, and on Monday they have a new book coming out. It’s a collection of favourite walks in Devon contributed by local writers and walkers.

As with all CVP books, the directions are detailed and the information is reliable and thoroughly checked. All the walks are circular. They range throughout the county – across moorland, over hills and fields, through woods, along rivers and beside the sea. The lengths are moderate – usually a couple of hours. A sketch map and photographs are included as well as advice on where to park, where to eat, where to stay and public transport. 

But what’s important, as Jane Fitzgerald, editor of Devon Life magazine, writes in her Foreword, ‘is the connection to, and familiarity with a well-trodden path that shines through’.

Having said all that, I hardly like to tell you that I have contributed two of the walks, one around the River Otter in East Devon and one on Dartmoor in the Warren House Inn/Hookney Tor area.

Favourite Walks in Devon is available from Monday in shops (bookshops, farmshops, post offices), from Culm ValleyPublishing and from Amazon (among others).

Do support us!

Bad habits

Next week I intend to get back to novel-writing. Ever since I stopped two or three weeks ago, my life has gone haywire. I’ve not slept properly, I’ve had a migraine and I’ve been permanently disgruntled.

I’ve done four reviews now for YouWriteOn so that’s my job done. I’ve received three, so have at least one more to come. (I’m not sure whether or not the first review is gratis.) However, because all three reviews say much the same thing, I think I’ve got enough to go on, even without the final review/s and the scores (which I can see after I've had four reviews).

And I must stop writing things in brackets (as one of the reviewers pointed out).

(And the really weird thing about YouWriteOn is that at least half of the participants are male - two of my reviewers so far out of three, and two out of four of the authors I've reviewed - as far as I can tell that is - whereas whenever I've been to writing workshops women predominate.)

(And I really must stop using dashes too.)

(And starting sentences with 'and'.)

(And using meaningless words like 'really'.)

Simplicity and complication

Vivien's Heavenly Ice Cream Shop by Abby Clements

Frog’s niece lent me this when she came to stay. It took me a while to get into it but by about page 40 I was hooked. It’s about two twenty-something sisters who take over their grandmother’s icecream shop on a Brighton beach. There’s some romance and some family drama – and even some icecream recipes. I suppose it would fall into the chick-lit genre but without chick-lit’s usual frenetic jokiness and it’s written in such a simple way that it’s a pleasure to read.

    I checked the book on Amazon (because I wanted to find out what else the author has written*) and browsed the reviews. While most of the reviewers loved the book, one or two derided it for its simplicity. As a novel-writer myself, I know how difficult simplicity is to achieve and I think the style of this book is the result of skill not the opposite. A writer to watch.

Virals by Kathy Reichs

I’d never read Kathy Reichs before but I found one of her books on the library’s bestseller shelves and decided to give her a try. It turned out to be the third in a ‘young adult’ series, of which this is the first. Never mind, I loved it (I think I’m going simple in the head.) so I grabbed this when I saw it on the shelves.

    I love the adventurous heroine – fourteen-year-old Tory Brennan, and the setting – an island off Charleston in South Carolina. The plots are gripping, with a dash of sci-fi, and the style is punchy.

    The series improves as it goes on, perhaps with the greater involvement of Reichs’s son Brendan, who is mentioned in the acknowledgements of this book but actually credited as co-author on the book I read first (Code). It may also be his involvement that makes the teenagers and their world so believable. These are books written from the teenage point of view, not books by an adult looking down.

Deadly Decisions by Kathy Reichs

So I decided to give Kathy Reichs’s adult books a try - they're crime novels featuring a female forensic anthropologist. What a disappointment. There were glimpses of the punchy style (blue sky ‘elbowed’ back the clouds, thoughts ‘swirling like five o’clock traffic’) but way too much information for my taste. Take this, for example.

Craig Beacham worked for the National Center for the Analysis of Violent Crime, NCAVC, one of the major components of the FBI’s Critical Incident Response Group, CIRG. For a time the entity had been called the Child Abduction and Serial Killer Unit, CASKU, but had recently reverted to the original name. Since the training of evidence recovery technicians, or ERT’s, is one of the functions of NCAVC, it is this unit that organizes the annual course.

I gave up.

    I am however giving the author another chance and trying another (more recent) book in the adult series, and so far it’s better.



* Two novels. The one above is her first. The second is called Meet Me under the Mistletoe.