Blog designs

So I'm at last managing to do some promotion for my novel, 'Cape Town'. This means I've been reading about what to do on-line (which seems to be essential these days). And I was struck my how many writing blogs use the image of an old-fashioned typewriter on their banners.

It's kind of weird, isn't it? I wonder how many of the writers have even seen one of those. And if they had and gave it a try I think they'd be only too glad that manuscripts no longer have to be typed out on those old machines.

When I was young, if you were any kind of a feminist, you were advised not to learn shorthand and typing because that would brand you as a secretary for the rest of your working life. I'm glad I didn't heed that. Finding myself with time to spare between leaving ballet school and going on to university, I took a three-months course.

Well! Those old typewriters! I tell you, half the course was directed towards making your fingers strong enough. We had to slam those keys as if they belonged to a very stiff piano! How different from the gentle tap we use today. 

The course served me well, although I'm sorry that over the years I've lost the shorthand skill. Would be so useful for lectures, workshops, conferences. But the typing I learned with a small cloth covering the keyboard? That's such a help when I want to move my handwritten words onto the computer.


Anyhow, all I can conclude is that some romance is attached to those vintage images, that they conjure up thoughts of... the Indiana Jones movie, maybe? Or there's some vicarious connection to authors such as Hemingway?

Getting back in the groove

My life has been interrupted over the last weeks because I underwent surgery. Thanks so much to those wonderful doctors, nurses etc who looked after me. Not to mention my daughter and husband who did the waiting-on-hand-and-foot till I was able to look after myself again.

Now that I'm pretty much recovered, it's time to take up my writing again. Also, my days are different because I no longer have to look after my two grandsons, something that's kept me extremely busy and well occupied over the last five years. (Yes, I miss them!)

So I'm faced with time on my hands, and I was thinking about something that's happening more and more. You see, a nine to five job provides a structure, a framework, for a working day. But these days more and more people are working from home, more and more people are retired, some are free-lancing and some, like me, are full-time writers. But here's the challenge: will I simply drift through my days, hoping they'll be productive, or will I find a rhythm that allows me to be productive, creative, do some promotion for my recently-published novel as well as find time to exercise and just... breathe?

In a way, this is a privilege and an opportunity. All I have to do is find what works for me, and then stick to this time-table I create for myself. Without being too fanatic or fixed!!

Happy Easter

I hope you are enjoying a full and glorious morning as I am. Once again, apologies for being a blog slacker. Blogs happen in my head, but don't always fly as far as the computer. And in the week ahead I'm not promising anything as I gear up for a very important and thrilling event: the celebratory launch for my book 'Cape Town'.

Celebrations, whether they be of such vitally-significant festivals as that of Easter, or simply of the smaller joys and milestones in our lives, are really important. Over the years I kind of let that awareness slip but have now come to a new appreciation and try to mark them more consciously.

Like the majority of writers and others who pursue an artistic career, my path has been strewn with rejections letter.  On Saturday, it'll be strewn with roses. Figuratively speaking, anyhow.

Can similes and adverbs survive?

I know, I know... I've been a blog slacker. But that wasn't my intention. It was all (or partly) due to living off the grid for five weeks. Now I'm back in the land of easy electricity, and here I am, on your screen again.

A while back, when Nathan Bransford was still agenting and blogging regularly about writing matters, he proclaimed that one simile per book was all he 'allowed'. Confession: my pre-order-on-Amazon-and Barnes and Noble etc. new book 'Cape Town' contains many similes.

Now, when my husband and I arrived at Auckland airport we picked up a magazine entitled, appropriately, Arrival. Yes, there were special offers, discounts, and ads, but we also found the pages a useful source of inspiration. What struck me immediately was an ad for a mobile phone network (I believe) that proclaimed 'Sweet As'. And that was it. This truncated figure of speech was confirmed by my daughter as being current in New Zealand. So you don't even need to think of a simile or a cliche but can say 'Hot As', 'Cold As' or whatever you like.

Hmmm.

Driving those bendy but picturesque roads, we passed many signs admonishing us to 'Drive Safe'. Well, that takes care of those writing 'rules' that proclaim you should only use words ending in 'ly very, very sparingly.

Then we passed a new sign that said 'Drive Safely'. Truth to tell, I felt like raising a cheer.

Waiting for the hip hop...er, make that 'op'

'Tis a not-so-well-known fact that many hours of intensive ballet will mean bad hips in later life. So far, fortunately, I only have one. Which is strange and I haven't quite accounted for that.

Next month it will be a year of mobility deterioration for me. Fortunately, I have no problem sitting at the computer, and so, much writing has been done. Nevertheless, the 17 year old heroine of my upcoming novel 'Cape Town' is a dance student. If you haven't taken a look at my website yet, go there tonight because I'll be putting up a new post. http://www.brendahammond.ca

And, if you really want, you can 'like' my author page on facebook.

Very very soon I'll have my cover image to share.

Enough already!

My main thought around all this preamble is that I'm having to learn to switch hands. When I go downstairs, cups, mugs and glasses have to be held in the right instead of the left so that I can clutch onto the bannister. Now, I know from Dr. Rudolf Steiner and Dr. Maoshing Ni that changing a habit such as this is strengthening for the life forces.

Yes folks, there's always a way to make lemonade.

This way or that?

I'm always intrigued by the different ways we do things and trying to figure out the reason why. If there is one!

What set me off on a train of this thought was 'unstacking' the dishwasher. See, I was replacing glasses in the kitchen cupboard, and setting them rim upwards. My observation is that plenty people set glasses, mugs, cups and so forth rim downwards. Does this originate from open shelves, when you didn't want dust or insects to settle inside, I wonder? Isn't it better now that we have doors to our cupbards, and won't they last longer if you set them rim upwards?

And then there's the business of putting cutlery inside the dishwasher, or into the dish drainer for that matter. Most people I think put the handles downwards. I tend to mix it up, here, so as not to spike myself. So, the tines of the forks go downwards and the blades of the knives too.

Now that I've set you all topsy-turvy, I'll get back to my writing. :-)

Snow day

Thanks to my ballet training, I have good self-discipline. Which means sometimes I drive myself too obsessively, these days, mainly with my writing.

Today we have a weather warning, with freezing rain and wet snow making the road conditions treacherous. People are advised to stay off them. Although I don't have to go out, I decided to give myself a snow day and simply relax with one of those two good books I was given for Christmas.

Kind of a busman's holiday. Good for mental health and at least I can justify the skiving by telling myself reading fiction is always a learning experience as well as a pleasure for me.