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!!