Category Archives: Writing

Time

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Time.
It’s something we all crave more of. Have you ever said…
‘If only there were more hours in the day…’
‘I just don’t have enough time to do the things I want to do…’
‘What I could do with just an extra hour…’
Yep, I have. We all have.

Three weeks ago I broke my ankle, and the first thing I found was I had an abundance of time. Time to feel pain. Time to realise I couldn’t go outside. Time to recognise how hard it will be to have a shower. Time to understand I won’t be driving for a while. Time to miss work and the people I work with. Time to feel sorry for myself and time to think too much.

Then I realised I needed the extra time because it took me twice as long to do anything or go anywhere. By going anywhere, I mean to get from my lounge to my kitchen.

As the pain subsided and things settled into a ‘routine’, I found I had time to sit and read. Time to sit and write. Time to sit and watch a movie on Netflix. Time to talk to visitors. Time to text message. Time actually to do a lot of the things I always said I didn’t have enough time to do. I finally had time, time and more time.

So I read and wrote a little and watched movies. I started watching a series on Netflix, scrolled through Facebook commenting here and there and played games on the iPad.

But then I found I wasn’t using my time wisely. When I looked back on my day, I could see wasted time. How can I be wasting time when all I have is time? Over the past week, I could have written 1000 words a day on my novel, easily, but I didn’t. I have ten videos I need to watch for two online courses I’m doing, I only watched one. I have three more videos I would like to see for interest sake, but no I haven’t seen them either. I have two photo books I am yet to finish (well one hasn’t even been started). I have this blog I’ve neglected and only now finally writing a post. I have an issue to sort out with Medicare, but I haven’t phoned them yet either (ok I’ve been putting that off, I know how long it will take to get through!).

I’m a person who, if there are 10 things I must do and I have heaps of time to do it, I procrastinate and only get one or two things done. However, if I have 10 things to do and I have a limited time to do it, I’ll work like a maniac and get most if not all done. I work better under pressure or to a deadline.

At the moment I have 16 hours of FREE time a day, and I’m wasting it. Even if I take 6 hours out for meals and getting around it is still 10 hours of lost time. It’s time to get organised. Even when I’m going to work, I still have two weekdays ‘free’. How many hours are spent on social media? How many hours are spent watching T.V? How many hours are spent doing things that aren’t really necessary?

Someone once said to me ‘Time isn’t something you have, it’s something you make’. So with a broken ankle, I have heaps of time, and I realise I have to make good use of it.
So, during my third week, I got this done…
⁃ I wrote every day in my diary
⁃ I worked every day on my novel
⁃ Because I worked every day on my novel things began to move. Ideas popped up, and new storyline directions began to flow. Problems I had started to be solved. Lots of words were written.
⁃ I watched 2 videos from my online courses and…
⁃ I got this blog done.

Good use of my time, yes, and I feel I’ve accomplished a lot. I still believe I can use time more constructively, there’s always room for improvement.

I challenge you to use one, just one hour more wisely each day this week. See what you get done and how it makes you feel.

Talk some more soon,

Polly

Names

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Being a writer or a teacher or in my case, both, have loads of beautiful parts to it, but there is one part that is extremely hard, choosing names. Yep, names. Think about it, if you’re lucky enough to be a parent, at some stage before the baby is born you have to come up with a name for the baby. Now all parents know this is not always an easy thing to do. As a matter of fact, it can be one of the hardest things you and your partner have to agree on.

You come up with a name, and your partner says, “Nope I don’t like that name because…….. cousin Sid’s kid is called that, or that name reminds me of potatoes” (ok maybe not potatoes but you get what I mean) and so on. But imagine if you can, a teacher becoming a parent. So many names remind you of someone you’ve taught. Some of those students may have been delightful children, strong bright children or adorable children and some may have been horrid. Some children you may have seen struggling for numerous reasons, and some may have been picked on because of their name. Just coming up with a name is ten times more difficult when you work with or have been working with children. I actually know many couples who are both teachers. How they ever came up with names for their children is a mystery, but they did.

I was lucky to have had my children before I became a teacher but now that I’m writing I’m finding a similar problem when I need to come up with a name for a character. I think of a name and realise I taught a child or a few children with that name. Firstly I think, can I use the name? What was the child like? This character has to be mean and nasty, will that be a problem? Funnily enough, if I want a name for a character who is incredible, amazing and about to save the world, I have no problem choosing a name, as I feel if any of my past students think the character is based on them they won’t mind at all.

Of course, if I’m lucky enough to have my book published one day, there is always this unusual disclosure which can get you out of most pickles, “All characters in this book are fictitious and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.”

I’m open to suggestions, if you have an unusual name, one you think I haven’t come across yet, let me know by clicking on the ‘Leave a reply’ tag below.  I may put it in the book.
Enjoy your day,
Polly

 

Travel Writing

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This year I have been attending some of the Bendigo Writers Council meetings.  They meet once a month and they have a guest speaker at each meeting.  These could be, editors, publishers, authors of different genres talking about their novels and how they got it done or even travel writers.  Last night was a very cold and wet night and I nearly didn’t go along to the meeting but I had been keen to hear this guy and my curiosity got the better of me.

Tim Richards is a travel writer and a good one.  He was the winner of the Best International Travel Story under 1000 words at the 2016 Australian Travel Awards and has written articles for many magazines, newspapers and often in-flight magazines.  You know the ones, you find them in that funny webbed pocket on the back of the seat in planes. I flick through them occasionally and have a read if I find something interesting.

When I go on holidays I like keeping a log about everything we do and I take heaps of photos too, so last year I made up a photo book which showcased my photos and had the story of our holiday woven through the book too.  But my travel writing so far has been more like a diary and I was hoping Tim Richards had some hints I could use to jazz it up a  little and make it interesting for anyone to read, and he did.

The biggest hint Tim gave out was to make sure the article doesn’t sound like a glossy travel brochure. I thought about that and I realised travel brochures are designed to get us to go to that place and spend money.  Whereas a travel article is a story about someone’s travels, the things they saw, liked, disliked and the funny, weird or emotional things that happened along the way.                                                                   

More hints were – Take photos along the way, this is an easy way to remember what you saw and how it made you feel at the time.  Photos have an amazing way of taking us straight back to that spot.

Write things down – probably an obvious one but when you write, remember to use descriptive words and to use your senses.  What does it feel like, smell like, sound like and taste like?  Let your writing contain facts as well as emotion, because you need the balance of personal story and useful information all the while conveying what’s it like to be there.

Lastly, write about things that your readers can go off and do themselves.

I learnt a lot in the two hours I was at this meeting and for my next trip away I’m going to try to approach my travel log from a different angle.  If you have ever wanted to write a travel article, for yourself, your family and friends or to have it published, think over Tim’s hints and just go for it.

Polly

 

From Salads to Soup – Winter

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Autumn has left us and Winter is here.

Autumn seemed a lot warmer this year than previous years.  Sometimes I think Mother Nature has the audacity to cool things down way too fast and throw us into a practice run for Winter but this year she allowed us to have some really lovely Autumn days. She even gave us some very needed rain as her grand finale.

Winter is a season people have mixed feelings about.  We all seem to like parts of Winter, well some of us do, but then there are parts we love to complain about like ‘it’s just too cold’.

I always feel winter Washes away the dust and cleans and freshens everything up. We get those wonderful crisp cool to cold and yes ok, sometimes freezing mornings, that can make it hard to get out of bed and where I live we sometimes get a frost.  Frosts here can be a mild crunch on the grass under your feet or a cover of white like a blanket over everything, but after a frost, we can often receive a beautiful fresh sunny day where the sky seems more blue than usual.  Everything is greener in Winter too.  Our summers dry everything up to leave us dusty and parched for nearly seven months of the year but in Winter everything seems to come back green and lush.

To me, Winter is saying goodbye to salads and making and eating homemade soups and casseroles. To be honest I cook casseroles throughout the year but in winter they seem so much more satisfying and you really can’t beat homemade soup.

How do you feel about Winter?  Good or bad? Let me know.

Polly

 

Books, books and more books.

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Over the past few weeks, I’ve been researching different author websites. I started looking at different websites to get an idea of what I wanted or needed for my own.  The trouble was, as I researched I found a lot of authors who were writing amazing books and before I knew it I had a list as long as my arm of books I wanted to read.  I think I’ve bought 10 books so far to add to my already large pile of ‘books to be read’, that sits by my bed.

Not all the books I bought are paper books.  Some are e-books I have downloaded onto my iPad. I like reading from the iPad as I can make the font larger, something I can’t do with a regular book.

The genres are all a little different too, an assortment of Historical Romance, Children’s Fantasy, Women’s Fiction and Crime Thrillers.  The authors are from different parts of the world, USA, Canada, and Australia. But as I went through my recently acquired books I realized all 10 books have been written by women. I don’t think I set out specifically looking for female authors and I definitely have books by my bedside which have been written by males, so maybe it’s just a coincidence.  Either way, I have plenty to read now.

I’ve just finished reading ‘The Duke and I’ by US author Julia Quinn and ‘The Mapmaker Chronicles’, children’s fantasy books by Australian author Alison Tait.

Currently, I’m reading, on my iPad, ‘The Paris Seamstress’ by Australian author Natasha Lester. It’s really got me hooked and I highly recommend reading it.

Do you have a favorite author?  An author you just have to get his/her latest book as soon as it hits the shelves?  I’m interested to know who?

Talk again soon.

Polly

My Passion

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Sometimes I call myself a ‘stationery-holic’.  I have a passion for pens, pencils and all things stationery, especially notebooks.  I have heaps of them all throughout my house.  I fall in love with a new notebook very easily. Each of them has a special use.  One to plan my day, one is for ‘making room for good things’, another one is purposely for writing a sentence a day.  I have a notebook for the current writing course I’m undertaking, a writers diary where I set my goals and try to stick to them and another is my personal diary, which I write in every day.  If I went out tomorrow and saw another beautiful notebook, I know I would buy it and find a use for it immediately.

We all have a passion for something.  Sometimes it’s music or painting or sometimes it can just be having that first cup of coffee in the morning before everyone wakes up.

My passion for notebooks works alongside my passion to write, well it has to, otherwise, I would have a bunch of pretty but empty notebooks.

I have written nearly every day of my life even if it was just writing snippets about my day each day.  Now I’m in the middle of writing a fantasy novel for children. Whoa, is that a big step and yet I’m loving every minute of it. Hopefully, I’ll be able to tell you a lot more about that later.

Polly