The self assessment grid.

I had my professional assessment in my course the other day. I’m studying to be an antenatal teacher with the NCT, and in the January before you graduate, you have to fill out an assessment grid all about yourself. If you get all seven or above, and you want to start your teaching career, then they book your first ever course in July. I mention this because of the assessment grid we have to use - twelve points we reflect then mark ourselves on out of ten. My tutor marked all my grades up from 7’s and 8’s to 9’s and 10’s and I’m set to teach my first course in July.

However, looking at the self assessment grid I got to wondering if it might throw some light on the whole writing lark. Seeing as I’m in reflective mood, let’s take a look at them-

Self-motivation 

Or when writing, what is motivating your characters. You have to know, the reader doesn’t. Or rather, they need to find out, and it might not be what you or they think it is when you start. It’s so much more fun when what we think is the motivation turns out not to be, or rather that the character start off thinking they want A, then discovering they actually want B, and perhaps even that it is A after all. 

You could also tick the box here for actually doing some bloody writing. There are a billion unfinished books out there, but who cares about them? A writer who doesn’t write is a bit like a dancer who doesn’t dance, you kind of have to do it to be it.

Self-awareness 

How well do your characters know themselves? How well does the reader know them, and how? You can have a character who likes to think that they’re respectable, dependable and reliable - but who goes on to prove that they’re anything but - especially if they’re maintaining their innocence all the while - the classic unreliable narrator. Or, have your character know the truth of their nature and try all the way through to hide it because the world demands it of them - until one slip is their down fall. They key is that you as the writer must know your character absolutely, every beat of their heart and every inch of their dreams - then decide how much of it you choose to share with them, or the reader.

Respect for colleagues 

This means other writers. They’ve all done it before you, you are standing on the shoulders of giants so do them the courtesy of treating the craft with respect. 

Reception of feedback

Ah-ha! You will get feed back. Some of it will be good, some of it will be bad, but all of it should be considered. Everyone wants someone to pick up their first book and say ‘why, this is wonderful, please collect your booker from the bran tub outside the door.’ They’re not going to. What might appear to be bad feedback, or hard feedback, is hard to hear, but once you’ve got over the pain, use it. Pain is there for a reason, pain is there to tell us we need to do something. You may decide that all you need to do is ignore it, you may decide that you need to jump six feet sideways - but think of it as something to use. Better you spend another twelve months working on it, than get another twelve rejections.

Ability to work as a team member 

This I’m going to use to say that you have to get all your team players working toward the same goal, your book. You need to be up on the plot, you need the characters to work, you need to paint the scene, you need to keep up the pace - think of all these things as your team and don’t let one take over from the others.

Reliability 

If you have a deadline, meet it. A deadline is a gift, not a burden. Just be glad you’ve got one, if you ever do.

Responsibility 

You’re creating a world, whether or not it’s a fantasy epic or Guilford in January, so do right by it. If the rain in your world is purple, it’s purple - so make sure it’s purple all the way through.

Accountability 

You are getting into the minds and hearts of your readers, I hope. Just be careful what you leave there.

Time keeping and punctuality 

Ok - stretching the point a little but timing is everything in writing as much as comedy. Always be aware of it, when building tension, when wrong footing the reader, especially when telling a joke. If I might load a second point onto this one, I’d also underline the importance here of reading things out loud. Everything, every word of what you think is your final draft must be read out loud to ensure that it is readable at all. You’ll hear at once if the timing is off or out, especially when it comes to dialogue - and yes, you have to do the accents and the voices and walk around the room in the guise of your characters.

Professional appearance 

How you present your work is crucial. There is a professional form you should follow when submitting. It’s not a question of people being awkward, it’s not a question of them nit-picking - it’s the way things are done. If you don’t do it, they will simply have an easy reason to throw your manuscript into the slush pile. There are lots of good books on the subject of submissions which are worth the read.

Confidentiality 

Don’t give things away lightly. This is going to be my exposition rant. You need to know everything about everyone in your book and everything in the world of your book, then write as if your reader does also. Don’t explain anything, don’t take a moment to set the scene - just be in the world of your book. As your characters walk through it, they will cause ripples in it which will turn into waves which will rock boats - and that’s your story. You know what I’m saying here, don’t you? Show, don’t tell.

Social media

There’s lots out there, some of it good, some of it bad. When you’re writing, turn it off. When you’re promoting, turn it on.

Now, how does your writing stack up, from one to ten? Go on, give it a go, and hopefully someone will come and mark you up as well.

No spam please!

The opener is seductive - 'Ever thought you book could be a film?'

Well, who hasn't? Especially when your first book comes out and your friends read it and love it, before it's properly exposed to the wrath of strangers - then you sit back and start casting it in your mind and even wonder about googling a few actors agents - well, we can dream!

So, I thought I'd enter this - and let me say at once that I'm not saying this competition is anything but above board and good fun for all concerned - you load up an extract from your book, and if it wins, the movie deal is yours. Fantastic - so I duly loaded up my extract though not quite clear about the rules and what I was meant to do - and today I'm withdrawing.

The way it works is that everyone who enters had to tweet about every one else who enters, the more tweets the better, and every time someone re-tweets your entry, you get a vote, and the one with the most votes will be made into a movie if the funding can be raised, and we all get a lot of exposure as a result - great!

Well.......not for me. You see, I'd be quite happy to tweet about the extracts I enjoyed reading, and to spread the word about the competition and to promote a kick-starter program to fund the film when the winner is chosen - but not to decide the winner.

Because all that does is show you who's spammed the most people on their twitter feed - not who's written the best book. And let me stress here, I'm not saying that I've written the best book, but I am saying that if I am to be judged, I'd like it to be on my writing and not my ability to send hundreds to tweets. I may not have a lot of twitter followers, but those I do have I don't want to keep on tweeting stuff at them merely to rank up points on a screen, because that's like awarding a prize to whom ever can click a clicker fastest in an hour - and frankly, I don't follow people for that, but for what they have to say.

Now, give me a shortlist to read and I'll pick my favourite and tweet about because I have something to say on the subject - but just to collect tweets like cake sprinkles? No thanks - I think I'd just annoy people more than anything.

Good luck to them though, and I hope the movie makes it into reality.

If you'd like to see if my book would make a good film - you can buy it through Amazon in e-book form - published by 'Not so Noble books.'

My first book it out!

http://www.amazon.co.uk/CROOKED-LITTLE-SISTER-dark-thriller-ebook/dp/B00H1Y05QM/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1386071953&sr=8-1&keywords=my+crooked+little+sister

I have signed with e-book publishers 'Not so noble books' to publish this and hopefully more of my thrillers. This is the first, written during NaNoRiMo 2011 - and here's the blurb:

 A woman staggers into a decrepit fishing shack in the Louisiana back woods, with no memory, a gun and a bullet wound. Enter Red, a stranger in a strange place, in time to catch her as she falls.

Trapped in the sweating heat of the swamp, no car, no phone, no one around for miles, the ex-solider offers her refuge and the name ‘Margarita’. 

Night falls and cabin fever sets in, ripe with intense visions and confession. In the small hours Margarita discovers a cache of hidden weapons and a plan for revenge on Red, once married to her missing sister - but who’s plan is it and who’s its real target? Deeper they go, embroiled in a dark game before all the players, both real and imaginary, have fully revealed themselves. 

A huge thank-you to all and everyone who has helped me with this - you are amazing SXX

Everyone loves a bad guy....

Hands up, I confess, I love a bad guy. Not in real life, in real life I love a great guy, but in the wonderful world of fiction I certainly do.
Personally, I like a bad guy with something of if not a soft side, certainly a little rational. There needs to be a moment when we like him, or we sympathise with him or hell, we even want to be him, just a little. Bad guys get to do all the things we can't, and most of the things we don't want to. We've all had moment when we've fantasised about offing an ex, a boss, a rival, and bad guys gets to do that. In fiction at least, we do like to be given a reason why the bad guy is bad, we like a back story - it's very hard to justify a bad guy who's just bad because, well, he's bad. And that's part of the appeal, unpicking a bad guy to see how he was made, to see if we could do better, or worse, than him.

Hero's have a hard time of it really, they have be heroic and they have to be moral, and as a result so many of them come off as a bit preachy, a bit dull and well, a bit humourless.

The best of both worlds of course is the anti-hero - the bad guy who underneath has a heart of gold, or the moral centre, the one who at the very last, saves the day, often at the cost of their own happiness - it is a far far better thing I do today, than I have ever done before - and so forth.

The reason I am thinking about this is that tonight I am working up to the first scene where my own particular bad guy makes his entrance stage right.

He is going to do, is doing, terrible things off stage but when he appears, my characters have no prior knowledge of him and so he must appear if not innocent, certainly ambiguous at first. But oh, we the reader will suss his him out from the start, we'll catch the scent of sulphur and the darkness which hangs around him - but should we? Is that the correct way to do it - should he be totally bland and inoffensive from the start?

He could.....but he's not going to be. Because although he's the bad guy, he's not the only bad guy. There are two others, one a dashing but troubled artist who really is going to do a number on my main character, and the other?

Why, he's so evil we'll hardly notice him at all. Until it's too late. And he's an example of the real and most pervasive form of evil - that of the banal.

That's what makes him a really bad guy. 

I'd love to hear about your favourite bad guys, your own or ones you love from fiction.

Foundation lessons

I am writing. I am currently working on the WIP, which is set in Weimar Germany and which has been rather sticky from time to time. Of course, life throws tar patches in your way when you can't help but drop the word count, but mostly I do solemnly subscribe to the belief that the only way to write a book is to, well, write the book - that finessing and all the rest comes after, and may take longer, but always   after there is a draft to finesse. It may be the first of fifty, but there still must be a first.

Only, but rules are made to be broken.

I was heading down the word count freeway towards the half way point - around fifty five thousand words - when I suddenly hit a tar pit not of the real world but in the world of the book.

A far more serious road block to creativity.

The basic issue is that when I reached a crucial scene that needs my main character's mother to allow her to take a rather unconventional job, it suddenly didn't seem possible that her mother would ever give her permission. I was either going to have a huge, protected scene where my MC leaves home after an uncharacteristic show of temper which I didn't really want, or......

Or I was going to have to look again at the first part of the book.

I needed to push the motivations and circumstances backwards, so that her mother's crisis point comes at the moment the daughter is offered the job, not before as I had it at first. That way, the mother is too distracted and brow beaten to notice the lie she's being spun, and then the deceit becomes one they all 'need' to believe, and the rest of the story unfolds.

I needed to strengthen my foundations before proceeding.

This does mean going back to the plan, it means re-working and moving scenes, it means working over existing ground before heading onto pastures new - and breaking the rule. Just a little.

Because something fundamental like that must be dealt with before you go back to writing, every day, even if it's only 500 words, or 250, or a line, or notes in your plot line - but something, every day.

Today, 1600 words, since you ask.

making at home - how's it going thus far?

Ok well, I have had some blood good results....and some less good results.

The things that really REALLY work for me and which I would not only say are as good as chemical alternatives but are actually better (seriously better) are as follows:

Oil cleansing - can't recommend this enough. It removes make-up, dirt and grime without drying and it's simplicity it's self. Simply run the hottest tap water into a basin (do I need to say put the plug in??) and soak your facecloth in it. Meanwhile, dip your fingers into some olive oil (organic please, the price difference is negligible as lasts for ages) or coconut or almond oil - and then massage your skin, even over your eye lids, anywhere you have make-up and general dirt build up. Leave for sixty seconds, then ring out your hot wash cloth, hold it close to your face for another 30 seconds then use it to gently massage away the oil, taking all the dirt with you. It also leave your skin feeling soft, and at a pinch you won't need anything else.

Honey cleansing - I love also, and tend to use when away as I can take my bottle of squeezy honey

(you need runny honey) in my bag with less fear of leaking. Basically exactly the same as oil cleansing, massage the honey into your face and then wipe clean with a warm, wet wash cloth. If you are prone to oily skin and break-outs you'll probably feel more comfortable with this method, or I can recommend using oil in the morning and honey at night. Either way, they work wonders -

Here's me after cleansing, no make-up and all scrubbed bare.

My next favourite thing is my salt spray toner. It's just like that crisp sea breeze that wakes you up like an enjoyable slap in the face - if you can have such a thing!
 Just take
1 cup of distilled water or pre-boiled strong green team which I prefer.
1 tablespoon  sea salt
pinch of epsom salt
Essential oils for scent – I use lime, but mint would be good also.
Add salt and epsom salt to warm tea and stir until salt is completely dissolved.
Add essential oils if using and store in a glass jar or spray bottle, you can swab it on or spray, but I like the spray for added zing!

 Then I apply my home made moisturizer to face, neck, shins and indeed anywhere want to moisturize. This is my latest batch - DIY Face and Body Cream Recipe
Ingredients:225 grams in total  of Orange flower water + aloe vera gel
 225 grams in total of oil, I use a mixture of coconut oil, almond oil , 35 grams of white bees wax, 75 grams coco butter and rose-hip oil(15 ml)  and squeeze in some vitamin e capsules, about 6 in total.
Essential Oils – 5 drops your choice - lime again!

In a double boiler (or a bowl over a pan of simmering water) melt all the oils (solid & liquid) together.
Pour the oils into a blender or, into another container if using a stick-blender.  Let the oils cool to room temperature.
Start the blender – then slowly pour the waters in – at some point the blender noise will change and you’ll notice that you have cream!  Keep blending to incorporate all of the water.  You can also blend the cream by hand, but be ready for a workout!
Add the drops of essential oil, and stir to disperse throughout the cream.
Scoop the cream into sterilized jars.  Label the jars  and don’t forget to include the date, but this lasts me about six weeks so I've always used it before it goes off.

Then there's this : Beach hair spray -it's a volumising spray to replace hair spray.

1 cup of hot (not boiling) strong Chamomile Tea as the base if you want to lighten hair or black tea as the base if you want to darken hair, but you will need to keep in the fridge.
2 tablespoons epsom salts (or more for extra texture)
1/2 tsp  Sea Salt (optional but adds stiffness)
1 teaspoon aloe vera gel
a few drops of almond oil or jajoba oil
optional: a few drops of essential oils or a spritz of your favorite perfume for scent- Lavender and citrus are great options
optional: 1 teaspoon lemon juice and 1 teaspoon vodka or alcohol- if you want to lighten hair (the lemon juice lightens and the alcohol preserves)
How to Make:

 Put the tea in a bowl and add the epsom salts, sea salt, aloe vera, oil, scent and lemon juice/vodka (if using). Blend until epsom salts and sea salt are dissolved. Store in the fridge and decant into spray bottles to use. Will last 3-4 months or longer.

Spray on damp hair and scrunch with a towel to dry for loose beach waves.
Spray on dry hair and on roots for volume and texture without the waves.
If your hair is straight and thin and you want all-day waves: Wash hair the night before and spray hair with Beach Spray while still damp. Then, either french braid into pigtails or wrap in a tight scrunched bun on top of your head. and leave overnight. By morning, your hair should be dry. Spritz with a little more spray and take out the braid/bun. Voila- all day beach waves. Spray with additional spray and scrunch if you want more stiffness.

The picture is of me going to a wedding having set my dead straight hair with the spray as above.

Lip balms work great too - just equal amounts of bees wax, coconut and cocoa butter and your favourite essential oil - erm, I use lime again because, as you might guess, lime is my favourite! Another winner though is to add cocoa powder to the lip balm and the orange essential oil, for a chocolate orange flavour!
It's also a great way to use up those dear little tins you get left with after you've eaten the mints or whatever is inside them.

 My hard core foot balm works really well too; that's just equal amounts of bees wax, olive oil and coconut oil with rosemary essential oil - my feet have remained soft and crack free all summer, just massage it in before you go to bed each night. Do be careful though, it takes a while to sink in hence doing it over night, don't try and walk on polished floors having just applied it!



Now the DIDN'T work ones:

Shampoo.

I've tried three methods now and they all leave my hair feeling like rubbish. Combine this with trying to use oil as a conditioner by leaving it on over night and the results have not been good. The shampoo refused to wash out the oil, and when I gave up got out of the shower, I still couldn't get a comb through it. Mind you, spray it with the beach spray and it finally did comb through, but it looked greasy when dry.
I have tried organic shampoo and that's ok, so for now I may have to admit defeat and buy organic hair products. I would say that rinsing your hair in ice cold water does give it a great shine, the only problem is getting modern showers to run cold enough, and the slight fear factor of putting your head in ice cold water - but I've taken to having a basin with iced water in it waiting and doing a final dunk.

Make-up - let's get this clear. No, cocoa powder does not work as a bronzer, eye shadow or eye liner. Neither does beetroot powder work as a blusher, and neither will tint your lip balm in any meaningful way, it certainly won't turn it into a lipstick.
Corn flour though makes a great face powder, and as I'm about corn flour colour, I use this over my face cream as a base and don't need foundation at all, but if you're of any deeper colour than I am, this may not work for you.

Body wash - so far, not too good either. I don't use it much, but I have found very few home made alternatives. The nearest I've got is this:

1/4 cup oil (coconut, almond, olive etc)
2-3 tsp shea butter
1/4 honey
2 tsp baking soda
1/4 liquid castille soap
vitamin e caps
essential oils.

You melt the oils with the shea butter in a double boiler, then whisk in the other ingredients off the heat for several minuets. Let it cool, whisking again if it separates, and store in a pump dispenser.

This was originally a shaving soap, and it does work well as that, only it's a bit oily as a body wash. I think the best option will be a soap, so that's my next adventure......

Retreat but never surrender!

A little while ago I won a blog writing competition organized by the wonderful Emma Darwin. No, that’s not true: I came third in a blog writing competition organized by the wonderful Emma Darwin, but the prize I was given was so good it feels as if I did win after all.
    Said prize was a two night stay at ‘Retreats for You’ in Devon, and not only is it in Devon, but it’s in Sheepwash, Devon, which even if you haven’t heard of it is a name to conjure with, and also happens to be where I spent a holiday around 1985 when I was a teenager. It rained.
    It rained again this time also, but that’s exactly the weather one wants for a writing retreat; more of that later.
    The only issue my prize raised was that, as my beloved and I live in a state of penury due to our reckless lifestyle choice of having a child (which, as we know, is simply self indulgent of us) and my inability to get a job, we were not going to have any holiday this year, and here I am, winning one just for me. I felt a bit mean, seeing as I spend my days lying around eating chocolates and painting my nails while my poor husband toils in a salt mine, so I emailed Deb of ‘Retreats for you’ to ask if I could bring him along. I felt he needed a break, salt mines being what they are, and there wasn’t the merest thought in my head this would also mean I’d have a lift and help with my bags, I promise.
    It turns out that Deb’s husband, Bob, is a carpenter, and he runs workshops along side her writing workshops, and so Andy decided he’d have a go making something, and that the ideal thing would be a bookcase for daughter’s bedroom. We decided on a rocket shaped one, as we were about to decorate her room with an outer space theme, in order to stress the awe-inspiring aspects of science, for various long and complicated reasons - not least that we’re making a conscious effort to avoid pink princess syndrome.Now, back to the rain.

    I wanted it to rain, you see, because sunny, beautiful weather always gives one the sneaking sensation one ought to be ‘doing something’ rather than sitting inside writing. Indeed, most of life seems gives one the feeling that spending time writing should play second fiddle to almost everything.  ‘Writing’ time becomes answering emails, looking at things on ebay, trawling facebook or cleaning and then, lo and behold, writing time is over.
    And this is, in essence, the wonder of ‘Retreats for You’ and why if one is trying to write in a serious way, I’d urge, nay, implore you to consider a weekend or more at such a place for the good of your soul. No, bugger your soul - for the good of your craft, because it’s an amazing privilege to actually put your writing first for once, but one it and you deserve.

    Because, when you get blown through the door by a bright Devonshire wind  into the welcoming, warming cottage, it suddenly feels like the place you've been looking for forever. Once you’re greeted by Deb, who’s like the cool Auntie you really wish you’d had, you realize this is just what you need. What she gives you, what the place gives you, is a sense that what you’re doing matters. It gives you time, and the rain lashing on the windows means a warm fire, a glass of wine or cup of tea, and space just to let the words flow.

    It was wonderful. It was feeling the weight of the mundane world being lifted as, fueled by flapjacks, all you had to do was write. So I did. I sat in their comfortable, clean, simple house and wrote and wrote as the rain fell and the fire crackled and the world was good. Food was made, food was eaten and enjoyed, and there were other writers to talk to and stories to tell. Both Bob and Deb are gifted with the ability to make you feel as if you’d been meaning to pop by for ages, and wonder why on earth it’s been so long, within five minuets of meeting them. Andy even mistook Bob for one of his hardened drinking buddies after a few good glasses of red,  and the two of them went to the local after dinner, even breaking out the whiskey at midnight. I’ve no idea if making a bookcase is a good hangover cure, but the hangover certainly didn’t delay launch time in any significant way.
    I’d booked a review session on the first chapter of the WIP for Sunday afternoon, and Deb and I sat in her ‘room of one’s own’ and talked over what I’d sent her, and it was easy, and helpful and insightfull and the most indulgent treat I could imagine - having someone let make me take myself and my work seriously for an afternoon.
    That evening new guests arrived and we got down to another serious session of fire-side story swapping after another great dinner. I went over some of my past life adventures as a dressmaker and jewellery designer, including one of my favourite tales about the little goth girl who’d saved and waited a year after she’d first seen one of my necklaces, to return to the same exhibition hoping I’d be there so she might buy it.
    ‘Did it make you feel rescuing a kitten good?’ Andy asked, and later that night we got the chance to compare.
    I should point out that lost kittens aren’t a standard part of Deb and Bob’s retreat, and they were not on our minds as we went to bed in our lovely little bedroom. However, at four a.m one made it’s self known when we both woke to the sound of its pitiful yet piercing mewing. Andy tracked it down to a jeep down the road - yes, it’s quiet enough there for you to hear a mewing kitten two hundred feet away and yes, it’s the kind of place where people still keep their doors unlocked. We roused the owner only for the kitten to fall silent, but luckily he believed us enough to open the car’s bonnet and lo and behold, up popped the tiniest, blackest, big eyed kitten in the world.

      

Eventually named Cedric, the kitten took an instant shine to Andy’s beard and we kept it amused for the next three hours until Deb got up and helped us find a box and, after consultation with the neighbors, a new home. Yes, we wanted to take him home but we do have another cat as well as a snake and two guinea pigs, and that’s enough for any two bedroom flat with no garden. He did rather put a hole in my writing plans, but never mind - the sense of space and priority the weekend gave my work has come home with me. That and a huge rocket shaped bookcase and the sincere hope, no, promise I’ll be back. As they say in the movies.