Time may have a chat with me later:

I do like sunshine - blue skies and light all around. As a youngster I would spend hours baking and relishing in the sunshine. Unfortunately although I still like sunshine and blue skies at this time of the year both are normally a sign of low temperatures. I no longer revel outside in this bitter cold - I hibernate and watch the light from indoors. In the summer sun and blue indicate rising temperatures . I no longer revel outdoors when the temperature rise to what, in the old days, I would have been soaking it up. A temperamental heart dissuades me, in cahoots with my lungs they check me, bar my way in fact behave as if they and they alone are the rulers of my life!:)

Ah well, old age only creeps at the start, after a couple of years it races up snapping at one’s heels

I have sidled out for the snatched odd moments this last week to enjoy the spring flowers, foolhardy enough to raise their heads before winter is passed. I can observe many of them from the various windows - oh what is this independent soul reduced to:(

I console myself with books and I have read a whole raft of interesting books lately. So not all doom and gloom.

I seem to be back on track for writing this year after Life took me away from it all.

Time, ah well, time will have a chat with me later if I am wrong!

Because of all the problems I have had writing The Children’s Tale over the past few years there is a tangle which would defeat Younger Cat from making any worse. It is the teasing out of these tangles and knots which occupies me at the moment.

This has meant destroying thousands of words - kill your darlings is what it is called but I found this time around I have slain them with so little compunction I decided they must have been total rubbish to begin with!! - that is better than admitting I have become a callous killer:)

So while I kill my darlings, I am busy writing new words to replace them. I tried doing them both the same day, however that doesn’t work so well, I end up split mentally  ‘somat’ rotten’. So one or two days chapters, one or two days red penning.

It’s working out pretty well so far.

I am also, in the evenings, working on the last corrections of my memoirs - that sounds grand! - not sure they are for publication though:) However, between covers I wish them to be and before the summer ends.

So The Children’s Tale and memoirs are the most urgent. Hopefully when May gets here I will be the right place to finish the short stories, started last May!

In between times I have been writing about historical fiction I read as a child, confessing to obtaining yet more books. Trying to work out what appealed to me about a poem penned back in the early 1800s and singing the praises of the National Health Service in the UK from the point of view of one who has frequently had to use the service.

It has been a reasonably good week and I hope this coming week will produce the same feeling - all the best to everyone else struggling to produce their masterpieces:)

Words Shy of Daylight

I am not sure that my moments of inactivity at the keyboard can be construed as writers block. It is more akin to very narrow entrance and a jam of words, shoving and pushing to pass through and getting nowhere! As in any jam all it needs is for one to move slightly to one side, allow a space and hopefully, like sheep the rest will follow. With luck the brain has settled on the right words and the correct order. If not that is what re-writes are for and good editors.

I started writing Ellen’s Tale during a period of great stress and distress. It was a therapeutic escape from a life becoming more unbearable by the day. The words flowed and I settled into a very agreeable alternative world. I continued writing after that stress vanished and more stress crowded in behind. Illness and operations have dictated my life for a few years now and I have learnt the benefits a ‘lie down’ on odd occasions during the day. It is during these quiet times I find inspirations, work out an impending piece of writing. I hold conversations in my head to decide which character says what. If I drift into sleep those moments as I fall asleep and the moments I come back are fertile moments.

So getting that first word sometimes, for me at least, means stretching prone on a bed, letting thoughts drift; or, as thoughts and words that elude one are often found when not being looked for, I will potter in a sunny garden. Again letting my mind wander as it will between - do we have vegetable bake or liver and bacon for dinner and the last piece of writing or research I had done. Many times when I think my mind is tunelessly blank a word, an idea will explode into consciousness with a huge Yay!

Other times if words are shy of the daylight I will shrug and get on with anything else. Maybe the house needs some work done (I hate housework so there is always something needs doing!)or maybe some research for WIP or maybe the next novel. The first is so boring I am driven back to the keyboard, the second is so endlessly fascinating that the barren hours can be kept at bay while a file of useful aids to the inspirations are collected.

Ellen’s Tale as I have said in previous blogs started as homework practice for short story writing. In the class I was attending each week I found a blank mind over three nights, a mind that refused to offer a single idea to the teacher’s requests, they were supposed to be ten minute writes. Sci Fi, Food and Historical, the three subjects I appeared to be blocked on. I spent the time doodling elaborate prototypes of some art doll I thought might be fun to make.

I was determined to get to grips with short stories during the holiday and then, when the first word made it though that jam, they just kept on coming. In the intervening weeks those three subjects had obviously been fermenting within a very over stressed brain. Not blocked so much as slowed right down in a whole lot of other issues; in the grand scheme of things more important than keyboard to screen. However the words and ideas were still forming, gathering strength until their time came. Waiting for a calmer tide to wash them ashore.

For me extreme stress has both been a spark and a dampener to writing; relaxation and brainless occupation often a great companion to them both. I do not have to write to make a living. I do not have to produce x number of words in x number of hours/days, I am willing to admit I am lucky not to have that pressure. I give them to myself by inventing deadlines!! No-one is dependent for a roof over their heads on my writing. I can just enjoy the process of adding words to words, gaining immense pleasure from the creation of my Tales.

http://www.albertaross.co.uk/    Official website for information on my books - extracts, purchasing and forthcoming publications.

I blog on anything that takes my fancy on http://didyoueverkissafrog.typepad.com/
and about books and reading on http://sefuty.livejournal.com/

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Writing Challenge:  WRITER'S BLOCK

Second Tuesday 2: Words Shy of Daylight - Alberta Ross 12 & a ½ Ways to Deal with Writer’s’Block - Ruchira Mandal Second Tuesday - Writer's Block - Patti Larsen Iain the Cat opines on Writer's Block - Jeannie Using Writer's Block as an Excuse to not Write - Rebeca Schilller Writer's Block - Gary Varner Second Tuesday - Writer's Block and the Tooth Fairy - Annetta Ribken Writer's Block or Writer's Withdrawal - Eden Baylee Breaking Past Writer's Block - Elise VanCise

This post is part of a monthly writing challenge known as "Second Tuesday," written by members of the Fellow Writers' Facebook group. Click on any link above to read another "Second Tuesday" post. Enjoy!