MEASURING UP FOR MARCH - WITH A HALFNANO

THINKING SMART

I've been teaching, part-time, for two months now. Planning, preparing, teaching, assessing and evaluating is sponging up a lot of my writing time.

It didn’t take long before I realised I had begun to think in a teacher-ly way: SMART targets are, again, an important part of my life.

The foundation of all teaching is identifying an appropriate learning goal – a SMART goal

Specific

Measurable

Attainable

Realistic

Time Bound

Once I started to plan using SMART targets they quickly seeped into my writing plan too. 

My specific goal is to write more.

This goal is no stranger to most writers. Most of us want to write more, to complete the draft of the wip and to balance all the other demands too. 

Write more? The trouble is... this goal is not specific. It is not measurable. When I wanted to go full-out and write at NANO speed, I suspected that target might not be attainable or realistic.

I needed to find a way to challenge myself, to quantify how much writing was More. I worked out what my output was over a five day period. It varied so I looked for an average. I wasn’t happy with the sluggish climb. 

I wanted something that would be encouragingly more rather than discouragingly unachievable.

 As a SMART target, I want to write more becomes:

I want to write 1,500 words a day, for five days per week, for the next month - that's like a HALFNANO :D

ARE YOU HAPPY WITH THE WAY YOUR WORD COUNT IS RISING? 

JOIN ME ON MEASURING UP IN MARCH - THE HALFNANO

HAL LONGLEAT AND THE TROUBLE WITH TRUTH

When everyone else crowded forward, to get a better view, Hal hid in the shadows by the stable door. He chewed on a grubby fingernail. He rubbed the top of the short nail against a tooth. It scraped and clicked and filled his head with noise. 

BAKING BOOKS - WRITING THE YOM! NOM! WAY

Today, probably because I'm alternating between 500 calories and 2,000 calories a day (and you can guess which kind of day today was), I decided writing was a lot like baking a cake:

1.    Collect all the ingredients: characters conflicts, settings

2.    Make sure you know the right sized container - nothing worse than too many words over-flowing and making a mess or sitting like biscuits in the bottom of book shaped dish

3.    Ensure your oven is fired and ready at the right temperature – I see this as an internal thing - best done through  reading and learning the craft, and the art, of writing

4.    Sift and stir in all the ingredients and add them in the right order

5.    As with cake making nothing is going to happen until you mix it up. You need action: a little at first or it gets messy. You need to keep up the pace so you can combine the ingredients with enough emotion and air. 

6.    Divide the mixture evenly

7.    Once it’s all prepared apply an external source of heat and generate a suitable reaction.

8.    Work on it and let it prove.

9.    Do a little testing, a little checking. It should work, but only if the mixture was right in the first place. Don’t be afraid to set it aside and start again.

10. Once it’s past this stage, you have to let it cool before you move on to the next stage

11. That bookycake isn’t finished until you’ve trimmed it, frosted it with peaks and dusted it with spice.

Yum! Nom! And, yum again! Seems like it’s nearly ready for reading!

ARE YOU COOKING UP A CAKE FROM SCRATCH OR ARE YOU READY TO FROST AND DUST YOURS?

TEASER TUESDAY - I AM DAVID BY ANNE HOLM

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. 

Anyone can play along:

• Grab your current read

• Open to a random page

• Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page

• BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)

• Share the title and the author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!

 I AM DAVID by Anne Holm

In my wip, Hal is an orphan who is kept by the Master of the Stable because he made himself useful caring for the horses.  In his past, there were disastrous consequences after a lie. Hal has promised himself he will never tell another lie. Now he is being tested, Hal finds the difference between being only truthful and actively telling a lie is a great grey mire and he constantly has to wade through it keeping on firm-ish ground. He is observant, loyal, and kind in the face of provocation.

At this point in the narrative, with his friends, Hal is making an arduous journey across the country. 

Something about Hal's character and his travels kept making me think about David – from “I am David” by Anne Holm. I had to find my old copy of this book and re-read it. No matter how he's challenged, David remains kind, honest and brave. Now I have finished reading this- and cried, again - I've realised that Anne Holm is a master of show and tell. She shows David’s strengths by providing examples of how other characters think and act under similar pressures. Although this book has been around like-forever - first published in 1963 - reading it was the first time I became aware of the character's voice in the narrative.

David set his foot in a gap higher up the barbed wire...When would the searchlight come? They could not be certain of hitting him in the dark...and if they did not hurry, he would be over...Why didn't they hurry up. 

The character in my wip would describe himself as observant, friendly and careful. 

HOW WOULD YOUR MC DESCRIBE THEMSELVES?

Love is in the air - a Valentine's Day love story

We're cooking our Valentine's Day dinner:
Grilled figs with goat's cheese
Herbed rack of lamb with potato and fennel gratin
Chocolate and raspberry cheesecake

It's heavy on the dairy, and bad news for the lamb, but I'm loving the smells and looking forward to sitting down to eat.

My Valentine's Day story is that this is our wedding anniversary *awwbless ;)

I hope you are having a good day. In about 5 minutes, I'll be raising my glass to wish a whole-lot-of-love to us, everyone we know, and to the world too. 

I'm hopeless...I've got heart and rose shaped earrings, can you tell Valentine's Day brings out the **HEART in me?

WHAT ARE YOUR PLANS FOR THIS EVENING?

TEASER TUESDAY: FIRST BOOK FIRST - JOHN GREEN

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. Anyone can play along:

• Grab your current read

• Open to a random page

• Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page

• BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)

• Share the title and the author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!

Last week, I went out and bought The Fault in Our Stars but I didn’t want to read it. I wanted to savour preparing to read it: it’s on the shelf facing outwards so I can look at it.

I had seen and heard interviews of John Green talking about his work, and – for me – there’s nothing like an interview to send a reader out to track down a book.

Typically me, when I became fascinated by the new book, I went out to find the first.

Looking for Alaska? I didn’t know what I was expecting. What I found was more than it anyway.

I started reading all about Miles. Miles and boarding school. It was different, not the kind of boarding school story I was used to reading. Probably because this was a male writer, I thought.

All totally absorbed, I was page turning and having a wonderful time up to the point where my jaw dropped. I went back to check… but no, I hadn’t got it wrong I’d tripped up over the plot twist. I turned back and back. I re-read the whole book again up to the (can’t spoil it for you) plot turn. 

Amazingly, I hadn’t seen it coming. For the rest of the book I was wrung through the wringer, ending up as puddle.

I loved the characters, loved the writing.

LOOKING FOR ALASKA by John Green

But I lacked the courage and she had a boyfriend and I was gawky and she was gorgeous and I was hopelessly boring and she was endlessly fascinating. So I walked back to my room and collapsed on the bottom bunk, thinking that if people were rain, I was drizzle and she was hurricane.

I need to recover from “Alaska” before I read “The Fault in Our Stars” I’ve only got one heart and I need it.

WHY DO WE KEEP ASKING WHY?

THE ROAD TO MIDDLEHAM

Time and distance has been giving me headaches this week.

In my wip, the boys are making their way to Middleham. 

Sadly, this beautiful castle, Middleham Castle, King Richard III’s home-in-the-north, was only being built at the time. They would have seen the first stage of development – maybe the foundations – as they were passing through and stopping off at Middleham’s market. Taking the time to admire the pictures from the English Heritage site is not good use of time but I’m happy I have an excuse to admire the images of the castle. It has to be said that the castle itself – up-close and enormous - is even more impressive.

In 1203, the roads would have been familiar to any Roman/Romano Briton who was able to travel forward in time. I know a lot more about lych ways, carthorse routes, and drover paths than is reasonable. Then there’s the problem of looking for fords and ferries. In England, the great age of stone-bridge building was during the reign of King John. 

DON'T YOU HATE IT WHEN YOU FIND AN ARCHVILLAIN HAS DONE ANYTHING GOOD?

FOUR HEROES WHO SHOULD KNOW HOW TO SAVE A KINGDOM

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. Anyone can play along:

• Grab your current read

• Open to a random page

• Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page

• BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)

• Share the title and the author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!

"Sometimes being a hero isn't about getting the glory. It's about doing what needs to be done."

Until Christopher Healy set the record straight, Prince Frederic , Prince Liam, Prince Duncan and Prince Gustav were better known for their bit-parts in the fairy tales where princesses were in need of good-looking men with the right lineage to make their lives complete. After the sparkly dust settled on their previous adventures, the princes’ futures were not bright. There was more than a suggestion that their heroics were… a little lacking in manly action. Taking along a few feisty princess-types was wise, their adventures escalate: together they battle a small bandit king, bigger trolls, giants and a dragon. When they discover an evil witch is plotting to lure all the heroes to their deaths they know how out to save the day.

WHO IS YOUR FAVOURITE FICTIONAL HERO?