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Welcome to my Jottings - a place for my random thoughts about this, that, and anything else that happens to catch my attention. Come in, sit down, and make yourself at home. What would you like - tea, coffee, cake? And if you have a blog of your own, don't forget to leave the address in the comments so I can return the visit. |
 A very belated Happy New Year to you! Yes, I know I should have posted this nearly a whole month ago but I’ve had lots of other demands on my time - mostly good, exciting things I’m happy to report. In the real world, husband and I have been busy ticking off items on our ideal home and garden wish list. So far we’ve got a lovely, new kitchen, have redecorated some of the other rooms, put lots of shelves in the garage for ‘his’ workshop, added a small greenhouse and shed to ‘my’ back garden, and re-designed the front garden. Still lots to do but we aren’t giving ourselves any deadlines. It hasn’t been all work. We’ve also allowed ourselves plenty of days off to explore some of the towns, villages and beautiful countryside in this part of the world. In my writing life, I decided to have a go at NaNoWriMo in November after giving it a miss for the past three years. As expected, I didn’t manage anything near the magic 50,000 words target but I did end up with some interesting new characters and a very rough outline of a story that might have the makings of a novella, so I’m hoping it wasn’t a completely wasted month of frantically scribbling nonsense. 2018 ended on an encouraging note with one of my short stories being long-listed for the Bedford Writing Competition. It’s one I’m particularly fond of so I gave it a few little tweaks and sent it straight off to another competition. Fingers crossed again! I’ve also dusted off an abandoned children’s novel, decided it’s not all as bad as I thought, and have nearly finished a revised first draft. It still needs some ruthless editing before I even think of showing it to anyone, but I’m quietly pleased with it – so far. And this year? Lots of things I would like to do but my only firm New Year resolution is not to have an impossibly long to-do list. It's too stressful! Instead, I’ve adopted a new motto: Let’s just see what happens, shall we?
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2017 was mostly a year of taking one step forward and two back.
It began optimistically enough with my husband and I deciding to move house. It was something we’d been thinking about for a while. Every time we visited family in Lancashire we fantasized about living there permanently, but we were reluctant to leave our home in Cambridgeshire because it was close to our daughter and son-in-law. Then daughter and son-in-law announced they were going to move – to Canada. It was certainly a surprise, but we soon saw a bright side. They were planning to start a new chapter of their lives – and so could we. We put our house up for sale, found a buyer, and made an offer on a house in Lancashire that had everything on our wish list. A couple of months later, when we were about to agree a completion date, our buyer pulled out of the deal. Aargh! We put our house back on the market and received another offer for it. Everything seemed to be going smoothly – until the new would-be buyers also changed their minds! We put the house up for sale again, but it was autumn by then and the market had slowed down. We had some viewings but nobody was buying. The Lancashire house we wanted was also put back on the market. Two days before Christmas, when we were resigned to nothing else happening until well into the New Year, we had a call from our estate agent. Could we do a viewing? That viewer became our third prospective buyer. The not-so-good news was that the house we’d wanted had been sold to someone else. Fast forward to today … We’ve found another house to buy (which is even better than the one we lost) and have almost finished going through the whole conveyancing process again. Trying not to get too excited, but we are cautiously saying ‘when we move’ instead of ‘if we ever move’. I don’t think I’ll really believe it though until I have a new door key clutched tightly in my hand! And my writing? Some of you may remember that part of my prize for winning a short story competition run by Alfie Dog Fiction was an offer from them to publish a collection of stories if I could produce enough, of an acceptable quality, to fill a book. It was a very big IF, and much harder than I expected, but I’m very pleased to report I’ve finally done it! My collection is now being expertly prepared for publication. Watch this space … |
My labelsHuman, writer, reader, dreamer, paint-dabbler, wildlife watcher, walker, gardener, slow cyclist, optimist, lover of life, etc. etc.
Polite noticeI wouldn't dream of stealing your words or pictures so please don't take mine. *** But I'm happy to share if you ask first! Categories
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