The TCA Writers' Awards, 2019

TOP CAT'S ALLEY WRITERS' AWARDS 2019

I should probably point out that not all of the winning books were first published this year. That's because, in true egocentric style, I'm working off when I read the book, not when it was first published. So without further ado, these are the works I feel deserve special mention, from what I've read and seen in 2019.

BEST LITERARY FICTION

Jeremy Wright, for Kaleidoscope

https://www.amazon.com/Kaleidoscope-JP-Wright-ebook/dp/B019BK3M1I

BEST NON-FICTION

Fr Rod Bower, for Outspoken

https://www.amazon.com/Outspoken-Because-Justice-Always-Social-ebook/dp/B07FMGJVJJ

BEST DYSTOPIAN NOVEL

Bradley Wind, for Bulb

https://www.amazon.com/BULB-Bradley-Taylor-Wind/dp/0997280573

BEST YA NOVEL

Michael Palmer-Cryle, for Hieronymus Jones and the Teacup Squid

https://www.amazon.com/Hieronymus-Jones-Teacup-Squid-tentacles/dp/0648422437

BEST FANTASY SERIES

Sarina Dorie, for Womby's School for Wayward Witches

https://www.goodreads.com/series/236063-womby-s-school-for-wayward-witches

BEST ACTION SERIES

Andy Peloquin, for The Silent Champions

https://www.goodreads.com/series/274938-the-silent-champions

BEST HUMOROUS SERIES

Ben Aaronovitch, for the Rivers of London series

https://www.goodreads.com/series/51937-rivers-of-london

BEST DETECTIVE SERIES

Denzil Meyrick, for D.C.I. Daley

https://www.goodreads.com/series/161572-dci-daley

MOST DIFFICULT RHYME ACHIEVED

Andrew Barber - for the breathtaking rhyme of 'coup, yeah' with 'halleluia':

Andrew has given me permission to reproduce the poem, so here it is:

Coup De Vil

Although we have a monarchy,

We still think it’s democracy.

At least we did before we had a coup, yeah.

But coups get stopped before they’re done,

(Guy Fawkes’ attempt was only one)

And every time they fail it’s hallelujah.

A hundred years from now we’ll find

That all those pennies for the Guy

Are pennies for the Boris that would screw ya. 

I’m not an optimist, it’s true,

But up to now, we’ve pulled on through,

And every time we do it’s hallelujah.

There is some scarlet in the blue,

Some signs of change long overdue.

The queen has lost her rep for being cool, yeah. 

She’s just another decadent

Supporter of establishment

And monarchy is spent, so hallelujah.

These interesting times we share

Have got me pulling out my hair,

We’re fighting opportunists who outdrew ya. 

But mostly we’ve been here before,

And if we have a civil war,

It won’t be won by laws, so hallelujah.

MOST ORIGINAL CHARACTER

K.M. Harrell - for the bitter castle Azwick, in Zadea (still unpublished, but hopefully coming soon).

BEST SUPPORTING CHARACTER

Sarina Dorie, for the unicorns in Witches Gone Wicked

https://www.amazon.com/Witches-Gone-Wicked-Not-So-Cozy-Mystery-ebook/dp/B07D5LMMZ7

BEST NEW WORD COINED

Rozita Berry - for 'Zeitritter' (time traveller).

CONGRATULATIONS TO ALL WINNERS! 

J is for Just Do It

My friend Fiona is decluttering her crowded house. She's really going at it, too. The other day she spent five hours working through paper clutter. She doesn't do this every day; after all, she has a full life. But she told me she is making it a point to get rid of something every day, so that even if she can only find a few minutes, the total of clutter in the house is reduced.

So, Fiona's decluttering, and I'm writing this book. It's uphill work this time. With some books, I can pound away and easily get a few thousand words a day. The Operation Tomcat books were each written in less than a month. Okay, they are novellas, not full-length novels, but still. They are easy and fun to write. I wish I'd chosen another of them for this project!

Be that as it may, I selected for my background project a book about people in a psychiatric hospital.  Not including the huge amounts of time I have had to spend on research, it's just a more difficult book to write than, well pretty well anything I've done before. There's a lot of grief, a lot of sorrow, a lot of character growth, and it's not as funny as most of my work, either. I've noticed in recent years that a lot of what I've been producing is not quite as frivolous as my early books.

Fiona's approach of doing something every day is a good one, and one I've been trying to apply with this book. In fact, I have it externally imposed, since I've been doing a friend's writing course and this book was my practical work for the course. We were to write a minimum of 750 words every weekday, and report our week's progress in our group every Friday.

On its face, this seemed like quite an easy thing to do. 750 words is not much; it is far less than my usual daily wordcount when I'm working on a book. And yet, somehow, with this one I found myself really struggling. So for today's article I thought I'd examine some of the reasons for that, and perhaps explore how they can be countered.

1. Emotional distress. 

This looms large at the moment. A little while ago, I was accosted in the street by a maniac, as I walked home from church. You would think that in a nice, middle-class suburb, an elderly woman could walk home from church without trouble, wouldn't you? Well, evidently you'd be wrong. The maniac said he was going to come to my house, hurt my animals or perhaps kill them (the actual term used was 'fuck up'), and pour a bucket of urine over my front door. Charming! And just so I'd take him seriously, he informed me of my address, which he's found out by stalking me. Now normally I'd ignore threats, but in this case Emily and my other kids are threatened. That's a whole different ballgame. I spent the first three days almost completely incapacitated with panic attacks, unable to leave the house. I'm still afraid, and more, I'm grieving the loss of the church where I've been so happy for the last eight years.

But wait! I'm supposed to be a professional! I've been writing for years, and I am neither a novice nor an amateur. We don't just not write because we 'don't feel like it', and nor do we imagine the existence of 'writer's block', muses, inspiration or any of that claptrap. It's a job. It's a job I know how to do.  I have set working hours. There is no reason in the world why any unhappiness ought to prevent me from being productive. So strike that one. It's an excuse. Perhaps those first few days were permissible; if I'd still been working in the city I might well have taken a couple of days leave. But no more. I've dealt with the situation as best I could; certain security measures have been implemented, and I'm not going to say any more about that as this is a public blog. Also, I saw a doctor, and got some really good techniques for dealing with panic attacks. This is the way. If something is hurting your ability to work, deal with it.

2. Interruptions. 

When you're working, you need to let everything - and everyone - else wait.

This one's a biggie, and a constant problem for many writers. You do not punch a time clock, you do not get a regular salary cheque, and because of this people tend not to see your job as 'a real job'.

The solution to interruptions is simple, although often not easy. You have to use the magic word. The magic word is 'no'. No, I can't come out shopping for the day. No, I can't pick up your kids from school/be on your committee/make a cake for your event/gossip on the telephone for two hours, whatever. No. And not just to other people, either. You have to say it to yourself as well. No, I'm not going to answer the phone. The doorbell, well I do tend to answer that, but unless it's the police or a delivery, people get pretty short shrift. No salesperson ever cold calls me twice! No, I shan't just go and hang out the washing/shop for dinner/take the dog for a walk. Just as with salaried employment, these things have to be done outside working hours. I have a twenty minute break in the morning, an hour for lunch, and I knock off at three. That is plenty of time to do personal stuff.

3. Internet. 

Of course it's wonderful, and there are genuine uses for it. Research, networking with other writers, and so on. But you do not need to have it up when you are actually writing. Especially Facebook, which will give you a notification every time someone tags you, or replies to something you said, or posts in a group you belong to. This comes under the heading of that three hour gossip-fest on the phone. Close Facebook, and close your email accounts, and close twitter, instagram, and any other social media sites. And especially if you participate in any online gaming. Close that. If you're playing something like Forge of Empires, as I do, time your productions to finish on your break, or just accept the fact you won't be there to collect them. It's only a game. Don't let it destroy your work. If you have an ongoing problem with this, consider giving up the game. It's not worth looking back one day and saying, if only I hadn't played so many games I might have finished my novel.

4. Too many tasks running concurrently. Just as this can spoil your computer's performance, so it can inhibit your own. Page thrashing isn't just a feature of technology. If you're constantly switching from one thing to another, choose one and stick with it. Of course it's valid enough to have several things on the go - things are at different stages. I have at present one finished book in revisions, and a long story in rotdown. But if you're drafting multiple things at the same time, this is bad. If they are similar things, you can get tangled between two books and make errors, like mentioning a character from one book in the other. If they aren't similar, it's even worse. Part of why I found it hard to get going with this current book is that for the early part of the year I was still writing the other one, the one that is now in revisions. That's a children's fantasy novel, a very different animal from the current work. It was hard, very hard, to get my mind out of one mode and into the other. In the end I acknowledged this and took a break from the current book to finish the children's one, which is my major project for this year, and was also close to completion. After I finished the draft, I went on with this book, and then I found it went much better. This is why in general I do not ever work on drafting more than one thing at a time.

Even with two unrelated tasks like drafting and revisions, you don't want to be havering back and forth. Different kinds of work require different mindsets. Segregate them. Perhaps you'll write in the morning and do revisions in the afternoon, as Stephen King does. Perhaps you'll write until you reach your daily target (time or wordcount, or a chapter, or whatever) and then work on your revisions. Ideally, the way you structure your day will take advantage of your knowledge of your own body's energy peaks and troughs. Also, having a set plan or method for dividing your time helps you to avoid spinning your wheels. You don't want to be in the position of sitting there scratching your head trying to decide what to work on. While you were doing that you could have written something.

So those are the Big Three, the unholy trinity of the enemies of productivity. And there is one more thing I need to say. Once you've said no to all the crap, dealt as well as you can with any issues like illness or maniacs threatening your family, and examined your workload for sensible composition, one thing remains. JUST DO IT.

I is for Irritating - Annoying Habits of Some Well-Known Writers

It's a generally accepted truism that no-one is perfect. 'Nobody's perfect!' we smugly cry as we face  the fact we forgot our child's gym uniform/ missed our class at the dog show/ turned up to work late for the third morning in a row. We accept our own failings with equanimity, although we are often not so tolerant of others.

We tend to be less critical of our idols, though, and nowhere is this more apparent than in the literary world. Certain writers, both dead and alive, are often perceived to be above criticism.

Not to me, though. On the right day, in the right bad mood, I can find fault with anything. Here, then, is a selection of the annoying habits of some of the great figures of  popular fiction. These are the things that, when you set yourself to emulate your favourite writer, ought to be the exceptions.

The thing about the writers I'm going to talk about today is that they are all really good writers. Seriously good, both in their craft and in their entertainment value, and massively successful as well. Of course they are - that's why we want to emulate them, isn't it? These guys are not third-rate hacks churning out rubbish; they are seasoned, developed, super-talented and their work has stood the test of time.

However. All of these guys have annoying habits that really piss me off when I read them. I'm pointing them out here to suggest that these are things to be sedulously avoided in your own work. Okay, so Stephen King can get away with it. That doesn't mean you will. You probably don't have the massive fan base he has.

ACCENTS

First on my list is Dickens. Often, when he writes dialogue with a working-class character, he rams it down our throat, over and over, with the spelling. Okay, so perhaps in his day working-class people pronounced 'v' as 'w'. So what? It gets very wearing, especially over the course of a long book, and most particularly when the material is not comic in its nature. Worst offenders are Martin Chuzzlewit and The Pickwick Papers. It isn't necessary, it has nothing to do with the plot, and if you can't show that your character is a member of a particular social class without phonetic spelling then you're not a very good writer. Dickens was a very good writer, so he had no excuse for ramming this down our throats with every sentence out of the characters' mouths.

Another offender in this category is Stephen King. Most of his books are set in and around Maine, his own stamping ground. Very sensible, too. There's a particular regional accent and dialect. Okay, fine. And of course you want your locals to sound natural. But it really isn't necessary to contort your spelling in every single speech. The first couple of times the character speaks is enough to establish a particular accent. I am reminded to be mindful of this myself, as one of my main characters in my current work is from South America. You want to show particularities of speech, but for heaven's sake don't grab your reader by the scruff and rub his nose in it.

CLOTHING

Constantly describing everyone's clothes like a David Jones catalogue is not cool. The person who irritates me the most with this is Robert Jordan. In his Wheel of Time series there is a group of women who invariably dress in dark skirts and white blouses. That point is made quite early in the series, that it's like a uniform for these women. If he'd left it at that it would have been fine, but all through the entire, long series, he hardly mentions one of these people without reminding us that she has on a dark skirt and a white blouse. Seriously, who cares? I'm not talking about some context where it's relevant, e.g. when one of them is sneaking about at night and her white blouse causes the sentry to spot her in the dark. Just ordinary situations, where clothing is mostly completely irrelevant. For the love of Chanel, don't do this!

WORDS

Some writers have a favourite word that they feel they have to drag in at every opportunity. It's not a very serious fault, but it can become extremely irritating when the word is used over and over again over the course of  a long book. My example here is Stephen Donaldson and the word 'intransigencce' in the Thomas Covenant series.

BELIEFS

We all have our beliefs, social, religious, and political. And no doubt those beliefs are going to become apparent in our work. Every writer reveals this kind of thing about himself; one can hardly write without doing so. But that doesn't make it okay to lecture your reader. Don't stop in the middle of a novel to deliver a five-page sermon about free love, or capitalism, or not wearing black with navy, or really anything at all. And no, it doesn't make it any better if you wrap quotes around it and have it come out of the mouth of a character. Just don't do this, people! It makes you look like an idiot. The worst offender in this category is Robert Heinlein, who has marred many otherwise fine books with his self-indulgent ranting.

Can we take a general principle out of this? Yes, I think we can; it is that excess in anything is generally to be deplored. This is one of the applications of Stephen King's often misunderstood exhortation to 'kill your darlings'. The 'darlings' are things to which you are inordinately attached, whether it's describing accents, cataloguing people's clothing, your political and economic beliefs, or even your favourite word. Overdoing these things is like wearing a classic Chanel suit and adding 54 pieces of Goldmark jewellery. It obscures and spoils your style.

Don't miss my recently released conclusion to the Fiona MacDougall trilogy. Available at AMAZON and SMASHWORDS

H is for Helping Hand - What Goes Around Comes Around

Back in the long-ago I belonged to a writers' group, on Facebook. It wasn't a bad group, either, as these things go. I'm no longer a member, because groups tend to be a bit of a time sink for me, and from time to time, when I'm not satisfied with my productivity, I leave most of the ones I'm in. 

Anyway, this was quite a good group, and among other things people used to post passages of their work for critique by the group. One man used to post a lot of passages, and I gave comments on a number of them. After a while, another person in the group messaged me, saying 'don't waste time on Andy, he's very needy, he's always posting his stuff.'

It was well-meant, but I disagreed. I didn't see his constant posting for critique as neediness, or indeed as anything emotional. I saw it as evidence of a passionate commitment to excellence, a determination to make his writing the best it could be. Because of this, and because I thought the stuff he was producing showed a lot of talent, I felt he was worth a bit of effort.

Time has proved me right. From a not very confident, unpublished novice writer, this man, just a few years later, has emerged as a very successful author, with more than twenty books published. Not only that, but they are thundering good reads, too. Whenever I pick up a new one, I know I am about to experience the very best adventure fantasy. Happily for me, I'm on the list to receive advance review copies, so I get to enjoy them before everyone else, which adds to my pleasure, as does the secret little glow of smugness that comes from having been right all along. 

What am I getting at, here, you ask. Well, it's this - if I hadn't taken a bit of trouble to help out a beginner, I wouldn't have that special enjoyment - I would still enjoy the books, of course, but I wouldn't have that special pride that comes from having discovered someone, before others saw his merit. And that really brightens my day.

Most people, if they are writing, probably belong to one or more writers' groups. The benefits are enormous, as long as you limit the time you spend in them, a thing at which I am very bad, hence my periodic culls. But don't limit yourself to what you can get from your group. People who do that generally don't get much. You have to give back as well to reap the full benefits. 

By now, you'll probably be mad with curiosity to know who is the writer I'm talking about. It is Andy Peloquin, whose Hero of Darkness series introduced a massive and complex fantasy world in which multiple series interlock. Currently in train are the Heirs of Destiny series, and the prequel series The Silent Champions, in which Peloquin has branched into the genre of Military Fantasy. Find them all HERE.

While you're at Amazon binge-buying Andy's books, don't miss my own new release, Where The Heart is, the culmination of the Fiona MacDougall trilogy.

Get it HERE

G is for Grammar - Care and Feeding of The Semicolon

It seems a long time since I've written anything in this blog. Sorry about that. Some months it's all I can do to keep my head above water.

Anyway, today I want to talk about something that's extremely useful and often misunderstood - the semicolon.

A semicolon is used to join two independent clauses in a sentence. What does this mean, I hear you ask. Well, an independent clause is a clause that can stand alone; it could, if necessary, be a sentence all by itself. See what I did there? That's an example of a semicolon used correctly. 

The semicolon is not appropriate unless both clauses are independent. For example, consider the sentence: The dog was tall, having inordinately long legs. Here we have an independent and a subordinate clause. The main clause ('The dog was tall') forms the basic sentence, and the subordinate clause modifies, or adds information to it. Do you see how 'having extremely long legs' on its own is not a well-formed sentence? Here, 'having' is not a verb, but is used as a preposition, taking the place of 'with', and so the clause does not have a verb, and cannot be a sentence.

So, 'The dog was tall; it had inordinately long legs.' is correct, whereas 

'The dog was tall; having inordinately long legs.' is not. 

A further restriction exists on the use of the semicolon; the clauses linked should be related in some meaningful way. For example, 'Harry took the train to work; the love of the poets is a thing apart', although ostensibly structurally correct, is just weird, because a general statement about the love of poets is not relatable to one man's morning commute. You have a fair bit of leeway with this; there only has to be some kind of link, not necessarily a very direct one. E.G. 'Harry took the train to work; Muriel preferred to walk.' Here, the association between the two clauses is direct and obvious; we are comparing two characters' transport habits.

We could also say 'Harry took the train to work; it was a bitterly cold day.' This is okay too; here, the link is formed because in the second clause, we are talking about the weather when Harry took the train. The two clauses are logically connected, even though there is no necessary link between weather and trains.

An additional use of semicolons is to separate subsections of a complex list. For example, suppose you are telling your husband what to buy at the shops. If he's not very clever at shopping, you may want to provide some guidance about the supermarket, just so he'll be home before dark. So you group the items into the parts of the store in which they can be found, so:

Get me some low-fat milk, feta, Greek yoghourt and Mozarella from the dairy case; a big thing of Napisan and some fabric conditioner from the laundry aisle; and half a dozen packets of Schmackos for Rover.

Now if you read this sentence out loud, you should be able to hear the difference between the pauses marked by the commas and the semicolons. Note that the semicolons are not used to separate list items from each other, but to mark the end of sections in the list. Note also that this usage contravenes the rules given above for the general use of semicolons.

There now! That's pretty well all there is to it. Have a good day, be careful out there, and if you fancy a great read that will make you laugh out loud and snort coffee, pick up a copy of my new book - just released, the final volume in the Fiona MacDougall trilogy. Get it at AMAZON or SMASHWORDS.

Tabitha's Excellent Cooking Adventure - Jewish Chicken Soup

My son hasn't been feeling well lately, and today I am going to make Jewish Chicken Soup. I've often heard about the wonderful healing powers of this soup, and once when I was very ill with a virus my friend Leon at work sent me some chicken soup that his wife had made. I really did feel tons better after having it, so today I'm going to attempt it myself.

I've got a recipe that my friend Wesley sent me - it's his grandmother's recipe, so I expect the soup to be even more powerful. So here we go on our Excellent Cooking Adventure. Oh, and lest you suspect me of abandoning my alphabet format, it is no such thing - F is for Family, and family is everything.

The First Day

Of course, as this is an old-fashioned Grandmother recipe, it has to start with a dead hen. None of this effete modern way of buying chicken fillets.

This chicken, according to its label, is 100% antibiotic free, accredited free range, raised on a vegetarian diet and has no added hormones or steroids. Why, in this case, it is wrapped in plastic, is a mystery. Another mystery is why a person who cared about vegetarianism would be buying a chicken.

First thing is to hack it into pieces. This is not how I planned to spend my day; I feel like Hannibal Lecter as I set about dismembering the corpse. The instant I start my grisly work, I am joined in the kitchen by Ferret, who demands his tribute.

I finish the disgusting business of ripping the chicken apart and appease Master with a small piece. It was supposed to be a WHOLE chicken, I tell him. He doesn't care.

Finally I have it all hacked up. What a gruesome sight it is! It goes into the crock pot with a little water.

Once the chicken is merrily crocking away it is time to start the other part of the soup. I'm cheating and using commercial chicken stock.

Look at my horrid old 1950s stove! My glamorous friend Amanda says my kitchen is a National Treasure and has forbidden me to change anything, but she doesn't have to live with it. I can't wait to get it gutted and replaced with a nice, all-white modern kitchen like everyone else has. Don't tell Amanda!

Now it is time to add the vegetables. Of course they are in their naked state. How I wish convenience foods were not evil.

Finally everything is in and cooking away on one of my two functional burners. 

At this point I consider leaving it and going back to work, because this is a work day and I have a daily wordcount to meet, but Wesley's recipe says to keep an eye on it, so I decide to play it safe and stay in the kitchen. I can finish reading my Lemony Snicket book.

These books are absolutely marvellous, and like the old Batman television show, they unfold more and more funniness as one is older, so can be enjoyed in different ways by people of practically any age. I can't recommend them enough!

After about an hour, during which time I finish the book, the two parts of the soup look like this. The left-hand picture is all blurry because of steam. It's not my crappy photography. It's not!

The vegetable part is ready, but the chicken still has some way to go, so I can get back to work for a short time before I must leave for my dance lesson.

Because of a very late start to the day, and the huge amount of time I've spent on this soup, I still have less than half of my daily wordcount when the alarm goes off to tell me to go to my dance lesson. I turn the crockpot down to low before I leave, just for safety - it's already had more than two hours but I think it still wants more cooking. By the time I've got back from my lesson and had a late lunch, the chicken is falling away from the bones; a little poking with the fork exposes smooth, clean bones, so it is cooked enough according to Wesley's grandmother's recipe. I turn off the pot to allow it to cool before the next step, and return to my desk for a final session.

Three hours later, the chicken is still almost boiling, so I decide to leave it to cool overnight.

The Second Day

Next morning it's cold, so I am able to continue. I cut it all into tiny fragments, carefully picking out the bones. Not that there's much cutting to do - it practically shreds itself at the slightest contact. This is the worst part of the whole exercise; I absolutely detest getting into food with my bare hands. 

Mercifully, the process is reasonably fast, and soon I can add all the chicken into the proto-soup.

This leaves me with a pile of bones and some sketchy-looking liquid in the crockpot.

This is all that remains of a once-proud bird

Not much to do now - I pour in the sketchy liquid and stir it all together, together with oregano and a little garlic powder.

Bring it to the boil and voila! My own, nearly-authentic Jewish Chicken Soup! It can't be completely authentic, I think, for my kitchen and equipment are not Kosher, and neither were the ingredients, but it's as near as I'm going to get.

E is for Effort - How Not To Waste It.

Today I was thinking about work. Mostly about how little I've got done the last year. But it's going better now, because of one simple adjustment I've recently made to how I go about things.

Planning the Day

Instead of looking at my huge list of things I need to accomplish, freaking out and plotzing all over the place (don't you love that word?) I've taken to starting the day with my morning coffee at my desk, and making a short list of things I am going to work on that day. It's been an absolute revelation, which really ought not to have been the case, because in my 20 years in I.T. the amount of money my various employers spent on sending me on management courses would probably have bought a Federal politician. As a result of doing this, in the last two weeks I've seen my Todo list shrink to a much more comfortable level, as several major things have been crossed off, and all around it is far less panic-inducing than it was, with a consequent enhancement of my productivity (see how I can talk the management talk?).

So, today being my day off, I started by deferring the work I need to do on the long story I have in progress (first revisions and proof edit) till Monday. That shrank things down a bit, and then I turned over a new page in my big spiral book (the Day Book) and laid out my day.

The Day Book

Here's my book for today. It's already 1024, so it's been filled out.

The Day Book is also something I've recently started. It's just a spiral notebook - foolscap size, so there's plenty of room. At the top I write the day. This is important - if I don't even know what day it is, I'm in more trouble than The Book can provide. Doing this gives me a small glow of accomplishment already. It's pathetic, I know, but there's just something about writing the heading of a list. Don't judge me.

Next, I put in any fixed engagements. Tonight there is a dance party, so I have written it in the lower half of the page. It's enclosed in a rectangle, because that's the convention I use.

Next the things that have to be done today go in, and they get enclosed in an oval, because they're not fixed times, but must be done at some point. Today, I must take Emily for a bath, and pick up and drop off at the cleaners.

Next, I make a short list of what I'll be working on, for this day only. Today, I've chosen Bat Rescue, WHB Floors and the novel writing course I'm doing. The course, because it is not part of my Work Plan for the year, can count as either a work or leisure activity.

As the day is already underway, I've already been talking to someone about the bat rescue. I've got my vaccinations done and I'm ready to start volunteering. Now you can see why I use the big size of notebook. The rest of the page can be used for notes as the day develops. Bat rescue is important. Our local bats, the Grey-headed Flying Fox, are an important part of our ecology, as they pollinate.

Grey-headed Flying Foxes. Aren't they divine?

The next item on the list, WHB Floors, is my cleaning assignment for Fridays. WHB stands for Weekly Home Blessing. It's a feature of the Flylady home management system, which I can't recommend enough, and if you are interested to know more you can find it here: www.flylady.net. It's free and very, very effective.

Finally, the course. As part of the coursework I must write 750 words a day on my project and report progress every Friday, so that is the third item on today's list.

So there's the day laid out. I've already spoken to the bat people, and there's a bit of admin work I still need to do for them. I've started on the floors - preliminary work is shoe cleaning and laundry, as this enables me to clear my closet floor for vacuuming. Now, before I settle down to write my wordcount, I decide to do the other stuff. I can visit the cleaners on the way to the dog wash, and then that will be crossed off and I can settle down with more coffee to do the rest. See how the day is taking shape, with no wasted trips because I planned it so I only have to go out once? A big part of productivity for me is not spinning my wheels.

Because I'm going to Petstock anyway, I take the opportunity to stock up on the good dog biscuits. That's another trip I won't have to make - time saved on some future day.

Before

After

I'm back at my desk at 1150, with dry cleaning put away, a clean dog, and a comfortable feeling that the day's going the way I want. Next is to deal with matters arising from tasks 1 and 2, because once I settle down to work on that book I don't want them jostling about in my head. I must provide some information to the bat rescue group, turn over the washing and pick up and vacuum the floors. 

By one o'clock that's all done, and I've had lunch, so I can turn my energy to the book. I need to write 750 words today; that's not a terribly big ask, and then I can actually have some of my day off for quality time with the kids. That's a great incentive. 

As I've mentioned before, I work best in short bursts, so as breakout activities during the next couple of hours I check my email and messages, and check and approve a paperback proof and order a proof copy. I've got my wordcount by 3:30, leaving a couple of hours for quality time with the kids.

It hasn't been much of a 'day off', but everything I need to achieve has been done, plus a few extras, and I'm feeling pretty well on top of things and looking forward to some leisure, and later, the dance party. 

What I Take Away From This.

There are two aspects to what I see from today. One is how focussing down to a small list can concentrate your effort so that you actually do get stuff done. The other aspect is how much less tiring it is. On days like this before I adopted this 'short list' system, I'd be exhausted by three-thirty, or even earlier. Now, although I've worked hard and I'm tired, it's nothing that a short rest won't fix, and I'm looking forward to drinking and dancing the night away with my friends this evening.

D is for Dogs

Deerhounds are shown 'au naturel', so there's very little grooming to be done even for a big show. Of course it's etiquette to make sure your dog is clean in the ring, so I generally give Emily a bath on the Friday, and then five minutes with the brush is enough to have her ready for the ring. Except for one thing.

The breed standard tells us that the fur on the ears should be short and fine, like that of a mouse. And they do have that, but unfortunately they also grow long, silvery fur over the top of that, and so to have her really perfect for a show, this all has to be stripped out. It's a dreadfully laborious business, because it has to be done by hand - pick, pick, pick, a few hairs at a time, and you don't realise just how much of it there is until you think you've done it all.

I'm gearing up for a whole bunch of shows that I've entered in July and August. We're entered in this year's Royal Melbourne Show, where Emily was Best of Breed last year, and at the last show we were at she didn't perform well in the ring, skipping and hopping like a prancing unicorn instead of displaying her beautiful, even gait. So she clearly needs to get back into practice, hence the many shows I've entered, and this weekend there's a dog match hosted by the Scottish Terrier Club of Victoria, so I'm planning to show her there. 

A dog match is a fun event. There are no championship points, it's purely social, so there's no pressure, and the serious players in the show world aren't going to be there (unless they are also there purely for fun). It's a great way to get your feet wet if you haven't shown before, or have a new puppy, or for that matter if your dog isn't actually pedigreed. I've seen greyhounds entered in a Scottish Breeds match as 'smooth-coated deerhounds'. It's all a bit of fun, and as a bonus, the Scottish Breeds matches always take place in the context of a Scottish Heritage day or Highland Gathering, so it's a lovely day out. Men in kilts, pipe bands, haggis for lunch - what's not to love! And to boot, these matches often have a fancy dress event.

Fancy dress for the hounds. Look at my friend Melissa's wonderful costumes!

So today as my breakout activity I'll be stripping away at the ears. I can't do it for long at a time because Emily hates it. My previous hound would stand there patiently while I did the lot, but bitches are a lot more feisty, and Emily is a Princess with a sense of entitlement the size of New York.

I've just learned from my friend Lene that there are rubber latex finger things - they look like tiny condoms - that you can roll over your fingers and then you get a much better grip on the fur and the stripping goes much easier. I was all set to hunt about to buy some, when I realised they look just like the fingers on my disposable latex gloves that I use for washing up. So today, we're going to put that to the test. But first, a quick trip to the vet to remove the stitch she had from removing a tiny dermoid cyst.

These are the latex fingers my friend recommended.
We no longer need wonder where Mr Trump gets his condoms!

Stitch out and everything's fine, although I note with concern that she now weighs 40.5 kilos which is quite a bit more than her optimal weight, and I think I'll stop leaving out food 24/7. Her eating habits have changed quite a bit since our other dog joined the family, and I think she's eating in response to other prompts than pure hunger. I decide to try having the biscuits out only in the morning.

So at 0930 I finally start work. I'm continuing with yesterday's task, so my goal for the day is 750 words on the new book, and this will likely be punctuated with lengthy chat or phone sessions with the people who've so kindly offered to share their ER experiences with me. I'm going to start writing anyway, though; as a wise writer once said, 'you can edit crap, but you can't edit nothing.' I wish I could remember who it was.

When I break for breakfast I try the latex gloves and they do indeed work extremely well, much better than bare fingers, except that it is more difficult to separate and I feel I am grabbing too many hairs at a time, so that it's more uncomfortable for her. I return to work, unsure whether it's just that it was the first attempt for the day and I didn't catch her in the right mood. 

By 1100 I've got 100 words but I'm now in a chat session with an informant, so writing pauses to focus on this. I'm in awe at the generosity of all the people who've responded to my appeal for psychiatric hospital experiences. I gain a lot of insight from my informant, and when our chat is over, I have another go with the latex glove and it goes much better; Emily is calmer about the process when it's not the first attempt of the day, and I've now got pretty well all of the outside of the left ear done, and I'm sold on this method. 

One ear done! The inside edges still need to be cleared.

The conclusion from today is that the latex gloves are an absolute gift. You have to be a little more careful about not grabbing too many hairs at a time, but it goes so much faster that you can get a lot more done before your hound gets restless.

Now, as this is supposed to be a literary blog (koff koff, hollow laugh) a word about books. I'm currently reading the Survivors series, by Erin Hunter. All the characters are dogs, some feral, some stray. This is first class YA/children's fiction, and this series deals in a subtle way with the problem of the Outsider; the foreigner in a society who struggles to be accepted. It's riveting stuff, an exciting story, and if you're looking for something to buy for your kids, or for that matter a good read for yourself, it's a great pick.

C is for Course - The Things We Do For Love

The Things We Do For Love. This is an old theme, and rather a hackneyed one, and many second-rate movies have been made about it. 

But there are more kinds of love than the merely romantic. There is family, animals, causes, even, for some people, cruelty. Let's not even go there in today's political climate.

The kind of love I'm thinking of today, though, is our love for our friends. It's a low-key, everyday sort of love. It's not glamorous; it's more like your comfortable old slippers than your Manolos. But it's very powerful, and that's why I enrolled in a course this year about how to write a novel.

Of course I already know how to write a novel. I've several published, and another one almost ready to go, and another one on the drawing board, and two in progress. But this course is run by an old and valued friend, and she has asked me to take the course in order to write a review of it.

So back in March I blithely said yes, enrolled, and I've read all the materials and done all the assignments, just like a real student, because that's the only way I'll be able to write an honest and legitimate review. But, as I already had projects on the go this year, I didn't do more than was explicitly instructed. I have not Gone The Extra Mile.

Because the course has, as its practical component, actually writing an actual novel, I didn't want to use the one I was already writing for its purposes. Instead, I chose to start one that I've had kicking around in my head for some time and never got around to. This was because part of the course naturally deals with preparatory things such as outlining, and I felt it would be a bit useless if I took as my practical component a book where all that's already been done. And, because it wasn't my main focus for the year, most of my work effort has gone on the children's book I'm writing, which is being rather difficult and slow. As far as the course went, I've checked regularly for input, read everything, done all the set work, but I have done nothing else.

Today, we got an email instructing us to be writing at least 750 words a day on our draft and reporting progress every Friday. Shit just got real! Therefore, it now behoves me to pull up my socks and take a more rigorous approach to the new book, to which I affectionately refer as BFT.

My usual process for starting a project is as follows:

1. Clear my desk, because I work better without a mess.

2. Setup - this is creating folders, setting up a physical file, and creating a spreadsheet to track progress, chart the outline if it gets difficult, store names of people who have helped with information or are likely beta readers, etc.

3. Write a detailed outline. (Mind you, what I call detailed is probably pretty sketchy to some people.)

4. Start writing.

So today, although my instincts are screaming at me to dive into my already-started draft and pound away furiously, I'm starting the slow, precise, plodding way, by clearing my desk.

Here it is. My secret shame. It's nearly always like this.

This is not a full-on declutter and clean - it's just clearing the decks for action, so it doesn't really take very long. I always feel the time spent on doing this pays for itself many times over.

Now I can hear myself think.

By this time it's 10:43. Don't judge me; I was late getting started today. I overslept, and then there were various things demanding my attention, so that I didn't really start planning my day until about 1000. 

The next thing is setup. This is already partly done, because I've actually written the beginning of the book, so there is a folder on my computer and so on, but it needs some work - one thing, for example, is that I'm sure I remember writing an outline in point form, and yet I can't find what I've done with it. Part of the trouble is probably that I had one folder in Education, for the course, and one in Standalone Books, for the novel, and there are no doubt things saved in both places. Virtual setup will mean finding everything and getting it stored in a sensible way, so that I know what I've got to work with.

The book's official folder contains a progress spreadsheet, the draft I've done so far, and a document called 'Story Arc', which I did for the course. It does not have the detailed outline that I'm sure I remember writing. However, neither does the other folder, the one under Education that is for all the course materials. The Story Arc one does constitute a rough outline, so I print that off, and I also print off my draft so far, which is shorter than my optimistic memory suggested at about 1700 words. 

These documents, together with a fresh spiral notebook, go into a manilla folder, which has Barefoot Tango written on the front in big black letters. Doing this comforts me in some perverse way.

It's now coming up to 1100, and I've still written nothing, yet I feel much better equipped. It's like getting on your horse with the comfortable awareness that he's been brushed, bridled, saddled and the girths are tight and the shoes checked. Everything is in good order. I've found over the years that this approach makes a huge difference to my productivity, and I count the time as well spent.

The physical part of my setup. This can all be easily transported.
I've used a purple folder in honour of Flylady.

Now for the outline. The Story Arc document is alright as far as it goes, but I do like my outline to be in point form. I read it over and I'm fairly satisfied with it as it stands, because I'm a pantser at heart and only really want the bare bones, so that also gets printed off for the physical file.

Now just a slow and careful read over what I've already written, and I'm good to continue with it. I'm only shooting for 750 words, as instructed. Now this is where the procrastination starts to rear its head. I give in to it to the extent of making a fresh cup of coffee, because that's legitimate self-care, but I don't allow myself to pander to it any further.

It's always hard getting started - that Blank Page Syndrome - and this is where Flylady comes into her own. I may have mentioned the Flylady system before. It's primarily designed for housework, but actually it can be applied to any large endeavour. It was the Flylady techniques that got me through law school. So what I do here is I set my timer, and in order that it won't seem too daunting, I set it for 15 minutes.

As Flylady says, you can do anything for 15 minutes!

When the timer goes off the first time, I've got 181 words and finished a section. This brings with it its own problems, though; as I've finished a section, I have come to a point where my protagonist is being brought into the Emergency Room after an overdose, a situation of which I have no experience. It's time to go to Facebook, to see if any of my medical friends can help out. I put out a call for nurses, doctors and ambos. I also request that anyone who's overdosed and been taken to the ER contact me privately in strict confidence. I only hope I'll get a response, because this whole part is totally necessary to the plot, and although I don't really, I suppose, need to talk about the actual arrival and the ER, I think it will be a very dramatic scene and I want to have it in.

So while I wait for nibbles on that, I'll work on something else for a bit; I have several administrative tasks, so I attend to those, and that brings me up to 1235. Checking back on Facebook, I find one kind soul has shared an ER experience, and hopefully this will be enough to get me started on the new bit. The important thing is that I didn't have to waste any time waiting for stuff - I had other things that also needed to be done, and in that small hiatus I've taken care of them, and so now both the other items that were on today's plan are now completed. That takes me till 1330, by which time I'm starting to get responses from my research appeal. I need to give my attention to the confidential chat session with my informant, and I'm getting really good material, so I don't regret the time spent not writing; this is all part of the process, and often I don't know what I need to know until I'm trying to write that bit.

By the time five o'clock rolls around I've squeezed out a painful 659 words, but I'm not satisfied with what I've written; I don't think I'm quite there with the authenticity yet. Once I get a real feeling for what it's like in there, it will flow easily. So I start trawling on youtube. This stuff is not comfortable watching, but I find one that shows an actual stomach-pumping, and although it's in German, I can get a sense of the kind of dialogue that's needed.

I eventually get the wordcount I've been aiming for; it all flows more easily once I have an  idea of what I'm writing about. Nevertheless, it's taken all day including all the research, and I'm dreading what my life is going to be like for the next few months. I have got not one word done on the book I'm officially writing, and nor have I done any of the many things I needed to do, beyond dealing with the mail, and stripping a bit of fur from my dog's ears.

This is Emily. She has to have long fur stripped from her ears for shows.

The thing I take away from today is that preparation is everything. Sure, I worked all day and only got 750 words (well, 781). But without the research, without the setup, without the comfort of having my ducks in a row, I wouldn't have got any. Perhaps 10 words or so that I would make up in desperation and later delete. So the motto, as always, is RELY ON THE SYSTEM.