De-blog

November 30th: it's a strange old day. The wind is starting to gust and darkness is descending, even though it is mid afternoon. In our family, Christmas starts on December 1st, with the tree and decorations in place on the first Sunday of the month. I have an extensive collection of Christmas socks, and tomorrow I get to wear the new pair I bought last year. There's no rhyme or reason to all of this. It's simply a case of tradition. Every year, as I leave November behind, I feel a sense of something beginning. I love Christmas: the build-up; the preparation; the excitement. Yet today, for the first time, I am sad that November is coming to a close, for it is the end of my first NaNoWriMo . It marks the return to reality. However, I have no intention of lamenting this event, for it has been the best thing I have done in a long time. I place it alongside my children and my degree in the sense of achievement and self I have gained from it. As the clock strikes midnight to...

As Steven Sondheim goes to great lengths to demonstrate, we really do need to be careful what we wish for. Wishes, like government policies, tend to bring about a whole heap of unintended consequences. The vast majority of my degree was spent dissecting past, present and future policy, and whilst I must confess that I am somewhat out of touch with these matters, I could still pick up any white paper and give it a good thrashing. I don't want to wed a prince, find perfection, be rich beyond the dreams of avarice (too much Tom Holt). Evidently there are aspects of my life that I would gladly give up, others I would cling to with all that I am, because they are all that I am. I've read enough fairy tales and fantasy novels to know that the wisher's obsession pushes rationality aside. The outcome is predictable: she marries the prince only to discover that, if she's really, really lucky, he's just a bit of a misogynist, but more likely than not it will transpire that he...

No time to stay, I have a novel to finish. Yes people, I have a new addiction, but this one is just perfect, for several reasons. Firstly, I have been sucked into a void over the past few weeks, one where deadlines and dates have ceased to have meaning, no-one has been cracking the whip in my direction, or indeed when they have it's not been cracked hard enough. No deadlines equals no progress or achievement. That's shockingly how this cookie crumbles. Secondly, I am a writer. There is a passion within me that just needs to put down words. Half the time I strangle my own creativity by being a petulant and indulgent self editor. Take that away and I go free-form, Beat, take the story where the story takes me. Admittedly right now that does appear to be into romance (uggh!), but who cares? Life is romance: love, sex, infatuation, lust. There's also some stuff to do with birth and death, biological functionality that we still somehow manage to romanticise. Thirdly, I a...