Hello all,
Last night I joined a very friendly writer's group who gather to give feedback, encouragement and share knowledge gleaned from their own experiences. It is a small group, but out of little acorns...

I think all writers, whether published or unpublished, should join these groups. We are all at different stages in our writing and not only does it keep the published writer grounded it gives an unpublished writer a much needed audience who can evaluate as well as appreciate their work.

Writing can be a lonely business, that is not to say all writers are lonely - they aren't, but a writer can live in a houseful of lovely people who have no interest whatsoever in a dangling participle or the structure of a sentence, paragraph, chapter or story and that is where writer's groups are invaluable.

I have joined others and for various reasons, be it the group has folded or the venue has closed, I have gone on to other groups. But I have gained many friends along the writing pathway and I think this group is a keeper.

So don't stay at home and slave over words that may never see the light of day, join a writer's group and give your words a good airing.

TTFN :-)

Mother's Day

I am just having a little rest before the gang descend for Mother's Day lunch, which I will prepare, cook, dish out and...Whoa, I stop short of washing the pots - I shall leave that to the two other mums who will be here helping me celebrate; my daughter - mum of three, and my daughter in law - mum of two.

These two beautiful women are very good at delegating so the dish washing will go to mum's of the future, my granddaughters who have a long way to go before settling down (me hopes) but are just the right age and height for a bit of dish washing duty.

Today, as every day, I will think of my own mum whose hand I held as her great big heart beat its last.

We were alone, which was the way she would have wanted it - being the mother of seven of us the house had been busy all week with people coming and going, but that particular night I went into her bedroom and sat beside her bed just holding her hand.

She had been unconscious for two days but I knew she could hear me. I stroked her fingers and watched as she fought every breath.. I couldn't bear to see her struggle and leaned over and whispered;
   'it's okay now Mum, you go, I'll look after the little ones.' It was something I'd said many a time being the eldest. And as I sat up the corners of her mouth lifted, just a little, and she sighed her last.

I hope she's having a great day up in heaven with all the other mums xxx

Just one last word, I remembered one Mother's Day when she received seven boxes of chocolates and seven bouquets of flowers - great minds...

Ta Ta

Stick to what you know

Good morning, and how are you this fine spring morning?

 I finished the edits sent to me and they have now yo yo'ed back to the agent to peruse when she has edited the three in front of me {{{{{

I have started on the first draft of my next story, which wasn't difficult as I had compiled a lot of info as well as rough notes ages ago and put it into a folder called DropBox, the on line folder you can access from any computer and is great for storing stuff you don't need right now.

Another storage place I find useful is One Note and this week I found an interesting article in Writer's Magazine about a programme called Scrivener. It gives you Manuscript templates as well as Screenwriting, and lots of other stuff I've been playing around with.

As I am not the quickest off the mark were techno stuff is concerned, I have taken up the thirty day free trial to see if it suits me as I have spent an absolute fortune an writing accessories in the past that are now gathering dust somewhere.

I bought speech to text when I discovered constant typing played havoc with the arthritis in my hands - that got lashed, I didn't have the patience to keep correcting the words. Him indoors bought me a pen thingy that writes straight on to the PC - infuriatingly slow, it went to live at the back of a cupboard.

I may give it to one of the little'ns, no doubt they'll have loads of fun with it.

For now though, I will stick with what I know best, a pen and writing pad, or even an old fashioned Dictaphone, and then put the work on the PC. I know these things so well.

TTFN
;-)