Prep & Pep Talk!

Second post in one day, I must be ill! Oh wait, I do have a cold and seem to be suffering from fits of the giggles at random times of day for little or no reason but I'm blaming the coffee.
Looking back at past tweets or things I've clicked as a favourite and I think this is probably one of the most important ones so far; it's simple and to the point and makes sense instantly, no long winded advice, just pure simple sense.

Neil Gaiman's writing advice"mostly it's a process of putting one word after the other.Fix it tomorrow." @neilhimself...
— KateMaruyama (@KateMaruyama) September 14, 2013

It's something I've never thought of before, to literally put one word in front of the other and sort it out tomorrow. It suddenly shifted the mental block out of the way and shoved me forwards to the point where I am really looking forward to NaNoWriMo instead of dreading it. Fear is holding me back again and the same niggling doubts - am I good enough? do I have any writing ability? will I be able to fix it all tomorrow or simply throw in the towel? And this little quote found on twitter reassured me that I've come this far, got 60K under my belt from last years 'win' and all I need to do is repeat the process, dig down deep and produce the goods! I've done it before so there is no reason why I can't do it again. Right? You'd think so, but I really need to kick the fear out of the park or it will hold me back permanently. Who cares if my writing isn't up to scratch...it's called editing for a reason!
So if you're aiming for nanowrimo this year, I wish you lots of luck and we can get through this together :-)
Now, where's the coffee?

bless me kitten, for I have sneezed!

It's been a while, I am still alive in case you were wondering, just very tired and sniffly. It would seem I either have a summer cold or a sudden and very strong reaction to my cats...I'm sticking with the cold theory as I don't relish dwelling on the possibility of an allergy to my pets!
Not much has been happening recently hence the lack of an update, work has been hard with long hours which has pretty much wiped me out but I am getting back on track with the writing and work in progress.

The muse kicked in at ridiculous o'clock last night and handed me a new plot twist on a plate which I am very excited about but at the same time finishing this manuscript is looking like a daunting prospect. It is already at 60K words but is not finished and with additions could be stretching the 100K mark...is it jumping the gun to look ahead at novel lengths which are popular with agents and publishers, or would you call it being prepared? Either way I know it needs to actually be finished, edited a lot, re-read, edited again and polished to really show it off at it's best before I can even think about kicking it out into the big wide world...I'm not going to lie, the prospect scares me. I read once that each novel should have a little piece of your soul buried within it's depths and it is this which makes it so frightening to send it out there for other people to pick apart, enjoy or loathe it. It is the fear that they are picking holes in oneself.
That said, I have a lot of respect for authors of any written work, be that an article, novel, short story, poem, song.
I truly believe that anyone can write, but embedding a piece of your soul and belief into that work takes courage, skill and time.

And breathe.
I might get there one day, looks like NaNoWriMo will be getting my manuscript finished this year!

Anyway, happy news about Jeanie's two kittens...they both have lovely new owners who have been visiting recently :-) So I am very pleased, both going to be very loved and spoiled! Funny story this morning hence the title of this post - A rather violent sneeze on my part made both kittens jump and stare at me with a look of awe and wonder, as an apology and humorous pun I simply said to the pair of them, 'Bless me kitten, for I have sneezed' they were less than impressed with my apology but happily accepted their breakfast and purred contentedly!

On a tangent and much more interesting note than my ramblings, have a look at this article about Egil Skalla-Grimsson, a Viking with an extraordinary history! Egil's Bones