More than Writers

  It’s appropriate that I’ve been asked to be the reserve blogger for the end of January. I’m not one for New Year’s resolutions in general –   I tend to have a list of ongoing goals that aren’t calendar specific. Instead, I loosely consider January a month for reflection, resisting (sometimes fighting) the urge to make any new commitments. This year, my month of reflection has looked very different from normal. The end of December was a flurry of activity, rearranging flights last minute to hop over to Princeton, New Jersey on Boxing Day to help my daughter and son-in-law after the birth of their first child (and our first grandchild!), who arrived a little earlier than anticipated. Being trusted to be with them at such a vulnerable and special time was a privilege, but – I have to be honest – I worked extremely hard. In between being the housekeeper, errand girl and assistant nanny, I was also trying to keep up with my actual paid job (which is not my writing) part-time....

  The hardest parts of any job are the tasks that aren’t the actual job. I had a wonderful, healing time writing Sapphire Beach, but what do you do when you get to The End? Turns out, the rest of writing a story is more complex than just telling a story! Parts of the process I really enjoy, like making the cover. Other parts, like marketing and making yourself known I enjoy but find them time consuming at the same time. Building a website is a fiddly job and involves a lot of nitty gritty details. I also have one of those pullup banners, which is a fiddle to set up without losing fingers, but looks good once it’s up. The problem with both banner and website is the upkeep of it. The banner is now out of date, as I have another book published since I ordered it. My website is in desperate need of an overhaul, which is time consuming and needs my full attention, even if it’s for an hour. I also have a podcast, which was rather ambitious and made me very nervous. I did enjoy it, al...

Image Credits:  Images created in Book Brush using Pixabay images. If you haven’t read Mnemonic by the wonderful Brian Bilston, I highly recommend it. It is his take on what seems to be the longest month - January. I guess it doesn’t help we’re still well into winter, the evenings still draw in much earlier than we’d like, and there is less natural light around (though things will be getting better on that front by the time this post goes out).   So we press on towards the fact even January must end and spring will come. It is a matter of time. Hands up, anyone who finds it easy to be patient. I’m not raising my hands, by the way.  But pressing on and being patient are crucial parts of both our Christian lives and our writing ones. I know. Logically, with time, we should be getting better at both, right? We’ve got all of that experience of our spiritual lives and writing ones under our belt, right?  Hmm… I am very much a work in progress on both fronts, but I find th...

Image from Wikimedia Commons Have you ever indulged in a bit of aspirational recipe-clipping while eating your porridge? I have, and I’ve got two folders stuffed full of scraps of paper to prove it, some of which go back a few decades.  What behaviours do you indulge in that go nowhere but give you a warm, fuzzy feeling? During the pandemic, I started a few writing habits. One was adapting AA Milne’s poetry with a lockdown slant. I was rather proud of one of them, and a family member shared it in her U3A writing group.  I also started writing 1,000 random words a couple of times a week with the intention of getting my thoughts on the page and garnering ideas for articles. I write with a potential reader in mind, and sometimes use this material as the basis for an article or blog post, such as this one.   What do we do with the wealth of information we hold in the form of clippings, cuttings and random notes on our computers? How can we collate them, or do we sometimes hav...

  I’ve been thinking a lot about waiting recently. This morning, I was in a queue of over 30 to get a call back from the doctor’s surgery. Just to arrange a phone consultation. That’s three times now I’ve rung to make an appointment to discuss test results. This kind of waiting is dispiriting. But at least with the wonderful (mostly) technology of mobile phones I was able to carry on with my morning dog walk. And I’d like to say my walk was filled with productive writerly thoughts. Sadly the reply came that there were no appointments left and I needed to try again the next day. I suppose I got a bit of a blog theme out of my following grumpiness so not all bad…   So, my random thoughts on waiting took me back to the '70s and good old R.I.E (Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh to the uninitiated). When a ward was on call for emergencies it was ‘waiting’. If things got too challenging another ward would take over the mantle. When waiting is difficult for us as solitary writers can we...

Are you analytical? Do you want to know why some things work and why others don’t? Do you analyse your KDP keywords, description and categories? In January, many people analyse and take stock of things, such as career choice, where you live, weight, how many books you read last year, how many you will read this year, etc. I have spent the last six months populating, growing and analysing my YouTube channel, and every day I learn more about analytics and algorithms. This led me to look at the analytics for blogger.com and More Than Writers, in particular, the 42 monthly blogs that I have contributed. There aren’t any in-built tools as such, although there is some data for views and comments that can be extracted. I love spreadsheets, so why not use one for this purpose? The ratio of views to comments is interesting. I have received a total of 19,036 views and 357 comments. When you consider that half of those comments are me responding to people, the number is significantly low. ...

 Is January really only 31 days long? Was Christmas really only one month ago? It feels ages... and not simply because the weather has been horrid, but because I hit a roadblock in the Work-in-Progress, aided and abetted by days-off that derailed my routine. I enjoy routine. I've managed to write the last six or so books on a routine of one hour every morning, five days a week. But what with Christmas and New Year (I'm a Scot, so Hogmanay and New Year are significant festivals for me!), my routine slid. And like an avalanche in the Swiss Alps, one little slip was the beginning of a hurtling descent into nothingness. No hour at the desk. And no hour at the desk means no writing. And for me, no writing means no joy.  I grumbled at the snow. I muttered even more balefully at the days of endless rain (when the water butt overflowed onto my patio requiring venturings out in wellies to deal with it - and buckets...) And then inevitably the larder was bare and I had to leave my burro...

Degas: Little Girl Practicing at the Bar free public domain image Sometimes the most powerful and affecting art is the simplest: a Picasso line drawing, a preparatory sketch by Degas or da Vinci. A simple line can suggest so much, and the space around it allows the observer to use their imagination and fill in the gaps. I have a print of an unfinished painting by Albrecht Durer above my desk. There’s something about the emptiness in the painting that intrigues. What did Durer plan to put in that space? What would I put there? So much to reflect on, more than if the landscape had been completed. Albrecht Dürer - Der Weiher im Walde (ca. 1497) - PICRYL - Public Domain Media If I drew a few lines on a page, they wouldn’t be powerful or evocative. An unfinished picture of mine would look abandoned, not intriguing. It’s not the simplicity that makes a piece of art powerful. It’s simple lines drawn by someone who knows what they’re doing. Who has placed those lines precis...

  Please hold the line by Sheelagh Aston You need to pray to God/Jesus. You start to say the opening of your prayer (Dear God/Heaven Father etc. ) for a voice to say: Hello, you’re through to Heaven. Please note that our conversations are recorded for training the Angels and monitoring purposes. Did you know you can access information about our history, services, and membership via our guidebook The Bible (available in paperback, Kindle, and audio). If you still wish to speak to a member of the Holy Trinity Team, please choose from the following prayer options. Press 1 – for prayers of Thanksgiving. Press 2 – for support to avoid temptation and sin. Press 3 – for your community, the church, and the world. Press 4 – for prayers on behalf of the sick, suffering and dying. Press 5 – for prayers of repentance and seeking God’s forgiveness. For all other prayer requests or enquires please hold the line. (Those of you who have a writer’s funny bone will no doubt be able...

As I type, my left hand has been out of action for eleven days, due to surgery. (Purple Sparkly sling) For the first days of those eleven, my right hand was pretty inactive, too (though my thumb worked overtime on messages and emails!). I’m typing this blog with my right hand – things are much improved, movement is back, thumb no longer carries all the responsibility.   Some months ago, I saw Titus Andronicus at the RSC. At one point, Titus Andronicus has his hand chopped off (stay with me, no grisly detail, I promise!). Immediately afterwards, Titus kneels: O now I lift my one hand up to pray to heaven   During some of the last six-ish days, I have been editing a manuscript. I last edited with two hands as I sat in the hospital waiting room pre-surgery, and hopefully I will resume two-handed editing soon, but in the interim, one hand it is.   Maybe some of us are also ‘one handed writers’ at the moment. Other life pressures are preventing us f...

We are now well into the second half of January, and our “Christmas” Amaryllis has decided to join the party. It has sat on our shelf with little or no growth throughout most of December, and now, with Christmas just a memory, it has decided to burst into full bloom. We have made no changes to any care or its position. It has just decided that it is its time and that is that. And what a show it is putting on. I am a bit scared of getting too close to it in case it tries to bite my face. (I’ve seen the Day of the Triffids. I know what can happen.) Obviously, our Christmas plant had no idea that it was missing Christmas, and if somehow it did know, I don’t suppose it would have made any difference. This is, I think, a good thing.   I am currently re-reading Equality is Biblical by Penelope Wilcock. It is an excellent book about the position of women in the church, stretching back to the early church and ancient attitudes.   What has struck me about it this time is the ages of th...

  My grandson has rhythm, he is always looking for drumsticks and if he can’t find any he will improvise with pens, sticks, cutlery… He will use whatever surface is available to create a rhythm – the bin, a table, a cardboard box. He is only 3 but he understands rhythm. He is now the proud owner of a small set of drums. Not sure how happy his neighbours are! Rhythm is something built into our lives to a certain extent. The changing seasons, day and night, regular meals to name a few. God built rhythm into creation when he set aside one day in seven to rest. I was walking along the beach recently, listening to the gentle wash of the waves. It formed the background to my walk; a regular rhythm that I could tune into or just allow it to be there. I’m sure that is one reason so many are drawn to the sea, whether it is a fierce pounding or a gentle pulling of the shingle, it is a soothing   rhythm that can be both calming and inspiring. I’m sure many of you have rhythms as wr...

I like a new beginning.  January 2026 – a new year, a time to look forward, a time to hope for new challenges that might push me out of my comfort zone, that grow me as a person. New blessings from God. What will He bring into my life in the coming year? Maybe there will be experiences I will not see as blessings but perhaps turn out to be in disguise. Yesterday I read a post by Pete Greig about Examen – a prayerful process of reviewing the day just passed, or maybe the whole of 2025. One of the steps he suggests is looking back through our journal of each month noting the more significant circumstances and life situations we have experienced. This could be moments of good and not so good. Times of rejoicing, or sadness; of breakthrough or hurt and failure. Through this examination we may see patterns or themes that were not obvious at the time. These may lead to repentance, forgiveness and renewal as we offer them to God.   Writing is a gift from God. Our God is the creat...

  There are bridges, and then there are bridges. I am fan of the kind of robust, clearly engineered, stood-for-centuries kind of bridge.   Tower Bridge has never let me down yet.   There are solid little hump-backed bridges over rivers on Dartmoor that are pure delight and photogenic to boot.   However, there are also strange swing bridges, rope bridges that have more of the Indian Jones vibe about them. Of these I am not a fan.   Bridges that sway beneath my feet give me a most peculiar feeling somewhere in my tummy.   Last year I discovered a bridge that was something else again: truly a wonder in the world of design.   It’s called the Sundial Bridge at Turtle Bay in California, and beneath it flows the mighty Sacramento River.   It makes complete sense to cross this bridge on foot in order to enjoy the panorama and take some photos.   However, just a couple of steps into my foray across the bridge, I realised that the flooring is transluce...