Tennis, Strawberries, Sunshine and Pimms!

Phew. Well I can't believe that I've been home for nearly a couple of weeks now! It's flown by, which is probably why I've only just realised I haven't blogged in a while. Which is why I'm sittting here now writing this, having just watched the Federer match on the BBC. What a tense one! I didn't really mind who won, but another upset this early on in Wimbledon would have been quite something! It's been a brilliant week already of tennis - the Wimbledon two weeks is one of my favourites of the year, and the only two weeks of the year I pay any attention to the sport pages of the newspaper! I even fill in the chart with who wins what match. Yes, I'm obsessed. Even more so this year - one of my friends is now living near Wimbledon and so I went up with another friend last weekend and we queued for the first day. It was an amazing day! I loved it so much. We didn't want to leave. We saw lots of great tennis, both live and on the big screen sitting on Henman Hill. It was great because we got to know a lot of players we wouldn't have known about otherwise and we now have many more favourites! It's a great atmosphere too, and as tennis is the one sport I enjoy playing too, I just really love it all. Of course we enjoyed a wonderful picnic, strawberries and pimms - and even amazing weather! I also downloaded the offical app for my new fancy phone which meant we were able to find out easily what was on when, get live scores and even little bios about all the players, which is fantastic when you don't know anything about the players you're watching and you want to - it really helps you to get into the match even more and understand perhaps who is meant to be the better player, and how experienced they are and all of that.

I didn't mean this post to be about tennis - sorry! I have also been enjoying the odd nice days of weather that we've had, reading and writing outside, and particuarly since finishing Camp NaNo (which I did successfully last Saturday, which was such a relief, glad to leave that story for now and focus on something else) I have tried to spend less time on the computer and outside where possible, reading, writing, swimming and playing tennis (oh I really adore the summer). I have been reading a lot as well which is great, really getting through stuff! Yay! I should be doing some editing, but yet again I'm pushing that aside in order to write a story I told myself I would write this summer. I wrote the first one of this series by hand, and so I am doing the same with the sequel because somehow it seems to work better this way for these particualar stories - odd that, but there is something so satifying abou toding it by hand, and particuarly in fountain pen, which I love writing with. I can see why Neil Gaiman writes his stories like this (I'm sure he's written stuff about this before), and particuarly in the summer it makes things so much easier! I have also been planning another series of stories which I unexpectedly have created pages and pages of white a4 sheets of notes... for me that is tonnes of brainstorming and planning, and I'm really excited to write this series, after some editing of course. These are both series aimed at younger children rather than YA fiction which I love to write - I'm going to say more on that later I think, as this has already become rather too long, and I jotted down some stuff I wanted to say and I need to dig that out....

Home Again.

I'm home now. I had a wonderful but very busy and emotional weekend. My room is covered in boxes, and I don't really have anywhere to put it all. The main problem is books. I have accumulated too many of them over the last three years and I don't think that they have ever been in the same place as all my other books! It's going to be fun to try to sort that out.

I also realised that in my rush on Thursday or Friday I put in the wrong number of words on my camp nano profile, which makes it look like I wrote so many more words that I did... whoops. And now the chart is stuck like that - it looks like I then lost all those words. Well..... whoops. That's kinda irritating!

I have to try to catch up again, although I think I'm still ahead, and while I was busy over the weekend, I managed to get some handwritten, so I'll begin by typing some up I think! And then time to get back on track.

Writing, End of Term, Home and Awards.

Writing has been going slowly. I have realised that there are certain parts that I obviously really dont' want to write, as they go really slowly, but I found a later bit I wanted to write earlier and I managed to hit 30,000 so that was good. I'm happy with that. Although it seems that I keep leaving it until late in the evneing, when I have so much other time I could have done it - instead I've messed around with blogs and stuff and well anyway, here we are.

I'm going home tomorrow. It feels very weird. The house is all packed up and it's strange that this is the last week, it has absolutely flown by! And today, typically, is an extraordinarily busy day, but I suppose that's a good thing - particuarly as my results come out today (ahh). Scary! I can't believe how quickly the last few weeks have gone. I don't think it's quite sunk in yet, and I'm glad I'm coming back or I think I would be distraught right now. But because I'm coming back if hasn't quite sunk it I don't think. It probably will when I'm on the way home tomorrow. It's going to be a busy weekend too, so that will probably stop me thinking about it too! Oh well. What with going home and stuff I don't know when my next post will be - my Camp Novel might also suffer too.

Also, I wanted to just say that Andrea and Laura have both given me awards, which I will blog about properly, sorry I haven't yet! But thank you :)

Anyway. I better try and do some writing before I go out today. 

Rainy Summer Days

It's been a busy weekend, without much writing. I knew it would be and so I was glad to have a good head start and have already hit 20,000. Still, the weekend has come and gone and it's time to get stuck in again.

I'm intrigued to see where my story is going to go now, and get on with it again.

It hasn't stopped raining nearly all day here... so much for summer. 

Anyway, better get going I suppose!

Camp Updates

Camp NaNo seems to be going well so far (famous last words....). It's strange though how the idea and story has changed so quickly within a couple of days. With, for example a slight change of cast. When I first conceived this plot idea, these two characters were not even in it. Now they're really important and central and the story seems to be going a completely different way to the way that I expected, which is also interesting.... I seemed to have been filled with an obsession for writing this story and I was scribbling away last night in my notebook, hit by sudden inspiration... only now I have to type it all up. Whoops. Oh well. Can't stop thinking about the characters, which has to be good. I'm writing this all out of order, which I never normally do, so it's interesting to see how this is going to work. I seem to be writing things that are going to happen later on, but I suppose if it's getting the words down, it's no bad thing. Better get on with some writing!

I also wanted to show you guys this, which you've probably already seen. Neil Gaiman posted this brilliant cartoon today, based on part of his brilliant and really inspiring speech at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia, America. It is such a wonderful speech and if you haven't already watched I recommend that you do so! You won't regret it!

Guest Post

My guest post on du Maurier is up today!

Go check it out here. 

Hope Camp is going well for those taking part!

Camp NaNo and du Maurier season

So Camp NaNo starts today, which is very exciting. I am just sitting down to try and crack out some words, which will hopefully give me a good solid start. Looking forward to getting on with it now! And I finished an edit yesterday of my children's story, which made me happy. So I'll have a break from that while I do Camp NaNo. Yay!

I wanted to draw everyone's attention to the Daphne du Maurier season over at the Historical Tapestry blog. As you may know, du Maurier is my favourite, favourite author so this is really awesome. I got asked, through my du Maurier blog, to write a guest post for the season. I'm really excited about this, and the whole month should be good. If you are a fan of du Maurier, interested, merely curious, or even if you have never heard of her and her work, you should go check it out!

Anyway, better crack on with the writing!

Good luck everyone else taking part!