Achy Breaky

Yesterday morning before ten o'clock, two unusual things happened. One, I found myself salivating over a uTube link my daughter had posted on Facebook. It was a clip of the new ad for H&M's David Beckham underwear. And yes, it was DB himself modelling. It made me feel like an eighteen year old again and I would never have guessed that DB could do that to me. I'm more a Bruce Willis type, wouldn't know what to do with a head of hair...

Who knew?

The second thing was I went for a sports massage (still have a lot of pain in the neck (ha) and shoulders, resulting from the pneumonia episode. Anyway, the point is that I exited from there feeling and looking like a sixty year old. Amazing what an hour can do to a woman. Today, I've woken up eighty. If muscles can cry, mine are sobbing. If DB himself walked in right now, I'd have to say no. Or at least take a rain check... If Bruce walked in, I'd have to suggest he go for a beer with DB and come back in a few days.

Screaming muscles also scupper today's real plans since using a laptop will not help...I'm almost finished the re-write of Plumb Crazy; today will do it, which means that somehow my achy breaky body has to keep calm and carry on.

So, I'm here, at the laptop, dosed up, heated bean bag thingy wrapped around my neck, like one of those airline cushions, specs on, determined to push through the pain. The laptop is perched on a couple of telephone books with a keyboard attached beneath. A cup of green tea sits just beside me. I am ready to go.

Just one more look at that ad, before I start. For medicinal purposes you know.

To e Or Not To e - That Is The Question...

I'm in a quandary. Three books down and I'm debating if I've got it in me to create a fourth. I know I can write it. I know I can edit it. I know I can get it to a stage where I think it is a publishable manuscript. But can I go through the process again? Can I spend a year of my life doing all of the above, only to have the next six months with various people telling me that it doesn't quite cut it? I'm not sure I can and more importantly I'm not sure I want to.

If I'm honest, I was one of those writers (and possibly still am, hence the quandary) who did slightly poo poo self publishing. I wanted and still want the validation of the traditional publishing world - an editor saying to me ' You can write and guess what, we're going to pay you to do it!' To me, vanity or self publishing could never deliver that, so it wasn't an option. If I wasn't good enough to get published through the agent/publisher route, then, perhaps I just wasn't good enough, full stop. Perhaps I should keep writing, hone my craft, until I was...

Years later and I'm confused. Although there are many fabulous stories of success with people I know who've travelled the traditional publishing route, I'm also hearing a lot of variations on a theme. Rather than the ideal complete picture - that is, writer gets agent, agent gets deal, publisher gets sales = everybody happy, I've heard a few tales of writer gets agent, agent doesn't sell book = everybody pissed off and disappointed.

At the same time,increasingly, I'm seeing success via the ePublishing route. I'm hearing stories of people who have, with well crafted, publishable manuscripts succeeded in this way. I have also, alas, while debating with myself what to do, downloaded some questionable writing...

So what constitutes 'success' with this route? Yes, the manuscript is 'published' in that it is out there with an instant audience available to buy it through a digital medium. And yes, assuming one can amass some fairly respectable sales, kindle allows a very favourable royalty percentage. But how exactly does one get from ground zero where the send button is pushed launching your baby into the digital world, to a world of actual sales? For me, it is only sales, real readers buying the novel, real readers leaving comments that they enjoyed it, that could possibly replace the validation of the traditional publishing route, which, after all, should end up with the same result. And how exactly in a world of thousands of books can one stand out? How can a prospective reader determine the difference in the digital world between a well written novel and the inevitable lesser written ones that are available too... One has to hope that good writing will win out, word of mouth etc but how, how, how does one create a working launch pad in the digital world?

It's a whole new world. One of catchy hooks to catch your reader. One of being able to write a pithy pitch. One of self promotion and flogging your blogging to death. Oh, hang on a minute, don't I do that anyway?!

Am I up for it? The jury here is still out but I think I am...

Bad Words...

One of my new year's resolutions is to stop swearing. I don't mean the more harmless, 'Oh shit!' said as a real expletive, like if you dropped your favourite wine glass. I mean the often unnecessary use of the 'F' word, like if you dropped a full favourite wine glass.

I think it's possible to give it up but then again I'm Irish. We Irish have swearing entrenched in our genes and I'm not sure the scientists have isolated the particular DNA strand on the human genome yet. Besides, if I'm honest, I kinda like the odd swear word *Once more, hangs her head in shame*. It's just, for me, it provides a certain release. Like today, when I heard that our local planning office are playing silly buggers over our application and being all uptight about our garage proposal. Like we're suggesting the Taj Mahal with an up and over remote.

Grrr...

See, after I walked around making bad words up when I thought I'd run out - the weird thing is I FELT better. So today I consider my rant a necessary use of swearing, since it made me feel better and will make me much more pleasurable company when my husband gets home after his particularly gruelling day. And most importantly, nobody heard it except me.

On the other hand, trying to teach my daughter's Westie to say a bad word was, I admit, a step too far. Nobody likes dog corruption. It's not nice and it's not clever and those peeps in the Planning Department are, I'm sure, all lovely. Breathe...So, I tried to teach the dog to yawn instead. (I saw it on uTube - it can be done...)

I will try to stop. It's a good resolution. And I need to be more 'Om' (said with both fingers and thumbs in a circle) about life. And planners. And stuff in general.

** No animals were harmed in the making of this post**