Taexalia
wild.life
Meeting The Standing Stones of Stenness
It's a while since we journeyed to Orkney, but it's never too late to share snippets from the journey... Travelling along the main road (which by the by is two lanes - one in each direction) we saw a howe (hillock or knoll) in the middle of a field, and we stopped in by to make arrangements. Further along the road we saw the Barnhouse Stone, protected by fencing in the middle of farmland. As we travelled towards a narrow causeway between the Loch of Harray and the Loch of Stenness, we could ... read more
NaNoWriMo ~ Yes, No, Maybe…
Well I didn't "win" - win being the completion of 50,000 words in the 30 days of November. But for myself, I think I made a pretty good effort. In the end I had a total of 31,584 words written over 15 actual writing days. So if I had managed to get to the page every day then I would have been laughing all the way to the finish line. But that is my perennial problem - actually getting to the page. On the days that I woke up, wrote Morning Pages and then went straight to the writing software ... read more
Skewed Focus
After a brilliant beginning to NaNoWriMo where I felt great about myself and my productivity, I fell back into the Not Writing Habit. I'm looking at how that happened and of course the main reason is that I popped off to Glasgow for a couple of days last week and when I came back I didn't get straight back to the story. Glasgow was excellent. We went to see a concert on the Tuesday night and were entertained by Iced Earth (OK), Lamb of God (I was not expecting to enjoy them and I liked them ... read more
Nano Diary ~ Beating Procrastination
Today I came to my computer feeling ready to write. I even opened up my writing software and set up a new entry. Then I seemed to drift into invisible but cloying foam and no matter how many thoughts about writing I had, visions even of scenes playing out in my mind, I just didn't seem to make it to the job of actual typing. I bounced between thoughts of self congratulation for getting 8037 words down in 2 days to thoughts of "yes but they are done, now you need to reach another goal". I ... read more
Nano Diary
So today was Day 1 of Nanowrimo and I have outdone myself. I started my day by coming straight to the page and writing which is something I know works for me but for some reason I always forget to do. At the end of that session I had clocked 2156 words and was pleased to have over run the minimum daily word count goal of 1667. For some reason I threw my original starting character out and left him stranded in the 90s to step back in time 2000 years, and into the landscape of Scotland in a ... read more
NaNoWriMo 2007
It's that time of year again when the excitement is building and thoughts of characters, plots and rattling keyboards run rampant in my mind. I see before me a possibility, a challenge and an excuse to write a 50,000 word novel in 30 days. In previous years I have failed in the sense that I have never managed 50,000 words, although I've usually written more words than I wrote the previous month - so the word failure is perhaps too harsh. This year I rise to the challenge yet again with ... read more
How I See The Higher Power
[caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="225" caption="Persephone ~ Chapel of Garioch"][/caption] I am not separate from it - it is part of me and I am part of it. I say it because it cannot be named or defined as one single thing or being. Sometimes it is the sun warming the earth and sometimes the moon kissing the loch. Sometimes it is the Cailleach brooding in the clouds, sometimes Bride wearing a cloak of bees swarming. Sometimes it is me asking the clouds to part as much as it is ... read more
A Baby Step for Writerkind
[caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="500" caption="Altered Waterfall"][/caption] Aside from my Morning Pages, I had fallen behind a little with Finding Water. I'm going to be gentle with myself about that since I had a whole week of chaos when the heating was being replaced, followed by a week long Artist Date/Artist Walk in the Lake District. So the last few days I have been doing a little catch-up with the Divining Rods. I wrote on Sunday about the wee revelation in my Morning ... read more
Finding Water
Today I will begin Week 3 of Finding Water. Just yesterday I was feeling that I wasn't really getting anywhere. I've been doing my Morning Pages every single day and I had even walked once each week, but the only thing close to an Artist Date was going out to watch the Lunar Eclipse - and I'm not sure it counted because I wasn't alone. Yesterday I was feeling that I was going through the motions and barely scratching the surface, that it wasn't enough to feel good about sticking to the ... read more