I know I did a post late last night (early this morning) but I realised this morning I never put photos up anymore.

I’m constantly making little pretty bits and bobs (which I sell vie eBay) so I thought I’d share a couple of recent ones that I’m particularly fond of.

I’ve just started to do fascinators and headpieces (a step on from the toxilox stuff – the minature top hats I do alongside my hairfalls for a more alternative market). There’s a floral one and a fabric/ribbon one here, both styles I intend to make more of in different themes/colours, at some point. It’s just a matter of finding the time, as always!

The ‘ebishop24′ across these photos just refer to my ebay username.

I’ll add more photos of the things I’m creating in the future, I plan to do a flamingo-themed bit of embroidery at some point (for pleasure this time, not to sell) so I’ll have to let you know. And should I get a big ol’ free day anytime soon, I’ll dig out some of the things I’ve done over the past couple of years and share those too

Happy crafting to everyone out there, whatever your art,

E x

*

The weather forecast:
Winter snow steals all the life
from tomorrow’s Spring.

*

Some nights, all I need
is to switch off the world and
lay my head to sleep.

*
Enough, I say loud,
the words ringing in my head.
Shut down the laptop.

*

And so to bed,

E x

There isn’t a lot I can say really. I just updated my twitter (link to the right) to say I’d fallen out of love with the blog, and was tempted to make a new one. Why?

Just saying that was enough to make me struggle to remember my password and log back in.

Then I notice the Christmas theme I set the last time I blogged and it was so sad. Back in September I blogged once, daily, for a month. Just to force myself back into the swing of writing words pre-November’s NaNoWriMo (check the past posts if you want to find out more)

I should WANT to write. I should be striving everyday to get some more of MY words out there in BIG, WIDE WORLD. And yet I shy away from it all the time.

A little of it is that aching feeling of having nothing worthwhile saying. I don’t wholly agree with that though. I don’t think there are many things, shy of abusive and bullying nonsense, that isn’t worth saying.

Now, whether it’s worth someone else reading it, is another matter entirely. I wouldn’t blame anyone for not wanting to read the nonsene I come out with sometimes. But I know for sure, the more I write, like a conversation with a faithful friend, the more you explore the ins and outs of whatever’s niggling you at the time, the fresher you feel and the wiser you are for the exploration.

So nothing ventured, nothing gained. I’m already a good way into a blog now. I know, I’m just splurting it all out there but hey ho.

2010 came along and smacked me in the face like an alarm ringtone rattling your eardrums at 6.30am.

I did a month’s course in catering & hospitality. I got a new job at a gallery & theatre. I sat down a lot of the time and did some BIG THINKING (soul searching). I listened to lots of new music and I turned the bass up hardcore on the stereo.

I went to see the Prodigy at Doncaster Dome, who were effin’ AWESOME.

I cut down on my use of caps, though this post seems to deny that truth.

I saw some awesome friends, and realised just how awesome one of them is. Someone who I’d thought of as ‘just a mate’ I discovered is actually a wonderful, thoughtful, friend of mine.

And that’s a bloody good feeling.

So. No apologies. I can’t take back time. I can’t tell you all about Christmas and New Year because THIS IS FEBRUARY AND THIS IS A NEW YEAR AND WE DON’T CARE ABOUT THAT STUFF THAT’S ALREADY HAPPENED.

On, on, and further on. Let’s soldier into the future. I might blog while I do it, I might not, but we’re all heading in the same direction and that’s what matters the most.

Love you long time,

E x

p.s. no spell checking, no reading back, so if you spot a typo, go you! personally i don’t a ****.

I held off. I bided my time.

Then on the first of December 2009 I had a mince pie for breakfast.

It seemed the best way to start really. I’d loathed the sight of the first Christmas tree I’d seen in someone’s lounge back in the first week of November, and now here I was putting a miniature one up in one room, whilst also giving myself another constraint of not decorating a big one for the family room until a fortnight into December.

Back then, it felt like December would last forever and that my beloved New Year and the promise of fresh beginnings would never actually begin. Now, it’s already the fifteenth, there’s still no tree in the lounge and I barely scraped enough time together to finally write the rest of my cards last night.

It’s a feeling I’m used to. You wait so long for something with such great, nervy anticipation, that by the time it happens, you either a) realise it was never going to be as big as the hype you pertained to it, or that b) the hype is real, but your heart’s not in it anymore because it was never really what you wanted in the first place. Don’t we always want what we can’t have?

That’s exactly where my two missing weeks of December have gone. I spent them wanting something to happen which inevitably did (it was all down to time). It didn’t even involve me personally. But then the opportunity I’d been waiting for finally presented itself, and instead of taking the bull by the horns, I realised I never even liked bulls in the first place.

Funny, what time does to you. I’m sorry my last post proclaimed I would be back asap to update you with novelling news. Truth be told, writing for three hours a night and cutting my nightly sleep from seven or eight hours (aren’t I blessed) down to four or five, and starting at a computer screen for an inordinate number of hours a day, by the end of NaNoWriMo (which I should say I finished well and in good time) I never wanted to write another word again. Least not for a couple of days. But by the time morning came there were emails to respond to, forms to fill out and before you knew it my fingers were typing out faster than I could think… oh the typos!

I had intended to write a post about my experiences doing NaNoWriMo but I think I need to let it all settle for a while before I come back to thinking about it. Plus, with the festive season getting in full swing there’s plenty more I could be telling you about, like the chaos of the Manchester Christmas Markets, the importance of really good friends, and the ever looming ‘New Year’.

All that said, I best go and see about the Christmas tree finally. Lets hope the last two weeks of this month don’t fly by quite as quick as the first two; one day I’ll learn to slow down and make the most of the here and now. All the best to you and yours,

E
xx

This is just a mini entry. I’ve been wanting to write a post for a week or so now, and haven’t found the time to sit down and get it done.

November’s been all about NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) and for the first time in weeks I’m on target and the end is in sight. It really has taken the majority of my free hours away from me and the rest of it, I’ve been so sick of seeing the computer screen, considering I use it for work too, that I’ve just had to sit back and chill/sew/paint when I really should have blogged.

That said, there will be one on the way shortly and it will mainly be about my writing experience this month and how it differed from last years novelling experience.

I would stay, but it’s 1.00am and I’m due to start another novelling sesh. See! I’m writing though my sleep time in order to get this thing done! And trust me, you will hear all about my lack of sleep during this years writing process.

For those of you out there also writing this month, write fast, write strong and I pray you don’t get the swollen fingers/cramp I’m getting from writing my ass fingers off.

Peace,

E x

For those unawares, November is host to simply the best mass literary get-together of all time. Or at least, in my life time, it is. NaNoWriMo, or National Novel Writing Month is that time of year we can squish a whole entire novel, or at least 50,000 words of it (yes, FIFTY THOUSAND) into a mere 30 calendar days. And how do we manage to fit it in amongst the day job and the ironing and catching up with X-Factor or however you spend your weekend? Why, with mass support of at least 100,000 folk around the globe all taking part.

That’s what I simply love about this. Now, I’m pretty motivated once I set my mind to something. Scrap that, once I’ve set my mind to something, I’m positively stubborn. So if I’d ever had said before ‘I’ll write a novel in a month, I will I will’ I would have.

But honestly, the idea never popped into my head, and had, it I would have poked it back down into a darkened crevice.

But take me back a year. Someone simply said ‘Are you starting NaNoWriMo tomorrow?’ ‘No,’ I reply, ‘What’s that?’

I regret to say, that in the ten years of it’s existence, I’d never even heard of it before, come to think of it, not even during my creative writing course at university – although I’m particularly good at not hearing vital information during seminars.

But with a quick read up on the web, I decided, ‘You know what, I’m only going to bloody well do it!’ I tried to quickly recruit a friend for moral support, but due to their work commitments and lack of self belief, they sadly never made it past 100 words and I was left to tackle the task alone.

I stuck with it though. I’d had no time to plan, prepare or plot but still galloped away head first. Luckily, the mantra is ‘Quantity, not quality’ which is perfect, as I had nothing more than an artist living in a flat and the last Stephen King novel I’d read rolling around in my head.

The best bit of advice I was given through all the pep talks from the creators, was ‘tell everyone you know that you’re doing it.’ It’s easy to give up on yourself, let yourself down and decide you’ll finish your novel next year, or at least after Christmas. Inevitably, once you start thinking like that, you’ll never progress past chapter five.

So, full steam ahead I told my family, my friends, and proceeded to update my facebook status daily with my ‘out-of-fifty-thousand’ word count. That way I’d have to let down 100+ people as well as myself.

Luckily, I managed to get through the extremely terrible horror tale in good time.

The chief idea is to keep on writing, don’t read back, don’t edit just keep going. All that matters is you produce a beginning, a middle and an end and you make that hefty target. A hefty target that’s still 20,000 or so words off decent novel length, but come on, this is in a month.
Hopefully then, you’re left by November 30th, with a huge file on your hard drive that you can call your very own novel. It will most likely, be pretty awful.

But it’s the start. The start that the majority of us never manage to make. You can edit it, re-edit it or (please don’t) delete it at your leisure. But you got through it. You made words and you made so many of them you made the equivalent of a book. It’s how almost every novel starts out. So yes, it’s terrible. But it’s terribly beautiful too.

The piece I wrote last year, however, was simply terribly terrible and I haven’t bothered to edit it, or even read it back. I knew from the moment I wrote that my main character’s art studio was upstairs (in his one-floor flat) that it was so riddled with mistakes and boring passages that I don’t have the heart to give it any more attention. At least not for some time yet.

This year however, I spent a good couple of hours over the course of the last week preparing and planning and am attempting another first.

I’m going to write a black comedy. Or try to. I can’t say how comedic it’s going to be yet, I’m hoping that alongside my 2k a day word target I’m going to find some time to do a little reading and research too.

But my inspiration? This blog. Back in September, at the very start of this blog, I decided I would write a blog a day. And I told you, in entry one, and I said it so many times (as I did last year with my novel) that I didn’t want to let anyone down by not doing it. I made it to the end, and produce a few snippets along the way.

In particular, I did a few ‘Character Creations’ from photos I found on the web. One of these led me to another idea, which evolved and grew and eventually became the plot for my novel this year.

I’m so glad I started this blog, and that I discovered NaNoWriMo. As always, if you want to write, to be a writer, the most important thing is to just get started. Make those words. You never know where your first sentence might take you – just don’t give up.

If anyone wants to add me as a writing buddy on NaNoWriMo, my username is ebishop24

Take care, and look after your typey fingers,

E x

I know it’s been a while since my last post, but now I’m not doing a post a day, I’ve allowed myself the time off to busy up with other daily going ons.

I thought I’d take a moment however to share with you a few pics of the hats I made this month for THE BIG KNIT. I wrote a post on this last month, Day Seventeen: The Big Knit 2009 so you can read up about it there also if you so wish.

In a nutshell, by knitting these little hats for Innocent Smoothies to decorate their products with, they will then donate 50p per drink sold (with a hat on) to Age Concern and Help the Aged. To help keep our older folk warm, happy and safe this Winter.

I like the uniqueness of this little charity effort, and it suits me more than sponsored marathon etc. So armed with some yarn scraps from my dear Mum, and a pair of knitting needles, I whipped up 50 different little hats over the course of the last month.

Here are a few pics.

The decorated smoothies will be available in Sainsbury’s stores around the UK during November, so instead of buying your usual soft drink, pick up a healthy smoothie, treat yourself, and help towards a worthy cause at the same time.

Hopefully I’ll be back here again soon!

I didn’t even realise this when I got on with yesterday’s poetry post. I was so busy getting back into it after a couple of days off, that even writing ‘Day Twenty-Nine’ in the title didn’t set any alarm bells ringing.

So where does this leave us then? Well. I didn’t start the blog for any more extravagant reason than because I simply wanted to. I wanted to put words on page. ‘Everyday for a month’ was just an incentive to not give up.

Although I did miss a couple of days (and not through choice) I still came back with a small poetic vengeance and I guess that also equates in me not giving up.

I doubt I will continue daily, as there are now other things I need to devote my time to, but should I return here again then it will most likely be more of the same; I’d like to see more characters, more poems, certainly more short stories.

In all, one month seems so very short. There was no intention to produce mass quantities of perfect prose in that time, just to simply make words. And words have been made. By and large, not even interesting ones. But the ball it is a-rolling.

Onwards and upwards then to October. I’ll be hoping to bring you a post on the hats I created for THE BIG KNIT 2009, and may well advance some of my character ideas to fit into my novel this year.

I’ll be taking part in NaNoWriMo again this November, so that along with The Big Knit in addition to work should take me up to December, and I don’t even need to mention the dreaded C-word that December entails…I’m almost too scared to go into shops at the moment.

The next couple of weeks I hope will see me concentrating on my novel plot and details, and sadly much of that I won’t be sharing. I’m all well and happy to share ideas, but once their complete, or at least in some whole shape. Perhaps by December I’ll give you a excerpt from my first draft.

So this is it then. Summer has finally left us behind, and I’m sure October promises to be as wet and blustery as ever.

I’ve come out of this month with a huge smile on my face, enjoyed times with very good, close friends and even bought a cardigan and scarf in preparation for winter. I’ve gone from a 23 year stint as a brunette into a ravishing redhead that’s received compliments from everyone and the world is looking like a brighter place too. And with my brand new specs, a little clearer also.

And most importantly, I’ve gotten back into writing. For everything that’s been said and read here, the main point, as I keep saying, is that it went from head, via fingers and interwebs, into the great wide public world. Writing daily is so important for someone who wants to create with words, and I think my brain has been well and truly stimulated.

It’s been a pleasure, so for those of you who’ve bothered to come here and read this, a huge thank you.

Maybe not quite tomorrow, but hopefully soon,

Otter.

I was going to get right back into the swing of things today with another poetic form, but may as well take the time now to explain to you a little more about meter. Especially to first explain Iambic Pentameter. You probably understand it more than you realise you do. We often speak in rhythm without even knowing it.

What does it mean?

Iambic Pentameter. Well, we have the iamb. This foot refers to a rising rhythm, so if we take our beats two at a time (creating the ‘foot’ in question) we start softly and rise. Note the stress in the following line;

a cat a dog a bird a horse

The ‘a’ is soft, rising for each of the animal names. Say it out loud a few times if you don’t here it straight away. There are three other feet, but we needn’t concentrate on those today. Back to iambic pentameter.

Pentameter, meaning literally ‘measure of five’ in Greek, refers to the number of feet per line. Five iambs create lines with ten syllables each, or five feet, as each foot has two syllables – the unstressed and the stressed.

Got that?

For example, if we take a line from W. B. Yeats; ‘When you are old’, we read;

“When you are old and grey and full of sleep
And nodding by the fire, take down this book”

Again, reading aloud will help you note the stresses on syllables 2, 4, 6, 8 and 10.

I’ve left this so long because the other forms I’ve already discussed, don’t rely on these patterns of metre. Although they may incorporate them, it’s not essential that they do so, their structures relying on rhyme alone.

Heroic verse is the prime example of where we find iambic pentameter, and in rhyming couplets too.

I’ll attempt a little something now to try and explain all I’ve just said.

These words begin to mean so much when read
Aloud, we note each sound, some live, some dead.
Softly and sharp each sound is poignant now
We read with care, learning to take a bow.

Okay, so that was rubbish, but it does follow the rhythm, which is the main thing. It takes a while and a whole lot of practice to not only master the metre but then bring that and it use it to emphasise the content. The rhyme also adds another challenge, but the more you practice, the better you get. Sadly, my mind isn’t tuned into words today – perhaps my few days off have put me back to square one.

At the very least though, I’ve made a new start, and something is undoubtedly about a million percent better than nothing.

Practice practice practice. And on top of that, read read read.

Top notch advice, that.

Otter.

It’s such a shame the daily blogging has gone to pot lately. I mean, a) every day for one month is exactly difficult, and come November I’ll be participating in NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) aimining for a minimum of 2,000 words a day.

Difference there is, every day I come back to my laptop and just carry on from where I left off the day previous, so, for me, it’s surprisingly easy to get going again.

I think with this, without a single, solid aim, and with a bunch of other stuff thrown at me, it’s not been quite as easy. Here’s hoping anyway, because you can’t afford to miss many days of NaNoWriMo. I still need to work out a plot and some finer details for that, but I guess that’s the job for October.

As for the rest of September….well…isn’t time flying?! I can’t, and don’t want to, believe this year. It’s been the craziest I’ve ever experienced, and not necessarily for good reasons, very emotionally draining at times.

But enough of that, this blog is does not sing to that tune!

Hopefully after the weekend, I’ll be back with a vengeance. There’s only one way to find out of course, and that’s to keep reading.

Otter.