Welcome to 2010

I ended the year on a wonderful high when Dennis, on bended knee under a Pohutukawa Tree proposed.  It was all very romantic and hearts and flowery and wonderful.  Then the children went to spend Christmas with their father and their grandparents from Portugal, while Dennis, the labradors and I spent a few days with my mum.  Keep in mind that it is summer here in New Zealand so we spent much of our time lazing under the trees and reading, stopping only to cool off in the pool or to throw shell fish on the barbecue and wash it down with icy Pinot Gris.  We followed this up with more lazing with Den's parents before picking up the children and returning home.

Our ducks, hens and cats were pleased to see us home - but none of us know what happened to the eggs our Indian Runner ducks were nesting on.  There is no sign of eggs or ducklings and both the runners have rejoined The Henny Penny Gang in the main coop.  I can only assume cats or rodents got to them and I suspect Dennis is actually relieved we will not have the pitter patter of tiny webbed feet around the place.

We saw the New Year in with the kids and their Portugese grandparents (my ex-parents in law) which was lovely.  Instead of giving the kids gifts on Christmas Day we kept them and did it at New Year.  The Grandparents loved it - getting to share two Christmases in one year with the kids.

During the time off I've rediscovered poetry and fallen in love with it all over again.  I especially love Deena Metzger, Maya Angelou, and Thich Nhat Hahn - and I'm even trying to write a bit of poetry again.  I've also taken up painting - and have done a couple of passable watercolours of waterlilies and tulips.  A bit cliched perhaps but very enjoyable.

One is not born a woman, one becomes one.  ~Simone de Beauvoir

Every day women get up and go to work - in our homes, in our offices, in our businesses.  We are partners, wives, daughters, sisters,mothers, employers, employees.  And some days are harder than others.  Some days it's hard to hang out one more load of laundry, attend one more meeting, make one more phone call, do one more thing.  At those moments most of us look to other women for inspiration - forgetting that we are ourselves inspiring. 

This  is a collection of interviews with women from around the world - women of different cultures, nationalities, faiths, upbringings.  The one thing they have in common is they are, each in their own way inspiring.   

From stay at home mums to film makers - and every possible variation in between - they are all ordinary women who lead extraordinary lives.

They are Women of Inspiration.

I have this cyber friend -Tade Thompson - who is a fantastic writer. (Actually, he's currently working on a book called 'Changing Pace' for kids, which I suspect could well be the next phenomena to hit book stores by the way!  I think he has the next Harry Potter in the making.)  Anyway, for whatever reason Tade has made it his mission to save me from myself and ensure I do not neglect my fiction writing.

With this in mind he regularly tells me off, shakes his finger at me and sets projects designed to ensure my imagination is not allowed to wither up and die.  It is not an easy task, let me tell you.  And for once it has nothing to do with my stubbornness.  Journlists and editors are trained to question everything they hear and read - and yes I know there are an alarming number of them out there who do neither but I'm not talking about them - because if you get it wrong, it could not only ruin the story, it could ruin your career.  So you check, you double check, you verify, you go back and verify again - you change the style to fit the story, you pick the words depending on how you want to portray what's happened.  You do all of this as you go - and if you do it carefully and you do it right, you get a great article.  It is a technique however that does not translate easily to fiction writing.  Because when you are making it up as you go along (well that's not quite how it works as any fiction writers reading this knows but it's the easiest way to describe it)if you stop and question every little detail - you are not going to get much writing done.

So, Tade decided I should do NaNoWriMo (www.nanowrimo.org) this year and simply get the words on the paper.  He caught me in a moment of weakness - probably around half way through a glass of chardonnay  - so I said yes I'd do it.  Around the second glass I signed up.  It all seemed like a really good idea at the time as I had been playing for some time with an idea for a story and I figured this was a good way of getting a rough draft done.  All was going well ...until my character flicked on a light switch in her shop.  The editor in me wanted to know what kind of light it was.  Was it the kind of light this character would have in her shop?  Would she have something else?  In fact what kind of lighting overall was in the shop and where is the shop and why does she have it?  Now in and of themselves these are good questions that need to be answered - but not while I'm actually writing the damned story down.  For nearly twenty minutes I wrote and rewrote the line about the light.  Tade had to finally send me a message and say 'stop thinking'.  Okay he might have been a bit more forceful than that. 

But he did have a point.  In fact he had such a point, I'm going to write an article about it later today but for now suffice to say I agree it's very hard to use your imagination when you are thinking.  I actually had to tell the editor and journalist in me to take a hike and let me work.  In the end they sat on my shoulder and grizzled about continuity and typos and logic - but for the most part I did a pretty good job of ignoring them.  And churned out 1008 words for NaNoWriMo  - not to mention this post.

I'm not going to take myself off to the garden to recharge the batteries.

See you further on up the road.