Saturday 9 June 2012

Writing style...?

A chap I know, friend-of-a-friend, kindly agreed to read The Grim give me some feedback and possibly a review. Which is very nice of him. I greatly appreciate it.
But as we talked he mentioned that my writing style is very different from the writing style I use in this blog.

Hmm. Is it?
Actually that's not the question I asked myself. I was confused...
The question I asked myself was, 'Why would he think that they would be the same?'

The style I use when writing this blog is different to the style I use when writing a film script, and different again from the various ones I use when writing fiction, and different again from the style used when making notes, writing a letter to a friend, writing a letter to a corporation, etc, etc. ... There are going to be aspects in common, but doesn't everyone adopt a different writing style for the specific task they are engaged in?

The syle I use when blogging is, I hope, engaging - and I speak as though chatting to a friend on the internet. (?) Informal. Just a chin-wag, a bit of a natter. ... The mad ramblings of an insane mind!!!
You know the drill, surely?

Anyhow, I'm supposed to be writing, and instead, here I am procrastinating. *sigh*

I'd better get back to it.

Tuesday 29 May 2012

An annoyingly 'interesting' year so far...

Well, my writing plan was interrupted slightly - okay, that's an understatement. It was interrupted a lot.

A brief recap of the year so far:

January 2012 - The MS tried to inflict another attack on me while everything medical was shut for New Year. Great. Thanks for that. - - The second everything opened again I was obtaining meds ASAP. Got the MS attack under control. Phew!A little later my day job came to the end of its contract and I set about converting The Grim into a novella. (It is currently available on Kindle The Grim - if anyone is interested in posting a review I'm sure a free copy can be located, please email me? The hard copy of the novella should be out in the next few weeks / months? (depending on whether you prefer to buy direct from the publisher, or wait for Amazon to get their act together.) I'll post again, with links, when it is.
[My contact at the self publishing company - Authors Online said that it was not normally something she would read, but she could not put it down! Hooray!]
Towards the end of the month I got to see my MS spcialist again and this time there was enough evidence for a diagnosis. It's official, I have multiple sclerosis - currently of the relapsing / remitting variety.So life had decided to be "interesting" at me. *Gnashing of teeth*
You may remember that I told myself I should have kept my mouth shut.
... Mind you, I suspect I had my first attacks when I was 15, I would joke with my friend that I had "tripped over the wall!" I was walking next too. There was nothing on the floor I could have tripped on, not even a matchstick! But thankfully stayed in remission for many, many years, at least visibly on the surface. Until August 2011, when it mangled me. Grr!
Ah well, such is life... back to writing!
February - the day job asks me to come back earlier than expected for the spring garden season, so I do - part time because the MS has a fatigue element that prevents anything more strenuous. And I write in my spare time, when I am able to; the text is finally done, and I love the artwork! (Thank you, Siobhan)
All I have to do is apply a final set of tweeks and a read-through to make sure everything is in order ... except ...
... 12th March onwards, The MS meds they have put me on have side effects, as they all do, but because I'm such a delicate flower - - STOP COUGHING AT THE BACK! - - (my specialist nurse knows of only one other person under her care who has had a similar initial reaction to this particular drug.) one of the many wonderful side effects was to destroy my ability to concentrate; as well as highlight all my symptoms; and ... a lovely one ... to destroy my liver ... !Eek! Better come off that drug then. Grr.
So that's March and 10 days of April lost to side effects.(The hope / my hope was that my body would get used to the drug. But the blood tests I eventually took prooved that wasn't happening, and that it was screwing up my liver enzymes. ARGH!)
Having come off the drugs, the effects have wained, and my liver is finally back to normal - mid to late May.

So now it's time to crack on with the writing, when the MS allows - which is not as frequently as I would like, ... mainly because I am devoting a lot of my time to reading up on MS in order to find out how to nutralize this effing disease, since I am unlikely to be able to use the normal interferon modifiers.
Although there is a new tablet coming out in a few months - fingers crossed it might be more suitable to my 'delicate nature';
But in the mean time, diet seems to be a key factor that I've tripped over in my reading. Although it's blinking strict and will take some getting used to, I also need to finish reading up on it. (I bought several tomes that I've only just started to wade through.)
Then there's the house hunting, and the form filling, and the doctors and nurses appointments. Family and friends.
And of course the actual thing I am supposed to be doing, the writing!
Wish me luck!

Sunday 1 January 2012

SHERLOCK

I was excited to see that Sherlock is back, for another 3 episodes.

So that's tonight's (this weeks?) TV entertainment taken care of. :) I'm looking forward to it!


UPDATE: Great episode! ... Sadly there were several distractions that pulled me out of the story - - well, they were all the same one: his violin playing. The bowing did not match the music being played - almost all the time!

This is Sherlock Holmes people. The violin is kinda important. The fact that it took me out of the story means it didn't work for me...

Please, Stephen, get Benedict a violin-continuity coach?