Just for Fun Competition

Having a good week so far. I managed to write about 3000 words over the weekend and I am hoping for a few thousand more this week. It is encouraging to begin to update the word count progress on my chart. Up to nearly 20000 and I am aiming at around 50000.

This picture was taken at Pembroke Castle while we were away on holiday in Wales a while back and Kat gave me an idea for a little fun competition I could have here on the blog. A useful writing exercise I do sometimes is to take a photo and write for thirty minutes about what the photo has made me think about. You can read a couple I did back along on my Thirty Somethings blog

I am sure you all have loads better and more productive things to do, however if you have time or a bit of a blank day and you would like to have a go, here's what to do.

Take a few minutes to look at the photo above and think about what it creates in your mind. Set a timer and write for thirty minutes. No editing once it is done. Email it to me at Michelle and I will publish entries on the Thirty Somethings blog. May be able to dig out some prizes but really it is just for fun. Enjoy!!

Home from Holiday...there's lovely!

Well we are back from sunny Pembrokeshire and we have really relaxed! Thank you to all of you who were so kind and wrote encouraging things on my last post as I was having a terrible week. We had a fantastic family time away and although Andy had to leave the holiday for a couple of days to drive to Liverpool and then fly to the Isle of Man for his grandfather's funeral, we managed to have a wonderful time together. We did loads of activities including visiting Fun parks like Heatherton, where C got to Go-Kart, play Robot Wars and thrash his parents at mini-golf; and a dinosaur park with lots of dino info and things to do. We also indulged the medieval historian in me and visited Pembroke Castle, where I got some lovely photos and got to see some birds of prey they were flying there that day. My 4 year old suggested I took the picture below of one of the corridors in the castle, which has come out really well as an inspirational picture for a story. We also did some brass rubbings and C chose a knight that turned out to be the very same Earl of Warwick that I wrote my dissertation on!!!! I have included some photos for your pleasure,I am sure you will agree that the photo of the beach at the top looks like it could be in the Med rather than at Tenby! I also couldn't resist snapping this carpet of bluebells in the nature woodland walk near our cottage where we were staying.

On the writing front I had a wonderful week, planning my novel out in scenes and tracking its development, so it is planned out to the end now and I have a vision for the way forward which is a huge thing for me as I was beginning to worry whether I would get lost in it a bit. I also wrote another three thousand words on the novel itself, started a picture book story and wrote a 100 word competition entry about an encounter with wildlife. I wrote about a magnificent encounter I had with a barn owl at about 12 midnight on a country lane near us on the way home from ASDA. I feel refreshed and ready to write, all I need now is time and no more stress from work to keep myself focused. Got lots of research to do too around young carers and head injuries! I have been reading a great little book about the dangers of mining in Cornish copper and tin mines as part of my research and it has been fascinating in a macabre sort of way!!