NEW BEGINNINGS

Current Work: Health Editorial, non-fiction piece on Journaling

Listening to: Radio 4 The Book Club

Reading: Rosalind Franklin, The Interpretation of Murder

I’m running out of time quickly but I wanted to post at least some sort of rant from Monday to Friday as I planned. We have visited the beach today. It’s been bright and sunny, the sky a Wedgwood blue and the snow as white as snowdrops on the mountains. Just the time then to go and blow the cobwebs of the old writing year away and at the same time pick up some scenes and characters for future use.

The dogs (still plural, the terror hasn’t returned) really enjoyed their first taste of the coast. They weren’t too sure of the water though generally, they didn’t mind but also Bertie managed to frighten some small young girl. How dreadful we have contributed to her fear of dogs. Her mother kept saying ‘niente’ – its nothing - but I felt dreadful!

I had to give up on Smileys’ People, the last novel I was reading. Our copy has extremely small text, which seems to be squashed together and therefore I kept reading back over the same thing. It was very distracting and although I enjoyed what I was reading, I gave up in frustration. Which goes to show that presentation is just as important as content, well for me anyway.

The dogs were awake early today, just after six, so fed, watered and walked by seven, the dogs that is, I managed to get my early morning writing in which felt good. I plotted out two short story ideas for competitions and managed to get a chapter in of the biography I’m reading by 8 o’clock. How’s that for the first Monday of the New Year. We have not long returned from another walk where we met our neighbours who had just finished slaughtering a pig (I kid you not) and there was blood everywhere and a strange ‘old’ smell about. The dogs were very interested mind you… Oh well, ‘when in Rome’ as they say.

And Finally the Word of the Day:

liminal

PRONUNCIATION: (LIM-uh-nl)

MEANING:
adjective: 1. At an intermediate state. 2. At the threshold of consciousness.

ETYMOLOGY:
From Latin limen (threshold).

USAGE:
"Jolted is funny and smart and fast paced. And it's written with real love for that fascinating liminal creature called the young teenager, for whom the sky is always just about to fall."

Tim Wynne-Jones; Electrifying; The Globe and Mail (Toronto, Canada); Sep 13, 2008.