Tuesday, 18 January 2011
Writing
Just to let you know that I'm writing away, a few hundred words every night. I'm guessing that after about three weeks that means that I must have written thousands of words. The current plan is to get it all down on the screen no matter how bad it looks. And then when I go away on my Arvon course I'll pull it all together
Monday, 10 January 2011
The Joy of Lego
I bought middle DS (aged 6) a huge box of Lego for Christmas/Solstice. I've found it's a really good way to be creative - like a rapid prototyping tool. Although now I've got a project I'm investing lots of time and effort into it to do the best I can at it. The end product is going to be a photograph so I'll share here when I'm done!
Also I now have a writing buddy - someone I worked with about 12 years ago in Ireland. Anyway, we're both on twitter and nagging each other to write every day. My novel is finally restarted and now I've been writing every day I need to get on and plan out the next stage of the plot.
Finally, I'm now booked on an Arvon course - five days of seclusion with other writers deep in Devon to (hopefully) knock my novel into some kind of publishable shape.
Also I now have a writing buddy - someone I worked with about 12 years ago in Ireland. Anyway, we're both on twitter and nagging each other to write every day. My novel is finally restarted and now I've been writing every day I need to get on and plan out the next stage of the plot.
Finally, I'm now booked on an Arvon course - five days of seclusion with other writers deep in Devon to (hopefully) knock my novel into some kind of publishable shape.
Wednesday, 29 December 2010
Hoping for a more settled 2011
Right so. The state of our family so far is that youngest DS has a nursery that he likes (at 2 1/2 he knows his own mind!) and goes there three times a week. Middle DS is going to his local primary and he can walk there with me which is lovely! But the eldest has so far failed with every attempt to get into school. Luckily he's happy about this adn we're going to start prepping him for the Kent Test.
This does mean that I need to carefully manage my time to get my creative projects underway. I'm about to book an Arvon course - a residential get-away for a week with other writers. This does mean that I'd like to get several thousand words under my belt - if not tens of thousands. That way I'll be able to use the course to do a major re-write and make the whole book hang together. But if I don't get enough written, I should be able to make proper progress on getting it written.
Graham
This does mean that I need to carefully manage my time to get my creative projects underway. I'm about to book an Arvon course - a residential get-away for a week with other writers. This does mean that I'd like to get several thousand words under my belt - if not tens of thousands. That way I'll be able to use the course to do a major re-write and make the whole book hang together. But if I don't get enough written, I should be able to make proper progress on getting it written.
Graham
Tuesday, 30 November 2010
Light at the end of the tunnel
Well, middle DS starts school any day now and youngest is going to nursery three mornings a week, so hopefully I'll soon get a bit of time to be creative. I've got a couple of craft fairs coming up for Christmas so I'd really like to get some stuff made for them... I'm working on night-light holders at the moment...
Graham
Graham
Monday, 4 October 2010
Trying to be creative
Hi
At the moment I'm trying to find time at either end of the day to be myself and to be a bit creative. I went out to Herne Bay the other day and took photos just for the fun of it. And I've sat down here to write this. I've also made decisions about my writing and the direction it's going in.
So I do feel that there is some forward progress.
Graham
At the moment I'm trying to find time at either end of the day to be myself and to be a bit creative. I went out to Herne Bay the other day and took photos just for the fun of it. And I've sat down here to write this. I've also made decisions about my writing and the direction it's going in.
So I do feel that there is some forward progress.
Graham
Monday, 27 September 2010
Home education
Well, a lot of water has gone under various interesting bridges. My LSW has been made redundant and has started contracting. This means, for the next eight weeks or so that she's doing a weekly commute of over 200 miles and I'm home alone with the boys. I'm also home educating the elder two boys (now aged 6 and 9) as they can't get in to their local school.
Anyway as part of my long campaign to try to get them in, I emailed BBC News on Friday and today a journalist with a camera came around and interviewed me for the local news station. I've been feeling a bit weird ever since and I realised that very literally someone came in from the outside to see how I live my life.
And that made me realise that a lot of what I take for granted is actually quite different. She only saw the home education side of things but in the background the home made wine was bubbling away nicely. And I run a compost heap and am strangely proud that with a family of five, including one in nappies, we can cope with rubbish collections every other week because of the amount we recycle.
Every day I see how other people live and realise that I am quietly forging my own path, from keeping slightly older, cheaper cars going to really wanting to walk my children to school.
Anyway, creative stuff I have done recently. I've had another go at some glass painting and am happier with the results. It's now autumn so I've been out foraging all sorts of berries to make into jam and wine and a new delicacy called Elder Rob. This is a home made cold remedy that tastes divine! And I've been slowly harvesting the garden into the freezer and planning next year's crops. And I even dusted off the chisels to give stone carving another go. I love doing this but hardly get the chance at the moment and it will eventually lead to some metal casting fun!
Anyway I've got to go back to being a full time house-husband-stay-at-home-Dad.
Graham
Anyway as part of my long campaign to try to get them in, I emailed BBC News on Friday and today a journalist with a camera came around and interviewed me for the local news station. I've been feeling a bit weird ever since and I realised that very literally someone came in from the outside to see how I live my life.
And that made me realise that a lot of what I take for granted is actually quite different. She only saw the home education side of things but in the background the home made wine was bubbling away nicely. And I run a compost heap and am strangely proud that with a family of five, including one in nappies, we can cope with rubbish collections every other week because of the amount we recycle.
Every day I see how other people live and realise that I am quietly forging my own path, from keeping slightly older, cheaper cars going to really wanting to walk my children to school.
Anyway, creative stuff I have done recently. I've had another go at some glass painting and am happier with the results. It's now autumn so I've been out foraging all sorts of berries to make into jam and wine and a new delicacy called Elder Rob. This is a home made cold remedy that tastes divine! And I've been slowly harvesting the garden into the freezer and planning next year's crops. And I even dusted off the chisels to give stone carving another go. I love doing this but hardly get the chance at the moment and it will eventually lead to some metal casting fun!
Anyway I've got to go back to being a full time house-husband-stay-at-home-Dad.
Graham
Saturday, 8 May 2010
My brother came down today and we got to messing around in the garage. This is the end result...
Here's a really odd star shaped light we got for Christmas.
It's plugged into this four-way under the stairs:
Note the bright orange lawn-mower cable. The other end of that cable is here, in the garage:
That weird silver thing is called an inverter and basically converts 12v DC into 240v AC. As you can see here, it's all hooked up and into the whole car battery that's permanently being recharged by a solar panel:
As you can see it's already working hard charging up digital camera batteries and mobile phones. Now it's also doing this:
That's being totally lit by the car battery in the garage that is recharged from the solar panel on the porch roof!!!
I know that there are in-built huge in-efficiencies throughout the system. In an ideal world I'd pipe in 12v and use a million and one different in-car adapters for the phone and the laptop and I'd modify the light too. But in a practical sense, having a normal mains 4 way that runs off the system is much more useful...
Graham
Here's a really odd star shaped light we got for Christmas.
It's plugged into this four-way under the stairs:
Note the bright orange lawn-mower cable. The other end of that cable is here, in the garage:
That weird silver thing is called an inverter and basically converts 12v DC into 240v AC. As you can see here, it's all hooked up and into the whole car battery that's permanently being recharged by a solar panel:
As you can see it's already working hard charging up digital camera batteries and mobile phones. Now it's also doing this:
That's being totally lit by the car battery in the garage that is recharged from the solar panel on the porch roof!!!
I know that there are in-built huge in-efficiencies throughout the system. In an ideal world I'd pipe in 12v and use a million and one different in-car adapters for the phone and the laptop and I'd modify the light too. But in a practical sense, having a normal mains 4 way that runs off the system is much more useful...
Graham
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