Lordy, it appears I have started a
blog. I’m sorry about that, but there
you go. I never thought I would, but now I have, and that is all.
Several people have informed me that this
is a must-do step in the process of promoting myself, and my writing; although
having a blog to promote a book that is nowhere near complete seems a little
premature, but there you are. At the
moment, I have about two thirds of a novel and thirty-minutes of a television
script, and here I am trying to drum up a ‘readership’. Do you feel like reading? Yay! Keep going then.
Initially, I was going to wait until
Eurovision to launch this (May 26th 2012, as if you didn’t know…tsk tsk)
but then several things made me think that wasn’t a good idea. Firstly, as Eurovision is quite clearly, one
of the best nights of the year (Christmas Eve is pretty good too) I know I will
be too busy dangling the bunting, forcing party hats on unwilling siblings' heads and
creating what can only be described as kitchen magic resulting in an
Azerbaijan-inspired buffet, so making time to sit down and write something
profound will be difficult. Secondly,
after just reading Nigella Lawson’s latest blog (she calls them kitchen witter) I have now
come to the conclusion that I don’t need
to be profound, nor build up to some massive launch with a spectacularly well-thought out and inspirational post. I absolutely LOVE Nigella’s writing in its
many and varied forms, but her witters are short, to the point and sometimes
discuss as basic a topic as the meal she ate the previous evening. Whilst I will leave the foodie posts to her,
it is reassuring to know I don’t need to upload an academic essay every time a
post is required. In short, I should stop thinking ‘I really
must start that blog’, and instead, just start the damn blog.
So, to conclude this inaugural post, I will
bring you up to speed about the Nov (Novel, in case that’s not obvious -
capital letter because it is my baby) as I like to call it. I’ve been writing it in short bursts, each
week for the last nine months. Whether it
is any good, I have no idea, but it is loads of fun to do, and it is giving me
an outlet for all the creative juices that were rather suppressed before. In terms of style, I am hoping that I’m channelling
lots of Armistead Maupin,
a small amount of Lisa Jewell
and sometimes even a bit of Rosamunde Pilcher. These are just a few of the authors towards
whose style I find myself regularly drawn.
It is also apparent to me that the basic plot of the Nov owes a rather
large debt to the type of character-driven films I love. The ones where a bunch of people in differing situations meet up at some sort of event, realise some things about themselves
and then move on - their lives changed in a meaningful way for evermore. Think ‘The Breakfast Club’, ‘Peter’s
Friends’, or even something periody like ‘Gosford Park’. Well that’s what I am trying to write. At the moment it is absolutely nothing like
any of the authors or film plots that I have referenced, but at least if I know
what I am aiming for, I have more of a chance of actually achieving that at
some point in the future.
So in the spirit of Nigella’s
Witters, I’m going to keep it short and sweet…for now. Just wait til Eurovision night – I may post
that essay after all.
