Pay hit my bank account this afternoon. If were able to transfer every cent of it to my overdrawn Irish account I would very nearly clear it. But of course I can't since there are bills to pay and what with having to pay for my course this month, it's going to be a spendy one. Still, I have transferred enough to bring the Irish account down to a nice round number - although if I don't get my tax refund soon I may end up having to "take back" some of the money I've transferred. We'll see. I also did make a transfer to my annual expenses account, which was completely drained this month. Looking forward to building that back up again. And I transferred 50 euro to my holidays account, just so that I can feel like there is something to look forward to. I feel like I'm spending most days just waiting for the next payday so that I can see my debt going down and my savings going up. Since I only get paid once a month though, that's a bit of a waste of time.
One thing I will be doing do occupy my time soon is participating in the 3-day-novel contest. When I first heard about the contest earlier this year (I read about it on Married With Luggage - oh, and linking just reminded me I never got to watch that video so I'd better get on that), it just captured something in me immediately and whatever that spark was, it lasted until registration was announced. I signed up way back at the beginning of June when registration opened. I think most people think they could write a book, or at least that most avid readers probably do. I also know that it's a whole lot harder than some people make it look. However, this contest is ideal, I thought. I can spend three days churning something out, quieten down any writerly yearnings and, best of all, someone will read it. But I don't actually have to go through the stress of trying to find a publisher, submit, deal with rejection and whatever else is the life of an aspiring writer. With tens of thousands of entrants and a fairly realistic idea of what my writing ability is, I am not expecting to win. I'm still going to do it though, just to be able to say, "I've written a book".
The only problem is that since I first heard about the contest I've sort of frequently thought, "what will a write about". Turns out that although I have a fair command of English, I'm a bit lacking when it comes to, you know, imagination. I even organised a notebook specially for making notes on anything that might occur to me. There are about three words written in it. While on holiday I thought I'd make a list of character names, thinking I could get the kids to make a bit of a game about it. Between one thing and another though, that didn't happen. My page had 25 lines and I decided that was a good number so I'm looking for 25 names for me to build into characters around which to construct a story. Have managed four and a half on my own so far - anyone care to contribute?
I did mean to borrow the Rory's Story Cubes that I gave my niece as a present as well but I forgot that, too - might pop into the local toy shop tomorrow and see if they've made it over here yet. I haven't even a clue what genre of book I'm going to end up writing and can only call my approach write-by-numbers. If I assemble some of the components, I'm hoping that once I sit down to write, I'll be able to get somewhere with that. Any and all ideas much appreciated. Spread the word to your friends and let them know that in about eight days, there's going to be at least one crazed blogger searching madly for ideas and inspiration!
No comments:
Post a Comment