'A poet can survive anything but a misprint.'

                                                                                            Oscar Wilde

        'The wastepaper basket is the writer's best friend' says Isaac Basheivis Singer.
 
         But not yet...I need every word I've got so far, even the bad ones....

In Sauchiehall St in Glasgow is Vanilla and Black.
 
A small place with cakes so large - huge meringues with glitter  - that although I like looking at them, I'm not really tempted to eat them. But it's clean, pretty in a girlie way with its vintage  unmatched china, twinkly lights and chandeliers, has friendly young staff, and is near to a good art gallery (Roger Billcliffe where I currently have five small watercolours on show - three sold so far!) and to the only remaining bookshop in the city centre.

A good place to write.

        'It is perfectly OK to write garbage - as long as you edit brilliantly.'

                                                                                                                                    C J Cherryh


....have got to 20,408 words..it's getting harder!

        'It took me fifteen years to discover I had no talent for writing, but I couldn't give it up because by then                                I was too famous.'

                                                                                                                         Robert Benchley

    
'It's better to write about things you feel than about things you know about'

                                                                                     L P Hartley







Snow on the mountains, mist on the water.
Today I needed yellow.

        'A great deal of talent is lost to the world for want of a little courage.'

                                                                                                                                    Sidney Smith



is there something you are not trying for want of a little courage? Or put another way, if you had just a little more courage, what might you be doing now?.....

     'Writing is easy; all you have to do is sit there staring at a blank sheet of paper until the drops of blood form on                   your forehead.'
                                             Gene Fowler

Could I pretend it's another month? Any month with 31 days in it?

No,  better take Lynne's wise advice and give myself a week's swimming leave.

So no more talk of blood and torture! I must remember I am doing this for fun!

I shall listen to T S Eliot, who said about novel writing:

    'There is no method except to be very intelligent.'


In times of stress I ask myself 'What would a sane, rational person do?' And the funny, and reassuring thing is I always know the answer....


thank you for the encouraging messages...favourite cafe tomorrow

I am thousands  of words behind - maybe I'll have to take Clarence Buddington Kelland's approach:

                           'I get up in the morning, torture a typewriter till it screams, then stop.'

Nine year old Ross and I are just back from a fabulous swimming course.

I can really recommend  the Swimming Without Stress course at Croft Farm near the pretty town of Cardigan in Wales. Instructor Ian Cross was brilliant, and Granary Cottage was beautiful (though the glitch with internet access meant no blogs this week - sorry!)

The picture is of one of the other residents.


THINGS I DIDN'T KNOW ABOUT SWIMMING :-

I didn't know you could keep your mouth open

I didn't know my head floats

I didn't know you could swim so slowly and still move forward

I didn't realise how far one normal breath can take you - I thought you  had to take big gulps of air

I didn't know when to make less effort - I thought if I wasn't trying hard enough I'd drown

I didn't know how far one glide can take you

I didn't know how beautiful it feels to let the water support you

I didn't know I could do breast stroke, front crawl, old English stroke (so relaxing), roll onto my back, roll back onto my front, pick up something from the bottom, come up for air whenever I want, pause and have a chat, be a jellyfish, a sea snake, a crocodile or a mushroom!

I didn't know it could be easy

I didn't know it was such fun

Thank you Ian -    www.swimmingwithoutstress.co.uk     www.croft-holiday-cottages.co.uk


Now, that novel I'm supposed to be writing....

        'The art of writing is the art of applying the seat of the pants to the seat of the chair.'

                                                                                                                                                                 Mary Heaton

        'It's none of their business that you have to learn to write. Let them think you were born that way.'

                                                                                                                Ernest Hemingway

I stood at this bus stop while two buses sailed past without stopping, before I looked around and saw the notice.......

Then for a brief moment I wondered if I was in some kind of time warp!

        

        'Everwhere I go I'm asked if the university stifles writers. My opinion is that they don't stifle enough of them.'

                                                                                                                            Flannery O'Connor



I've joined a 4 week writing class.................!  starts Friday 


                                                                                         

What have I let myself in for!?

My primary cheerleader Chris Baty (see Simply Write 31 Jan) has in his book a chapter to be read at the beginning of each of the four week's writing. The chapter for the first week (YAY!) is entitled Trumpets Blaring, Angels Singing, and Triumph on the Wind  .  Well, perhaps that's overstating it a bit, but I have managed 11,716 words much to my surprise and delight. Whether they are the right words....

'All the words I use in my stories can be found in the dictionary - it's just a question of arranging them into the right sentences.' said Somerset Maugham.

Baty's Week Two title is Storm Clouds, Plot Flashes, and the Return of Reality . Uh Oh. 'The storm will likely break in three or four days, exactly at the point when the novelty of the event starts to fade, and your book starts to get more demanding.'

It looks as though I'm going to need all the support I can get for Week Two, so if you're thinking of leaving an encouraging comment....I'd love it!

Meanwhile I hope you find the tips from the writers entertaining. Today's is my favourite:

'I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by.'        Douglas Adams

Here is one of the special places I've found to write. Seasons Coffee House is in Dunoon, on the seafront, and is attractive, clean, friendly and welcoming, has delicious home-made food, free trade tea and coffee and a view - what more could I ask?

www.seasonsdunoon.com

        

        'Get it down. Take chances. It may be bad, but it's the only way you can do anything really good.'

                                                                                                    William Faulkner


10,032 words and counting.....! Weekly report tomorrow..


        

        'The test of any good fiction is that you should care something  for the characters; the good to succeed, the bad to 

        fail. The trouble with most fiction is that you want them all to land in hell, together, as quickly as possible.'

                                                                                                                               Mark Twain

        'Make everybody fall out of the plane first, and then explain who they are and why they did it.'

                                                                                                               Nancy Ann Dibble.



        what powers the novel writer has....

'Why do writers write? Because it isn't there.'

                                  Thomas Berger.


The same might be said of painting. Here is one of five snowy landscape watercolours I have showing at the Roger Billcliffe Gallery in Glasgow, starting tomorrow. The exhibition is of postcard sized paintings by gallery artists and is always very popular.

www.billcliffegallery.com

        'I'm writing a book. I've got the page numbers done.'

                                                                                                           Stephen Wright.




..tee hee! ..thanks for the special places recommendations....any for Dunoon, Greenock, Glasgow?  Interesting comment Lynne....

        

        'If you haven't got an idea, start a story anyway. You can always throw it away, and maybe by the time

        you get the fourth page you will have an idea, and you'll only have to throw away the first three pages.'

                                                                                                        Wm Campbell Grant

        ..met my word count target on my first novel writing day !  So far, so good.....

       


       'Writing a novel is like driving a car at night. You can only see as far as your headlights, but you can make
 
                                                          the whole trip that way.'

                                                                                                E L Doctorow