Deep. Crisp. Even.

The smell of cold, clean air.

The phlumph noise snow makes when you shovel it off the path.

The cars left with fluffy white mohicans once snowballing arms have reloaded.

The whoops and hollers of unalloyed joy carried across rooftops from other streets.

The trails in the snow - crossing over one another, showing tracks we share across time.

The cold drips that fall high from trees, hitting the back of your neck and reminding you how alive the day is.

Hope you enjoyed them too.

Resolutions

 A bit late in the day perhaps - who said you could only make them at New Years?

A lot of the resolutions I made were to do more of what I do now - more writing (natch), more running (DIY does not match up, however many cupboards you demolish and doors you hang) more risotto (with barley - will report fully when I've perfected it).

The newer, more frightening resolutions are:
 - read my work to a public audience as often as possible
- sign up for and complete a 10k run
- complete a full working draft for the sequel to Hidden Daughter before New Years Eve
- finish reading all the books I mentioned when I talked about reading last year

With the snow outside, running's gone for a burton, but I'm busy working through the books (really enjoying Paula Rawsthorne's Truth About Celia Frost) and I've signed up to the open mic slot at Alt Fiction this year - will keep you posted on the others as I go along.

Rollers

Christmas and DIY have done for the blog over the last couple of weeks; I've been doing jobs that needed to be done when I was completing Hidden Daughter last year.  It's taken most of writing another novel, Coalface, to get to them.  But when the water starts dripping where water really shouldn't be dripping, it's time to close the laptop.  Or at least, put it on hibernate.

All the scraping and painting's been useful - I've had chance to step away from the plot of Coalface, and let the thoughts of the YA writers group at Nottingham Writers Studio sink in.  As a result, a chance throwaway comment overheard on the radio one Saturday afternoon has taken the middle of the story along a different path - can't wait to share it.

But first, that second coat is calling - and I'm not talking about the weather.

100

Tea and inspiration at Lee Rosy's Nottingham
(pic from www.leerosyshop.com)

Had another great evening with Writing at Rosy's last Wednesday - it's great mix of writers, which means there's always something surprising to discover when you listen to one another's work, especially when you're all working to the same brief.

This month's homework was to write a story that was exactly 100 words long.  It's not a lot, and it was interesting to see who wrote up to the magic number and who edited down to it (raises hand).

Editing is always tough to start with - I think I can't lose a word; then there's a moment when I understand what's really at the core of the tale.  After that, there's smoke coming off the backspace key.

I checked the wordcount - 99.

It should be the easiest thing - just add one more word somewhere in the text to complete the task.  But the effort I put into finding which words were the essence of the story meant chucking in an adjective willy-nilly made a mockery of the work.  I got there, in the end; but it took me as long to add one word as it did to take out fifty.

It reminded me about the importance individual words can have in the text - how every word should be working as hard as it can to drive the story forwards, to get us closer to our characters.  A great reminder for any writer - and the gingerbread and orange tea at Lee Rosy's was very nice, too.