My middle son (10) passed the time on Saturday evening by doing rock art….

How cool is this dog?

I know I’m a little biased, but I think his rock art ROCKS!

It smells of fresh ink, and its spine makes a delightful crackle every time I open the book, which I do often! Cheryl Orsini’s illustrations are beautiful, and so perfect for the story. Again, I am left in awe of illustrators. Behind that book is a very wide smile!

Cheers everyone, and make sure you take the time to enjoy the wibbles – life would be dull without them!

Just when I thought I’d never come up with anything to blog about ever again….my husband came home yesterday with the news that the dot over the letter i has a name.  (I would rather he came home with a robot that irons and cleans windows, but he didn’t. Maybe next week.)

Anyway – he couldn’t remember what the actual name for the dot was so I googled it. And he was right, the dot over the letter i does indeed have a name, it’s called a tittle (kinda surprised he didn’t remember that word…)  But I have to ask – why does it need a name?  What’s wrong with the dot? Is this just a case of the letter i trying to rise above itself? Small letter syndrome maybe?  Nobody ever teaches  the tittle, and you can see why – imagine saying to a class of year five boys  ‘Make sure your i’s have a tittle on them‘.  Hmm.

As a writer I’m all in favour of a world full of many wonderful and unusual words, but this one is just plain silly.

Cross your t’s and tittle your i’s? Sorry letter i, it just won’t catch on. (Except maybe with the year five boys)

Due to circumstances beyond my control, I can no longer accept any rejections…

There are plenty of sites on the triple w’s that deal with exercises designed to improve your writing, but this blog is not one of them. The exercises I’m talking about here are physical ones. Huh? So what’s that got to do with writing? Do I mean bicep curls with a biro? For those of you who haven’t zapped this blog back into cyberspace at the mere mention of physical exertion, let me explain.

Everyone know that for the most part, writing is a very sedentary past time. And pretty much everyone knows that a sedentary lifestyle is bad for you. (Even if that knowledge is buried deep within, and trying desperately to stay there.) So what’s a writer to do? Writing exercises, that’s what.

There are two occasions where these exercises are useful. The first is on those days where the words are flowing and the fingers are tapping the keys like mad. You don’t want to stop, but eventually the bum starts to feel like plasticine that’s been left too long in the sun. First it spreads out, then it hardens. Sound familiar? I used to alleviate this feeling by getting up and wandering aimlessly for a few minutes…. until I realised that my ‘aimless’ wander always seemed to end up at the fridge or pantry. Which just meant there was more plasticine to spread the following week.

So now, whenever I get plasti-bum feeling, I get up and do some exercises. Doesn’t have to take long, doesn’t have to be complicated.  Skip for 30 seconds. Lift a big dictionary over your head, then squat it to the ground and back up 5 times. Do 5 star jumps. I have one of those step-up boxes, and I’ll often just stand in front of it and jump on to it and off again 5 or 6 times. (Little tip – if you’re like me and have failing eyesight, remember to take your reading glasses off before jumping up onto a step or you’ll think it’s closer than what it really is…!)

The other occasion where exercises are useful is the opposite of the first – on the days when the words just won’t come. Instead of staring at a screen at a loss for the next sentence, do some shuttle runs. Do them fast, and bend to touch the ground at the end of each run. You can’t  stop until you’ve come up with the next sentence. This works a treat with me. I’m guaranteed to come up with something pretty quickly… even if it’s awful, but at least it gets me started again!

The great thing about doing these exercises is that when an acceptance comes, you can celebrate with chocolate, biscuits, cake, wine, beer… whatever, with a clear conscience!

My middle son (10) came out of his little cousins’ room giggling. ‘Mum, the boys have just taught me one of the games they play… they clean their room as fast as they can, then jump onto their beds and pretend to go to sleep!’ Hmm, I’d bet my sister made up that game!

And remember how easy it was before they could read? When the sign saying ‘No helmets inside shop’ could be pointed out with a groan – ‘Oh rats, it says  No ice-creams left in shop, sorry kids.’ Or when the older kids from next door got our kids enthused about The Simpsons, and we could scan the TV guide and say, ‘Nope, The  Simpsons aren’t on tonight’. Or my personal favourite, when the sign on the escalators could read If you run up the down escalator, you will be taken down to the cellar to sort through the bloody, chopped off toes of kids who tried it and weren’t quick enough to step off in time.

I know, I know… the correct parenting path is to gently, but firmly tell them no, they can’t have an ice-cream today, and stand by that decision. But, sheesh, that’s hard! And you’ve got years and years of that in front of you. My advice is to take the easy road while you can… savour that short, illiterate window and milk it for all it’s worth – because in the wink of an eye you’ll be hearing ’s-i-m-p-s-o-n-s…yes it is Mum! It’s on tonight.’

Now I’m off to teach my pre-teen boys a new game… called play together for one day without calling each other names or twisting your brother’s arms and legs into a triple half-hitch knot. Wish me luck.

For a start, I guess roughly 10,500,000 will be spent sleeping. 2,600,000 chewed up buying, preparing and eating food. 1,300,000 burned up by exercise (hmm, only half the time allocated for food,  uh-oh!).  2,750,000 written off doing bookwork etc for husband’s business. 1,000,000 driven away taking kids to and from school, social,  sports and arts pursuits. 700,000 washed away  showering and dressing. 1,300,000 deleted for e-jobs, like reading and sending emails, banking and general surfing. 1,300,000 absorbed by reading – books, newspapers, school notes, magazines and reminder lists. Another 2,000,000 transmitted away watching TV, movies and replays of our Disneyland holiday video. 500,000 wrung out by refereeing offspring disagreements and homework disputes. 600,000 lapped up by dogs, cat, bird and fish duties. 60,000 weeded out by gardening.

That brings me to 6,926,000 seconds left – and lots of un-noticed time spenders. Conversation (kids, husband, girlfriends, myself, and stupid voice recordings on phone help lines) -  1,000,000. Jumping in and out of the pool to cool off – 250,000. Finding things I’ve lost – 250,000. Looking for something good to eat in the pantry – 500,000.  Whinging that there’s nothing good to eat in the pantry – 250,000. Whinging about stuff in general – 250,000. Back-tracking to try and remember why I went into a particular room in the first place – 250,000. Pondering the benefits of starting some form of yoga – 150,000.

I’m aiming to use 4,000,000 for writing and writing related stuff (including day dreaming). So that leaves me with 26,000 seconds for housework, which works out to about 8 minutes a week – a bit more than I did last year, but if I sweep a bit slower I should be able to make it!

Happy New Year!

But last thing on Christmas Eve  I always have a quiet moment alone. It’s become a tradition I look forward to.  I turn all the lights off, click the CD player onto Silent Night, and have a little cry. Don’t worry – they are emotional, happy tears. Christmas just does it to me – always has, and I hope it always will.  I reflect on the year that’s almost over, and thank God for all that’s good in my life. And there’s a lot.

It’s almost that time now, all’s quiet, the presents are wrapped and under the tree, the house is as tidy as it can reasonably expect to be – given my distaste for housework, and everyone is asleep (although there’s a fair chance the boys are only pretending!) So in a minute I’ll go and sit in the dark, next to our raggedy old on-it’s-last-year Christmas tree, sing Silent Night badly and cry. And thank God that I’m lucky enough to cry happy tears at Christmas.

Merry Christmas everyone.

This is the front cover for Wibbly Wobbly Street, due for release next May. Cheryl Orsini has done a terrific job of the illustrations – the houses and people of Wibbly Wobbly Street are just as wacky as I imagined them to be.

It looks great on the computer screen, but I’m sure I’ll love the way it looks on the shelves even more! Come on May!

Some friends were admiring the proofs yesterday (well they wouldn’t dare not admire them in my presence, would they?) and asked some questions about ideas, and development of plots etc. For some ‘unknown’ reason, a famous speech popped into my mind, and it seemed to explain the process of starting a story rather well….

Firstly, there are known knowns. These are the things I know I know. (For Wibbly Wobbly Street, the only known known was the title.)

There are also known unknowns. That is to say I know there are some things I know I don’t know. (For Wibbly Wobbly Street,  the known unknowns were the characters and the plot. I knew I had to have them, just didn’t know who and what at that stage.)

And then there are the unknown unknowns. These are the things that I don’t know I don’t know. The best way I can describe them is to say they are the suprises. Something totally unconceived at the beginning stages that somehow writes itself into the story. (For Wibbly Wobbly Street, the unknown unknowns were wibble-ectomy and wobble-otomy. Especially wobble-otomy… I just love how that wobbles around the tongue)

And I’ve just thought of one more, one that didn’t make it into Mr Rumsfeld’s speech… the unknown knowns. This would be the instinctive stuff, the stuff that make a writer’s voice unique.

So there you go, that’s all I know about knowns. Simple really.