NANOWRIMO 2014: A Summary

Like many aspiring writers, I find myself wandering around with thousands of stories swimming through my head, waiting to pour out onto the page. But one of the biggest things I struggle with is deciding which one to go for and actually start working on! The predicament is paralysing, leading to absolutely no work getting done.

Where the magic happens...

This year's NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) was my opportunity to break out of my writer's block. If you didn't know, NaNoWriMo is a website that challenges writers to work on their writing and write 50,000 words from the 1st to the 30th of November. I think it is a good way of tricking yourself into finally getting shit done. I currently work full time and it is a massive change from being a student. I don't have strict deadlines anymore, so imposing deadlines on myself is really hard. NaNo was especially helpful in that way as it gave me a goal and a set date to work to. Unfortunately, I didn't succeed in writing the obligatory 50,000 words this November, but I did give it a good crack.

After umm-ing and ahh-ing about what project to work on - to continue the novel I started for my dissertation or start something completely new - I decided to start fresh on something I'd been thinking about writing for a while. I wrote about 1,000 measly words in the first week, mainly in note form as I fleshed out a plot. But, after a while, I found my concentration drifting back to the novel I'd already started and I decided to focus back on that.

For my dissertation in my final year of university, I did a creative writing portfolio and wrote the first 10,000 words of my own original novel. Ever the sucker for dystopian fiction, my novel centres around a young woman, in her 20s, who has been imprisoned and experimented on for over a year. When released, she discovers that she has been moulded into a super soldier to fight mindlessly for a cause she doesn't understand or necessarily believe in. Needless to say, drama ensues, blah blah blah, you can all read it when I publish it! Over the course of the month I managed to write a few thousand for it. It's not an amazing amount! I know that! But I am so pleased with myself for getting back into something I'd neglected for so long.

To be honest, the hardest thing I found was remembering exactly where I'd left off. I've been writing it for over 2 years now. So instead of agonising over what I'd already done, I decided to push forward. I wrote little scenes here and there from random parts in the book, parts I'd been particularly excited about. This is working quite well for me because, instead of having a start and a finish and having to write the inbetweens, which is very overwhelming, I now have lots of pit stops throughout to aim for!

I've never finished a novel I've started and I am so driven with this one. I vaguely remember being told that, when it comes to writing, you should just get everything written down and worry about the edit later. So that's what I've been doing and I've found writing it so much more enjoyable. It is so much more exciting to make progress than stay stuck in the same place.

Anyway, that's all I really have to say at the moment. I didn't complete NaNoWriMo this year, maybe next year! But, if anything, I have reignited my ardent love of writing again, so thanks NaNo!

How Elmer the Elephant Got Me a Job

One night about a month ago, I found myself on a website for local jobs in schools. I'd been thinking a lot about what sort of job would make me happy. Before work each morning, I used to walk past a local primary school. I found myself wishing I was going there instead of to my actual job. I wasn't enjoying my job and I craved something different. I love talking to people, I love education, I love being a little bit silly so I started to think about getting a job in a school. Anyone who knows me will remember my disastrous au pair job two summers ago where I swore off kids forever, but deep down I know that I've always worked wonderfully with children. If I'm anywhere near a kid I will make faces behind their parents back to make them laugh. Last year, I became the unofficial baby sitter for the hotelier's daughter on my holiday in Greece. I've spent my entire educational career being told I'd be a good teacher.

So, feeling extremely unqualified, I applied for a few jobs as a TA and, unlike the majority of things I'd previously been applying for, I received interview offers from each and every role I applied for. At this point, the lack of interest from employers had become unbearable. In some situations I'd even attended interviews, actual, physical interviews, only to never hear back from that company again. Not even out of courtesy. To get a sudden influx of attention was really great for my confidence but also nerve-wracking.

I was offered a job at an infant and nursery school near where I live. The school is really nice and felt almost comforting in a way. For the interview, I was asked to conduct a 10-15 minute story-telling session with a small group of children. This sent me into a pretty wild panic. It'd been years since I'd done anything like it and had no idea how best to engage the kids. I agonised over the book I would read until my mum reminded me of a fancy dress costume I wore for World Book Day when I was in primary school. She'd made me this amazing elephant headmask and I got to be Elmer the Elephant for the whole day. I found the book Elmer Again (pictured above) in our cupboard, a book I loved a lot when I was a child, and decided to use that. Having not worked with 5/6 year olds before, I wasn't sure what kind of story would be suitable but Elmer worked really well. I had the children counting the elephants together on each page, doing impressions of elephants (and other animals!), as well as talking about which colour on Elmer's patchwork body we liked the most, which the kids really loved. I was so nervous about how it had gone which is why when I got a phone call from the school, only an hour later, I was really surprised and happy to be offered the job.

I am now two weeks into this new role and am enjoying it so far. I know that it isn't a forever thing. Part of me applied because I wanted to see if the teacher route was for me and I don't think it is. But if you are a graduate or a parent or a school leaver and want to do something that is actually rewarding, challenging and new everyday then I highly recommend a role like this.  Working with kids, especially my class, can be a really great experience and definitely makes a difference to your usual 9-5.

By the way this was my leaving cake from a co-worker at my previous job! It was INCREDIBLE.
White chocolate icing, milk chocolate lettering and chocolate cake inside!

"You can always find me in the drift..."

Mako Mori doodle!

I recently saw Pacific Rim and, ever since doing so, I have been having some feelings. I didn't expect to like it. When it came out it looked very much Not My Thing. I made a flat out assumption that it would be something very clinical, unfeeling, plotless. I like action, I like monsters, but I also like characters and interaction and back story. I want to care about the characters. If they're gonna try to "cancel the apocalypse", I want to be able to root for them.

To be blunt, Pacific Rim kicked ass. When a deadly threat from under the Pacific ocean surfaces, humankind must fight monstrous creatures to save the world. Former pilot, Raleigh Becket (Charlie Hunnam of Queer as Folk fame) is re-recruited to defend the Earth in giant machines, called Jaegers, that can only be operated by a pair of pilots. When operating these machines, the pilots must share a deep connection. Not everyone can pilot these machines and siblings, or other relations, are usually the most "drift compatible". However, after serving with his brother for many years, Raleigh finds himself compatible once again with a trainee, Mako Mori (Rinko Kikuchi).

Pacific Rim fails the Bechdel Test spectacularly, but it should definitely not be dismissed because of this. It's rare to see an action film that doesn't focus on Americans as saviours of the Earth and, furthermore, actually includes a range of cultures, endeavouring to represent POC really well. I was especially excited to see lots of languages featured in the film with subtitles, adding a certain sense of authenticity. I hate when films, that are set in non-English speaking countries, completely disregard that country's native language and was really excited to see the opposite here.

MOST IMPORTANTLY HOWEVER! My main reason to love this film comes down to my favourite character in the film (and, possibly, EVER). Mako Mori is not a marketing afterthought. She's not there as the obligatory female prop to influence young girls to watch it. Nor is she a piece of eye candy. She is Raleigh Becket's peer, she beats the shit out of him at one point and, although she starts out feeling pretty self conscious about her abilities, she proves that she deserves to be a part of the team. She has an interesting back story and relationship with Stacker Pentecost (Idris Elba), Head of the Hong Kong Shatterdome, and Mako's adoptive father. I especially liked that there was no explicit romance between Mako and Raleigh, but hints at what their relationship could become.

I just want to know more about this character and her general bad-assery has inspired a lot of terrible drawings from me.

And guess what? There's going to be a sequel.

The Best Thing I Never Had - Erin Lawless

Formerly published as 'Little White Lies'.

Downloaded on a whim, The Best Thing I Never Had turned out to be a pretty great read. Reminding me slightly of David Nicholls' romantic novel, One Day, the story follows a group of university students in their final year of studying.

 Lawless' insight into university life and beyond felt very on point for me. We meet the gang in February 2012, several years after finishing uni. Miles has just proposed to his long term girlfriend, Nicky, leading to a mass text to all of their friends to spread the good news. However, for Nicky, Sukie, Harriet and Leigha, who lived together at university, a lot has changed and the prospect of being reunited is jarring. Especially for Harriet whose relationship with the rest of her university pals has broken down almost entirely. Flashback to September 2006, the start of her last year of studying, and we discover why. 

As the novel progresses, Adam, Johnny and Miles (Nicky's boyfriend), a group of boys who live down the road, become more prominent. Tensions develop as Leigha develops feeling for Adam,  whilst his best mate, Johnny, falls madly in love with her. Quite the kerfuffle. To make matters worse, Adam's friendship with Harriet grows, leading to some serious rivalry between the girls, with disastrous consequences.

I think one of the main draws to this book was, as mentioned, just how brilliantly it captures university life. The characters must juggle their workloads and budding relationships whilst managing to get pissed on a week night. It truly is a hard life. What's more is that Lawless manages to craft some pretty fantastic characters. Personally, I loved Harriet the best. Becoming one of the more prominent characters of the ensemble, Harriet is quieter than her rowdy girlfriends. She's kind, fiercely loyal, bookish, hard-working, yet somehow effortlessly cool. Lawless has us really feeling for this character, whilst an excellent book boyfriend was made in the form of Adam. He, at first, seems rather superficial, lapping up the attention he gets from Leigha, yet emerges as a really lovely and swoon worthy guy.

Furthermore, I really liked Sukie's character, but felt that she wasn't explored enough at all. Only in the final section of the book, when the narrative returns to the present day as the group start to prepare for Nicky and Miles' big day, do we really begin to understand her character. Similarly with Nicky and Miles. We learn a lot about them in the latter part of the novel but their 2006 story sheds only a small amount of light on what makes them tick as a couple. Nicky's lost dream of living and studying in France seems like a massive afterthought. Considering the couple are so important to bringing the group back together, we don't learn as much about them as I'd personally like.

I must say that I felt an unexpected connection to this novel. I lived in a house full of girls at university for two years, after enduring some smelly (albeit secretly sweet) boys in my first year, and found myself picturing my friends and our house as I made my way through the story. Those girls were and are some of my best friends and so I felt an affinity with this group of female characters and their close friendship with each other. It really made me miss them and the thought of falling out with them (as Harriet does in the novel) is unbearable. I think the novel really taps into a sense of time and place that I feel a lot of readers will be able to recognise.

Overall, this was a really enjoyable read that I recommend to all young romantics out there.
4/5 stars.

'Back to School' Book Haul

So for the first September in about seventeen years, I haven't had to endure my mother singing this to me before I headed off to school/uni. That's because I'm finally out of education! I don't really feel old enough to be in the big bad world just yet so in order to get me through this strange change, I went on a mini book haul in the last week of August to collect some books for my 'Back to School' reading list - because if I pretend I'm not an adult, it won't happen.

Throughout August, I got through a staggering amount of books, thanks mostly to my unemployment and copious amounts of free time. Despite buying lots of books for my kindle, including the eagerly awaited Isla and the Happily Ever After by Stephanie Perkins (which I devoured), I did decide to treat myself to a few paperbacks. A couple of weekends ago, I headed to London for the day with one of my uni friends, who came to visit me. We had a lovely time wandering along the Southbank of London (one of my favourite areas!), eating frozen yoghurt and, to my absolute elation, we found the Southbank Book Market.

Paradise!

 Cue me, dragging my lovely friend along every single row of books.

There was such a brilliant range of genres on offer, I even found a particularly brilliant little book, solely about cats (see above). Which I almost bought. I've never felt such a deep connection to a book in my life. However, it was quite expensive considering a lot of the books were priced around the £2 mark and so couldn't justify spending too much on a book I probably wouldn't read...


It was touch and go for a while but I managed to leave with only one book. Love Story by Erich Segal caught my eye quite early on. I'd heard of the film, starring Ryan O'Neil and Ally McGraw as two lovestruck college students whose relationship is headed for tragedy. I think I'd even seen the end of the film on one of the Sky Movies channels and had heard the iconic song from its soundtrack.

When buying secondhand, I usually try to look for something specific. Maybe a classic book I've been wanting to read or something by an author I really love. But I really can't tell you what drew me to this one having never read anything by this author. It smells like old library books and it's cover is slightly bruised and battered so maybe that was the reason.

First page, including price!

The following week, I found myself , again, perusing the book section of a local shop. There was a pretty decent offer going on paperbacks and, before I knew it, these next two were mine.

The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August by Claire North and Panic by Lauren Oliver

Let me talk about Lauren Oliver for one second...  I've passed her books around a lot of my friends and fangirled about her for so long now that she's fast become one of my favourite writers. I was absolutely gutted when I found out the TV adaptation for Delirium was being abandoned (although secretly glad when I saw the pilot that was released... it was seriously disappointing). However, I'm incredibly excited to read Panic, I'm not entirely sure I get what it's about yet!

As a writer, I just love Oliver's ability to build these worlds. Her stories are very situational as she plays with some really interesting scenarios. What if love was a disease? What if you could relive your final day? Over summer, I read Stephen King's On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft and in it he speaks a lot about how ideas combining various situations would often yield some of the most interesting storylines for him, most notably his novel, Carrie. What would happen if a bullied teenager discovered she had supernatural powers?
As I've not started reading it yet, I don't want to look for any spoilers, so here's the link to the blurb as found on Goodreads.

I also got The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August by Claire North. Again, I wasn't sure what drew me to the book but it was probably the front cover. I know what they say: "Don't judge a book by its cover!" but in a lot of cases, I do. If the design looks appealing, I'm more likely to get it. I've never read anything by Claire North before so I don't know what to expect but if this beautiful and mysterious cover is anything to go by, I'm sure I'll enjoy it. Again, you can find the blurb on Goodreads if you're interested.

So those are the few books I found on my mini book haul to start my first year without school! What are your September reads?

xo

This Blogger's Bookshelf

After returning from university, my entire house has become a mess, filled with my belongings strewn across pretty much every room. In trying to reintroduce a vague sense of order into my life, I have been clearing out my childhood bedroom. I’ve been brutal, chucking a lot of stuff and discovering some absolute gems. Out of date nail polishes, an army of teddies and a vast collection of notebooks filled with stories that have only slightly been plagiarised from other books are just a few of the treasures I have found. But let me tell you, above all, there has been nothing more satisfying than organising my bookshelves. 

It’s been years since I’ve given it a good overhaul and, if I’m honest, I expected myself to be throwing out or donating a lot more books. For some reason, I can’t bring myself to get rid of a lot of them. Just looking at these books, especially the ones I read when I was a child or an early teenager, gives me such a strong sense of time and place. In deciding to keep a lot of the books, I have decided I will make an effort to read as many of them as possible in a bit of a nostalgia tour of my favourite books.

So, without further ado, here is my new and improved bookshelf!

 These are the top two shelves where I decided to put all of my childhood favourites. On the left, we've got a few children's collections along with my treasured set of The Chronicles of Narnia which, I believe, my late grandfather gave me when I was A LOT younger. In the top right, this theme continues along with a more modern set of books I read as a child... Of course I mean the Harry Potter series. Any bookshelf cannot be complete without a trip to Hogwarts...

In the bottom left photo, I decided to lump my collection of what I refer to as 'classics' together. In my head, that means anything before the 1950s. Here you'll find a set of Jane Austen books as well as a stack of novels by a range of authors: Fitzgerald, the Brontës, Orwell, Shelley and lots more. I also fitted in the (very few) plays I have: Top Girls, Romeo & Juliet, A Streetcar Named Desire and a collection of Chekhov.

In the bottom right, I went with a coffee table book/cult classic kind of theme. The three large books are some of my favourites to flick through. Art Now, which I think I nicked from someone, and The Polaroid Book make for excellent lazy day perusal but I especially love Well Read Women by Samantha Hahn which features gorgeous portraits of a selection of famous literary heroines. I will ensure to write an entire blog post about that one in the future because it is truly a beautiful book.

The rest of the shelf consists of the books you always felt like you should read. Lolita, On the Road, Trainspotting, Breakfast at Tiffany's, I feel that the selection of books in this section have made a massive mark on our culture today as modern classics. I've not read all of them on this shelf but I'm making my way... slowly.

The next level of shelves include some far more modern novels. In the top left photo, which shows probably the emptiest section of my bookshelf, I have lumped together a few books which fall under the thriller/mystery genre (as well as a Spanish phrase book...). Here you can see the Millenium series by Stieg Larsson, which I actually started reading YEARS ago. I loved it but stopped reading around half way through the second book (The Girl Who Played With Fire) and, for some reason, have never picked them up again. I definitely need to rectify that. Alongside, I've got a few books by P.D James, though I've never actually read any of them! However, being a big Austen fan, I couldn't exactly resist buying Death Comes to Pemberley. There's also a few others in this section including two (borrowed) novels by William Boyd. I'm currently halfway through Restless and Boyd's writing style is fantastic, I highly recommend him. I am dying to read Any Human Heart after seeing a couple of episodes of it on Channel 4.

In the next box, you will find some of my absolute favourite books. The bottom row are brilliant reads and I tried really hard to colour co-ordinate them but ugh, whatever, too hard. On this shelf there are also some autobiographies and two writing manuals I bought over summer: Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott, which I am very excited to read, and On Writing by Stephen King. I took the latter to Croatia with me and, despite feeling quite unenthusiastic about it, I loved the way King blended his memoir with tips for writers. I honestly feel like I learned a lot from it and it got me wanting to write again, so much so that I bought a new notebook at a supermarket in Dubrovnik so I could start jotting down ideas!

Okay, on the next level, we reach The Teen Years. In the bottom left photo you will find a shrine shelf to Meg Cabot, Queen of my teenage heart and writer of The Princess Diaries. Dreaming that I too could secretly be a Princess, I still absolutely adore this book series along with its top notch adaptation starring Anne Hathaway and Julie Andrews. I don't believe in being "too old" to read any type of book which is why I have no intention to throw any of these (or any in the following shelves) out in the future. 

On the next shelf there are a few more YAs, mainly by Sarra Manning as it would seem, another
author I was especially enthusiastic about in my early teen years. She wrote Dylan, my first true book boyfriend (not counting Harry and Ron, obvs), in her Diary of a Crush series. The entire Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants series by Ann Brashares also makes an appearance. Any book about friendship and magic trousers are fine by me!

Now we're onto the final shelf! What an exhilarating journey this has been! Anyway, I'm slightly ashamed to admit it, but I did place my Twilight collection on the bottom shelf so people wouldn't immediately see it when walking into my room... I, like many a thirteen year old girl, adored Twilight when it first came out. A lot of my friends were reading it and they highly recommended it to me. I bought the first one and was hooked. It was romantic, exciting and there were VAMPIRES. What more could a girl want? But, I think, growing up and realising a lot of problems with the books has developed my general distaste for the franchise (but let's leave that discussion for another day). Next to it, I put a couple of my mum's books by Jill Mansell. I used to really enjoy those books because of Mansell's humour but did find them to be quite repetitive after a while. I'd often find myself reading a new one and feeling as though I'd read it before.

In the final section (as seen in the bottom left photo), there are a few more teen books. I'm really keen to read these again, especially Louise Rennison's Angus Thongs series which always had me giggling! I also found E. Lockhart's The Boyfriend List amongst my piles of books. I vaguely remember reading it a while ago though I can't remember it very well. But since Miss Lockhart wrote my FAVOURITE NOVEL OF 2014, We Were Liars,  I will definitely be giving it a reread in the near future!

Anyway, that's all from my bookshelf. I counted them all and on this bookshelf there are 258 books. Of those I have read 170. I don't think that's too bad! Although, with all the books I'm yet to read and with the ones I intend to reread, I think I've got enough books to last a few weeks... Mind you, I've also got more books dotted around the house and over 500(!) on my Kindle too so maybe I'll be kept busy for much longer than that...

xo