Wednesday 16 January 2013

pet please

I think I need a pet.

I probably need a job first to pay for said pet.

Or a publishing contract.

I think I would like a cat, a dog, a turtle and a sheep.

For starters anyway ( and I don't mean 'starters' as in dinner.)




Friday 11 January 2013

pitch pitch pitch

I am trying to write a pitch for my manuscript The Uncanny Abilities of Philomena Philpott. (You know the novel I wrote that had  a publisher and then didn't.) It's silly because I lost a lot of confidence when the contract fell through with that publisher even though it had absolutely nothing to do with me. Now I am trying to give the manuscript a new home and it looks like a lot of places want a pitch. I don't pitch. I write. I procrastinate. I hide from decisions...but I definitely don't pitch.  I  guess I'll have to become a pitcher though if I want to succeed. I mean Philomena can't waste away in my cyber closet for the rest of her life, can she? That would be unkind.

Tuesday 8 January 2013

If it bends we can kill it....

Today I decided to go to a yoga class after more than a year's break.  It started well. I felt relaxed by the music and the woody smell of incense cones. I even managed to cross my legs without creaking.

Then the teacher came. 


He looked like a shaggy-haired version of Arnold Schwarzenegger but with none of the mercy. It was exhausting and sickening and he spent every few minutes correcting me in every imaginable way. I think in his mind he thought 'ah she has had a break from yoga so she is rusty,' but the truth is I am not very good at yoga. I mean granted I was probably more bendy when I did it more regularly but I don't believe  I ever found any grace or poise. At the end he stopped me and asked me if I had a minute...in a Hollywood movie this would be where the instructor cracks on to the student and they do wildly twisty moves together to sounds of Roxette...but in this reality he took me though a variety of basic poses and explained just out utterly weak my core and legs are....( and something about me needing to suck my belly in.) I left the studio with a grateful smile on my face ( but secretly chanting 'there's no crying in yoga' over and over again.) Actually I was grateful to him for showing me the positions but I know when i go back again I will be just as terrible...Part of me wishes the teachers would just leave me to my terribleness but I suppose for them it is like watching a bad cook butcher a pavlova ...and I suppose they are trying to save me from back trauma as well.
******

O ...and Happy New Year to all