I’ve been putting off writing this blogpost. It feels a little like pinning down a butterfly. Flying around it creates wonderful glimpses of colour but I know if I don’t pin it down, it will flutter on its way and the memory of it will fade. I attended a poetry workshop in the local university a few weeks ago. It’s the first time to my knowledge that an English-language poetry workshop has been held so I jumped at the chance Click for more
Category: Being
Falling Off the Wagon
It’s not been long. I’ve only been on the wagon (that would be the writing and blogging wagon) for the last month. I can already feel I’m flagging. Now I could say it started last week when I failed to get a post up, but that would be denying the scale of the problem. It probably began before that when I spent a day idling and feeling blue. I did not write the two posts I had planned and I Click for more
An Uncomfortable Truth
This post transported me back to the early days after moving to this town. When it was all new and foreign and different. We wanted out. We were not going to have children here, not going to buy a house here, definitely not going to send the kids to school here. Twelve years later here we are. Still here. The town has changed in some ways; it’s a little prettier, has sprawled and is more crowded. There are signs of community at Click for more
Outlining the Plan
One of the things that aids a good procrastinator, sorry I mean distracts a good writer, is that there is endless debate about the best way to go about writing. So first you must decide if you are a planner or not. This refers to whether you will plan your manuscript to the last comma before setting pen to paper or whether you just sit down and let it all flow freely. I’m not sure either of these extremes really Click for more
Words on the page…
Anyone who mentions how many thousand words they throw out before breakfast, anyone at all on the #amwriting hashtag, any completely unhelpful “10 great writers who wrote prolifically” get THE LOOK from a not-writer. The one that says – I’m trying to be cool here but the truth is I’m jealous and will now resort to making personal comments because my argument really is that weak. So why not just write? You’ve got these ideas you say, characters and Click for more
Oh Well!
A few days ago I came across a post by Chuck Wendig that summed up a quandary I’ve been in lately. When I say came across I actually mean read in my Feedly because I follow his blog. But that sounds boringly practical, so instead imagine me wandering aimlessly through the wild grasses of the internet before stumbling over the tree stump of enlightenment. The post just consisted of the flowchart below… And I was forced, as all devious flowcharts force Click for more
Global Friends
A few months ago I participated in a six-week workshop called SUM-it UP run by Global Niche. I’ve known Anastasia and Tara, founders of Global Niche, for many years. We have something in common as wives who followed Turkish men home. The course itself looked deceptively simple. Six weeks of working through visions and goals, to what online platforms you want to present these on, to creating and action plan and implementing it. Easy. But somewhere along the line it Click for more
I’d like to thank…
I’ve been struggling a little lately with blogging. It’s into the New Year and yet there are no new posts, several reviews waiting to be written and an air of hesitation prevails. So it was a terrific boost when Sezin Koehler nominated me as a Very Inspiring Blogger. Sezin is a terrific wonderful amazing sister who I’ve virtually known for ages. She’s lived all around the world and is now back in the US, just about surviving life in small-town Florida. She’s Click for more
Translating a Holiday
One of the things that regularly drives me distracted is the constant mixing up of Christmas and New Years in Turkey. I’ve even mentioned it before. But my perspective is changing, a little, with time. First there’s the fact that many of the traditions associated with Christmas actually came from other festivals. The date of the 25th December was specifically chosen so the early Church could ‘compete’ with several other pagan festivals that feel at this time of year. The Click for more
Grateful
“The ESSENCE of learning to be GRATEFUL is to learn to WANT what you HAVE.” Maureen Gaffney – Flourishing