80 Post Challenge – Post 56

Posted on March 29, 2012 by Ileandra Young

Where is a great place to get breakfast?

MUM’S HOUSE!!!

^_^ Yeah, what can I say? I’m an incredible fan of my mum and even though breakfast generally consists of whatever I can pull out of the cupboard when I’m there, its the company that makes it a great place. Of course if she’s in the mood for it, a cooked breakfast will happen and that is all sorts of great!

I remember Crimbo 2011; waking up and scarfing a cup of tea before heading to church – with far less protest than usual, it must be said. Then we came back, enjoying the fact that there was no snow (unlike the year before; wow!) and I was thrilled to realise that we were having a full cooked breakfast.

Now… for those of you who don’t know, my parents are Jamaican, so even though I say cooked breakfast, I’m not talking about that ‘Full English’ gunk you’ll get in cafés and restaurants. Yeah, yeah, sausages and bacon are nice enough, but who the hell thought black pudding was a good idea?! Yuuuuuuuuuuuk! Anyway… I digress… a cooked breakfast at Mum’s place will often consist of the following nummy treats:

  1. Bacon
  2. Sausage
  3. Hard-dough bread
  4. Bun and/or bullah cake (preferably bullah if I get my way)
  5. Fried plantain
  6. Ackee and saltfish (dependant on mood)
  7. Fried dumplings (and sometimes boiled ones too)
  8. Good, strong tea
  9. Some form of sweet fruit juice thing
  10. As much brown sauce as I can handle!

Yeah… now who wouldn’t want that?!
I wish, oh I WISH I had a picture of this sort of stuff, but I’m not one of those folks who splatters Facebook with pictures of food (what’s all that about by the way?!). So I didn’t take any pictures last Christmas.

Don’t worry though; I guess this Christmas will be a very different one and, if I get my way, I may be able to sweetly ask for at least a couple of those treats if Mum comes to visit. Heh, fingers crossed!

 

 

 

 

My 80 Post Challenge is brought to you with help from Tom Slatin’s 80 Journal Writing Prompts.

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Patience

Posted on March 27, 2012 by Ileandra Young

Patience.
Yeah, I have none.
Fact.

I look into the world and see all the wicked-awesome things out there and think ‘I want it now!’
Prams, cots, and bottles? Want to buy them now!
Maternity leave? Want to start it now!
My birthday? Want it to come now!
Visit from my Mum and sister? Want them here now!
My new kids? Want to meet them now! -Though I realise that at this point, it would be less than ideal for them to show up, since they’d spend the first weeks of their lives in an incubator with tubes up their noses.

All these things I see and want just make me twitchy and irritable because I have to wait for them to come to me like a good little girl. I don’t wait, to be fair; I piss and moan just like everybody else – probably a little louder than the average person too. But, when the universe tells me that it makes no difference what I want, I usually begin calm down.

Even with writing….
I want to be published. I want to be published right now! I want to see my words available to buy on the internet and see my name on the spine of physical paper books. I want to feel the print and the pages between my fingers and know that I wrote this!!!

And yet I know that this is the one thing (okay, one of many things) that I can’t afford to rush. It won’t do me any favours if I do. I’ll end up with scrappy, poorly edited, poorly written, poorly arranged work that readers will resent paying money for in the long run. Not only that, but I would have sold myself short and effectively sabotaged any chance I might have had at experiencing some form of success.

Writing takes time. Editing takes time. Publishing takes time. Perhaps, with self publishing, the process takes less time than usual (especially via the traditional route) but if you want to do it properly, you have to be patience.

Good things come to those who wait.

If you’re going to do something at all, take the time to do it well.

Both very sage and worthwhile pieces of advice. I’ve no idea who wrote/came up with them, but I try to keep those simple ideas in the back of my mind every day.

I’m editing one of my erotic short stories at the moment. I might have mentioned it before; its called ‘The First Time.’ The piece has featured in a couple of Six Sentence Sunday posts and was a story that I thought was ready for submissions. Oh how wrong I was! I’ve picked it up and looked at the first page and felt a horrible cringe grip my spine. Not to say that the writing or the story was awful, but it was still so… raw. It needed polish, it needed love and care and tender attention to smooth off those rough edges and make the words flow smoothly off the tongue. I don’t think I had even read it aloud before picking it up a few days ago.

That is what impatience does.

Now I’m glad I had the sense to look at the piece again before doing anything with it, but that, as much as anything else is a message to me that I need to slow the hell down and be patient.

I’m only 27… I have plenty of time. Rushing is not worth shooting myself in the foot and later realising that I’ve ruined my chance at being taken seriously. After all these years of striving for publication nothing is worth that.

So… let’s see if I can take a tip from Take That:

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Bonus Blog: Baby Shoppin’

Posted on March 26, 2012 by Ileandra Young

So this is one of those little posts that I just have to put out there because my glee-meter might explode if I don’t.

I had an urge at the weekend. An urge which resulted in me telling Dave that I wanted to buy something for the babies. Even if it was small. I didn’t even really care what it was so long as it was something for them and not for me. Something I had bought. That part was and is really important to me.

So we mooched around town for a while and did every except that, until it was almost time to go home. And when I reminded him, Dave suggested Marks and Spencers.

I’d never considered them before, but they were right across the street from where we were sitting and I was in a good enough mood to forgive my usual distrust of their prices. Besides, you get the quality in exchange, don’t you?

So we went in, headed straight for the back and after some discussion, this is what I bought:Five baby vests, assorted colours.I’ve pretty much been staring at them ever since. Occasionally stroking the fabric and whispering ‘Baaaabies….!’ like a demented freak.

I’m bloody glad my maternity leave starts soon; I’m not sure how much more I can cope with. It seems now that I’ve got the bug and, if I’m not careful, the guys at work this week are going to go slightly nuts trying to block out my baby-brained babbling.

In advance, guys, I apologise. I really, really do.

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Six Sentence Sunday 25/03 (7)

Posted on March 25, 2012 by Ileandra Young

Well! Last week caused such interest (thank you everybody!!! *very, very happy face*) that I can’t do anything other than give you the next six sentences of ‘The First Time.’

Let me know what you think, peeps. ^_^

“Are you awake?”

The shape rolled over, a corner of the sheets sliding back over smooth skin to reveal a single erect nipple, dark and pebble hard. I stared, thankful for the open curtains and the moonlight which streamed through; painting the object of my longing pale silver.

My mouth grew dry.

“I’m awake,” she said. And then; “its cold, Vicky, come to bed.”

So… there we are!

Does that perhaps help to explain a little of the panic, or give you even more to think about? Hehee, more next week, and for now I’ll leave you in the hands of a wonderful selection of writers also taking part in Six Sentence Sunday. Click the banner to find their work.

Six Sentence Sunday

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The Community Of Writers

Posted on March 24, 2012 by Ileandra Young

I’ve been doing lots of reading recently. Its a lot easier to cuddle up in bed with the laptop than it is to sit up at my desktop and do a lot of scribbling. That’s why I’m rather behind right now, but that’s not what we’re talking about here.

I’ve been doing a lot of reading of other people’s blogs and columns and websites, trying to get in touch with the wider writing community. There are a lot of us, I mean a LOT of us and its waaaaaaaaaaaaaaay more than I ever anticipated. The Writing Community as I will now call it, is vast and is comprised (mostly) of very kind, welcoming and talented people who are as eager to see others win as they are to see themselves do so. This is because these people understand that one person’s victory (particularly in indie publishing) is a victory for everybody!

That is a wonderful attitude, so I’d just like to take a second to say THANK YOU to everybody I’ve encountered on Twitter, Facebook and various blogs (including those crazy enough to follow this blog) who have shown that community spirit. It means more to me than I have space to describe and I’m grateful to every single one of you. ^_^

Anyway…! While I was reading, I noticed lots and lots of ‘how to’ posts and ‘dos and don’ts’ posts. I also found lots of interesting, thought provoking posts that have either made me think differently about plans I had for myself, or something I was writing at the time. There are tonnes of these all over the internet, some better than others, but I just wanted to take a moment to write about those posts that have carved out a little space in my mind in recent weeks, either for their advice, their style, their humour, or the way they made me tremble in my boots!

Nick Mamatas – Ten Bits of Advice Writers Should Stop Giving Aspiring Writers

Roz Morris – (Nail Your Novel) – Why playing safe in publishing is riskier than ever

Sarah Baughman – (Write It Sideways) – 4 Writing Routines You Can Live With

fantasywriter91 – The Depths of a Villain

Craig Hallam – (Steel City Writers) – Writers: Are you ready?

Jeff Bennington – Ten Crazy Ways to Improve Your Writing

Cheryl Reif – (How to Thrive on the Writer’s Road) – 25 Inspiration Sources for the Discouraged Writer

Richard White – (Guest at Novel Publicity) – For the love of all that is holy, please hire a professional editor before self publishing

And this is by no means an exhaustive list! This exercise tells me that I need to do better at using the ‘favourite’ button on my twitter feed, because some of the ones I was hoping to find I can’t seem to locate right now. 😦

Anyway, I wanted to point out these ones because I think you guys should read them too. There is some conflicting advice/opinions in some of these, but that’s part of the point. After all, everyone has a different experience and its through sharing all those experiences that we get the best out of it. I’m also putting these posts here as a reminder to myself that if and when I can, I would like to do something similar to help the Writing Community that has done so much for me in the last two years.

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