Following on from last week’s post and our learnings from Nalini’s book launch and talk, we have come to the sad realisation that if we don’t meet weekly, our writing production tends to slump. We know we need to write every day but somehow life intervenes and we just don’t make the time for it.
Toddlers and Tiaras is my favourite activity when I get home from work (my new temporary contract with a fabulous company – sadly with a 7am start which means by writing time I’m about to head off to bed…) car crash TV I know but it helps me unwind, DON’T JUDGE ME! Lisa has many activities before, during and after work which all take away from our collective writing time. In fact, she has so many responsibilities that I’m amazed she even has time to sleep, let alone write!
However, we have undertaken to aim to write at least half an hour each day – which means that once we actually get going, at least an hour or two, so we hope to have the last book in our ‘siblings trilogy’ done and dusted in quick order. Or by the end of the year anyway…
So this is our aim, but we thought we would show you some of the other creative things that we do.
10 year old birthday cakes:
9 year old chocolate chippie initiative (with unbelievably good berry chocolate brownies in the background):
We also actually read actual books written by other people…Lisa has been reading three different books this week, Allegiance of Honour (by our Nalini of course), The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August (by Claire North) and The Boys in the Boat (by Daniel James Brown). She’s just finished listening to the audiobooks of “Rivers of London” by Ben Aaronovitch for the second time. She mainly reads or listens on the train on the way to work and occasionally in the fifteen minutes before going to sleep at night.
As for me, my only reading time is when I drag my lazy arse to the gym – have to have some distraction on the treadmill! So I tend to stick to light reading – although I have been enjoying Undraland (by Mary E. Twomey) and How to Be Dead, Books 1 and 2 (by Dave Turner). When I do manage to get to the gym I also listen to podcasts from Stuff.com, particularly Stuff You Missed in History Class,Stuff You Should Know and of course, Stuff they Don’t Want You to Know and Stuff You Should Know.
All in all, our conclusion is that we need to actually make writing our own stories our priority, rather than reading someone else’s creation (although that’s always fun, for both of us!), or getting distracted by other projects.
What we’d love to know is, what do you read? What other things do you do to distract yourself from the things you know you should be doing? If you confess to the shame of Toddlers and Tiaras, then I think I might just love you forever…
We look forward to hearing from you 🙂 x
Emily Morgan 