Friday is a good day to ponder one's reading over the past week. Now that I am getting a tad more used to reading on the bus to-and-from work, I'm whipping out a novel as soon as I take my seat. Not so great on the winding bits, but on the straight roads, I'm good. I'm currently reading Jennifer Probst's The Marriage Bargain , because I read her wonderful writing book, Write Naked and her amazing story of how The Marriage Bargain became a NYT Bestseller, and ended up selling for a million bucks. (Apologies if I've got that order wrong.) This just does not happen for category-length books!  The author's own fairy tale story, to be sure. Wonderful characterisation and dialogue in the novel, too. On the non-fiction front I am making my way through Judging Shaw by Fintan O'Toole; it's a look at George Bernard Shaw and his GBS brand. There is an exhibition on GBS coming to New Zealand next month so I'm getting up to speed on this fascinating ma

I had a book voucher to spend recently and while browsing, decided to buy The Bullet Journal book. I got a bullet journal last year but I think I need to up my bujo game, hence the book. I also bought a copy of The Winners Bible by Dr Kerry Spackman, a New Zealander who coaches high performing athletes, among others, on how to improve performance. My brother had recommended the book a while back and when I saw it, I figured I’d give it a go. Its an interesting book which I am making my way through and taking notes, but today I was pondering a section he calls 'intrinsic drivers'. That is, those reasons for doing things. It's all about digging deep within yourself to figure stuff out. He asks you to list things you like doing and then examine why you like them. Reading, of course, figures and I thought it was really interesting to ponder just why I like reading a novel, romance or any other genre. Straight away I know that with romance I like the happy ending and th

I thought my latest book, The Heart of Matthew McLeod , was done when I read it through and realised, it so wasn't. How depressing. The first couple of chapters, despite a lot of work on them, just weren't working at all. They were disastrous. They were stilted, dull, boring, unexciting, amateurish, lame..... I could barely read on, so sure as heck, no one else was going to bother, and put themselves through that torture. What is a writer to do when their world is about to fall apart around them, when all that work is just utter crap? What? Pondering what to do, it came to me as I struggled to get to sleep one night and the solution was simple. I could cut the first three chapters . The more I thought about it, the more it made sense. A fair bit of rewriting involved to be fair, but it may be the answer. I really think it will work. So while it's not back to square one as such, it is back to the re-writing as I figure it all out. My writing year to date has not g

Traditional Kiwi cereal! Am taking a break from the dreaded editing of a manuscript that will be the death of me. Anyhoo.... I just spent a nice weekend in my home town, visiting my mother, who now lives in a rest home. I go down every couple of weeks and look forward to giving mum a day or two out-and-about. It may be temporary, her living there, it might not be, but I have the utmost respect for the caring and nursing staff who work with older people. One of the carers at the home gets Mum to dress in nice outfits and put on jewellery when she goes out with us. The other day when I went to get her to take her out, she was dressed up, even wearing make up and looked really, really good. Plus it made her happy. When I was a teenager I worked as a kitchen hand in a rest home, and I enjoyed it. I liked the setting up the dining room for the meals, and the clearing up after, and working with the guy who washed the dishes and the chef. That was where I first saw people eating We