Conquering The Fear of Failure - Bit of Inspiraton!

Our doubts are traitors, and make us lose the good we oft might win, by fearing to attempt.

William Shakespeare

Doggy Cool

Our Cooling Dog!

I guess we all need to cool down sometimes!   

(But he better not stay out on Christmas night!) 

See great poem below not written by yours truly,

especially for all you Santa's helpers out there that picked up a dog from one of Santa's Gift Shelters!

Christmas Returns

 Santa comes quietly long before dawn
While shops are still busy and lights are still on
While dinners are simmering and kitchens are warm
And children count presents they'll open by morn.

He slips past the trees and the windows aglow
Through the gate to the back yard as icy winds blow to find
the pup that he brought last year chained up in the snow and
kneeling he whispers, "Are you ready to go?"

There are too many stops like this one tonight
Before the beginning of his regular flight
He leaves not a note or a footprint in sight
Just an unbuckled collar on a cold Christmas night.

 ~ winner of the Maxwell Award

Novel Wordcount Celebration

90K words at long last!  Yippee!!!

Just another 10K to go!

Soundings for Simon

The Soundings Reading has now been postponed until the 13th December due to the weather conditions.

'Soundings for Simon' will take place on  Monday 6th of December at 7pm

Upstairs in the Bad Ass Café, Temple Bar, Dublin.

Some of Ireland's best poets will read their favourite poem from 'Soundings', say a few words on what it meant to them and then respond with some of their own work.

Tickets at the door €10. All proceeds will go towards the Simon Community.

Finger food and wine are free.
The line up is fantastic and will include:

Theo Dorgan
Mary O' Donnell
Maggie O' Dwyer
Padraig J Daly
Tom Conaty
Celia de Fréine

A great event and a great charity.  Not one to be missed!!!

Poetry Bus Poem - Rebellion

Poetry bus this week is being driven by Kat @ http://hyggedigter.blogspot.com/  And a mighty interesting challenge she has set for us all. 

The idea was to write something rhyming and humorous about our favourite pub or if not a pub, a restaurant.  Anyhow, I thought long and hard, and as with most good ideas, once you stop thinking too much, you find one! So here is the story and the  poem!!

Image from the mid fifties

One part of the house that we live in used to be a public house back in the late part of the 18th century, records go back as far as about 1750 (see image above from about sixty years ago).  Like all good things, it has survived the test of time, even if it isn't a public house anymore.

But back in 1803 when Robert Emmet led his failed Rebellion in Dublin, running from the authorities he and the rebels hid out in a glade near our house, and the following morning they visited the then public house because the owner William Kearney was a known supporter of the cause.  There is no doubt that part of the course of history would have been changed had it not been for the quick thinking of Mrs Kearney when the house was surrounded by Yeomen.

Robert Emmet

Anyway, here is said poem!

Rebellion

They lay in the glen those men in their green,

hoping to God that they wouldn’t be seen.

The moon in the heavens looked down on the night,

as chilled from the air, they wrapped up out of sight.

In morn they arose, refreshed anew,

And wanted to taste some parliamentarian brew.

Kearney a rebel from ‘98,

Opened his door, and bid them to haste.

Emmet and Devlin quietly they spoke,

in secret tones of true rebel folk.

But then Robinson a constable came in for some beer,

From him, the strangers had something to fear.

Had it not been for Kearney he’d have given up his life,

As the men with their blunderbusses had some might.

But still on their tracks was the enemy Robert Shaw,

who wanted his glory for killing an outlaw.

Whilst hid in the loft of the small walled house,

They kept an eye out, huddled as quiet as a mouse.

Across the valley from their hideout they saw,

Ten score men and more, wanting them by the law.

The wife of Kearney she was real quick,

Scared the yeomen off without a stick.

For she gave them a yarn that saved the day,

Leaving Arthur Devlin with the last word to say.

'My blunderbuss was loaded, ready good and fair,

Shaw was lucky his family wasn’t made barren of heir'.

Away the brave men parted from their upper mountain glade,

To find other hideouts and seek some more aid.

Before the men left, Emmet gave Kearney his coat,

In thanks for what he had done, to help him the most.

No sooner did the rebels leave the public house for the day,

But Mrs Kearney piped up ‘no bloody way’.

It was she after all, who'd saved the men where they laid,

And a rebel’s coat, was the high price to be paid.

The lady she looked very spiff in her green,

But sadly of course, she could never be seen!

Thought for the Weekend - Phyllis Diller

Early hours!

Okay someone finally ate the Marshmallow, and did their best on the cars last night as well!!

Sun on its way!

So in continence of the snow and anti-housework theme for the coming weekend, here is a quote from someone that you youngsters out these will not remember - Phyllis Diller!!!!

'Cleaning your house while your kids are still growing is like shoveling the walk before it stops snowing'  -

Phyllis Diller

Food for Thought

Anyone for a snow marshmallow? 

(we won't be having coffee at this table anytime soon with more snow forecast!)

Novel - THE BIG FREEZE

Anyone who was unlucky enough to make contact with me over the last few days either by phone or email, has already had to listen to all my woes about life and novel writing  through the current big freeze!!! 

My Life
Due to a series of errors we ended up running out of heating oil on Saturday morning once the BIG FREEZE had taken hold.  Coincidentally as it happens the power also went on Saturday, meaning that along with no heat (other than the good old fashioned fire), we had no electricity, and of course no phone.  Then later that day the water went, and yes I know it is my own fault for choosing to live up in the mountains!!!  Anyhow by Saturday evening the power was back on, so Xfactor could be watched on tv, then on Sunday morning, the water too decided to be kind, which meant we could at least have showers even if the bathroom was in Siberia. 

Just to extend the suffering, the oil company didn't deliver the 'failed oil delivery' from Friday on Monday either, as the 'Man' went home without making 3 deliveries.  Now I know the real reason why the 'Man' went home was that he just did not want to drive up the hill in the snow!  Even though the roads were fine.

After more snow last night, any chance of an oil delivery in the foreseeable future was well and truly put to bed, which means that we are going to be without heating in one of the coldest spells ever recorded for November, and yes you have guessed it, in one of the coldest part of the country, the east, which is especially cold on high ground!!!

The Novel
The Novel has been a bit like the oil story in its rather trying failure at delivery.  Don't get me wrong, I worked hard last week, and despite being told by many to ignore the revised plot line and just keep moving forward, I did the very opposite.  It was really tough spending hours on chapter after chapter with words falling off the page instead of on to it.  We also had a family birthday which meant I was forced to do some food shopping, (just as well with the snow making us housebound), cooking and baking, safe in the knowledge that after the weekend, Monday would soon be here and my word mountain would rise again.  This did not happen!  Firstly I had lost nearly 1,000 words with plot revision over the previous days, then I had a miscalculation, reducing the word count by another 300 words.  When I finally did write on Monday, I spent 3 hours fixing an opening paragraph that I still hate, so I was devastated.

I moaned to anyone that wanted to listen and even those that didn't want to listen, because basically all I wanted to do was moan.  I was giving up, I had enough.  Sane people told me to walk away, to get a real life, with real people and real things, something nothing to do with murder, or madness, or whatever else is on the pages of my 'would be novel'. 

But did I take the advice?  Of course not!  So I went back to fixing the blasted thing and finally I got to a place this evening that I had completely forgotten about, being so long since I had last been there. 'A NEW CHAPTER' finally got started, and the words came out.  Some good, some bad, but all of them NEW!!!

Anyhow after about 6 days of whatever it was that I had been through, I managed to add in an extra couple of hundred words, which is pretty amazing seeing as how I lost 1,300 on rewrites and miscalculations.

So like the power and water going and eventually coming back, so too did the words, however temporary it might be.  Maybe the novel, like the oil will arrive sometime in the foreseeable future.  And just maybe, I might get to live a normal life again!!!

Thought for the Weekend - Joan Rivers

Well more of a laugh than a thought.

She might not be everyones cup of tea, but she makes me smile. 

Quote from the very funny Joan Rivers!

'I hate housework. You make the beds, you do the dishes and six months later you have to start all over again.'

Have a great Weekend!

Donoghue Scoops Top Award

'Room', the bestselling novel by Emma Donoghue which just missed out on the Man Booker Prize last month, has taken the Novel of the Year prize at the Bord Gais Energy Irish Book Awards 2010.

Emma Donoghue's winning novel was inspired by the case of Josef Fritzl who locked his daughter in the basement for 24 years. and has been in the bestseller lists for the past three months.

It tells the story of a boy and his mother who are held in a one-room garden shed.

The five-year-old boy thinks the locked room he lives in is the whole world because his mother has never told him about the outside. At night the boy hides in the wardrobe when Old Nick brings food and then makes the bed creak with his mother.

Despite the dark subject matter, the book is ultimately uplifting and the boy and his mother eventually escape.

"I was driving along when 'Room' came to me in a flash," Donoghue says. "I realised that if such a story were told from the child's point of view, it would not be a horror or sob story, but a journey from one world to another.

Originally from Dublin, but now living in Canada, Donoghue is best known for her historical novels.

Read our own book club review of 'Room'
under this month's  Popular Posts.

 You will see we are a tough bunch!!

Full Short List 2010

Let the Great World Spin, Colum McCann, Bloomsbury
Brooklyn, Colm Toibin, Viking
Skippy Dies, Paul Murray, Hamish Hamilton
Ghost Light, Joseph O’Connor, Harvill Secker
The Dead Republic, Roddy Doyle, Cape
Room, Emma Donoghue, Pan Macmillan