A sort out day

A bit of a strange day. It began with a parcel being delivered. My son, on shutting the front door, said that it was addressed to me but it had the wrong name (right surname, wrong first name). It was from a publisher (I'm not saying who) whose competition I entered but didn't make the shortlist. I decided to open the parcel to see if I could work out what this was about. There was no correspondence just three copies of the same book. Checking inside I found the name of the person the package was addressed to - she had a story published in it. I think this was her prize as a shortlisted contestant.

Is it wrong of me to be miffed? I know mistakes happen but this made me angry, perhaps because it's been such a bad year writing-wise, this kind of rubbed my nose in it. I've sent the publisher an email - I don't think I've quite calmed down. In fact I know I haven't!

Next, I've been searching for something I cut out of a magazine last year - a tip for a home made gift. It should have been with my cookery books, but I've been through everything and it's not there. I even had one of those plastic re-usable water bottles fall on my head as it was balancing on top of the books. That didn't improve my mood and I had a go at the boys about how many they'd accumulated and I had no where to keep them.

Finally, I have two shelves of books, files and writing stuff as well as part of the shelf on the sideboard. I went through all this and have actually thrown some old notebooks out as I am sure everything is on my computer. I need the space, and sometime I will have to go through stuff individually and throw more. At least it's tidier and sorted better. I've picked a few more notebooks to go through and see if I can throw those out. It would be great to keep everything, but I just don't have room.....and no room of my own to work in. I'm considering throwing a lot of my early stuff as I've moved on from that, besides I feel I'm gradually winding down from that manic sender-out of stories and poetry. I want to get on with other things., maybe dig out my art materials and play!

Tomorrow I switch into Christmas mode with Advent services to attend, singing events to take part in, meals to consume and present shopping. (I have actually got all my cards and most presents). The stereo will blast out the usual Christmas hits of years past, as well as carols - Enya's album And Winter Came will be first to be played! If my hubby ever moves his boxes we might even get a Christmas tree up! The course with Live Canon will finish next week and apart from my daily poem that's it for this year.  And this is it for my daily blog for November (yes, I did miss a few days). I hope you've found it interesting and fun. Thanks for reading. Hope to see you again sometime.

#wpad July Challenge - Stationery, friend or fiend

STATIONERY, FRIEND OR FIEND

A selection of notelets/cards I could lay my hands on

I love notelets and cards.  The trouble is that I write too much to fit on one, so I begin with a notelet or card and then move over to paper.  Now I used to enjoy collecting different designs of writing paper but then I went all green and began buying recycled which was plain and rather boring.  So I brightened it up with felt pen designs or rubber stamps.  Years ago I even used some ink drawings I'd done (copied from art books), had them photo reduced and made into notelets.  I still have some.

However, when I switch to paper what I end up using is from old exercise books that the kids had at school. Before they got thrown away I'd rip out the unused sheets.  The last of my kids left school/college three years ago and I'm still using them!  I feel embarrassed turning up for a writing class with my son's name and English Book written on it!  Ah! but I hate waste.

My ink drawn notelets

The books I write in (when I'm not using up leftovers and odd envelopes) tend to be Pukka Pad recycled spiral bound A4 notebooks.  I love them.  Hubby bought me two hard backed A4 notebooks for Christmas but they don't bend well. They are not meant to but I managed it!

I hate the Reporter notebooks - so damn confusing, I can never find where I am!  I spend ages flipping the pages to find a poem, find the start then can't find the end!  So I don't use them anymore.  I sometimes use a smaller notebook but I prefer A4 so I can spread my thoughts out and if necessary rip the page out if jottings are getting too many edits over pages and I don't want to keep turning back.

When I'm outside in the garden I use a board underneath  (hubby's idea) so that the notebook (the one that isn't hard back) stays rigid.  You following me so far?  Keep up!

You can never have enough notebooks and paper (likewise pens and pencils).  My main problem is that I usually have at least two on the go and still haven't made an index of where certain poems are.  They are on my laptop but the original with all edits (apart from the ones I make on the laptop at the last minute) are there.  One of these days I WILL sort it all out.

I also have a box file with the notebooks in it (but that's now full) and that also includes odd sheets of typed poems and other writing related stuff.

My shelf is a mess, again, and I need to sort that sometime.  It contain all my files on writing, course work and a lot else beside, including rather too many files full of Art of Knitting magazines.  When will I ever have time to move beyond scarf knitting!

My writing stuff plus other bits!