Well yes. I suppose I should be looking on the bright side. And most of the time I can. But it is amazing how isolating being stuck home alone with an injury is. When you have the flu/migraine/stomach bug (delete as applicable) your brain all but shuts down. You’re capable of sleep and watching TV and not much else. Your needs are pretty much water, soup and paracetamol. You still get fed up, but it seems much easier to accept that you can’t do a thing, and your brain doesn’t fully function or really care what is going on as long as you are as comfortable as possible.

But this is possibly the first time in my life I’ve realised how much I take everyday things for granted. My brain is still in full working order, so when my sister kindly offers to go shopping instead of a simple list, she gets instructions like “child size fromage frais, whatever is on offer, but not Nestle!” I decided that annotating it with the questions I would ask myself is perhaps going a step too far (and could result in my sister abandoning me).Going through my shopping list I realise just how many thoughts my brain goes through on the average trip to Sainsburys.  I don’t just pick stuff up, it seems everything from the sell by dates of houmous to the price vs quality of tomatoes makes my supermarket shops more complex than the average persons. Decisions take into account price, brand, quality, shelf life, ethical issues and in a different order or ranking of importance for different products. It’s probably why, despite not having a car and struggling on the bus, I have never fully embraced online supermarket shopping.

I have realised my control freakery runs deep. There are plenty of things in life I can let go of. Day to day I can seem positively normal, I don’t tend to get too precious about things at work, I don’t have any silly rules in my home and the way other people live their lives is up to them. On the surface I have relinquished the need for control of everything because trying to be in control when other people are involved is no fun. It’s much better to be relaxed there and save the control freak for things I don’t have to involve other people in like buying food, getting from A to B, and posting letters. Except suddenly I find myself trapped at home unable to control the details of my life that hold my secrets of weird, demanding and high maintenance behaviour. I love being independent, because in that independence I can be me, with all my crazy ways of doing things, without having to impact or rely on anyone else. It’s like having my secret superhero power taken away from me. And that makes me cry. And moan.

Saying that I am getting lots of writing time in. And now that life is back on track, I am working on pieces to pitch in the coming months. I am appreciating that for a brief few days if I suddenly get an idea I can just stop everything and start writing. I don’t have to scribble something on a post it and hope that evening I’ll have time to get back to it.

As as I’m getting back to thinking about getting my writing published I did think it was a good time to have a look back at my goals from January 1st 2010. The first five months of the year I’ve not really accomplished huge amounts on the list (though the dating bit seems on track!) but I have done so much more besides, that should mean I can get on with so much more in the next seven months.

Hopefully I’ll be back on my feet in no time at all so I can get on with having lots of energy, doing lots of stuff and stop having to explain the way my mind works when it comes to the weekly shop!

It’s been a busy couple of weeks and amongst everything else I had intended to update you on my writing and politics a bit earlier. I had a whole blog conjured up with my thoughts on Alice in Wonderland (in IMAX 3D of course and it was brilliant in my opinion!). There was ice skating, which was blog worthy as I didn’t fall over even once. Not to mention other bits and bobs that have been happening in the wider world and deserve comment. But all of this has been in my head rather than on the page. I even missed blogging on the one year anniversary of changing over to WordPress and making www.helenthornber.com a dedicated blog. There are a couple of blogs that I managed to draft so hopefully they will see the light of day in the next week.

In some ways I’m pleased that I’ve had the interruption though. Enough to prove to myself that the online world isn’t the only one in which I reside. Sometimes the real world gets busy and the online world has to take some time out. I’m feeling the need to escape from communication for a few days, especially as that’s the day job too these days. Maybe later in the year I’ll make it out of the country to visit a friend or two, giving me an excuse to leave my laptop behind and my phone switched off.

If you read ‘Party Animal‘ you’ll know I’ve decided to dip my toe in the world of politics. I haven’t joined any party yet. To be honest the literature coming through my door at the moment is not much more than parties bitching against each other. The kind of thing that reinforces my desire to get into politics and create some change, because sniping at each other is just a waste of taxpayers money. Most of us don’t trust the people that are meant to represent our views and make decisions on our behalves. That’s no state for a democracy to be in. Though I’d love to see parties working together, a great start would be them simply  telling us more about what they’ve achieved and what they plan to do next. I think I’d like to sit back and observe until after the general election, see how the different parties play it locally and nationally.

I also might seem a bit quiet on the writing front too. I’ve not given up. Since I decided to pursue my writing professionally my ideas have evolved from there. Hopefully getting involved with politics will give me some more focus to writing feature and opinion based stuff that I can look at getting published elsewhere. That puts a redesign of my blog on hold. For the time being the format of my blog won’t be changing, you’ll still get me, plus some opinion and a bit of communications and marketing talk too.

Until next time… (I promise it won’t be too long!)

On the other hand I have a lot to be grateful for. I did get another job. I still have a roof over my head. I didn’t lose everything because of it. But I am finally angry at the chances I didn’t get. The opportunity to realise what was happening and defend myself. The opportunity to make a complaint and get justice. The opportunity to make my own decision about when I left Royal Mail. By the time I understood I was being bullied it was too late. Perhaps my biggest problem in moving on is that I haven’t got angry. Maybe getting angry and feeling low is a way of letting go of some of the negative emotion that has been bottled up this past year.

Anyway Friday 1st January 2010 is a new day of a new year of a new decade (there goes that decimal system again!) I decided to do a positive thing involving post it notes and pretty coloured pens. And looking forward.

It’s something I first did on a Graduate Works programme with the fabulous Will & Rupert. The general premise is that you get post it notes and pens and write down all the things you’d like to achieve or do in life. However crazy or unrealistic they seem. Or however dull and mundane. But all the things you want to do. You then narrow them down to the things to REALLY want to do and stick them on a big piece of paper in any way you want. I go for the vaguely chronological approach & have arrows and doodles… but when I did it with the Royal Mail Grads there were plenty of different interpretations.

The next steps are to draw up a three year plan. And then a more detailed one year plan with achievable goals (you know… the SMART ones!) Of course I haven’t quite done it like that this time. I’ve skipped the three year bit because to be honest I’m not quite sure where along my time line I will be by then. I decided a while ago to ditch the new years resolutions. Nothing new and crazy here. Just building on each years successes and move on to the next step in achieving my ambitions.

In 2009 the things I contributed to meeting my goals were:
* Started teaching my niece Spanish
* Did lots of internet dating
* Blogged regularly (and hoped people read it!)

Thanks to my NaNoWriMo attempt I also realised that I really wanted to go into Journalism. I might pursue fiction in later years, but it isn’t my priority right now.

So in 2010 I will…
* Continue to teach my niece(s) Spanish
* Complete the Michel Thomas Spanish CDs (I’ve made it up to CD5 in the past!)
* Continue to blog
* Submit pieces to paper/magazines both in print and online
* Get my writing published (and hopefully get paid, but that is really a 2011 goal!)
* Keep an eye out for the knight in shining armour
* Go on the dates I postponed due to illness at the end of 2009…
* …but give internet dating a break for a while. It’s quite tiring!

2010 has to be better than 2009. Friends and family are so important to making it that way. During the past year I’ve been a bit of a hermit at times. I hope that my many cancelled trips to London and other places haven’t left everyone thinking I’ve fallen off the face of the earth. Over Christmas I realised how wonderful it is to be around people who know you well and who can share your dreams with you. And in 2010 I’ll make so much more effort to see the people who bring a smile to my face and pick me up when I’m down.

That’s enough soppiness for one day. Or even a whole year. How did I get from number systems to sentimentality?!!!

My blog moved to helenthornber.com on 15th March 2009. Since then I’ve had over 10,500 pageviews from over 5000 visitors, which may be nothing compared to Google, but is a big achievement for me (I feel like I should be making pretty graphics with all the stats like the ones I shared with you yesterday!)

1. The Real Me
My most popular blog post this year has been ‘The Real Me‘ (and not far behind is it’s follow up ‘The Real Me – Part 2‘). It was a blog I’d been unsure about writing so I’m glad my honesty about mental health has had such a positive response.

2. Geek Chic
Another popular blog. A surprise hit that sums up my own combination of girlie and geeky!

3. Waterstone’s Woes
I’m not known for keeping my opinion to myself so every so often I have a bit of a rant. Of all of them this has been the most popular. I still think that Waterstone’s should hire me as head honcho and then all their problems would be solved!

4. Adventures of a novice foodie
Back in August I decided to make the most of my summer holiday by cooking up a storm. Once of my proudest moments this year had to be successfully making sushi that looked like the real deal and tasted yummy. (The giraffe fried egg was pretty impressive too!)

5. Blog 101
Reaching my 100th blog was a big milestone that proved I could stick at it. But it was Blog 101 that I really enjoyed writing. Instead of waiting for the day I’m famous enough for the BBC to invite me in I decided to do it myself! Watch this space in 2010 for ‘Strictly Blog Dancing’, ‘Have I got Blog For You’ and ‘Top Blog’!

Starting at the end of January 2010 I will be doing a monthly feature and I’d like to hear from you. If you (or anyone you know) would like to share your story the details and deadlines are below.

If you have a story to share send your contact details (name/email/number) and a brief outline of your story to hello@helenthornber.com

Bullying at Work
According to a TUC sponsered survey* in 2008 bulling in the workplace is on the rise. Although the bullying itself can be traumatic enough, the effects can last for years afterwards. From personal experience I know how difficult it can be to recover and rebuild your life, yet the information out there with advice on how to do this is minimal and hard to find. I’d like to share the stories of how others have survived workplace bullying and raise awareness of the issue.
•     Have you experienced bullying at work at all in the past five years?
•     Did you report it?
•     Did you leave your job?
•     What steps have you taken to recover and move on with your life?
Get in touch by Friday 8th January 2010

Climate Change & the Recession
The combination of climate change and the recession we’ve been made aware of how wasteful our society can be. We’re encouraged to save energy, make more informed choices about the products we use and raise awareness ourselves. I would like to share your stories of the interesting ways of making the most of the resources you have.
•     Have you made significant/extreme changes in one or all areas of your lives?
•     Have you had success in business, life or even love because of changes you’ve made?
•     Have you experienced a crazy coincidence or life-changing event because of changes you’ve made?
•     Have you had a big reaction to the changes you’ve made?
•     Are the changes you’ve made because of climate change, the recession, or both?
Get in touch by Friday 5th February 2010

Married too young?
A significant proportion of people who marry in their early 20s are getting divorced before they hit 30. There doesn’t seem to be a week goes by without a report of another young celebrity splitting with their fiancé or divorcing their other half. I’d like to speak to couples who’ve married young and stayed together. I’m also interested in hearing from those who’ve separated or divorced.
•     Are you between the ages of 26-30 and did you marry before 25?
•     Why did you marry so young?
•     Did anyone have a problem with you marrying at the age you did?
•     If divorced, how soon after marrying did you know it wasn’t going to work? Do you think age has anything to do with it?
Get in touch by Friday 5th March 2010

Please Note: All contributions will be treated in strictest confidence and where necessary can be anonymous in the features I write. They will be used as portfolio pieces to submit to magazines and newspapers as well as being available on helenthornber.com

* Data taken from surveys conducted by UMIST and sponsered by the TUC and CBI in 2000 and 2008 http://www.emplaw.co.uk/content/index?startpage=data/12mar00.htm

Now it’s Saturday and about 15000 words behind target. I tried writing yesterday and managed just over 100 words. It’s not looking good right now. NaNoWriMo does not allow for illness, especially not an entire week of brain failure. As I write this blog my brain is struggling less than 200 words in.

I haven’t given up yet. Purely because I refuse to give up whilst I’m still ill. Realistically I can’t see myself being able to write 3500 words a day for the rest of the week. And that’s based on me being in a fit state to write from tomorrow, which I’m not sure I will be. But there is still the part of me that is determined to succeed. Just last weekend I could visualize the finish line and see myself getting the 50,000 words I needed to win. Now that seems like it is a million miles away.

But then there are the times you get stuck. I get on a roll and see my word count soaring in a couple of hours, then I hit a turning point. I’m suddenly at a cliff edge and can see the other side, but there’s no way across. And this is where Twitter keeps me going. Within minutes of tweeting that I’m stuck I had people suggesting solutions and pushing me on. @rebeccablain tweeted “Even corrupt leaders make stupid decisions” and that set me off again. I’d be so caught up in my lead characters moving through the story I’d forgotten that the other characters were there to help the story along. Their stories and actions could be independent of the main characters, yet inadvertently create the situation that would get them across the void and onto the next bit of the story.

I’m up to 19000 words and just over half way through the month, but I’m determined to hit the 50k mark in the next two weeks. A few more days of 3000 words and I’ll make up the shortfall and before I know it (well probably the last couple of days of the month!!!) be sprinting to the finish line.

This Halloween will be considerably quieter and more sober, but hopefully just as significant. At midnight it will be November, and I will be writing the first few words of my NaNoWriMo novel. 50,000 words in one month.

I spent last Sunday evening listening to David Nicholls and Nick Hornby talk about their latest novels as part of the Durham Book Festival. They shared that they write about 500 words a day. I’ll be aiming for 2000. The reality of this is starting to finally sink in. Juliet Naked is 85,000 words, by the end of November I’m aiming to have written around two thirds of that. I shared this with David and Nick as they signed my books afterwards and they both looked quite horrified. Two published authors caught in the headlights of imagining getting that many words down in such a short space of time. It should have been enough to make me run away screaming from this crazy month ahead of me.

With less than 36 hours before it kicks off my mental state switches between complete fear and total excitement. I sometimes also just stop thinking about it or make myself believe that 50,000 words is easy to do. In reality I haven’t got a clue what this month will bring or how I’ll juggle work, conferences, tutoring, social life and an average of 1667 words a day. But the one thing I know is that deadlines work for me and if it means most of my weekends in November will be spent making up for the words not typed during the week it’s more likely than not I will do it. It is a huge challenge, but one I’m confident I can succeed in. (In a weeks time I’ll probably want to delete that last sentence!!!)

Back in August I set myself a challenge of writing a blog a day over 18 days. In that time I wrote 19 blogs, averaging 512 words per blog. A total of 9722 words in just over two weeks. At the start it was daunting and seemed quite difficult, two weeks later I was finding it much easier to write. Although I wasn’t considering NaNoWriMo at that point it was a nice warm up. And although it may have been only a tenth of what I have to write in the month, at least with NaNo there’s no worry about editing or uploading (which can take up a good bit of time when you have a few links and pictures).

I have finally decided which of my stories I am going for, though it has changed a bit since I started in February. Tomorrow I’ll be gathering all my research together, handy for reference if needed as I go along. I think I have an idea of the first chapter, again not what I had originally written. I am starting from scratch though some of the work I’ve already done may find it’s way in to the book once I start the editing process… but that’s December and onwards. I have some intensive writing to do first!

The only other concern in November is what will happen with this blog? I’d like to think that I’ll keep up at least a couple of posts a week, venting my frustrations and general feelings about the NaNoWriMo challenge. Or just a way of getting out of my system anything that is diverting attention away from getting my writing done. I hope you’ll bear with me through the ups, downs and possible silences that November will bring. And I promise whatever happens I’ll be back to full blogging duty in December with plenty of festive cheer.

Something clicked on Sunday night which made me understand why I’m so adverse to joining a writing group, or share my work with other writers in general. I can’t put it down to anything Nick or David said, but just more my own opinions on their books and where they come from.

One Day I enjoyed immensely. It is the first book to make me cry in a while. I haven’t read anything by David Nicholls before, but following this will be buying and reading Starter for Ten very soon. The book follows two characters Emma and Dexter over twenty years, on one particular day each year. Both characters are flawed, at times frustrating and annoying, but I always wanted things to work out for them. I liked them and I like the story. I was gripped and it was one of those books that when I realised I was coming to the end, wanted to know what happened just as much as I didn’t want it to end.

By contrast Nick Hornby is an author I have read before. High Fidelityis my favourite of his novels. Juliet, Naked had three main characters and again they were flawed, frustrating and annoying. Unfortunately I didn’t care less what happened to them. The story was compelling and I wanted to see what happened in the end, it kept me entertained. But I really didn’t care about the characters. I wanted to, but I found myself apathetic towards their fate. The reason I want to pick up another Hornby book as soon as possible is to reduce the disappointment I felt with this book.

But both books I read, enjoy and critique as a reader. Not as a writer. Writing doesn’t stop my enjoyment of books. Sometimes after reading a particular chapter or finishing a book I really enjoyed it will inspire some ideas of my own. However if I don’t enjoy it I’ve never been tempted to think about how I would have written it. As I read I get lost in the story, and if it’s good I’m too absorbed to critique it at all.

I think this is my problem with writing groups. I don’t care what other writers think about my work. I am writing for myself, and for readers who might enjoy the story. Firstly I am writing for me, because lets face it if I don’t get published I don’t want it to feel like a waste. Secondly for my readers, even if that only ever ends up being friends and family, I don’t want to waste their time. Eventually I hope I’ll be caring about what agents and publishers think. But I don’t care if another writer would have written this in that way. Or another writer thinks that this should or shouldn’t have happened. I write because I love reading and I love writing. Not because I want to impress anyone.

If I get the opinion of a few avid readers that’s far more valuable. People who genuinely love books and love stories. When people are reading as readers they want the story to be understandable and to flow. I want them to be absorbed into the reality I have created and care about the characters and what happens to them.

Wherever criticism comes from I think I have good enough judge of my own work to know when to take it on as it will improve my work as a whole, or when it just comes because someone doesn’t enjoy the genre, or the way I have written. I’m sure there are people out there who will hate One Day and will love Juliet, Naked. Their opinion is no more or less valid that mine. As I hope I develop a knack of writing fiction, I’ll also discover who’s honest opinion I can trust to help me develop my work to be the best it can be. As a writer there will always be people who dislike what I write. I’m hoping there will also be people who love what I write, and someone out there to publish it.

p.s. After Sunday night I’m a little bit in love with David Nicholls… he is gorgeous, geeky, funny and an author! I think he might be my first proper author crush!!!

So I have to do it. This week. Back to Body Balance. Back to working out at home. And in a week or two back to Spinning as well (one step at a time, I need to motivate myself before I kill myself with exercise!)

Both exercise and writing need to be staple parts of my routine once again because in a couple of weeks it will be November. And November is NaNoWriMo. That’s National Novel Writing Month. I will be trying to write 50,000 words in one month. To be honest I’m not thinking about the reality of it too much. My plan is that every spare minute between work, sleep and exercising will be spent writing. I do have a weekend in London planned. But that is three hours on a train each way. Plenty of writing time even then.

For me the aim of NaNoWriMo is to get past the mental block I have about writing fiction. As with blogging I just need to do it and as I do I am sure I will find my voice. I am not expecting 50,000 words of fabulousness at the end of the month. 50,000 words with the potential to be fabulous after copious amounts of editing would be a great achievement.

First I need to decide what I am going to write. I have two ideas which already have outlines and a certain level of character development. I have a further two with nothing much done so far. For a while I thought I might just dive into something new and see what happens. But if what happens is writers block I have nothing to push me on. No cues to get me writing again. That could be fatal and mean I stop before I’ve even started. So it’s down to the two ideas with outlines, characters and some initial efforts to get them down onto paper.

Sooo… which one do I pick? I’ve written a synopsis of both and sent them to a few friends for their opinion. It took me a good couple of minutes of hovering over the send button before I let the email go. The friends I’ve sent it too are mostly bookworms. One has already written a couple of scripts which I really enjoyed. Another sells books for a living and has probably seen thousands of synopsis better than my attempts. Two I’m in a book club with and together we’ve pulled apart novels that other people have poured their heart and soul in to writing. I’m petrified that someone will reply with the email equivalent of incessant laughter at the thought of me writing a novel. It isn’t that my friends are cruel. It is that I am feeling quite insecure.

If nothing else I’m hoping NaNoWriMo will boost my confidence about writing fiction. Whatever I write is never going to be liked by everyone so I need to learn how to be confident about my writing. I will have to learn how to differentiate between helpful feedback and negative criticism. And work out which are the people I know who will read my work as it develops and give me an honest and useful response.

I am scared that whatever I do write might be completely wrong. I might get to the end of the month and discover I can’t write fiction at all. But this is precisely why I need NaNoWriMo. To push me out of my comfort zone and see exactly what I’m made of!