My kinda fun

I'm tidying up.

It's something I can control.

And, if I utilise all the essential stationery bits and pieces I've bought over the years, like the Dymo label maker, I can even have fun while I'm doing it!

Oh dear.

Should I get out more?

(I was very upset that the Dymo didn't have an apostrophe: just a slash (/) and a full stop.)

I really must get out more.

Searching

God grant me the serenity 
to accept the things I cannot change; exams, revision, Bangkok’s streets, other people’s parents. 


Courage to change the things I can;
 the mess on my desk, the spagetti jumble of wires under my desk, the ergonomics of my writing space;

and wisdom to know the difference. How wise am I? Aren’t I doing well?

When the rest of life is spiraling out of control I’ve discovered there are lots of things I can control. Here’s an after picture of my desk. Yes, this IS after. This is tidy now, okay? 

Thank you to everyone who has facebooked, emailed, texted or twittered support and thoughts to us.

What's in a name?

Firstly, I’m very over-excited that my caption ‘won’ DJ’s Wordless Wednesday. I’ll skate over the fact that we were all winners. I can’t turn on the funny. It is the skill I’m most envious of in other people, particularly writers.

DJ’s award leads me onto wondering if anyone knows if Blogger will let me have a ‘page’ where all my blog awards are… that I can link from the sidebar? I’m very proud of every award I’ve had but on one of my rare tidy ups I had to remove them from the sidebar as it all got so cluttered. I have them sitting in a folder ready to display… but I can’t work out how to do it.

I think it might be time to don my apron, a headscarf and reach for the furniture polish for another TeaStains tidy up. My blogroll is out of date; if you have a big, showy offy widescreen, then my tea stain won’t reach all the way across it. It’s not just spring cleaning needed here…

My blog started two and a half years ago when I could hardly admit to myself, let alone out loud, that I wanted to write. It took a further eighteen months before I was writing seriously. So the blog is all a bit untidy and I suppose it needs to develop. It needs to go from a scared woman in Thailand trying to admit to herself she wants to write to a (slightly) more confident person who wants to write the best book she can.

As for publishing…I really don’t know. But, if that’s what I want, I need to start thinking about TeaStains maturing.

I started life here as JJ to avoid there being two Jens/Jennies in the Novel Racers (Spiral). And of course I wanted the anonymity too … Then I started to write my book and I learned things about publishing – such as having a platform – I became JJ Beattie because I felt if, eventually, I want to seek publication, the time I’ve spent at TeaStains will be the beginning of that. So in my big tidy up, should I remain as JJ Beattie or should I become me? Jenny Beattie?

Oh dear. I don't know and I really hate housework.

Tidy me

Blergh. I’ve spent all day tidying my office. I promised myself I’d get going on it before I start my next 10,000 words which I must be tomorrow. It was disgusting. There were several toppling piles of paper and they were all crucial too; I couldn’t just tip them into a bin bag. I’d got papers from school, travel documents for Singapore next weekend, vital notes about novel one and novel two.

In fact, I had to tidy up before I start writing again, because somewhere there was a graph of which character was what age in what year and I’m starting to get confused. Now I know exactly where it is.

I spent the whole time listening to BBC’s World Book Club podcasts. I’ve listened to David Guterson, Toni Morrison, Alice Walker, Annie Proulx, David Lodge, Chinua Achebe, John Irving and Khaled Hosseini. Not wasted time at all and my desk and area are looking lovely and tidy.

I haven’t quite finished tidying … I’ve got some piles of books to find a home for (there isn’t a home – every shelf is already full of double stacked books) and some magazines to make decisions about (they’re destined for the recycling bin but I hate throwing magazines away – what if I need the information again?) I’ve also got a gargantuan box of papers to go through but they’re really old so I can ignore them for a bit longer.

Still, I got a bit over excited and prematurely got my Dymo label maker out. I’m sure I’ll be much more organised from now on…