A week in paradise

A huge hello to my best friend who is on holiday in Australia right now and who will be reading my blogs. Enjoy yourself.

Two weeks ago I spent a very enjoyable week in a little village called Sheepwash, near Exeter. I was staying in large house owned by a freelance journalist, and immediately Deborah and her family made me extremely welcome. It had been a long journey and what better welcome than two slices of banana bread and a cup of tea.

For the whole week I spent every day curled up in the lounge under a rug, with my laptop on my knee, tea being brought in regularly as I battled with editing my debut novel. Every night from 4pm the log fire was lit and it was better than anything I could have imagined. I hadn’t looked at the middle part of the first draft since about the beginning of this year so you can imagine what it looked like; a big, mismatch of writing that seemed relatively good on first impressions but delving into it I realised it wasn’t. A lot of scenes were moved around, edited or even deleted until I was completely satisfied. Now I’ll be honest with you, I’m still not satisfied with any of it. It’s certainly getting there and I’m having a lot of fun playing with my characters and watching them interact with each other.

During the week I worked 8 hour days, even managing to squeeze a 1700 word short story in as well, and Deborah allowed me to work until one day when she encouraged me to go for a walk, saying I looked pale. I wasn’t sure whether to take that as a compliment. Certainly when I got back I felt much more refreshed. On Friday I received a huge surprise from Deborah, who said that on the following evening, we would be having four guests. Two ladies who would stay the night and their friends from Devon would be coming for dinner. It turned into such a fun night and I’m not ashamed to say that having consumed only a salad leaf from my starter, I ran enthusiastically from the table to fetch my notebook and start scribbling helpful ideas for my novel from all of the guests. The help was much appreciated even though I probably looked like a child on Christmas Day. The highlight of the night was definitely the lighting and waving of the sparklers in Deborah’s dining room. So it got a bit smoky and we nearly all died from choking, but I have never laughed so much in my whole life. It leaves me with a lot of good memories. Thanks to everyone who was there and I will definitely be returning to Sheepwash next year, when I’m a published author. Well, I can dream can’t I? But seriously the whole week gave me a lot of confidence and I at least proved to myself that I have the commitment and dedication to put in the hard work required to become an author.