My Blog
My musings about the world, self publishing, living abroad, and my author career.
Today is budget day!
I missed writing yesterday because I knew that today was the day the Dutch government announced their budget. Normally I don't bother with blogging about this, but this is not an ordinary year. This time the implications for us were very high. Now, the Dutch (like...
Why do I write?
I find the beginning of the school year is always a good time to re-evaluate what I'm doing. To assess where I am in my plans and to realign them with where I am and where I want to go to. This year, as part of that I have been fleshing out my reasons for writing. And...
When do you wear your best dress?
My daughter has a favourite dress. It's purple and frilly and great for wearing to parties, weddings etc. But she wants to wear it all the time. She'll go to the playarea in it, or poke around the garden, and of course wear it to school. In fact she'd wear it everyday...
Stepping outside my comfort zone
I'm a private person: I don't shout about things that happen to me and I don't ask for help easily. Which makes it all the more difficult for me to promote myself. I prefer standing in the background, rather than being the centre of things. And yet I know that's what...
Where do I post what?
Over the last few weeks, as well as relaxing over the summer holiday, I have been thinking through how to use the different broadcast methods I have. My newsletter is growing (sign up if you haven't already) and my Facebook author page is increasing in likes too. One...
Life goals
I remember towards the end of my time at Uni going through the milkround of interviews, trying to get a job for when I graduated. In one of them I was asked something along the lines of what I wanted to achieve in my life. I answered that I wanted to be happy, and he...
365 questions a year
For Christmas 2016 I was given a Dutch 5 year diary, but rather than just having the spaces to write in it had a question for every day. The idea being that every day of the year you answered that question, and then at the end of five years you can see how much you've...
Reading
Since starting to write more seriously, and in so doing learn more about story structure, I find I'm reading more critically. And I can better articulate why I don't like something. I still need to work on understanding why things work well! This makes me slow down...
What do you regret?
My biggest childhood regret is that I never learned how to cartwheel properly. My legs never go straight over me and I end up in a heap at the end, as I don't land on my feet again. Not that I've tried in years. Why didn't I learn to cartwheel? Lots of my friends at...
Being child-led
This summer I want to try and do the activities that the children want to do - let them lead in choosing, and executing what we do each day. Or at least as much as I can. I have ideas, but I'm going to try not to push those. Ideally we want to have a mix of daytrips,...
Museum cards
The Dutch have a great system where you can buy an annual subscription, and then visit pretty much all the museums in the country for free. This is a museum card, and it is personalised, so has your name and the adult cards have your photo on too. Children's fees to...
Nee-nah or tatu?
What I hadn't thought about when learning a new language was that it's not only the words that are different. The sounds that things make are different too. For example in Dutch cows say "boo" and cockerels crow "kukuleku". And recently I found out that the sirens of...