Alex Gutteridge's Blog, page 5
November 19, 2014
November 18, 2014
Never Grow Up
Last week it was my son's birthday. He was 26 and his girlfriend bought him some boy toys, a remote controlled car and a small model helicopter. As I stood at the cooker making scotch pancakes for breakfast, the toy car whizzed around my feet and immediately I was transported back twenty years to when both of my boys used to play on the kitchen floor and I had to be careful where I was treading.
"You should never grow up," my son's girlfriend said to him and I was reminded of this later i...
"You should never grow up," my son's girlfriend said to him and I was reminded of this later i...
November 12, 2014
November 7, 2014
Just Do It
'Sometimes you just have to get on and do it,' my daughter said last week. And she's right of course. Sometimes you do have to fight the lethargy and get on with whatever it is that you are putting off. But it's not always as easy as that, is it? Normally, I love my writing life. Where had that love gone? Not wanting to write is discombobulating. I don't feel like myself. I did sit down and do a little writing but it didn't spark a real desire to plunge in, so I found plenty of displacem...
October 31, 2014
A Sense of Wonder
After returning from from Lanzarote, relaxed, refreshed and raring to go, I've had flu which really knocked me for six. Not only did it leave me feeling rather fed up that all the benefits of my lovely holiday were wiped out but also quite unmotivated too. I had a new book waiting for the back-story to be worked on and for the first few pages to be scribbled down but I kept putting it off. Then last Saturday my son and daughter-in-law suggested we went to Canon's Ashby in Northamptonshire for...
October 24, 2014
Building a Back-Story
I hate to be disappointed by a book but I read quite a few manuscripts and quite a few published books where the back-story seems scant. These are the books where, however hard I try, I just can't relate to the main characters, and however pacy the plot, the story does not satisfy me.
As a beginner writer, I too was guilty of skimping on the back-story but one day, when struggling with plot, I had a light-bulb moment. I realised that if I knew my characters well enough, what they wer...
As a beginner writer, I too was guilty of skimping on the back-story but one day, when struggling with plot, I had a light-bulb moment. I realised that if I knew my characters well enough, what they wer...
October 22, 2014
October 15, 2014
October 14, 2014
A Delicate Balance
There is a delicate balance required to being a mother-in-law and to being a daughter-in-law too. I am lucky enough to have a beloved daughter-in-law who has accepted our family with all of its faults and idiosyncracies. I have also been lucky enough to have had wonderful parents-in-law who embraced me unreservedly into their fold. In spite of this there are bound to be ups and downs along the way but over the years we have all found an equilibrium at worst and an increasing closeness at...
