Chocolate and Charlton Heston

Praise be! A five-day weekend is heading my way faster than Charlton Heston on a chariot!

I love Easter holiday. Always have done, mostly because it involves taking root on my sofa, accompanied by a rather luscious chocolate egg and Ben-Hur on the TV. There’s nothing more I’d rather do than watch Charlton sticking it to the Romans for four hours. And yes, I’ve seen this film countless times but if it’s not on the telly-box during the weekend they will hear my howling all the way over in Jerusalem.

In fact, I love Ben-Hur so much I had dreams of calling our first-born son Judah. Vetoed by the hubby obviously. Not sure the school playgrounds of Houghton Regis are ready for a Judah so we played it safe.

But anyway….for me, Easter isnt Easter without the fine manly form of Charlton, a  nine-minute chariot race and a few lepers thrown in for good measure.

And yes,  you might think I’m missing what Easter is all, but check out the ending…..Judah’s mother and sister are cured and Judah himself finds salvation “I felt His voice take the sword out of my hand.” Seriously, what could be more uplifting than that?

Oh. And Charlton looks seriously yummy when he’s all beardy and half-naked. See…..I feel uplifted already 🙂

 

Get thee behind me, editing demon!

 

This week I somehow managed to see what Dark Sanctuary will look like when it’ s finally available to download on the kindle. I worked out how to email it to my kindle so I would know what it looked like in ‘print’ (thanks to Lisa S for showing me the way). 

I have to say I got goosebumps seeing it however when I realised that I had made some errors in formatting I decided to take the plunge and dive back into editing.

I’m not going to lie. Editing and I have serious issues with each other. We have this weird love/hate relationship. It loves me. Loves to reel me in.

Go on. Just check out a couple of paragraphs. Go on. It won’t take you a minute. 

Let me tell you something, editing is the demon of all liars! A minute my ass! Trust me, two hours later and I’m still there, slogging away wishing I had trusted my instincts and stayed away from the wily ol’ bastard.

I hate editing. Okay, so call me lazy if you want and you’re probably right but my spare time is very limited, so any time spent editing means less time writing. Yes, I know it will help me hone my craft, become a better writer, yada yada blah blah blah. I know all this and agree. But I still hate it.

And this time round not only did I discover that I had made some horrible formatting mistakes which meant my novel lost structure when it was transferred from word to HTML, but also that I had made some highly embarrassing grammatical errors that even my dog wouldn’t make. So now, I am forced to dive back in with gritted teeth and cursing under my breath like Muttley and literally edit the whole thing again. Yep. The whole thing.

Not only am I massively guilty of being lazy when it comes to editing, I also sometimes hate reading back stuff that I wrote a while ago as I am highly critical of myself and have uncontrollable urges to wipe out whole paragraphs or even chapters on a whim. I suddenly doubt my ability to construct characters or plot and let my finger hover over the delete button in a crazy Caesar style thumbs up or thumbs down yet instead of a baying crowd to give my gladiators the yes/no vote, all I have is my sudden lack of confidence in what I have written.

Yes, I do often read through again and think ‘wow, that part was pretty damn good’ (if I do say so myself) and that for me, is the only blessing in editing. It can either build me up or cut me down.

So do excuse me, if for the next few days I spend most of my time scowling, biting my nails, screaming, or throwing things. I’m sure I will get through it with copious amounts of diet coke and chocolate.

Any excuse, eh?