January in Pictures

We've had misty days, damp and dank days, crisp frosts, blue skies, bright and piercing sunshine and nights that were well below freezing. The seasonal stream has swollen, the ground going from rock hard to soft to squelchy in a matter of hours.

Birds have been singing, the green woodpecker has been swooping and feasting in the garden, a heron stopped by for a day or two, flying upwards leisurely when disturbed.

The calling sound of the pheasant, we've got black ones around here with glints of green in their tails, is a regular sound, as is the voice of my eldest cockerel.

Inside the soft scent of vanilla and ginger hit your senses, as my son gets stuck into his baking project. Plans of my own are being hatched and researched. My head has been scratched endlessly; my brain almost unpleasantly stuffed with information.

I never wish January away. It's a month that gets a hard time. After all, how could the month following December with it's bright lights, joyful music, carols and laughter, compete?

But I relish its quietness, the solitude, the nesting. It's a chance to recover, to plan and a time of anticipation.

Using Steller as a writer

In the past year I've been sharing more and more of my writing and photography online. There are a number of personal reasons for this, such as silencing (mostly) my imposter syndrome (I'll write about this in a future post) but also because of my love for Instagram. I really enjoy curating my instagram feed and telling a story through the photographs and the captions. It challenges me creatively; making me experiment and create things I'd never have thought of previously.

One thing that always gets lots of double-taps is my notebooks. People love looking at my handwriting, my notes and drafts of stories and my recipes.

So I've brought together two of my notebook projects from Instagram onto the Steller app.

My Notebooks from 2016, which is a collection of my rough drafts for My Stories, along with notes and plans and My Recipe Journal from 2016 - a collection of the recipes I made, recorded and photographed last year.

Are you on Steller (I'm abookishbaker)? What do you like to share over there?

Five Ways Writers Can Use Instagram

Instagram is a wonderful place for creatives. Knitters, weavers, illustrators, photographers. So many people showing their work, talking about it, showing their process, their inspirations. But I never see many writers there. Perhaps because it's a photo-sharing app so writers aren't immediately drawn to it. But I think it's a fabulous place for writers; a great place to grow your audience and to be inspired and connect with other creatives.

Want some ideas? Here are five ways you could make Instagram work for you.

1. Show us where you work. Your desk, the table at the coffee shop, a crumpled duvet cover with notebooks scattered around. Cups of coffee, pots of tea and cake, stacks of books and notebooks are adored on Instagram. People love to see where writers are writing. I know I do. Don't you?

2. Show us your work. Your notepads, notes, ideas and rough drafts. This is one of my favourite things to share on Instagram and it has inspired my creativity as well as given me ideas for blog posts and non-fiction. Again it's that need to see how an author works and how they create.

3. What inspires you? Nature, buildings, front doors, cities, roads, chickens (the last one might be just me). Take a photograph and show us. Then tell us about it, why does it inspire you?

4. Use your captions creatively. Create some flash fiction or flash non-fiction to go with the photograph. Or use it as a prompt for others thereby creating a community. Really think about your caption - use it as a place to practice your descriptive writing. As you took the photograph what could you smell, hear, taste?

The day breaks. A muted crow from the cockerel. Breath chuffing like a steam train. Frost so heavy the ice is over an inch thick. A solitary leaf on a silver birch smothered in miniature icicles. Crunchy water in the stream. The willow weeps tiny flakes of ice onto my shoulders. Hands, stuffed into pockets, feeling like they're burning. A heron rises in front of me and soars over the field. The sun appears, liquified orange merging with the landscape. The orb's glow spreads around my heart.

5. Show us what you're reading. Have you heard of the bookstagram community? It's huge. Readers photograph their current read and chat about it in the description.

I'm using Instagram more and more like a micro-blog. I use it to share my notebooks, my desk, my writing process, books I'm reading but also to share what I'm seeing and feeling outside. 

Tips

• Always use (your own) good quality, non-blurry photographs taken in natural light.

• Think about using a filter so when you look at the grid as a whole (the top three or four lines) there is a cohesiveness and attractiveness to it. I use VSCO.

• Use hashtags to increase your reach. Don't use #writing #desk #coffee - these are far too generic. Hashtags are used to evoke a mood or an action. #createmakeshare #makersandthinkers and #momentsofmine are just three of the hashtags I used in one of my notebook shots.

• Think about your profile page. Tell us you're a writer. Link to your blog, website or twitter.

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An honest review of my year

On Monday 28th November I woke up feeling anxious. Unsettled, overwhelmed, worried. And low. At first I thought it was because December and Christmas were racing towards me like a freight train. My immediate thought was to step back from social media. From twitter, from facebook and from writing in general. This wasn't hard as I'd run out of things to say. My mind was empty, my brain was slow.

But it gave me the mental space to collect my thoughts, to work out what was bothering me.

So, with a deep breath I went through the projects I'd been working on. Then I thought about what I'd achieved this year:

• At the beginning of this year I hired a mentor to help me with my instagram and photography. I also hired a coach to help me with focus and direction.
• I rebranded and called my blog A Bookish Baker. I pushed the fear away and became more honest about my writing and even wrote some of my non-fiction chicken stories on my blog.
• I learned new skills: how to make videos and also, more recently, I've been drawing and painting.
• I went to Blogtacular and had a lightbulb moment after hearing from one of the speakers.
• My instagram has grown and my followers have increased from under 1000 to nearly 8.5k.
• I've developed an interest in writing my memoir. I've blogged about this, written and photographed my process on instagram and already have over 20,000 words.
• I finished the first draft of my novel. It needs a hell of a lot of work but I've started a major editing project.
• I became editor of Novelicious. The response from the book community was wonderful.
• I made my first vlog. Put my face on Youtube.
• I've taken on paid work through my blog.
• I launched my newsletter.

I'm sure there are other things that I've forgotten to mention. All positive, all wonderful.

But this year I also parted ways with my literary agent.

At first I was pragmatic. But over time I've felt a sense of loss. That I've made huge strides in my career but also taken a massive lurch backwards. All the above meant nothing.

I threw myself into new projects. That's my default response to bad news. It was overload. Eventually my brain couldn't take any more and told me to stop. That was Monday 28th November.

This is the most I've written since that morning nearly two weeks ago. My head is clearer. There's still fog there, there's still a bit of confusion about my way ahead.

But there are also glimmers, small glimmers, of excitement at what I can do next. Imagine what these glimmers might have turned to once I've had a proper rest over Christmas?

So, unless I have something I desperately need to write about, my blog is going into hibernation. Just for a few weeks. I'll be back stronger and more enthusiastic in the New Year.

Thank you to everyone who has supported me this year. From reading my blog, making supportive comments, signing up to my newsletter, writing and recommending me elsewhere...thank you! Everything is truly appreciated.

I hope you all have a wonderful Christmas.

5 Beautiful Christmas Books

It's coming up to that time of year. And, from December 1st, I like to start my Christmas reading. Last year I read, The Santa Klaus Murder and enjoyed experiencing Christmas at the same time as the characters. (Though, thankfully, the real Father Christmas was not suspected of murder!)

This year I've a few more books to read and all of them are collections of short stories. Perfect for dipping in and out of as you have a cuppa and a breather.

I decided to chat about them and show them in more detail on my YouTube channel. If you'd like to subscribe to my channel I'd be most grateful! 

The five books are:

The Santa Klaus Murder

Sir Osmond Melbury, the family patriarch, is discovered - by a guest dressed as Santa Klaus - with a bullet in his head on Christmas Day. 

Christmas Days by Jeanette Winterson

Quite possibly my favourite Christmas book - ever. This is a gorgeous book of recipes, short stories and beautiful illustrations.

A Merry Christmas by Louisa May Alcott

A beautiful selection of Christmas stories, from 19th century America, from the author of Little Women. 

Round the Christmas Fire

A selection of stories from well-known authors including Kenneth Graham, John Cheever, Sue Towsend, Nancy Mitford, Dylan Thomas, Charles Dickens, John Julius Norwich, P.G. Wodehouse and Stella Gibbons.

A Snow Garden by Rachel Joyce

Six wonderful Christmas stories. 

To find out more about these books then watch my YouTube video below:

If you'd like more Christmas book ideas then you might enjoy:

My Stories ||The Darkness and the Moonlight

"It's as black as your hat," says my dad when he comes to stay. He's got a Derbyshire accent though so "your hat" becomes one word: "yerat". Every time I step outside my back door in the darkness, especially at this time of year, I think of his expression. Because it is. Extremely dark. You cannot see your hand in front of you.

At our last home, on the housing estate, we had a street light right next to our house. It would glow outside our bedroom window, leaching an orange haze over our sleeping forms.

But here? There are no streetlights. There's nothing except the distant pinpricks of light from the dual carriageway. Eventually my trees will grow and we won't even be able to see that.

I have to go outside in the darkness every night to shut in the chickens. At first, before we got the dog, I would not go out in the field after dark. I once cast the torch around (to my left, straight ahead, to my right, behind me, argh what's that noise?!) and saw two eyes staring at me from the bottom of the field. The eyes were well above ground level. It freaked me right out.

It's funny, thinking back, that I used to be so bothered by the darkness. Because now I don't give it a second thought. Yes, I still quickly scan my torch all around me, checking the shadows to my left and right, but I'm actively looking for glowing eyes.

Then there's the moonlight.

I knew the songs, of course I did. Dancing in the moonlight. Moonlight shadow.

But actually seeing moonlight? Seeing the shadow of our house cast by the full moon? I didn't really understand that it had existed other than in a Famous Five novel. Living in a town with light pollution we lose that wonder of seeing a giant elm tree reflected on the ground as a moonlight shadow.

But once every few weeks I can go outside, as long as the sky is clear, and not need my torch to see in the dark. The moon is bright and luminous. Shining down, my shadow walking ahead of me.

My Chicken Story Stories is a collection of my thoughts as I pull together the first draft of my memoir.

Bookish Hygge || November

With the fire being lit earlier and earlier in the day, table lamps being switched on to light up dark corners and cosy rugs bought for sinking toes into as well as furry throws to tuck ourselves into the settee, it looks like we're coming to the end of autumn. Winter is making itself heard through the wind, the rain and the icy bite of the wind. Books are always important to me during these months. More so than summer - except for when I'm lying on a sunlounger. And the book I'm enjoying at the moment whilst tucked into my blanket in front of the fire, is Angela Thirkell's High Rising. It is such a deliciously gossipy novel. I am loving it. Thank goodness Angela Thirkell has lots more books to read because I'm going to be adrift when this one comes to an end.

If you follow me on Instagram you'll know I started a #bookishhygge hashtag a few months ago (see this post). I love seeing pictures of old books, new books, books that comfort and books that give joy.

These three stood out for me this month:

Nicki, of The Little Green Door, was starting Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister by Gregory Maguire. This is from the same author who wrote Wicked and once again tells the story of the bad character from a well known tale. In Wicked it was the Wicked Witch of the West. And in Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister it is the stepsister from Cinderella.

Niki, of Niki at the Cottage, has a Christmas present she's not allowed to read yet. It is the late P.D James' The Mistletoe Murder with four Christmas mysteries. And the cover is beautiful.

Cate, of Cate Butler, showed us this beautiful edition of 84 Charing Cross Road. This edition pictured is by Foxed Quarterly, a subscription service where you receive a magazine and hardback book once a quarter.

What books are you reading? Any recommendations?

Editing my novel - week TWO

It's week TWO of my edit. I started the week feeling utterly overwhelmed but ended it feeling rather positive.

Editing my novel - week one

This is my first proper vlog. A vlog with talky bits. A vlog with my face. Where I document how I'm undertaking a structural edit of my novel. I don't know what I feel most daunted about. The edit (it's a major edit) or putting my face up there onto YouTube.

It's incredibly exposing opening myself up like this. It is also incredibly scary. Am I risking criticism, trolls, comments I can't handle? Possibly.

Undertaking an edit like this though is something I've never attempted before. And when I'm scared, with little confidence, I'm prone to procrastination. I'll put all my energies into other projects and put this one off. Because it seems so big. Massive. Like I could never achieve it.

The only way I could see myself going through with it, is by filming it. That is my deadline.

It is one thing writing 70,000 words. It's quite another to craft those words, those sentences, paragraphs and chapters into something cohesive. Something that'll entertain, keep the reader gripped, and tells the story that you've had in your head for so long to the best of your ability.

Right now I'm at a pretty low point with my writing. And exposing myself like this could go one of two ways. But, I'm trying to convince the 25% of myself that wants to give up that writing is worth pursuing. So this is almost do or die. Pushing myself to do something that frightens me.

Please be kind...

For Pinterest: