Tiggy Hayes

A friend of mine from my writing group sent me a competition on the youwriteon.com web site.  I load the first three chapters of my novel and it is put out for review by other budding authors.  For every review of other people’s work I do they will send it to someone to review.   The competition prize is that if your work gets enough good reviews it goes into a table and the publishers Bloomsbury will look at the story with a view to publishing.

Scary thoughts; firstly it is sent out into the public domain for other people to read: the general public and also terrifying that my copyright might be breached in some way.  Not to mention the weight of responsibility when I have to review somebody else’s painstaking work.

The website addresses both issues and assures me that I retain copyright of my work and they date stamp it so no-one can steal my work.    On the other issue they claim that is what they are supposed to be doing; opening it up for general review.  They leave the onus of review firmly on my shoulders.

I came up with all kinds of excuses why I shouldn’t upload it and none of them plausible so in the end I bit the bullet and pressed the proceed button.  Unfortunately having gone into great lengths to fluff out the bare bones of the story I now could not upload 3 chapters so 1½ was all I could fit into the 7000 word limit but I let it go anyway.  This of course does not take the story very far apart from introducing the main characters.

This morning I have had my first review and wonder now why I bothered.  EricJ has been very harsh in his comments and has missed the point completely with one scene he wants cut altogether.  Obviously from the short excerpt he has read he does not realise how the clues are being filtered in and how it is relevant to the plot.

To give EricJ his due he has suggested changes and links that might be of use to me and one day I hope I will look back and thank EricJ as my novel is printed.  He also does say sorry for not being more charitable.

I am currently on a roll and determined somehow to get more work out to the public.  I have sent some short stories back to the magazine that printed an earlier story as fillers.  I hope to have time to develop some more short stories for other magazines but then life gets in the way and without life my experiences are limited and I cannot write.

Tiggy

It has been a strange weekend. I have lost a limb; metaphorically speaking.
Middle son has gone on a four day school trip to an outward bound centre, where hopefully he is enjoying the activities on offer to him. Mothers will relate to the weird feeling the absence of one child has on the dynamics of the family.
Don’t be deceived, I paid heavily for these days without him in monetary terms to the brave school teachers who have taken responsibility. It has been worth every penny to have the short-lived respite from his teenage mood swings, but I still feel I am missing a vital organ or necessary limb from my very being.
Friday I had to drop him and luggage at school, before getting myself to work. I’d had a productive morning’s writing in the company of the birds, before bodies began to emerge from their slumbers. Sexy Sporty Dad not known for his early mornings appeared down ahead of the 7am news (unheard of), clad in Lycra no less! He had challenged himself to cycle the 17 miles to and from work. There have been sporadic incidences of insanity when he has taken the bike in the car to cycle home returning the following morning but this was madness!
Middle son appeared showered and pleased to be out of the confines of his restrictive school uniform. He made his own lunch from whatever lurked in the fridge or cupboard. The fruit bowl untouched but the multi pack of mini cheddars and the last remaining slices of my home made chocolate cake have vanished!
No 1 Son appeared with a few teenage grunts and requesting a lift the whole mile to school. Mini Son up and dressed fed and drank his birds, brought in the milk, emptied his bit of the dishwasher; ok he gets pocket money for all these but so do the older boys, they prefer to forgo the money along with the effort.
Parking outside a shop on the way I trusted Middle Son to go and get the sweets he needed for the journey. No 1 Son having had a lift to the back gate and not wanting to be seen with his mother leapt out quickly and joined the throng.
Middle Son reappeared loaded down not with sweets as expected but with cans of stimulation drink. I don’t envy those teachers one bit.
We may not have had to bring him down off his high but the family have missed him albeit in their own little ways. No 1 Son struggling to find someone to fight with has resorted to hanging round with his brother’s friends. He turns his wind ups on the family using the same tactics; but to his disappointment it does not work so well.

Mini Son complains his brother takes over his friends but this weekend with no one to organise their games and look after the little ones he is wandering round the estate looking for someone to play with. With Middle Son away there isn’t even the usual gathering of BMXing teenagers to hang around with.

Sexy Sporty Dad had no-one to repair punctures for and was lost having the time to finally do a “toit”; something he has been meaning to get around to, for some time without the continual “Dad can you just….”
Quietness has descended on our house without the neighbourhood traipsing through for drinks, snacks and play station. Squash is left in the cupboard, bread and milk in the fridge and no half drunk glasses left over the kitchen, hall, garden and stairs.

I had a disturbed sleep the first night he was away, wondering how he was getting on and if he was able to sleep. Next morning I ventured into his teenage domain towel over my face and aired his room rescuing his bedding for washing. The second night I slept better. Only one more before he is sewn back into the fabric of his family and my body feels whole again, and then the family can get back to bickering like families do.

Tiggy

Who am I?

I am a writer in the early stages of what I hope will be a long and creative career.  I have always written but now I write focused articles and stories early in the mornings, my only companions the birds singing their dawn chorus.  May is already upon us and the sun has been up for some while even before I struggled out of my pit.  This is my time while the rest of the world sleeps.

I am now what the term middle-aged used to refer when I was in my youth although my life has already begun again and I am rushing towards another milestone birthday.  I have 3 children all boys who bring chaos and turmoil to my life. I work part time in the school office where Mini Son attends school.  I wear various hats at the local rugby club where the children play rugby, I am taxi service, cook, bottle washer, cash point and housekeeper, not that anyone would notice unless it doesn’t get done.

No 1 Son is now 15, taller than me and at school studying for and taking his modular GCSEs.  He is a rugby nerd and his whole life revolves around the sport.  His friends are all drawn from the pot of team players who join him every Sunday come rain or shine.  He has spent a year out of the game through injury which has been frustrating but he has used it  to develop  his refereeing skills and has helped me  report on the matches.

Middle Son is about to turn 14 and also now taller than me.  He lacks my fuller figure and takes after his father more, being willowy and skinny.  He has just taken his options for next year when he begins his GCSEs.  His passion in life is just as injury prone, but he prefers BMXing to rugby.  His talk is littered with “spine, 360s, the volcano” that is when he has something other than uggg to say.  A typical teenager with hair growing way down past his eyes and his boxers hanging out of his trousers in the most off putting way.

Mini Son is striding on to his 9^th birthday.  One of the youngest in his class but one of the tallest.  He too is into his sports.  He will grow up, I am assured, into a famous footballer.  In the meantime he is dragged off to Rugby on a Sunday, football training on a Friday night followed by game on Saturday.  He swims midweek and goes to cubs on a Monday.   The rest of the time he plays out with any child older or younger and passes through the kitchen for drinks or snack as and when the need hits him.

Sexy Sporty Dad had a midlife crisis a few years ago.  Rather than run off with his secretary or taking up train spotting, he returned to a childhood activity of Dinghy sailing.  In a bid to pass on this sport to his sons we now have a mirror dinghy, a 420 and a topper.  We live near to Longleat and are trying to join their sailing club, Poole is only an hour away and we spend many summer weekends traipsing up and down dragging various boats behind.    After careful thought and another year or so to his battered body; he decided dinghy sailing did not take him away from the family sufficiently, so he took up Triathlons.  Not just one discipline to train for nightly but three; cycling, running and swimming.  We do still keep photos of him when, he was not just a shadow passing through.

My writing

I took up the challenge in November to write a novel of 50,000 words in a month,  NANOWRIMO.  I failed, by the end of the month, I was reaching about 32,000.  However another month in and I completed my first draft of 64,000 words.  Memories is now coming to the end of the second edit and I am very proud of the effort I have put in but not over the barrier of sending it to a publisher yet and it being rejected.

I hope you will enjoy reading my blog and please comment on the trials and tribulations that I hopefully will continue to overcome.

Tiggy