I was quite disappointed with myself that my intention to write another novel in the Miss Price series was not going to be on schedule. Nanowrimo had a month long challenge for April, but my cat is quite poorly and I did not have the necessary equanimity to start the book intil April was well underway. Since then I have worked on it nearly every day and the word-count is now 21 thousand. But yesterday I discovered a discrepancy in my plot and had to go back and smooth that out, so I lost a day's new writing. I don't really know how far I'll get in May. 50 000 is minimum for a novel. 60 000 is better.
Another shorter project is a children's story. When you write a comment on blogspot (blogger), you very often have to prove you are human! To do that, you write funny words. One of these words really caught my eye and I am now collecting a few to use in my story. I'd like to illustrate it, or find an ilustrator. Anyone interested out there?
Here's the beginning:
Ughtah and the Guardian Angel (A little story about a big guy)
Ughtah is a big guy. He has a big feet and a big voice, but
most importantly, a big heart.
When he enters a room he has to duck so that he doesn't bang
his head on the top of the door frame.
When he sits down, he takes up two-thirds of his sofa. Everyone
looks up to Ughtah, but you can't see what's behind him without
running round him.
His problem is that he looks up to everyone else, so he is
often scared when someone gets angry and shouts at him because they think he won't hear them otherwise. This makes life difficult for Ughtah because he never knows
who is not angry with him and who is not hiding behind him, and he is so tall and round that he cannot always fathom out where a voice is coming from.
One day Ughtah decided to go for walk, the sun was shining
and the birds were singing.
Ughtah thought the sun was shining especially for him so he
said a loud THANK YOU to the sun and smiled with as much warmth as someone could manage who was not the sun himself.
When the birds saw Ughtah, they each sang a special tune for
him. The one who sang the best song was the cuckoo, but the other birds did not
care much for their fat feathered friend. Instead they sang tunes like
Ugh-ugh-ugh-ugh-tah, or Ugh-tah-ugh-tah-tah, or even
tah-tah-tah-tah-tah-tah-ugh.
If it was raining, the birds did not stick around to get
wet, and neither did Ughtah. Instead, he listened to music in his room. His
favourite tune was by a guy called Beethoven and went Ugh-tah-tah-tah, but
sometimes he played music himself on his old upright piano. Tunes like Diddle-ugh-tah-tah, Diddle-ugh-tah-tah were his favourites.
He also liked to play when his friend, who was named Diddle purely by accident, was over for a
visit. Then they would play Did-dle-ugh-tah-tah fourhanded, and Diddle, who was
very little and had very little feet, but a big heart like Ughtah's but not
quite as big, would wind the revolving piano stool as high as it would go and
sing along to the piano-playing.
When they had finished playing they would open a bottle of
lemonade and quench their thirst.
Then they would go into the kitchen and retrieve the donuts
someone baked for him every day, and eat them all up to the last crumb, leaving
nothing in the dish, but with a frame of icing sugar round their mouths.
One day, Ughtah said to Diddle 'We're getting fatter and
fatter on these donuts. We must find out who makes them and ask them to make
only half as many in future.'
It was true. Ughtah now not only had to bend over to avoid
the door frame, but he had to squeeze himself through the door opening with a
push that ended with a boing as he emerged the other side.
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