Making It Up

as we go along

blogtember

Stories for homes blog tour

by Leave a Comment

Tonight I’ve a slightly different type of review post for you. In the stories for homes anthology, published and unpublished writers come together to create this selection of stories about what ‘home’ means.

There are 55 writers included in this second charity anthology that brings issues around housing, poverty and crisis to life through the power of storytelling. Volume One of the Stories for Homes Project raised over £3K for housing charity Shelter alongside raising awareness of housing issues. Volume Two of the anthology includes stories, poems and flash fiction and again all proceeds will be donated to the charity.

Stories for Homes volume 2

Release Date: 28th September 2017

In Support of: Shelter Charity

In Response to: Grenfell Tower

Format: Ebook

Link: Stories for homes

I haven’t read all of the anthology yet – there’s a lot of material involved, and I didn’t get quite as much reading time this weekend as I’d anticipated. What I have read I’ve enjoyed, and I’m particularly liking the fact I’ve recognised various author names too.

I love the first story by Jan Carson, the Tiger who came back to Apologise. (If you haven’t read The Tiger who came to Tea you should read that first, and also how have you not?) I was also intrigued to spot a story by Leigh Forbes who I’ve known on twitter for a while but not read anything from before. (It was good in case you’re wondering. ) And I’m saving up the story by Antonia Honeywell until I need a treat.

All in all, while short stories/anthologies aren’t usually my thing, I’m really pleased to have got involved in this blog tour, and as I got my copy of the book for free for review, I’m going to make a donation to Shelter of my own accord – seems only fair really.

(early) Saturday snippets September 23rd 2017

by Leave a Comment

{heading} for bed very soon, as Kentwell calls. Our last event of the tudor year, and it’s just me and Small attending. Which will be a little odd tbh, but also quite nice to spend a bit of time with just one child. We’ve four days, and have borrowed a caravan so at least I’m not wrestling with a tent!

{feeling} slightly overwhelmed at how suddenly life has got busy and complicated after a relatively straightforward summer. Two children doing different courses at different places, all the variety of clubs back in action, add in the usual home ed activities and trying to blog and create and run and and and… I think I may be overdoing it. Is this just how it works when you’ve four children? Very possibly.

{reading} still the Loneliest Girl in the Universe (amazon affiliate link). I picked up a review book on the kindle the other night and accidentally lost an hour or two to that, which I regretted as quite frankly, no. (I’ll be reviewing that direct on netgalley as a DNF I suspect, although I’m taking my kindle with me, just in case, this weekend.)

{wondering} what I will discover I’ve forgotten on arrival in 1600.

{thinking} I really should be in bed.

{savouring} this burst of late summer at the start of autumn.

Snapshots – an unexpected roadside find.

{Big} trying to get into the swing of A levels, not being made any easier by the fact that two of her teachers have been mainly absent this week, and then she’s ended up with a nasty head cold – I had to collect her from school today. As an aside to that, I wasn’t overly impressed that I had to ring in to confirm I’d done just that, apparently a 17 year old’s word isn’t enough? Hm.

{Small} preparing for *another* guitar gig, getting into the swing of college and with a weekend at Kentwell ahead.

{Smallest} preparing to launch her own book blog – she’s read her first review book twice, so as to be sure to give it a thorough write up!

{Tigerboy} in need of focus. Going to ponder on that this weekend.

And with that, I must be off to bed!

Drawing exercises – blind contour drawing

by 2 Comments

Tonight I’m working from Draw People in 15 Minutes. (Amazon affiliate link, although I got it from the Works – there’s a banner ad in the sidebar/footer if you want to explore.)

I’m using a 2B pencil and a Cass Art sketchbook, and the exercise is blind contour drawing. The idea is that you draw in a continuous line as you look at your subject, and you *don’t* look down at your drawing.

I’m actually quite impressed with this for a first go.

Guess the offspring?

(It might have been marginally easier if said offspring hadn’t kept dissolving into fits of giggles while I was drawing! )

What's it all for?

by 6 Comments

When I started blogtember, it was to kick start my writing again. And it’s worked – I’ve blogged every day in September.

It also hasn’t worked, because sitting at the kitchen table at 11 o clock at night, drooping with tiredness and yet not willing to go to bed because I haven’t blogged isn’t doing me, or you, the mythical reader, any favours at all. There are at least two posts in this sequence that are just there because I’m too stubborn to quit on a challenge.

And yet I’m also too stubborn to start some challenges. I still haven’t decluttered even the kitchen let alone the house. I wrote one article for the new business idea and then froze. The boom I started writing for write now live last year? Stalled at 20 pages.

Why am I so determined to complete things that will get me nowhere, and avoid things that might make a difference? What am I actually afraid of? Failing? Or succeeding?

I don’t really know any more. And I’m very very tired of it.

I might complete this challenge. I might decide that actually, it would be better to put the energy into something that might make a difference to our lives in terms of bringing in an income, or something that might make a difference to my self image by actually taking a shot at finishing something.

If I were you, I wouldn’t lay any bets on anything just yet. The one thing I am really, but *really* good at is is procrastination. (Anyone remember that series I was going to write on autism and burnout and all this stuff? Yeah, exactly.)

Hm. I think I might need to run through the compassion meditation I was just working through again. I seem to have let the compassion to myself bit slip through my fingers again.

This stuff is hard.

Deschooling – a continual process

by 4 Comments

Dew drops in grass

I can parrot off the law regarding education – something like a parent of a child of school age shall cause the child to receive a full time education, suitable to age, ability and aptitude. I can go further and say that a suitable education is one that fits a child for a life in the community of which they are part.

But did you ever stop, really stop, and think about what it’s all about?

It’s the beginning of a new school year and more than ever it seems the home education support groups are full of parents searching for curriculum, resources, plans, schedules. What if I fail them, they say. What if they fall behind? What if they want to go back into school and they haven’t covered everything that they would have covered in school?

I can address that last one. Big *did* go into school. She was ‘behind’ (slightly below average) in maths. She made it up in a year, when she wanted to and the support was there. In English she was ahead of the curve from day one – reading is her thing. In science, having not done the foundation GCSE the other kids did in year 11, she still passed the additional science, and did it well.

Some things do build on things that go before but an awful lot of other things don’t. The ahead/behind thing is a peculiar side effect of a school system that insists you can process all children according to a central plan, which if you think about it logically is nonsense.

Nowhere else in life do we process people in this way. Even university breaks – people take gap years, additional degrees, arrive from foundation courses, go as mature students. And it’s fine.

Look at babies. Can you imagine if we had a lesson plan for walking? If it demanded all children started at the same age, regardless of their physical development, interest, ability? And yet that’s what we do with reading, despite its complexity, despite us knowing that people learn best when they’re interested, motivated, turn to a thing themselves.

We talk about children coming out of school needing to undertake a deschooling process, a month for every year in the system. How much more does that apply to us adults who never really broke free? We think we did, because we turned against it for our children but it runs through us like the words in a stick of rock.

Deschooling is trickier than you realise and it takes time and thought. Give yourself space to really work it through. I’m still working on it, 9 years since the children left montessori, (ahem) years since I finished school myself. It may take me a while longer yet.