I'm not sure the source of this list(*) - it's saved into my phone - and since I found it I've been working on focusing on the different types of rest:
The above photo was taken on the day of a family destination wedding. Everyone else was staying near the venue, we needed to get home for Jade, our dog, who was home alone. We left a tiny bit earlier than we needed to, pulled over at a beach we used to visit as twenty-somethings, changed in the car/carpark (as we did as twenty-somethings) and spent 30 mins on the beach. * @Ninetypesco may be the original source of the list - I have clearly got it from somewhere else as the version I have is slightly different. There is a second list of nine types for rest which I discovered when I tried to find the source. More on that later...
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As the weather warms up and the days get warmer, I thought I would share five things I love about Spring:
1. Nature coming to life after the depths of Winter, like my good friend here, the hibiscus. 2. Longer days - its still light when I leave work and I can't tell you how exciting that feels. Running group is not just a string of lights spread along the path. There is birdcall as I wake... 3. Getting outside - sunshine, walking, doggie walking, running, gardening. Most exciting: swimming. Had my first lap swim in ages the other day and it was great. 4. The joy of new life at the farm - last count we had two of this years calves, with more expected every week. 5. Salads! Don't get me wrong, I love a cooked vegetable, but I love the return of salad to our weeknight rotation. Every September, I hit the library up and see what's new in salad recipes. This year the wet weather drowned all of my herbs, so spring will also bring some new herbs to the garden, ready for salad season. What are you looking forward to as we dive into Spring? We're just back from our latest writing retreat, to Queensland's Sunshine Coast. Sadly, there wasn't much sunshine, but we still had a great time. I've been on a few writing retreats in my time and here's wheat I think works and doesn't work. 1. Location, location, location Comfortable and spacious enough to house everyone, with sufficient space for writers. Something that doesn't involve a lot of travel (you want to write, not travel) and depending on your eating arrangements - either close to food outlets, or close to a shop. Hint: Always take a power board and extension lead. Powerpoints are never where you need them 2. Your tribe Finding the right people to bring on a writing retreat can be fraught with pitfalls. You have to have the same budgets, same expectations, be able to work independently or as part of the group. Before we go, our group agree a budget, general location and house rules eg Breakfast = fruit, yoghurt and sprinkle of muesli + tea/coffee, Lunch = cheese platter, Dinner = out. Hint: This is work. Staying with someone who isn't a writer only works if they understand you will be ignoring them to focus on your work. With the huge number of holiday apartments now available, we've found it as cheap to stay in an apartment as with someone you know. 3. Your Goals What are you going to achieve during the retreat? We found its good to verbalise that at the start and check in daily. This last retreat we had someone editing a NaNo draft (that was me), someone writing scenes their final scenes in Scrivener and eventually combining into the word draft for the first read through and someone converting hand written notes scribbled when looking after a toddler and turning them into 10000 words over 3 days. 4. It's not all writing.
This retreat we also had watercolour painting, crochet of a child's blanket, reading and outside time - moving our bodies. We stayed in a swim up room - highly recommend - but our usual walk/plot on the beach had to be cancelled due to the weather. I'm doing a run/walk streak (every day for over a year now) so I went out at sunrise (in the pouring rain every day except the last) to keep that going. I took a photo of the above sculpture knowing at some time, it will appear in a work in progress. And I photographed the sunrise on that last day to remember how beautiful it is when its not bucketing down. All in all, a great retreat. I've just finished my next 90 day plan - I'll have my NaNo draft complete, will have dabbled with the short story I wrote for a Christmas anthology that folded unexpectedly, and watched a writing technique video I got a while ago, but never got around to watching. Wish me luck. I love a sunburnt country,
A land of sweeping plains, Of ragged mountain ranges, Of drought and flooding rains. My Country - Dorothea Mackellar (Excerpt) You may have heard that the east coast of Australia has copped a battering with rain event after rain event. Whenever this happens I think of Dorothea McKellar's iconic poem "My Country" and the second verse "Of drought and flooding rains". City folk are generally a bit protected from the reality of drought and flood but 2022 changed all that. Areas of Brisbane that don't normally flood went under - mainly around creeks - a combination of record rain fall (300mm in one day) and tidal surge. This creek (above) is less than a kilometre from the house, and on this day, we were cut off by 3 separate flooded creeks - we were high and dry, but stuck. We faired a lot better than others who lost cars, whose houses and businesses were flooding including people of Maryborough and Lismore, both sit on a river and suffered catastrophic flooding. An ex-colleague lost their life, swept off a flooded road. Down at the farm, we've replaced the cross river fences six times since November. The river is a single deep fast flowing channel at the back end of the block. At the road end of the block it splits into two channels, one faster and deeper than the other, before rejoining just before the road bridge. So we have 3 crossings to refence (+ support fencing) to keep our cows safe. I don't have photos. The water is too deep, fast and unpredictable to risk carrying an iPhone. We work in waders (armpit high on me), and concentrate of navigating where its safe to cross, while stringing barbed wire. (Safety first) We spent easter at the farm and worked all day every day. Fencing a span on dry land is a piece of cake compared to rescuing an existing fence to restring it, in a metre of fast flowing water. This time, we strung new wire, and when the water comes down we'll rescue the old wire, ready to restring the next time. I'll leave you with a photo of the river in calmer times. (Right now, it is raging, trees pushed over, mud everywhere) We are lucky to have the water, having just come out of drought. And we haven't lost property or any of our maternity cows. While hiking up to the other side of the back crossing (its too fast/deep for me to cross) I saw evidence of cattle. Someone else's cattle have lost their fences and decided to follow the river. When last sighted, they had just swum across the river at our back crossing and were heading west. We've had cows turn up from 10km away, so goodness only knows where they have come from... What does your 2022 look like?
Is it unsettled skies and rough seas? Or is it the cleansing of the soul from being out in nature, the salt spray in your face, the heat of the day being chased away by a stiff sea breeze? From the same starting point everybody's story will be different. Here's hoping your 2022 is a great one. 2021 - the gift that just keeps giving. And taking away from my writing. Five days after my last post - Misty - our 12+ year old doggie with a liver tumour and a difficult to treat ear infection died suddenly. We've been working through her bucket list since her July appointment, preparing for her full cancer recheck in December. We knew her time was limited, we just didn't realise how soon we would lose her. It was a week before our beach holiday (the pet friendly rental) and it took a while to get over the shock. The photo below was a bucket list day trip, keeping the problem ear dry, but letting her get her paws wet. Heaps of fun. (She did end up coming on holiday with us, after Pets in Peace returned her ashes and plaque, paw print and lock of hair - it didn't feel right leaving her home) Writing wise - I'm working on a contemporary romance and a bit of a left field fictionalised non-fiction book (cryptic, I know). I'm not as far along as I would have liked on either project, but for the first time since I started my writing journey, I took time away from writing, the computer and went on leave. The combination of the day job (in a hospital in COVID times) and losing Misty meant I wasn't in a place to write. And I don't think you can underestimate the disruption of a "working-from-home" hubby to creativity. It's hard to get deep into the romance when there's a Zoom meeting happening behind you. (Does confirm though that workplaces are the same everywhere) Sadly, I've also just cancelled this year's attendance at the Romance Writers of Australia conference, which was rescheduled to December. We have hard border closures, and while I can get to conference, my friends/roomies can't. The borders will reopen just after conference, but looking at the modelling, it won't happen before. So now, I'm looking forward to 2022 in Perth. I'll leave you with a photo of this morning's sunrise. 4.36am and I was just about to leave home to run with my running group. The remnants of yesterday's storms were out over the bay and the colour was way more vivid than the photo shows. Summer is nearly here...
2021 already seems to have gone forever and we're only just into September. Australia is currently dealing with the fourth wave of the pandemic, with NSW, Victoria and ACT the worst affected, while Queensland remains relatively unaffected, except for snap lockdowns, mask mandates and event cancellations.
At the Greenes we've been dealing with being locked out of the farm (its over the border in NSW), a meniscus tear with patellar tendonopathy (me) and a doggie with a life changing ear infection - Misty - who is now deaf. My workplace was also rocked by two unexpected deaths, which has thrown me. Add in two projects at work, and my writing ground to a halt for a while there. Of all the years to be injured, I suppose 2021 was a good one, most running events cancelled or postponed to summer. In some regards, I'm lucky. A lot luckier than the marathon school participants who trained for 24 weeks to have their event cancelled 3 days out. Or the Melbourne contingent who are busy cancelling flights and accomodation now. I'm now looking at 2022 and possible events. Lots of strength work needed to get back to where i was. Misty is our doggie who had a liver tumour. At her recheck they noted an ear infection and treated it. At her annual vaccination (locally) they checked it and it wasn't good. She's been on oral antibiotics and ear drops since July, has had her ear washed out under anaesthetic, and sadly has two perforations in one ear. That ear is now profoundly deaf (probably because of the ear drops entering the working bit of the ear) and the other is mostly deaf. Sometimes she hears a noise, but she's unable to place it. Most times, she hears nothing. Which allows her to sleep, but makes getting her to come/sit/stand a bit difficult. Faced with another recheck at the vet last week, she decided to do a runner. Lots of vet staff chasing and calling her as she navigated "out the back". Finally recaptured trying to exit via reception. Only one parent allowed to come to the vet, and it wasn't me that day. So I'm having a quiet chuckle about her big adventure, and the futility of everyone yelling "Misty, Stop. Come." So, during this tough year, I've started what I call Sunrise Church - chasing the sunrise, and taking the time to process, reflect and recentre myself for the day ahead. The photo above is Alexandra Headland, on the Sunshine Coast, taken on September 11th. I have two excellent writing friends - Danielle Birch and EE Montgomery, and we managed to get away for a weekend writing retreat. During which time we primarily ignored one another and took the opportunity to work on our writing - without the distractions of everyday life. I came back feeling much more in touch with my writing. October is looking good for more words... Rescued Hearts...
A stand alone e-book novella, first printed in the Paw Prints of Love Anthology. This story first saw the light of day in the Romance Writers of Australia annual short story contest in 2007 - my first year as a member. It missed the cut for the anthology, and I always knew I'd go back to it. When the call went out for Anthology participants for the Gumnut Press Pawprints of Love Anthology, I thought "why not?" There's so much to love about Stonecrest Bay, the fictional town in Western Australia but how could I move a story set in Brisbane to WA. I started to revise this story sitting in a pub in my mum's hometown of Emmaville NSW. We'd been down for a funeral, and it was early the next morning, and I was sitting in the beer garden with a coffee and my writing notebook. The night before we'd talked and laughed and reminisced and I'd spent looking at the photos on the walls. One in particular, of motorbikes lining the road outside the pub caught my eye. And so the story began to take shape. What if you met a man who was only in town for one night? What if you shared a magical night, away from the doldrums of your normal life in the small town you were stuck in? What if, years later, you decided to cross the continent to look him up? Rescued Hearts was born, and I got to tell Nick and Beth's story. As with all my stories, there are bits and pieces that friends and family will recognise - the pub in Emmaville, a love of macrame, markets and homemade lemonade. There's an exploration of the "Sons of Anarchy" love of a bad boy on a motorbike. And most importantly rescue - I've met so many people involved in volunteering for animal rescue - our local vet who does cat desexing in their own time, the receptionist at the vet specialist who rehouse greyhounds, and writer friends who rescue, rehome and adopt. Together they are a community, and that's the community I wanted Beth to encounter. Available from March 31st at e-book retailers , Booktopia and direct from Gumnut Press . How exciting is this? The stories from Paw Prints of Love Anthology are being released individually, one each month for the next 10 months.
I loved Stonecrest Bay, with its relaxed coastal feel, its community of animal lovers and I can't wait to revisit these stories. The first story - All the Good Stuff, releases today and my story Rescued Hearts is available as an ebook for pre-order now . Great prices too. 2020 was a great year for publishing for me, but not so great for new content. So when my 2021 goal setting session came around I had to think long and hard about what to include.
So, my goal for 2021 is to be more consistent, by:
Next task is to make the goals into a work plan and schedule small achievable pieces into my diary across the year. Wish me luck. |
Fiona Greene AuthorWhen you set out on a journey and night falls, that's when you will discover the stars." Archives
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