Still racing on

Another week of plot twists and characters surprising me. I've slowed down a bit (phew) and have written another eleven thousand words, the book is developing nicely and I know how it ends (sort of). It will be a relief when the Twins book comes back from my helpful agent with ideas on how to improve it, tidy it up etc. to see if it's ready to go out into the world. Scary stuff but exciting. 

The cottage we bought is in Appledore, a great fishing village full of lovely, friendly people. I have joined the Appledore book Festival volunteers, and hope to do some stewarding in September. I so enjoyed some of the workshops there last year.

My absolute favourite was a workshop given by two printmakers, one of which lives in North Devon called Merlyn Chesterman. I absolutely love her woodcuts, and she ran off a massive print while we were there, incredible. If I had a big enough wall I would want to buy one of these:

And if I had an even bigger wall I would go for one of the Pine Feroda prints that she is part of. She has a wall of prints at the Coffee Cabin in Appledore and her studio is in Hartland. I love prints, they do something that paintings don't do for me, they are like - well, printing words as opposed to scribbling in pencil. There is something permanent and authoritative about them. 

Making prints makes me write poetry, I don't know why. I've been teaching poetry all over the place and it's making me work on new drafts and old ones. Poetry makes you think about all the connected meanings of words, how they don't just have a dictionary meaning but carry culture and history and mean different things to different people. Words are wonderful.