Tidbit Tuesday: A Funny One!

Hey peeps!

Rolling with my word count - clocked down some more this morning, and Chapter 1 is done!

That's the writing news of the day! Now on to the Tidbit for this Tuesday...

You know I'm a rabid tennis fan, right? I spent the past 2 weeks immersed in the French Open at Roland Garros on my TV. The ending was a disappointment - I mean, Federer at one point giving away a 5-2 position in the first set, that start of his downfall (and fall from grace in my eyes!). Yes, I know I'm not there, not the one playing the game, but that was such a disappointment. My husband tells me I should stick to watching tennis just to ogle the male players, and I'm starting to agree...

Anywayz, speaking of players - this one seems like a true darling! Novak Djokovic is currently ranked world's No2, and he appears to be on the rise to become the next big tennis champion (especially if the rumours are true that Rafael Nadal is considering retirement soon).

But Djokovic - nicknamed Nole, and/or The Djoker - is not just a brilliant tennis player. He's got a terrific sense of humour, evident in his many impersonations of his fellow tennismen and tenniswomen.

Check out this clip - it'll have you in stitches!



There's another one here, but the Embed feature has been disabled so I couldn't post it up. Check it out if you have a minute - the impersonation of Federer is to die for!

That's it from me for today! Hope you had a laugh. :)

From Mauritius with love,

Zee

Random Thoughts' Monday: What's cooking...?

Hey beautiful people

Start of another week... Sigh... You know I'm gonna ask where the past weekend went, innit? With both boys home, instead of leaving them to their own devices with the Playstation (and where they'll bash one another senseless in Tekken or Street Fighter or Mortal Kombat or what else other I'll-kill-you-while-you-kill-me-twice type of video game), so we hit the beach yesterday morning, probably our last stint to the coasts now that winter is coming in.

As for today... just put a dish of lamb tagine to slow-cook in the oven. It's a Moroccan dish - served with couscous - that features in my upcoming release, Walking The Edge. Reading all about it again through the edits last week made me crave the food once again and I set out to make it today. Well, yesterday, to be more precise - for you see, you have to cut and marinate the lamb with specific tagine spices overnight, before you'll combine the rest of the ingredients together after you've browned the marinated meat and place the dish in the oven to slow-cook over 2 hours (or a little more).

Making this dish, I couldn't help but realize how much the systematic and well-organized setup to prepare a tagine is also akin to balancing life and your many duties when you're an author. You cannot simply pull up and decide to do something - it all requires planning, like your tagine meat needs to be marinated overnight. You cannot just do something the way you and you alone want to - there are rules, a certain framework and order to follow, exactly like your recipe, its list of ingredients, and what to add first and how.
All in all, this dish has taken me 1 hour to put together and get it into the oven. Yet, looking at the instructions and the list of ingredients a mile long for tagine, you'd think you need to spend half a day in your kitchen to pull this together.

Life is like this too. You think it'll take a long, long time to get everything ironed out, but until you try, you won't know.

On Friday, I mentioned that I'm collaborating with my bestie Angela Guillaume on a story. We've given each other a deadline set in stone for that one - we have a plan, and we're doing it all ourselves. I now have until July 31 to pen down a 50K story. It sounds doable, or terribly daunting. I'm like, 6K a week? Isn't that madness? You gotta reckon that in the past, I wrote in one single block of time, uninterrupted. I could clock 3-4K words in one morning. But then I wrote only once a week - with my hectic schedule and to-do lists, I couldn't find a free block of time to write every so often. That's why I stalled with my WIPs too.

But I cannot do this now, not for this project! 6K a week, every week. How on earth...? And this got me thinking of the tagine recipe - where a little here and a little there break down the mile-long recipe page into something that's doable in steps, where one builds upon the other, and before you know it, you end up with a consistent whole.

That's what I'm aiming for in my writing now. A little everyday. I clocked down 1.1K this morning, and still found time to do my other tasks. Win-win on all fronts. This'll be my goal every working day now - 1K and slightly more everyday, to add up gradually to 50K come July 31.

My update for now, folks! What are you all up to this week?

From Mauritius with love,

Zee

Progress Friday

Hello beautiful people

Sorry I've been AWOL for the past 4 days. I received the first round of edits on Walking The Edge and it's been a consuming task to get the manuscript in tip top shape (and agree with Noble Romance Publishing's Style Guide). That's quite something - a pub house's style guide. Of course, there are some basic rules all houses follow - and the savvy author knows to already work those conditions into her story before submitting - but what some places agree on and refuse, others refuse and agree... and you're left with a rather 'unique' set of conditions and rules to which you have to abide.

That being said, I've learned tons in the past few days. My editor too is a darling, a woman with whom I've really connected (thank goodness! Lol), and she's really making the story sing. Already, after the first round of edits itself, I cannot believe how the story is reading so much better. Which goes to show that you always, always need another set of professional eyes on your ms.

What else has been going on? Well, taking in the 'big games' of the French Open. Roland Garros without big surprises this year too - well, maybe not on the Singles Women's side. Can you believe Maria Sharapova is out, knocked off by this amazing 'newcomer', Na Li, from China. On the Men's side, not any surprises. Waiting for the clash of the titans today, when Roger Federer plays against Novak Djokovic. Two of my favourite men on the tennis circuit - I have no idea who to support...

Other than that, I haven't gotten anything else done this past week. Edits are time consuming, especially when you're an anal perfectionist like me. Not to mention that I can only 'work' when my son is at school, since I turn into the 'teacher' when he comes home and I have to check his lessons and homework.

Add to it too that I was without power for most of yesterday, at - you guessed it! - exactly the time when my son was in school. Upgrade works on the specific power lines on our street alone, and then those stinking idiots pulled down our phone line and only botched it back in late yesterday evening. Thank goodness they connected the Internet line (though botched coz my connection is terribly slow today!) - we're still without our land line coz those stinking idiots (forgive me for repeating myself, because these jerks are really stinking idiots!) 'forgot' to connect the second line. Sheesh...

Now looking forward to a chill weekend. Got tons of books to read, and a new story to start too... Excited about that one, because it's a venture I'm doing with my bestie, author Angela Guillaume. Will tell you more soon, promise!

What have you planned this weekend?

From Mauritius with love,

Zee