Stressed Off My Scone

Don’t you just love quirky sayings?

Stressed off my scone is one of my favorites. It’s completely random and brings to mind a very English woman incapable of taking on an itty bitty scone.

Children tend to pick up on the sayings of their parents without realizing it. I once repeated a phrase so commonly said in our family unit that I didn’t even know I’d said it and was completely put out when my friend started laughing hysterically.

I believe these little sayings make a character more human, more relatable, more real. A cardboard cut out wouldn’t be stressed off its scone.

I love a completely deranged character, the more flawed a hero and heroine the more I want to read. Give me a woman who’s accidentally tazered her boss or who’s marched down a highway in a beaver suit and you’ll have a hard time getting rid of me.


What do you do to make your characters more real to you?

Down The Toilet

“There are days I’d rather clean the toilet than write”

Ahh the words of B.J. Daniels, who writes Intrigue, and who, let’s face it, has spunk! I’m not quite tempering an urge to clean the toilet but I probably could stand and bash my forehead against a wall for an hour rather than read my own work again. Not because it’s particularly bad (although it very well could be) but because my characters aren’t eagerly awaiting me to tell their story and have been going out of their way to make me work for every single word for the last few weeks.

This is what happens when I write only one story at a time (you would think I’d have seen it coming) and because I’m writing to a deadline I don’t have the luxury of putting my work aside and chatting with two different characters who actually want to cooperate with me.

Enter the skim reading phenomenon.

Have you ever found that you’ve read your story so many times you’re no reading it but skimming over it? I blame years at university for permanently damaging my ability to read like a normal person. The little perfectionist imp on my shoulder is cracking the whip and is definitely not happy with the finished product but procrastination has kicked in and now I fear I’m a goner (at least for today).

Right now, I could quite happily delete the entire thing out of pure frustration. Aren’t the characters supposed to do as they’re told? Would someone please tell mine that? Perhaps I’ll change their names to something completely ridiculous as punishment… Snugglepot and Cuddlepie come to mind…

“What an amazing profession: getting paid to give life to your imagination” – BJ Daniels

Perhaps my imagination has a little too much life at the moment?