Day 30! WooHoo!

YAY!!!!!   I did it :D :D :D :D :D

I have written my final hub of the thirty day challenge :)  Alright, I haven't posted it, but I have written it and it is just ready to be typed up.  I was going to sit up for another hour and get it posted, but I actually have to post the 29th as well, and it's already half past eleven.  So I hope all of my followers will forgive me, but you will actually have to wait an extra day to see the two final posts.  But rest assured that they are definitely written and I am not lying to you.  Oh, here you are, I'll take a picture of them and their titles.  Hang on...

Alright?  I don't lie about things like this, you see?  (I do lie about some things, but I'm not going to tell you what!)

So I have finished my challenge, and I think that I will miss it.  I will probably write another hub tomorrow, because I will miss it if I don't!  I should really have an evening off and just watch a film, but I think I might have made myself addicted to hubs.  That's not really anything to be ashamed of though, eh?  There are worse things to be addicted to.

I'm feeling sort of proud for finishing the challenge - and also for managing to post a blog every single day too :)  That was the easy bit though.  I'm not feeling completely proud though, as I don't think the hubs are particularly good.  I think one or two of them are very nice, but on the whole I think they're too rushed and I'd like to address some of the issues in them again and write better hubs from scratch.  If I do that then I think I will have to delete the ones I've expanded on, so that I'm not repeating myself.  HubPages has strict rules about repetitive hubbing and things like that.  It's a super site - I'm very glad that I found it.

But I'm off to bed now, because I'm very tired.  I would like to go to sleep, and perhaps sleep for a week.  Writing five hubs in one day is not really good for a person, and I have a bit of a headache!

Night all.

Day 24.

Wowee!  I'm doing rather well on Hubpages actually.  Doing the 30 day challenge has boosted my profile quite a bit.  I've got 30 followers, and they're leaving comments every day.  Some of my followers are very talented writers - I've read their hubs, and they're fantastic, really put me to shame :S  I feel a bit daft when I look at some of my silly hubs, and then I look at some of their information-packed ones.  Oo-er, I think I should probably put more effort in.  I think that's what I'll challenge myself to after next week - to write two or three excellent hubs a week, rather than lots of sketchy ones.  When I first joined Hubpages I noticed a comment on someone else's hub that talked about how it's okay to go back and edit hubs at a later date.  I thought that that sounded very silly, because why would you post a hub if you thought it wasn't good enough.  But I can see what that person meant now - you learn a lot the more you hub, and the more hubs you read, and you start to see big flaws in your own writing.  I don't think I will go back and edit any that I've already written, but I might rewrite them and delete the old ones.

It's been one of those slow days today, because Matthew isn't very well.  He just seems to be have one of those random 'viruses', and is generally a bit poorly.  But this signifies the first of the winter illnesses.  Last year it was the same - we got the first lurgy about now, and didn't really get free of germs until the spring.  It's the same for everyone, I know.  I'm not complaining about it at all.  I think you just kind of have to embrace the cold, make it your friend, and enjoy a rest when you can.  It's difficult when the kids wake in the night with fevers, and sickness, and pain in their ears, and sore throats, and coughs, and all those things.  Tempers fray, of course, as they do when we're tired.  But winter colds have a huge plus, and that is that they give you an excuse to snuggle up on the couch with tea and toast (if you can manage it - have your toast with honey, as honey is healing, and is particularly good for coughs), and you can watch as many DVDs as you like without feeling guilty.  DVDs are my very great friends, and I do love them, dearly.

I have no photos today.  I should have had a good one of James and Matthew with mohawks in the bath, but I couldn't find my camera :(  They did look cool, with their hair spiked up with shampoo.  James had a head full of hair gel today - he put it on himself right before we had to go to school, so I didn't have time to wash it off.  He looked like he'd dipped his head in a chip pan, poor chap.  It must have been quite itchy, bless him, because when he came home this afternoon, he took himself off up to the bathroom and I found him five minutes later with a nice lather atop his head.  The lather was made from handsoap.  He'd washed his hair, with a little cold water also, every so neatly :)  There wasn't a drip of water on his clothes, and he'd been very careful not to get any soap on his face or down his neck.  Bless. I don't know how he imagined he was going to rinse the soap off!

That's all for today.  I'm off to hub some more.  Got two hubs to post today, and I've still got plenty of time left this evening to write another.  Catching up a little.  I think I'm going to do it!

Day 23.

Blah!  I'm not catching up very well with the hubs.  Only 7 days, left, and I think I've got 12 hubs to write. It's a tall order, but I think I can do it.  I do think so.  We'll see.  Wish me luck.  I've got lots of hubs titles waiting to be expanded on - it's just finding the time to get on and write them.

I didn't get to finish the two I've been working on today.  My mummy came to visit, and stayed for most of the evening.  It was very nice indeed, because mostly we talked about writing (my mummy is a poet, a very good one), and about the costumes we're going to make for the Jane Austen Festival next year.  Loveliness.  But now I am too tired to do anything except go to bed and read half a page of my book (Lords and Ladies, Terry Pratchett).

I've got lots to choose from for my next read.  I don't know what to go for.  I don't have the next Terry Pratchett novel, so I'll have to wait until I can get that.  Shall I go for Stephen Fry's Moab is my Washpot, or Brandon Mull's Fablehaven, or Cornelia Funk's Inkheart.  Oh no!  I'd forgotten - I've got to read Northanger Abbey because my mum is about to read it, and we thought we should probably read all of the Austen novels that we haven't read before we go to the festival.   Decided.  Lovely.  I will enjoy a bit of Austen, and then I might read Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, which I said I would read months ago but forgot about!  Good.

Night then.

Day 21.

Oh noooooooooooooo!  I haven't left enough time to blog!  I've spent all of my evening hubbing, written two good hubs (not quite ready to publish yet), and done nothing else.  I can't wait for the hub challenge to finish, because it's stopping me from doing anything else.  I want to be getting on with my MA application, and my CW course, and my two bloody novels for chrissakes!

(Someone on Hubpages mentioned their own 30 day challenge, and then said that they went on to do 100 hubs in less than 50 days!  I was tempted for about half a minute, and then I decided that I shouldn't do that to my novels - I've neglected them for far too long, and I really would like to get them finished so that I can start to try selling them.)

So, I'm not blogging properly tonight, because it's already waaaaaaaaaaay past my bedtime.  Night friends.

Day 16.

Aha, over half way, you'll be glad to know.  Me blogging every single day is not very entertaining for you is it?  No.  But I said I'd do it, so I have to.

Me old mate Emily, what I went to university with quite a few years ago, has just posted on her blog (The Tangled Yarn) about a competition involving the writing of 50,000 words in the month of November.  Naughty Emily, to post such a post, when I already am up to my eyeballs in self-inflicted deadlines.  Now, I love a deadline as much as the next person, as I've said before.  But an extra... what was it Emily, 1667 words a day? ... is just a deadline too many for me, I think.  Unless I stayed up all night, every night possibly.  I would very happily do that, if my body didn't need sleep, but unfortunately it does.  Damn the cursed frailties of the human body - there's definitely a design fault there.  Wonder if we could fix it somehow.  The brain doesn't turn off when it's asleep anyway, so it's a strange thing that we do need to sleep, to lose consciousness for a while.

Sorry, I've drifted off topic again.  What was I saying?  Oh yes, that competition.  Well, I would dearly love to have a go at it, but I think I will have to try to remember to do it next year.  I can't enter everything now, can I?  No.

Like I said in my previous post, I'm easily distracted when I write, and I said that I wanted to learn to focus on one piece at a time.  I should start that today.  Yes.  I did quite well this morning, with my three hours.  I only worked on one piece - a nice hub that I think has turned out better than I planned it to.  I hoped that I would be able to write two or three hubs in that time, but this one has turned out to be quite a long one.  I haven't typed it up yet, but I'm a bit nervous about any comments it might get, as it's a serious piece (my first one on Hubpages I think).  It's a review of three books that I read recently, with a little comparing and contrasting.  It probably reads like a Year 7 English essay, but I've not practised book reviews for years.  I'd like to do more, and the only way to improve is to practise, so hopefully we'll see some development in my writing if I do more of these.  Book reviews are a little scary to write, because you never know if you've misunderstood the premise of the book completely, or if you're going to say anything that will reveal how stupid and narrowly-read you are.  But I guess everyone's entitled to an opinion on a book, if they've taken the time to read it.  I am profoundly aware that I'm not the best of readers, that I do often miss the obvious, and that I usually have very different opinions from everyone else.  I quite often detest characters I'm supposed to like, and love the ones I'm expected to hate.  I usually don't see the denouement coming, even when the signs are blatant to everyone else.  But hey, the hub is just a writing exercise, and I'm getting used to baring my soul on the internet and allowing everyone to see inside my head.  As long as I don't offend anyone I'm not bothered if people think I'm naive and a bit stupid :)  We all knew that already anyway.


Here's a Barbados photo for you:

And maybe one or two more:

There are many more.  Maybe I'll show you a few next time, if I remember.  Just be thankful that I'm not subjecting you to a full slide show of the whole lot.  

Rambling over.  Bye for now.  

Day 4. Recharging the batteries

Sometimes it's good to recharge your batteries, eh?

I'm not talking figuratively.  I actually mean that it's good to recharge your batteries, otherwise you might be in a pickle when you need to use your camera and you can't because your batteries have run dead.  So  don't forget to recharge.

Do you like my batteries?  I thought I'd take a picture of them for you, because they're a very pretty set.  Green's my favourite colour you see, so I feel very lucky to have green batteries.

Now I'm treating you to a photo of me.  I'm pondering possible hub topics whilst waiting for my batteries to charge.  Obviously, I have two sets of batteries, because I wouldn't have been able to take this photo if the batteries in the camera were on charge.  Don't be silly.

Anyway, it's fun, this hubbing-blogging challenge.  It's only day four of the challenge and already I look like this most of the time.  It's very difficult to think of hub topics when you know you have to come up with a new one every day, and you have got very much time to considering whether or not it's going to work.  I'm spending a lot of time disregarding many ideas very quickly, mainly because I can't think of a funny angle on them.  I didn't intend for all of my hubs to have humour in them, but they just turn out that way.

I am thinking that my life is being overtaken by hubbage, but it's a very good thing because it's forcing me to practise writing.  It's forcing me to tackle topics that I might otherwise avoid.  I wrote about crying last night because I was short on time and another topic didn't present itself.  It was kind of good that I couldn't think of anything else, because the hub turned out quite well, and I found more things to talk about than I expected.  I haven't decided on today's topic yet.  83.7% of the words and pictures that pop into my head are dull, and disregarded almost before they've even registered.  15.2% of topics fill me with instant dread - they are way too hard for my small brain to process properly.  1.1% are just right - that's an awful lot of thinking in a day.  But I'm getting used to it.

What I need to stop doing is staying up until after midnight with the hubs, because I'm having trouble staying awake during the day.  Idiot!  Stands to reason I'll write better hubs, and I'll write them much quicker, if I get a decent night's sleep.

Oh.  I just had a good idea for generating more ideas.  But I won't be able to implement it until I have more followers because it'll require some reader participation.  I could use Twitter for it, or Facebook, and ask my friends and followers to suggest topics for me.  I could start to treat my hubpage like a magazine/newspaper column and ramble away about all kinds of random stuff.  And, I might even learn some stuff, eh?

Oh, that reminds me.  This is very exciting, more exciting than anything else in my life right now.  I've bought the boys a very small globe this morning.  They've really latched on to my idea of doing projects at home.  We're going to learn about the world, its countries, its seas, its people, its histories, its place in the Universe.  We're going to draw pictures of the interesting things that we learn.  And we're going to do a good bit of writing and practising with numbers.  And we're going to glue things on, like grains of rice, pieces of pasta.  I think we will do our projects on big A1 sized pieces of paper.  Thomas and James will be able to take them to school to show to their classes.  It's time we started taking our teaching responsibilities much more seriously I think - we've been slacking again, and letting our boys down.  Two glowing reports at Parents' Evening for Thomas and James, but my report on my own start to the academic year says 'must try a wee bit harder.'

This is our globe :)  Soon there will be pictures of our 'About the World' posters :D  This is going to be A LOT of fun!  Saturday afternoons will never be the same again!  

Oh, and there's my hub topic for today!  How to revolutionise Saturday afternoons - particularly rainy ones.  Off to write it now.

Day 1

Quick blog, just so's I can say that this is Day 1!

I've challenged myself (and also my friend Sazzle) to blog for thirty days.  I was going to say 100 days, but since I'll be hubbing every day too, I thought I'd probably be really sick of thinking and typing, and would be in need of a day or two off in a month's time.  This can be the trial, and if I like the routine of blogging and hubbing every day, then perhaps I'll challenge myself to the hundred days.  And perhaps you'll be really sick of me scrabbling around, trying to find interesting things to talk about, and not succeeding.

I have hubbed today (it really does sound quite wrong, doesn't it?!).  I hubbed about my bad parenting.  I don't know what I'll hub about tomorrow, but I think I'm going to have to carry a list with me, for noting down hub ideas - I'll probably think of lots each day, and if I don't write them down, of course, they'll instantly disappear as soon as I sit down to hub.  If you haven't looked at my hubs, and have no intention of doing so, this will mean absolutely nothing to you.  Hubs are like mini-articles (actually some are very lengthy, but none of mine are yet), and you're supposed to try to be informative and interesting and original in them.  Lots of people use the Hubpages, and lots of people leave comments on your hubs.  It's all very encouraging.  I've never really seen a negative comment on there - you get to moderate your own comments, so I guess hubbers must delete those that they don't like.  The way to say that you don't like hubs is to 'vote them down'.  I'm getting some views every day, and a few comments.  But I'm hoping that by hubbing daily I will start to get lots of views and better ratings.  Mind you, I have to come  up with some interesting reads to keep my readers!  I don't know if I'll be able to do that.  We'll see.  It's worth a bash, eh? :)

So I'd better get to bed now, before Professor Brian Cox's fabulous 'Wonders of the Solar System' draws me in again, even though I've seen it before.  Night.  Happy hubbing and blogging everyone.  Do feel free to join in the challenge!  And let us know if you are, so we can read and encourage :)