Hello, very nice of you to stop by. Welcome to my blog. My name is Jerri Ryder, and I am, among other things, an aspiring writer. Wow, that feels very bold and scary to announce it just like that. Almost as though I'm planning to publish a book, or something. Oh, wait, I do plan to publish my book. But I'm getting ahead of myself.
Back to the intro. I currently live just outside Paris for the second time around, with my husband, our teenage son, one Manx Border Collie and two cats. We have a grown-up daughter at University in the UK, and life is pretty busy. We have moved around quite a bit, having lived in Yorkshire, Isle of Man, Paris and Zambia. My husband and I also lived in Kingfield, Maine for one memorable winter, but that's another story, from a different lifetime.
We returned to Paris from Zambia in August, (a real case of two worlds colliding) and I find myself regularly defending my atrocious French. Time to stop defending it: either improve or accept that I am no linguist. I hate to admit defeat, and have come to accept certain OCD qualities. A bit unnerving at my age to discover new flaws, however we'll treat them as strengths instead. Perfectionist. Optimist. Artist. Mmm. Moving along...
Let's finally get to the raison d'etre of this blog: I am attempting to finally, ultimately and against all the odds, (the ones I place against myself) finish my very first novel.
I have several projects in the pipeline, but my main focus is my novel which hovers around 46,000 words at last count this afternoon. I hit one or two hiccups a few weeks ago and read a few 'writer blogs'. I decided to follow one excellent piece of 'writerly' advice - 'just write'. Brilliant. Why didn't I think of that? That makes it sound as though I'm mocking it - I'm not. Write every day, that is my new motto. Every damn day.
The second piece of advice I decided that made sense was 'get on with it and publish', even if you aren't ready to publish your masterpiece. (I'm calling my novel my 'masterpiece', because if you don't blow your own trumpet, who will?) Not a rhetorical question, I'm asking - who will?? Anyone?
Blogs apparently count as publishing in this context, which is lucky for me - I've been dabbling in blogging for a little while. Not that anyone reads most of them, other than me. That could be because I've set the privacy settings so high that I am literally the only person who can read them. I'm scared people will be able to read them. And comment. Numpty.
I started blogging when we moved to Zambia in 2012, and started a blog called And That's All She Wrote; I feel it could still serve me, even though that adventure is over, but have not posted on that blog for over a year. I shall think about that. I may resurrect it soon.
I religiously posted everyday during our Coast to Coast walk last summer, 192 Miles. Of course, once it's over, you can't keep posting about it. Not when you're back at home with your feet up, cup of tea in hand. It would just seem wrong.
And voilà! Here we are, my new blog, where I plan to waffle, babble, repost helpful advice and generally try to inspire myself to get on and finish it. And get this. I'm going to make it public. Yup. Public. People can read it. They might not, they probably won't in all honesty because who cares about what I've got to say? But they could. They might. And if you're reading it now, I have one reader. You might even decide to follow me, how exciting would that be? And you might not even be my mother.
What's even more exciting, you might click on one of those links up there, and see what I've written before. Why would you? I don't know, but if I was reading this, I would.
Next time, I will discuss my work in progress, let you know how it's going and request advice on the problems I have encountered while trying to write fiction (of which there are many). I won't give away any plots or spoilers, (other than the fact that I'm writing fiction) - don't worry. I want you to buy the book. Especially if you are not my mother.
