Words are hard to come by for me this morning -- unusual for one considered a little too gobby and opinionated most of the time -- but I am slowly finding the little blighters and trying my utmost to dilute the venom from my initial draft as I pick and pack them into coherency.

It's hard though.

I read, last night, with increasing horror, Graham Badman's report on Home Education in England and his recommendations to the Secretary of State. A horror which brought tears only a third of the way in. My kids, naturally, were concerned and I had to explain that should they choose to live in England again, they would not be allowed to think freely as they do now, to learn naturally and with complete autonomy. I had to tell them that their lives would be policed, not only by the LEA, but by other home educating families too. I explained that it made me feel particularly vulnerable because all the second guessing about whether or not I was doing the right thing by home-educating my children that I have suffered over the years, the agonising I did purely because I'd been schooled, and bullied at school, and made to believe as a child that it was the only way, came back in a huge, hot rush. And it hurt me badly. My complaints? Just read the document first (opens PDF):

www.freedomforchildrentogrow.org/8318-DCSF-HomeEdReviewBMK.PDF

QUOTE:

The National Association of Schoolmasters/Union of Women Teachers (NASUWT) in its response to the call for evidence, was quite clear in its opposition to the whole basis of elective home education as currently defined:

“The NASUWT maintains the existence of a right to home educate is anomalous with the clear emphasis in Government policy of ensuring that all children and young people can benefit from educational provision where teaching and learning is led by qualified teachers in well resourced and fit for purpose modern educational settings.”

Here we have teachers saying because they have pieces of paper and schoolrooms that they are better qualified than I, and than my autonomous children, to facilitate their education.

QUOTE:

And the Education Division of the Church of England states its concern:

“that children and young people not in formal education are missing the benefits and
challenges of learning in community with their peers. Children who do not go to school
may not experience the social and cultural diversity encountered there; they will not learn
how to deal with the rough and tumble of everyday life; they may never meet people with
different faith and value systems. All such encounters, even the difficult or painful ones are
enriching...

Here we have a major religious organisation telling us that bullying is FINE in schools. (I waited with baited breath anticipating the use of the phrase "character building" in that particular section, and would wager a small gold mine that it was all the CofE's Education Dept representative could do to NOT say it).

And with reference to Badman's constant griping that we are all SO maddeningly different...

Here we see the upshot of one person's inability to understand diversity, to understand that every human being on this planet is different, so every educational experience is likely to be just as different. Yes, we are all to conform because this single person did not like the fact that many home-educating families differ in opinion and method.

This report's recommendations are an erosion of the right of our children to live without fear, no matter how much the Church of England feels those children's spiritual and community development needs it. It is an erosion of our children's right to learn naturally and with autonomy, without the fear (yes, that word again) that they are somehow not 'doing it right' because they are facilitating it themselves.

And to tell us that because we may not have the same opinions, beliefs and philosophies as those who home-educate alongside us, that because we do not conform to one standard way of educating our children, we have failed, we need regulating, is outrageous to say the very least. It is nothing less than thought control. Get this: NO TWO CHILDREN ARE ALIKE. How DARE you tell us that we should educate our children in any other way than that which is suitable to THEM and them only. How DARE you compare the educational differences of each and every home-educating family to a failure to successfully home educate. You grossly underestimate both the rights of the child and the parents of that child if you believe diversity to be the problem here.

Indeed, let's look at diversity and what works for each situation such as in nature and bio/species diversity. What is right for one group in nature is not right for another, yet it is their differences that allow them to co-exist and to thrive on the planet. One does not seek to control or wipe out the other. One does not seek to harm the other. Instead, they flourish in a system that would be disfunctional were they not there.

Only humans seek to control other humans in such a way. Conformity. Do your thinking only inside the box.

Keep your individuality, folks. And please please PLEASE comment on this here. The Government wants to know what you think. Tell it.

www.dcsf.gov.uk/consultations/index.cfm

Ah well, seems I have words after all. Apologies for their rambling.

Good grief, I've been neglecting this journal. Time to make amends.

Keep an eye out, all my writing fiendlets, for a past half-way through review of Holly Lisle's How to Think Sideways course for the professional writer. Though I'm naught but an interloper where the word "professional" is concerned, I've found the course very (EXTREMELY) helpful.

Suffice to say that everything a writer's group I belonged to a couple of years ago wrung out of me I now have back.

More later.

It SNOWED last night!

How about that? Four inches of wet and cold being pretty all around me. The mountains almost look Swiss, this morning. Tre luvverly.

Please do go and have a read of THIS. It's hilarious and brilliantly written and needs a little help to stay in the top five this month ready to be skimmed off tomorrow.

It's laugh out aloud stuff, seriously.

Read it QUICKLY!

...I shall be 'doing' NaNo again this year. So much for the well-planned novel, eh? I'm giving it all over to the muse again.

Ah well, if it ain't broke, don't fix it.

Here's my NaNo profile. Buddy me if you dare.

Well, not everything -- that would be much too long and boring -- only what's been going on in my writing life since my last LJ entry, which was me asking what everyone thought of my virtual book cover for Great Aunt Ida's Revenge. Well, you liked it, and it seemed so did many of the kind folk at authonomy because they voted the novel up into last month's top five books on the site. This has put Ida on the HarperCollins Editor's Desk and will reward me before the month's end with a Critique/Review from a HarperCollins editor.

*bites nails*

With this on the non too distant horizon, I need to say thank you to any friends and writing colleagues who've joined the authonomy community and added to it in the way HarperCollins intended: by reading and commenting and voting. I also need to say thank you to the majority of voters who put the book up there (number three at midnight, Sept 30th). That is those people who don't know me from Adam yet who liked my story enough to put it up on their bookshelves for all the world to see.

Thank you. I am truly indebted.

You've all given me a chance to learn something new, a something that's worth its weight in gold: what a major publisher thinks about my work. This will help me move forward with my writing, I just know, and will help bring it up to a standard that will definitely see one of my novels in print before long. One can't buy that kind of knowledge and you've all given me the privilege.

I wish I could buy you all a drink. You've earned it.

Thoughts?

No WIFAHADIA words released from the depths of the muse during the last couple of days as my current WiP has been put aside in favour of the first 10k of Great Aunt Ida's Revenge. I am polishing the extract to within an inch of its life before it leaves my hands and enters a private beta site run by Harper Collins.

Anyone interested in joining said site, please post a comment and I'll get an invite out to you.

Back to The Bridge tomorrow. Can't wait.

Hmm, this starts to become serious. This starts to look like a 'proper' novel, being that now I am around 12k in. Characters come to life, settings are more than just pictures in my head. I mean look, someone's actually left a candle burning near some curtains over there...

I guess what I mean to say is, "Uh oh, there's no turning back now".

No more than around 400 words last night, but a couple of ideas I need to write today.

I love the gazing-into-space part of writing; it's my meditation, like I'm going off somewhere to choose ideas and stuff for stories. It's kind of like wandering the halls of chaos for building blocks, I suppose. I take an off-the-peg something or other and put it in my trolley/cart, then I'm off to the next aisle, in search of a line of dialogue or personality trait for chapter nine, but something else catches my eye on the way and I bag a little extra doodad. It's a something which doesn't yet fit anywhere -- indeed, it may not fit in this story at all -- but it's good and I know it will go somewhere. One day.

Heh. I love shopping for ideas. --And I hate shopping.

I haven't been posting because, well -- life, y'know?

Anyway, 1552 words for today and yesterday, and that brings the pixelated word count (I have a couple of k on paper) of my new novel to around 8600.

I'm happy.

From the BBC today. China proves itself to be just as shallow as the West.

Speaking on Beijing Radio station, musical director Chen Qigang said the organisers needed a girl with both a good image and a good voice. They faced a dilemma because although Lin was prettier, seven-year-old Yang had the better voice, Mr Chen said. "After several tests, we decided to put Lin Miaoke on the live picture, while using Yang Peiyi's voice," he told the radio station. "The reason for this is that we must put our country's interest first," he added.

Two day update, erg. Was much too tired last night -- after gorgeous food, gorgeous wine and the even more gorgeous hospitality of wonderful friends -- to even consider drafting.

So...1.5 hours today of hand-written text turned into pixels a little later. 1084 words. That'll do pig, I say. That'll do.

I'm the annoying person at the check-out who refuses to put all but the very smallest of vegetables into a plastic bag. My onions roll around with the apples and oranges, shedding their papery skins everywhere; my carrots -- relieved of the large plastic bag they've been sitting in since being picked -- deposit sweat on the conveyor belt. Fer shame, I hold everyone up while the cashier chases my fruit and veg around and gets frustrated because I 'brought my own bags' and she can't pack for me. There's nowhere to put my shopping, you see, because we're not supposed to pack for ourselves and certainly not into our own bags. We're suppose to let the cashiers do it, and into yet more plastic.

We put plastic wrapped stuff into plastic carrier bags without a thought. And this isn't even the half of it. What about the polystyrene trays etc?

Anyway, this blogger: Chris Jeavans is trying to do without the stuff for a month. I'll be watching closely to see how she does. It'll be an uphill struggle, I'm sure.

949 new words tonight. Editing now.

And if this seems a puny amount to anyone reading, let me say this: I don't care. If I churn out a thousand words, or as near as dammit, a day for a year, I will have churned out 364-5 thousand more words than had I not sat my backside down for that special drafting hour.

701 words and around 60 minutes of virginal content: mmmm.

I must just point out that this single hour a day is not to be used for anything other than drafting. No editing; proofing; outlining; world-building; character sketching; plotting; drawing; sitting with fingers in ears sing Lalalalalalalaaaaaa. No matter how nice your voice is.

Oh, and no daleks. Ever.

Please do post your daily stats. I'll read 'em.

Me? Oh yeah, Little Miss Slooooow:

One hour -- 885 brand spanking and uber-shiny new words.

"What the...?" you may ask.

"It's the new thing for summer," I answer while considering my fingernails and the length of them. They are long, unkempt. They have not been tapping many keyboard keys of late. I need an excuse to trim them. "Write For An Hour A Day In August," I say. "Get out of the heat and into your imagination. Forget NaNo, this is going to be BIG."

"But NaNo's big."

"Not as big as this will be." I plump out my bottom lip a little. "You in?"

"What do I have to do?"

Resisting the urge to blow you away on a sigh of sarcasm (something to do with standing upside down against a wall for a hour each day in February -- naked) I explain that one merely dedicates a single hour a day, each day in August, to write. Doesn't have to be thousands of words, doesn't even have to be ten if the mood doesn't take you. The object of the exercise is to get you to dedicate a single hour a day to your imagination and fingertips.

Who knows, by the time NaNo comes around, you might even be thanking me.

Up for it?

...Chris Jordan will be going global at some point.

http://www.chrisjordan.com/current_set2.php?id=7 (The first piece, enlarged, might not be considered safe for work. The Barbie piece is debatable).

We, as a species, should hang our heads in shame.