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A Sense of Achievement
A Sense of Achievement
I can’t believe it’s three months since I last wrote a blog. At least I have some pretty good excuses for neglecting my website: moving house, complete make-over of the new apartment, holidays, family visits and illness (a holiday in Majorca that ended up with a week in hospital!)
But if my weekly blog has been neglected, my novel has been even more so. I opened the Word Document today and saw it was June when I worked on it last! I’ve had several inspirational ideas since then, but not found a moment to do anything about them and now I’m not sure where I was going to fit them in. A complete re-read will be necessary before I launch into it again. It presently stands at 71,000 words and Im only a few chapters from completion. I have left novels for long periods before, and sometimes feel a break is a good idea and it would be a shame not to finish it now after all my hard work.
Like all retired people I wonder how I ever had the time to work. At one stage in my life I worked full-time with three young children and a large house to run. Looking back on it now I don’t know how I did it! And even when the children were grown up and had left home and I worked part-time I managed to write three novels! Yet here I am no longer working and struggling to find the time to do the thing I enjoy the most. When you’re no longer working you fill the time available with other things: I go to exercise classes, dally afterwards for coffee and a chat with my friends; I spend longer over the housework, mentally watching myself carefully iron and fold clothes that at one time I would have just rolled up and thrown in a drawer; and with my husband at home there is time to stop for tea and a biscuit and a chat in between the chores, rather than madly dashing around from one task to another like I did when I was working.
So rather than bemoan what I haven’t achieved this year I thought I should congratulate myself on what I have done:
- Moved house (twice as it happens!)
- Cleared out, packed, unpacked and sorted all the paraphernalia from one house to another to another.
- “Project-managed” all the improvements needed in our new apartment: new bathroom, shower room, kitchen, re-decoration throughout, new curtains, new carpets.
- Maintained my website onactiveservice.co.uk This has been more onerous than I expected, but is so rewarding and I have learned so much about the Second World War and people’s lives at that time that it has certainly been worth it.
- Self-published my novel based on the website “Counting the Days”.
It’s a little early, maybe, half-way through November, to look back on my year, but nonetheless I feel pretty pleased with what I have done.
Bethany Askew is the author of eight novels: The Time Before, The World Within, Out of Step, Counting the Days, Poppy's Seed, Three Extraordinary Years The Two Saras and I Know You, Don't I? She has also written a short story, The Night of the Storm, and she writes poetry. Two more women’s fiction books have been accepted for publication in 2020 and 2021 respectively and she is currently working on a new novel. In her spare time she enjoys reading, music, theatre, walking, Pilates, dancing and voluntary work. Bethany is married and lives in Somerset.