About & Contact
Originally from Jersey, I now live in a teeny tiny village in East Sussex. My working day mainly involves typing stuff about bits of grass and counting cows. At other times I am to be found sipping red wine and wandering about in my pyjamas looking a little bewildered while trying to get to grips with my second novel.
I am also toiling through a degree with the Open University (Eng Lit and French) and tootle the flute in a chamber orchestra. I am therefore very clever and interesting completely and utterly knacked out most of the time. Or slightly squiffy. Or something. Yes, definitely something.
Email me: jenny [at] spiralskies [dot] com
(Oh, and I look a bit like this. Just in case you wondered.)
Comments»
Hello Jenny. Found you, as us writers do, by googling myself (as I do daily to confirm I still exist). Thank you for flagging me up as one of your writerly sites – i hope you’ve found some of what’s on there as helpful as i have found some of what’s on here funny and clever and insightful. I LOVE your thermometer. I have a similar thing ongoing when writing, and by your yardstick (I tend to work to 110,000) I’m about 62% through no. 8. By the way, if you visit my site you’ll see i am in a state of some excitement right now, which is why I’m here instead of beavering towards 63%…. Keep up the good work! Lynne
Melissa Nathan Award for Comedy Romance – Wow, Lynne, how exciting! Good luck – I shall be following your progress and keeping my fingers crossed for you. Plays havoc with the typing, but never mind!
It made me smile that you google yourself – isn’t the internet a wonderful thing!?
Thanks for your kind words; I like to think I have my moments… your site is fab, loads of helpful stuff for the aspirant among us.
I shall keep you posted, Jen! And yes, it is playing havoc with the writing; though I imagine I’m now at about 78% done, using your method, (I am working to a deadline called ’school breaks up sooner than you think’) I keep having to break off to think things like ‘frock’ and ‘nail varnish’ and ’should I get an eccentric haircut?’. All distractions I could really do without…
I don’t know a single writer who doesn’t google themselves; it’s the only decent way to find out if people actually like what you do!
Dangerous to blog when you are also trying to write a book: blogging is so easy and writing a book is so hard.
I speak from experience: after four years my blog has 175,000 words and the two books I attempted got nowhere. I don’t think they would have been much good, but then neither is my blog.
Plus an OU degree, two children and a dog?
I wish you the very best of luck.
Thanks for the luck, Tony, I think I’ll need it! I have to disagree with you though – your blog is most interesting.
“Most interesting”?
How dare you, patronising little minx?
Oh, I’ve just realised that we must have met in Hastings Sainsbury’s, each of us being a representative of one the two rival gangs which infest the place, fighting over territory and getting in each others’ way: the SHARKS, dusty relics shuffling around clutching their loyalty cards in palsied, liver-spotted, hands trying to think of some suggestive witticism with which to enliven the day of a comely check-out girl, and the JETS, tired, dog-owning pyjama-clad mothers, many of them aspiring writers, pouring in from their rural retreats in search of BOGOF offers on Peruvian medlars or whatever else Jamie is recommending that week.
I am the SHARK with his own teeth (not quite a complete set) and a full head of lustrous fair hair belying his mature years.
I shall keep my weary eyes peeled for you. Have never thought of supermarket shopping as gang warfare before. Makes it all the more exciting! Oh, and ‘comely’ is SUCH a good word.
Jenny, I’ve read your blog and I find myself portrayed in it. The struggle between the craft and the means to make a living, the everlasting feeling of being overwhelmed by words and ideas. If you feel like it, please stop by http://www.horaciomontenegro.blogspot.com
This is my online journal. The entries are originally written in spanish and, since I don’t have much time to translate, I’ve embedded a translation widget which you’ll find on the right column of my blog.
Though some of it may be lost in translation, I trust you’ll feel someone out there is keeping you company and going through the same trouble.
Yours truly,
Horacio Montenegro.
Me? I just love this blog! I love the honest, down-to-earthiness about it! I love dipping into it and chuckling, and frowning, and sometimes wishing to put an arm round you and say “your blog enhances my life”. Anything that makes me smile enhances my life. And your blog often makes me smile.
John, thank you. That is such a kind thing to say and I’m still smiling days after reading your comment.
Hi Jen Brilliant to see you after soo long!!!!! The reunion in Jersey was great. I am now following you on twitter still a virgin on this as well as facebook. Hope to see you befor you go home if not lets not lose touch this time xxx
Hi Jenny,
I love your blog. Good luck with novel 2 (I have many half finished ones on the go). Love your piece on the bendy biscuits and health food shoppers. I eat the bendy biscuits but I’m still a bit of a stiffy.
Melanie – Gosh, thank you so much. I’m surprised I can actually get in the house, what with all the half-finished things. There’s nothing wrong with being a stiffy. Have you tried cake though?
Hello. I quite like reading you blog, I found you by being an utter nosey parker, my best friend is the Rah Goddess and I saw you commented on her blog – she’s bloody marvellous, not unlike yourself.
I am welcoming myself to becoming a regular reader of your blog too.
Laura x
Laura, hello! Oh, I’m loving her blog. Sometimes, just now and again, you find a blog and wish that the writer was your friend in ‘real life’. So you’re lucky, she does sound fab. And thank you! Please come back. I like nice people. x