<p><span style="font-size: x-small;">Just as something nice, like the opportunity to be writer of the month comes along, off goes the internet connection. Why? Who knows? The umpteen nice young folk my husband has had consultations with over the last several weeks have had lots of advice and ideas but we're still none-the-wiser.</span></p> <p><span style="font-size: x-small;">I'm not going to whinge, there are real problems out there, but it has turned my writing and personal life upside down. Today's connection is tenuous at best so I won't linger. I hope to post my contribution to the WOM Forum later today or tomorrow and to get in touch with the person I want to nominate as next WOM. Will that be for February, Sue?</span></p> <p><span style="font-size: x-small;">Happy New Year to you fellow bloggers. Long may your connection stay connected.</span></p>

<p><span style="font-size: small;">The engineer has been and for a blissful hour the light may have shone unobserved on our Broadband home-hub. We were having lunch upstairs. Come the phone call from the call-centre to find out how it was for us and up goes the 'no-broadband' connection notice. This one may well run and run. </span></p> <p><span style="font-size: small;">In the rest of my life, I've completed a plot plan for a novella. This is new for me on two counts. I've not tried the novella length before and I've never completed a plot plan. I'm still waiting for a decision from the publishers I sent the last one to, so a novella length seemed like a good in-between answer to the waiting game.</span></p> <p><span style="font-size: small;">While the engineer was here, I boiled up some marmalade pulp.&nbsp;The enforced stillness waiting for the pot to boil and settle back into a 'steady rolling boil' allowed me to&nbsp;come up with an article idea. I'll now have to get covered in dust and cowebs while I search for the photographs to send with it. Now that we may be re-connected that sort of thing should become possible again.</span></p> <p><span style="font-size: small;">On the other hand, the Gremlin landing pad on our roof wasn't a victim of the recent gales...</span></p> <p><span style="font-size: small;"></span></p>

<p><span style="font-size: small;">My laptop's just come home from the clinic and the diagnosis is don't plan on writing a saga!</span></p> <p><span style="font-size: small;">Martin has de-bugged it; re-connected the printer (Yippee!); put on a trial of free anti-virus softwear and handed me a spec for 'The new machine. For a writer.'</span></p> <p><span style="font-size: small;">It may be a truism, but if you haven't got the tools of the trade getting anything written and out there is seriously difficult. I know I said I was passing the Quill Pen onto Moosey as Writer of the Month, but I didn't mean it, Moosey, honestly. Please do use all the electrical hard and soft wear at your disposal.</span></p> <p><span style="font-size: small;">So now I'm ready to meet my characters again and, as the machine is running so much faster than when it went into the clinic last week, that should be easier and more of a pleasure. We do get used to almost anything and sometimes that's a mistake.</span></p>