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Give Your Story A Great Beginning

Monday, July 27th, 2009

I’m still in research and planning mode – I really want to make sure I understand what I’m getting myself into when starting out to write a book.

As a complete novice in the area of book writing, I find my nights are now typically spent trawling through hundreds of sites thrown at me by Google as I continue searching for advise on book writing and how to make sure that what I put on paper will count.

Every now and then Google spits out a real gem of a site such as the Writers’ Editing Workshop. This site is managed by a freelance editor, Angela Harms, and she describes it as

“… a place for writers. It’s intended to help authors revise and polish their novels, and prepare for publication.”

The site is full of great articles including, Give Your Story A Great Beginning, Writing Non-Fiction: Write an Outline.

I can see I will probably be spending a good few hours here, now and well into the future.

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Book writing with Open Source Software

Sunday, July 19th, 2009

So I’m in the very early stages of looking into the what and how of writing my book. The first thing I wanted to address was what technology is out there that I can use?

Considering that all the computers in our house run Linux (mainly Ubuntu), I have been thinking about utilising Open Source Software to assist me in my writing.

So my computers are running Linux, what about a Word Processor? Immediately Open Office comes to mind, and appears that it would fill this role perfectly.

With the basics sorted, I now need to understand in a little more detail about how I need to layout the pages of my book – how does my Open Office document need to be formatted?

A quick Google search lead me to a nice article on the Make Tech Easier blog – How to Layout a Book with OpenOffice.org: Part 1. I expect this will help me sort out the formatting and layout required for my book.

I think I will continue to post about how I am getting on, and the little tips I come across.

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Moroccan spiced grilled chicken

Saturday, July 18th, 2009

Lucas' Moroccan spiced chicken. Spiced grilled chicken is my current BBQ favourite (in fact we’re having it for tea tonight). I’ve cooked it twice now, and each time it turns out beautifully – it looks and tastes great. Basically its a whole chicken that you cut the back bone out of, push it flat, and marinate in delicious Moroccan spices before BBQ’ing (or roasting in the oven).

Goes great with rice, or a simple salad.

The recipe for this comes from the Cooking Moroccan cook book (available on Amazon).

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Pondering a book

Saturday, July 18th, 2009

After reflecting back over the past 18 months or so, and the things that Laura and I have done and achieved – getting married, travelling the world together, comming home and settling down – I have been pondering the idea of capturing this stage of our lives on paper and publishing it as a book.

I guess the seed that is driving this idea was originally planted while we were travelling when, almost religiously, I posted to our blog about our travels – it was so easy to write about something I was passionate about.

I feel that seed was probably berried some what after our return to ‘real life’. Work and general every-day living nipped it in the bud, but recently that seed of an idea has been sprouting back to life, and today is where it all starts.

I can’t promise anything, but I think drawing on the blog articles I have already written about our wedding, and trip, I’m already in a reasonable place to make a start. I don’t assume for a minute that this will not be a challenge, but thats half the reason why I want to do it.

Anyway, I hope to post my progress as I am going.

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Lucas & Laura’s 1st wedding anniversary

Thursday, April 2nd, 2009

Well, the last year has gone quickly – it only seems like a few months ago that we were getting ready for our wedding, and to head off overseas for 4 months. It’s been quite an exciting and busy year, so we decided to take a few days out and headed down to Hobart for a few days to relax and celebrate our first year of married life.

The slower pace of Hobart (and I guess Tasmania in general) was great for a few relaxed days away. We hired a car so we could get out and see a bit more of the country side. We got up to Coles Bay and Feycinet National Park. We experienced the spine tingling ghost tour at Port Author, and spent a bit of time in Richmond, the Cadbury chocolate factory and the Cascade Brewery. Mount Wellington was covered in cloud, so our slow drive up there didn’t really yield the spectacular views that you could imagine on a clear day.

All in all we had a great couple of days on the smaller island. We have posted our photos in our photo album.

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