Freedom From The Mundane

Scotlandness

Image: Foxypar4

I’ve been thinking about my NaNoWriMo effort last month, and the reasons why I never managed it. Compared to previous years I didn’t enjoy the experience this time – not because I never made 50k – I never made the 50k was because I wasn’t enjoying it.

This morning I feel able to continue work on the novel. The pressure feels as though it has lifted and I think the 50k deadline was constricting me, not driving me. Maybe I chose the wrong novel to write for NaNo; it’s complicated, deep, and is requiring a lot of research I never envisaged before I started. It requires a lot of writing “off the page” in order to keep a track of everything that’s happening.

Yesterday was Saint Andrew’s Day here in Scotland, Not many celebrated it, in fact, I think it was mostly the SNP trying to make themselves the Scotland Party instead of the Party of Scotland, and all the lucky civil servants who got today off work to mark the occasion.

In the spirit of ‘Scotlandness’, here’s some interesting facts about our Saint Andrew* you might not know.

The patronage of the saint, whose name means ‘manly’, also covers fishmongers, gout, singers, sore throats, spinsters, maidens, old maids, and women wishing to become mothers.
Andrew (the Galilean fisherman who was singled out to be Christ’s first disciple) preached the Gospel in the lands around the Black Sea and in Greece and was eventually crucified on an X-shaped cross in Patras. The X-shaped cross is what gives Scotland its Saltire.
The geography of his mission means he is also the patron saint of Russia and Greece, and never once set foot in Scotland.
Saint Andrew became associated with Scotland three hundred years after his martyrdom, when the Roman Emperor Constantine, himself a Christian, ordered that the saint’s bones should be moved from Patras to his new capital city of Constantinople. Before the order was carried out a monk called St Rule (or St Regulus) had a dream in which an angel told him to take what bones of Andrew’s he could to “the ends of the earth” for safe-keeping. St Rule duly took what he could – presumably in a swift and frantic raid on the tomb – and after an epic journey with the aforementioned assortment was shipwrecked on the east coast of Scotland. He must have deemed that he had indeed reached the ‘ends of the earth’!
St Andrew was officially named patron saint of Scotland after Robert the Bruce’s famous victory at the Battle of Bannockburn in 1314, and in 1385 the Saltire became the national flag of Scotland.
Around midnight on November 29, it was traditional for girls to pray to St Andrew for a husband. They would make a wish and look for a sign that they had been heard.
A girl wishing to marry could:
- throw a shoe at a door. If the toe of the shoe pointed in the direction of the exit, then she would marry and leave her parents’ house within a year
- peel a whole apple without breaking the peel and throw the peel over the shoulder. If the peel formed a letter of the alphabet, then this suggested the name of her future groom.
- sleep naked the night before the 30th in order to ask St Andrew for his help in marriage. She will see her future husband in her dreams.
- young women should also note the location of barking dogs on St Andrew’s Eve, as their future husbands will come from that direction.

* Information provided by Lindsay Galbraith
Monthly GDR Plan

Fiction
* Write to 75% complete of Blood Ties (G1,G2,D1,D2)
* Submit new batch short stories (G1,G2,D1,D2)
* Re-submit rejected/recalled short stories (G1,G2,D1,D2)

Freelance/Non-Fiction
Writing:
* Query freelance gigs 31/mth (0/31 pitched – Total=89) (G7,G9)
* Complete Scotland’s Treasure column for SDR Winter edition (Jan) (G5,G7,G9)
* Remain flexible for any TLB assignments that come through
* Prepare for new client’s work portfolio

Web:
* Updates to photography site pending

Business:
* Keep company accounts up to date
* Continue work amalgamating web design and freelance writing sites to compassfreelance.co.uk

Poetry
* Nothing planned

Editing
* Stay on top of RR submissions (G6)
* Launch RR issue 5 (G6)
* Start laying out RR issue 6 (G6)

Marketing and Promotion
* Publish December newsletter (G5)
* Prepare January newsletter (G5)
* Publish December GDR Plan
* Publish December GDR Review
* Prepare January GDR Plan
* Keep website(s) up to date (G5,G8,G9)

Reading & Learning
* On-the-job research and reading for writing of Blood Ties
* Closed Doors by Ian Rankin – IP

Non-Writing
* Final month of diet (15/28lbs lost as at 15/9/08) (R1)