The Fun of Blogging with Family

Most of my family have blogs. My mum writes on several blogs. My three younger sisters all have their own blogs. Even my older sister Felicity, who lives a long way away, has a blog. But, in all the time we’ve been blogging, we’ve only ever written on our own, personal blogs, except for the occasional guest post on each other’s blogs. Until now.

This year we’ve started a new blog, Mother, Daughters, Sisters, where all us Elvis girls will be blogging together about our lives and the things that interest us. The blog has been going for about a week so far, and already it’s been amazing fun. This past week has been all about introducing ourselves, and it’s interesting to see how each person has introduced themselves in a different way, from Sophie who interviewed herself, to Felicity who wrote a heartfelt post on why she is different and it doesn’t matter.

Yesterday it was my turn to introduce myself on the blog. Somehow I find introductions very difficult to write. How does one manage to write an introduction that tells people about you and at the same time make you sound like an interesting person? Well, I don’t know if I managed to write an interesting post, but my attempt involves Jane Austen’s heroines including a previously unknown one...

There are lots of great things about blogging with my family. There are lots of people to share the posting with. It doesn’t matter if no one reads the blog (though of course we would love it if people did), because we’re sharing our posts with each other. It’s a way to keep connected with Felicity, who lives on the other side of the country. And most importantly, we’re all sharing a passion for writing in a personal way that connects us, no matter how far away we are.

Have you ever shared a blog with friends or family? Would you ever consider being part of a shared blog? What do you think is the best part about blogging with other people?

Interviews and Unschooling

Image by popturfdotcom here

Yesterday, Mum and I made a movie together. We settled down in the living room and set up out tripod, a dining room chair with a pile of out-of-date encyclopedias sitting on. I sat in one of the big armchairs. Mum set up the camera on the 'tripod'. Today Mum would be interviewing me about being unschooled and about studying at university.

I glanced at the list of questions I had sitting in my lap. We discussed what I was going to say. Was this a good idea? It felt a lot like public speaking, which scares me. I'd much rather sing to a crowd than speak to them. Taking a deep breath, I waited for Mum to start filming. The little red light appeared on the camera. I smiled at my non-existent audience and began to speak.

Once I got going, it wasn't too scary after all. Every so often we stopped the camera, discussed what I was going to say in the next segment. Mum took a rest from holding onto the camera.And then we carried on. I talked for what seemed to be ages before we finally got through all the questions and finished filming.

Then Mum took the video to her room, downloaded it onto her computer and started editing it into something acceptable for other people to see. As I passed her room occasionally, I caught snatches of my own voice, babbling on about one thing or another, and winced. There is nothing so humbling as hearing your own voice. It didn't take long for Mum to have the movie finished though.

"Do you want to see it?" Mum asked me.

I shook my head at once. "No thanks. I don't like listening to myself talk."

But even though I didn't watch it, other family members told me that it was good. It seemed that me sitting in front of a camera and attempting to talk about my experiences unschooling and now studying at university had ended up with a fairly good video. Already we're thinking about the next movie. Now that I've been interviewed once, I wouldn't mind too much doing it again. My brothers and sisters might have a turn too. Who knows what we might come up with next?

If you're interested in hearing what it was like to be unschooled, and what it's like to study university over the internet, then please check out my interview. You can find it here: Imogen Talks about Unschooling and University

Feeling Like a Jane Austen Heroine

Photo by Ben Sutherland on Flickr

Right now I feel like one of Jane Austen's heroines. Except not quite so witty and elegant. Or maybe Cinderella, except I have both my shoes and I don't go around covered in ashes. Why? Because one of my kind friends has invited me to go to a ball. I've never been to one of those before, but I've read enough Jane Austen to know I'm in for a good time.

Finding accommodation, shoes and jewellery is the easy part of getting ready for the ball. I exchange a few emails with the college holding the ball and hey presto, I have a room reserved for me. No, the real challenge is trying to find a dress for a five foot something girl who's rather interested in having at the very least, thick straps on her dress.

We search for a dress. Many hours hunting on internet shops and walking round real shops tells me two things. Ball gowns with sleeves or thick straps are hard to find. How on earth would one ever be able to keep a dress with no straps on? And finding a ball gown that fits a short person like me perfectly? That's impossible. By the time we find a dress, I felt about three feet tall. Surely I am not that small. It is only thanks to my amazing mum that we find a dress at all.

The dress arrives less than a week later, and I try it on. It's a pretty silver blue, with three layers of shiny, slippery fabric and jewels around the neckline. And it's long. Very long. To even walk I have to hold up huge handfuls away from my feet. Just one look at the dress and we can all see, it's going to need some serious altering to make it short enough for me to wear. We measure it, fold the hem, measure it again. Finally, after hours of work, we reach a decision. I have to have exactly half a foot lopped off the end of the dress. And with such a complicated dress to turn up, we have to get a professional tailor to do it for us.

But the hard parts are done, and the ball is looming closer and closer. Soon my beautiful ball gown will come back from the tailor. Soon I'll be able to try everything on properly and see exactly what it all looks like. Soon I'll be off to a ball with my friends, dancing, having a good time, and feeling rather like a Jane Austen heroine.

My mum has also written a post about me going to a ball: Wanted: One Prince Charming. Please pop over and share her humorous post about finding a Prince Charming.

Family, Fun, and a Bush Run

My family loves to run. During the winter we take turns pounding out a few kilometers on the treadmill every morning. During the spring and summer we get up early and go for a run along the bush track before breakfast. We also love to spend time together as a family. So what would be better than to go out on a run together as a family outing?

Shoes tied and water bottles in hand we headed out to try one of the local bush tracks. Together we walked from the car to the path. Together we set off. And together we hit the first hill. My muscles were already burning as we scrambled to the top and plunged down the other side. At the bottom we hit another steep hill. Up and down. Up and down. And up and down again. I puffed and panted, sweat rolling down my face as I worked hard not to fall behind. Somehow I kept up almost all the way to the end of the track.

At the end of the track it was time for triumphant photos, inspection of wounds where various family members had fallen over on the loose rocks, and a quick rest to catch our breaths. But then, we had to run all the way back. The track had led us deep into the bush, and our water bottles and picnic were 2.5km away, back at the car. I looked at the hills. I'd never make it all that way. 2.5km back, all up and down those hills again.

We split into two groups as we headed back. There was the slow but steady group, led by me, the tired, out of practice runner. And then there was the fast group, rapidly disappearing into the green of the bush way ahead of us. I looked round at my little group. 2.5km. We could do that together. I'd make sure of it. We set off after the quicker group, our tired feet carrying us steadily up and down the steep hills, heading ever closer towards the car, our drinks, and lunch.

"You can do it."

"Just a little bit further."

"You can make it to the top of the next rise."

"Careful, it's a bit slippery here. I'll help you."

My little team and I pushed each other up the hills, encouraging each other. I was tired, and my feet and legs hurt. But this was actually really fun. I had my team, and we were doing well. I looked around at my little group and had to grin. Even us really tired people were working hard and still going. No one said that they couldn't possibly run another step. And there was the end of the bush track and the concrete path back to the car. Why, we were almost there already.

"Ready?"

My team and I looked at each other. We grinned and nodded, then picked up the pace, sprinting past little old ladies, dogs, and children on bikes. Feet pounding, arms pumping, we flew towards the car, pulling up, puffing and panting. We collapsed on the grass, red faced, but triumphant. It might have been a long run, it might have been hard. I might have been a little out of practice. But we'd made it the whole way. I'd made it the whole way. And it was picnic time.

Looking around the picnic table not long after, I was very thankful. I had my family. I was fairly fit. And I'd had a whole day of fun. It might have been a tough run for me. But it was worth it to spend time with my family like this. Yes, I was very thankful indeed.

How to Make a Colour Splash Photo

I have always admired other people's photos. How do they manage to compose the photo so perfectly? How do they get the lighting just right? And how on earth do they manage to edit those pictures so spectacularly, like that great effect where just one thing in a black and white photo is coloured? Obviously they must use some extra special editing programs that are incredibly difficult to use. Normal people couldn't do it. Or could they?

The other day my clever mother found out how to make these colour splash photos, and she taught me how to do it too. You only need a photo and some simple, free, online photo editing software. It's so easy that even I can do it! I'm going to show you how you can make these fantastic your photos, even if you know nothing about photo editing.

Step one is to find a photo to use. You can use one of your own, or, if you're like me and aren't any good at actually taking photos, you can use a free one. Most of my photos come from Morguefile, a creative commons photo resource website. I find that using a photo with a strong subject in a strong colour makes the photo more striking. This is the photo I've chosen.

Now go to Picmonkey. It's a free online photo editing program, and it has all the tools that you're going to need for this. If you need to play with the colours and brightness in your photo, now's the time to do it. Make sure that the part of the picture that's going to be coloured is just how you want it to look. Once you've started the next step it's difficult to go back and fix colouring. My picture already looks ok, so I'm ready to move on to the next step.

This next step is where the magic happens. Go to the 'Effects'. It's in the left sidebar, and looks like a bubbling flask. Scroll down and click on the black and white effect. Now your whole picture should be black and white. Do not click on apply. You should see a floating window with slider bars sitting near your picture. This is the paintbox, and it's going to help you make your amazing photo.

Make sure that the 'original' button is clicked on the paintbox. Hover your mouse over the picture. It should be a little round circle. Click and drag across the part of the picture that you want to colour. The black and white effect will disappear. Use your paintbrush to colour the subject of your picture. This might take a while, and can be a little fiddly. If you make a mistake, just click 'Effect' on the paintbox and rub over the mistake and it'll go away.

Once you're sure that you've got the picture right, click on 'apply'. And there you have it, your black and white picture with a splash of colour. Isn't it awesome looking? And you didn't need anything special to make this effect.

If you're feeling like the black and white is too harsh, you can use the slider bar in the left sidebar, where you clicked on the black and white effect, to fade the black and white, like I've done in this picture. This lets a little colour into the picture, but keeps everything except the painted area very muted.

Isn't my mum clever to know how to do this? And now you can do it too. Why not give it a try? Then leave me a link in the comments so I can go and see your masterpiece. I'd love to see what you come up with.

Critiquing Fear

It’s the first day of a new study period for university. I click eagerly through the university website, glancing through the course outline. For my introduction, I have to introduce myself as a character. Well, that’s  different. And then…

I have to critique someone else’s introduction.

At once the panic starts to rise. Help! Critique someone’s work? But I’m not very good at writing myself. I don’t know how to give a good critique. I don’t want the other students to hate me for pointing out faults in their work. I’m having a panic attack and I haven’t so much as clicked the mouse yet.

It’s a funny thing, but no one seems to like giving critiques. My course is a creative writing course, and yet everyone is saying ‘Oh your work is wonderful. I love such-and-such about it’, and nothing else. Which is all very nice to hear. I can’t help smiling and feeling just a little bit clever. But at the same time, comments like these aren’t going to make me into a better writer. They’re just going to give me a big head.

So, if I realise that this is not the way to help people, why do I feel bad when I post a critique that both praises and criticizes a piece of writing? I might not have a piece of paper that tells me I’m qualified to help other people with their writing, but I can tell them what didn’t work for me. It’s an opinion, nothing more.

I think that this fear of critiquing someone’s writing comes from fear that I’m going to hurt the other person’s feelings. Even when I’ve spent an hour writing and rewriting the same hundred and fifty words over and over trying to phrase the critique in a way that I hope won’t offend, I’m still worried that I’m going to be making them feel like their work is terrible. I’ve had enough bad days of my own where I think that my writing is terrible to want to give anyone else a day like that.

But saying that everything is perfect, that’s not the way to help anyone improve. If we were all perfect already, why would we be taking this course? So I write and rewrite that critique over and over again, trying to word it just right, trying to gently show the other people where they might improve their writing and make it stronger. Not to say that I’m any good at this. It’s true, I’ve never done this before. But if I truly want to help the other person, I need to show them the good and the bad, in the nicest way possible. Critiques, they don’t seem to be easy things to write, but they are necessary if we're to grow as writers.

April Adventures Successes

Before April started, I wrote a post about all the adventurous things I was taking on in April. And honestly, there were a lot. I looked at my list and couldn't believe how many things I was doing. What was I thinking? Well, to tell the truth, I wasn't thinking. Not until it was too late.

Still, I had signed up for all those things, and I wasn't about to give up now. So I went to it with a will, determined not to fall behind in anything. Surely I could manage that? Well, maybe...

April Camp NaNo was the easiest of the challenges. Even aiming for a higher goal than the usual 50 thousand words I found it fairly easy to keep up with the required minimum of words. Writing first drafts of novels is the best part of novel writing to me.

The A-Z challenge was harder. Being me, I wasn't prepared at all. I didn't even sign up until a few days before. I had no idea of what to write. Every evening I sat at my desk and tried to come up with something interesting to say, with varying amounts of success.

And then there were university assignments that had to be written and submitted on time. Music practices to be done. Family to attempt to see more than just at meal times. So many things to do in a day.

And did I manage it? Yes I did. I didn't miss a day with the A-Z challenge. I completed my April Camp NaNo word count. I did my music practices, submitted my assignments, and even managed to remember I had a family every once in a while. April was a huge success.

After all that hard work in April, I took a blogging break for the first two weeks of May to recharge. Which means I'm terribly behind with the lovely comments that people have left me. My apologise, and thank you to everyone who has left a comment. I'm working moderating and answering them all as fast as I can.