Are you a 4p Worker or a Papillon?

Plus some more photos of Israel!

I've made up the phrase 4p worker so please don’t rush for the dictionary. It stands for perseverance, persistence, pertinacity and patience. I do love alliteration. So a 4p worker is someone who has:

      Perseverance – plain old-fashioned hard work

      Persistence – sticking with that hard work

      Pertinacity – stubbornly sticking with said hard work and

      Patience – the ability to not be irritated by and so not be distracted from the hard work.

These are valuable skills, especially if you’re a writer, and I must mention all those people who have just launched themselves into this year’s NaNoWriMo (write a novel in a month) challenge. I admire you all. I couldn’t stick to the strict regime, but then I’m not a 4p worker. So good luck everyone [assuming you’ve got time to read this blog post!]

Last week I saw two amazing 4p workers. [Did I mention that we were in Israel last week? Oh, you read my last blog post? Sorry. I’m still on a high!]

4p Worker Number One

We were visiting an Italian Synagogue in Jerusalem. It was a beautiful, gold leaf-adorned Synagogue.

The Synagogue had a small museum for tourists and there we met an antique restorer. She worked constantly while we stood and gaped.

This is said to be one of the oldest Arks in the world. [The Ark is where the Torah Scrolls are kept in the Synagogue.] It had once been very beautiful and the restorer was working hard to recreate that beauty. What a job!

4p Worker Number Two

Masada is in the Negev desert and when we visited it was steaming hot. In the heat of the midday sun we were taken on a guided tour around the ancient ruins.

We ended up at what had once been a Synagogue. The tour guide pointed to a small structure in the corner of the ruins of the Synagogue and said, 

      “There’s a scribe in there, writing out Torah scrolls.” But it was getting on for 90^o up there! Surely it must be a museum dummy-style mock-up, but no! There really was a man writing each letter of the Torah with perfect precision.

Now that’s what I call a 4p worker. I only hope he had air-conditioning!

If I was a 4p worker I wouldn’t have five half-finished manuscripts on my computer... or an ironing pile that keeps falling over. I guess I’m one of those people who are destined to flit from one thing to another, like a butterfly... or rather a papillon! [I do love alliteration.]

So, what are you, a 4p worker or a papillon?

What exactly is sparkle anyway?

I arrived home from the shops yesterday to the sound of hammering. It made me smile. Rod was repairing a stool. In the afternoon, while he pottered in his potting shed, I settled down to work on some picture books. Life is slowly returning to some sort of normality.

It’s quite some time since I worked on picture book fiction so I dug out some of my guideline notes from way back. In amongst all the bumf about double-line spacing etc it said to make sure the story had lots of sparkle. I had no doubt faithfully written this from a book I was reading or a talk I attended but I don’t think I stopped to analyse it. I mean, what exactly is sparkle anyway? And never mind getting sparkle into picture books. If it’s so important, then I need to know how I can get sparkle into my life.

In my last blog post I talked about how we felt about ourselves on a scale of one to ten, ten being fantastic. I can’t remember the last time I was a ten. A number of you said the same in your comments. If we could work out how to get sparkle into our lives would it increase our scores? An eight would be good.

As far as writing picture books is concerned I reckon that the way we can add sparkle is to write with an easy-to-read rhythm, to include a fine sprinkling of alliteration and inner rhymes, and to feed the illustrators with many and varied spreads so they can add sparkle too....

Hang on a minute! Maybe I can do the same with my life. Maybe it’s all about an easy-to-live rhythm or maybe I have an inner illustrator who needs to be fed? Now there’s a thought.

p.s. I tried to take a photograph of the sun sparkling on the frosty grass but it wouldn't show. However many times I tried and whatever setting I put the camera on, the grass and frost were there but the sparkle wasn't. Sparkle is elusive - official!