The in's and out's, up's and down's of life...(shit, are there supposed to be apostrophes)
June 4, 2025
How I see myself.
Editing
I am a writer who knows feck all about grammar. Did I learn it at school? I don't know, I can't remember back that far. Gees Louise, that was another millennium ago.
Hell no.
I can be as incompetent as I want to be and no one is going to know (unless they read this blog and then I am outed).
What I am trying to say, and turning it in to a waffle, is, you don't have to know any of that stuff to write a good story but it sure makes it a lot easier. When you submit a manuscript filled with typos and mistakes in grammar, spelling, and punctuation publishers are not even going to bother reading it, and if you self publish a manuscript in that state you will end up looking like a idiot. Readers know grammar and they know when something is not right, just by looking at the prose on the page. And you can say to yourself all you want that you don't think any of that stuff is important all you want but it is important to your reader.
BUT, there are other ways you can have a well written, well edited, clean manuscript and that is to get someone else to do all that stuff for you. The only thing is, you have to pay for it in some way. Either by buying windows word or another word processing programme that does all that stuff. trusting your editing to AI ( I do not reccommend this at all as AI gives with one hand and steals with the other and sucks the life, soul and your voice out of your writing, and without your own particular voice, why write?
Get someone you know is fan-freekin-tastic at the grammar thing and paying them. Either with a cuddle if they are your professional editor hubby or quid pro quo (doing the same for them) or, doughnuts, carrot cake, (name your currency). By the way, if you are a writer do not, and I mean this, DO NOT, extend the gift of editing to a mate if you don't have the time to do it, because it takes aaaaaaaaages to do it properly, as it is not a job you can half arse.
When things get blocked...
So there are things you need to know if you want to be a writer, and one of them is 'Writers Block' which is a real thing, no matter how many twats tell you it isn't. Sometimes my creativity is a huge empty chamber filled with the echo's of nothingness.
So what do I do.
Well I pivot and do something else. Take crochet. Well, I have been obsessed with creating art out of yarn using the medium of crochet and I have come up with...
and...
and lets not forget this...
which was inspired by this...
so yeah...and by the way that is just the tip of the crochet iceberg...
Did this help with the writing process....yes. I am back writing with great ideas jumping onto the page, I am going to put a short story at the end of this blog...
Writing advice
I can give you advice about writing but this amazing woman, Joanne Harris is an freekin unbelievably brilliant writer, and way way way way better and more experienced than me so...and if you want pointers on writing check this out...click this for her ten things about writing on youtube.
Big sad things...
How I saw my cat....Princess Fluffy Butt Puss Puss Meow Meow
Did this help with the writing process....yes. I am back writing with great ideas jumping onto the page, I am going to put a short story at the end of this blog...
Writing advice
I can give you advice about writing but this amazing woman, Joanne Harris is an freekin unbelievably brilliant writer, and way way way way better and more experienced than me so...and if you want pointers on writing check this out...click this for her ten things about writing on youtube.
Big sad things...
How I saw my cat....Princess Fluffy Butt Puss Puss Meow Meow
I love my cat. Oh geez, I mean I loved my cat. No one knows how much comfort she has bought me over the years, especially when she was standing on my desk, staring at me, while I try to write, or helping me crochet in her own special way by getting tangled in the wool or rushing in front of me so I trip over her.
She was very sick as a result of breast cancer and then the operation to remove it. The last two months had been hell for her, she was blind with failing kidneys and liver, and then no balance at all.
We had to make a really hard decision, she passed away 5 June 2025 at 3.pm with her mummy and daddy holding her. Her daddy gave her a wonderful karakia as she breathed her last breath, knowing that she was loved. I can't bear it. My heart is breaking. Anyone with a little furry friend knows how I feel and when it comes to grief there is only one thing you can do and that is go through it.
I love you my angel xxx
Can I end this blog with a short story...
At her full-length mirror Docia carefully coated her lips with a vivid red gloss that would never have made it through the front doors of a church when she was young. Now, she was old, she could where whatever the heck she wanted. Who was going to tell her off? The Vicar? She’d like to see him try.
Phil was pleased with his signature dish, a platter of carefully crafted devilled eggs he was now wrapping carefully in plastic wrap. He’d been honing his recipe for more than 20 years. The yolk mixture he piped back into the egg-white cases was just creamy enough, just tangy enough with a touch of curry powder and feathery shower of chopped parsley.
Mārama had been beautiful back in the day, smooth, plump and open to the world like the dewy petals of a spring flower. Too bloody beautiful according to her late husband.
She was very sick as a result of breast cancer and then the operation to remove it. The last two months had been hell for her, she was blind with failing kidneys and liver, and then no balance at all.
We had to make a really hard decision, she passed away 5 June 2025 at 3.pm with her mummy and daddy holding her. Her daddy gave her a wonderful karakia as she breathed her last breath, knowing that she was loved. I can't bear it. My heart is breaking. Anyone with a little furry friend knows how I feel and when it comes to grief there is only one thing you can do and that is go through it.
I love you my angel xxx
Can I end this blog with a short story...
Bring a Plate
by Olivia
The event committee placed a line of trestle tables down the middle of the church hall covered by crisply starched and ironed tablecloths—none matched—onto which parishioners could place their dishes.
It was divided thus. A third for savoury, a third for sweet and a third for drinks.
The seating committee scattered chairs in casual little groups around the room for the less spritely to sit down.
The food committee waited for the dishes to arrive so they could arrange them attractively, after placing their own offerings in the prime positions for the photos that would go up on Facebook and Instagram. As with all things human, the shared church lunch had long since descended into a competition with the parishioners vying to out-cook, out present and out everything each other.
***
At her full-length mirror Docia carefully coated her lips with a vivid red gloss that would never have made it through the front doors of a church when she was young. Now, she was old, she could where whatever the heck she wanted. Who was going to tell her off? The Vicar? She’d like to see him try.
He was their first male vicar in a long time and the church biddies were all a bit loopy over the fresh-faced boy, especially when they found out he was unmarried. They were all waiting outside the vicarage the day he arrived to move him into his new home.
Once upon a time he would have inhabited the entire Vicarage by himself. It had been built back in the days where Vicars were meant to be married and encouraged to multiply with great abandon. Back in the 80’s the house was divided into flats, retaining a two-bedroom attic studio for the resident Vicar. The rents from the other flats were meant to supplement the Parish income.
Docia, who was on the parish committee, knew most of the money flew off into the never-never. No one knew where or why because the Anglican diocese had a don’t ask don’t tell policy for everything.
She turned slowly to check out her new lemon-yellow sun dress with short cape sleeves from all angles. She was going to wear it with a wide brimmed straw hat and strappy sandals. At least she no longer had to wear gloves, thick pantyhose and long sleeves even in the height of summer, like the olden days.
When her Lyle was alive, he’d been strict about what she could wear to church and would inspect her from top to toe on the doorstep as they were about to leave. She couldn’t count the times, he sent her back inside to change, while he sat in the car revving the engine and beeping until she hurried out, in something he considered more suitable. Then he would berate her for making them late.
He had been such a pill.
Well, he was gone now, and she was free. She’d even learned how to drive and pay her bills, years of him telling her she would be useless at it. To tell the honest truth, the last eleven years of her life on her own had been wonderful and every time a friend suggested she seek a companion, she laughed in their face.
For this month’s church shared lunch, the first since the new vicar arrived, she’d made her famous bacon and egg quiche. She hoped the vicar knew how honoured he should be, she didn’t whip out her A game for just anyone.
***
Phil was pleased with his signature dish, a platter of carefully crafted devilled eggs he was now wrapping carefully in plastic wrap. He’d been honing his recipe for more than 20 years. The yolk mixture he piped back into the egg-white cases was just creamy enough, just tangy enough with a touch of curry powder and feathery shower of chopped parsley.
He showed the platter to his wife, whose ashes resided in a small white wooden box on the mantelpiece.
‘Bonny lass, what do you think?’ he asked her in his Geordie accent that was as strong as it had been when he stepped off the boat fifty years ago. He imagined her reply and answered. ‘Aye, of course I used the good mayonnaise, you say that every time.’ He chuckled. ‘Change the record.’
He supposed he should have said change the MP3 or whatever they played music with now. He didn’t know what they were, or how they worked, and he didn’t really want to know. Nowadays if he had a new thought, it meant one of his old ones would fall out. Which is why he couldn’t remember where his reading glasses were or whether he'd taken all his meds that morning.
He was wearing his grey suit to church today. It was the least stifling of his suits, an imperative at the height of a Kapiti summer. He noticed the increasing casualness of some younger church goers, but his wife would have something to say about it if he decided to turn up in his shirtsleeves.
As he slid on his jacket, he noticed his ANZAC poppy was still pinned to the lapel, which meant he hadn’t worn it for almost a year as his wife had pinned it there.
‘My bonny, wee lass.’ He sighed, tears in his voice. ‘I miss ye.’
Again, he imagined her reply. A pretty laugh, and a chorus of you are my sunshine, my only sunshine, you make me happy when skies are grey.
He walked out his front door to the open garage, and put the platter carefully on the passenger seat, singing her song to himself.
***
Mārama had been beautiful back in the day, smooth, plump and open to the world like the dewy petals of a spring flower. Too bloody beautiful according to her late husband.
Cliff was forever smacking some poor fulla in the face for looking at her. She had twenty-two years of him being an idiotic seething ball of jealousy. She could still hear him bearing down on some poor basket who’d glanced at her for a moment too long. ‘What the f**k do you think you’re staring at.’
He’d been a drinker and got worse and worse as the years ploughed by. One foggy night he drunkenly drove himself over the edge of Paekākāriki hill, and to this day she had no idea why he’d been up there in the first place.
After he passed, Miriama realised, at forty-two years old, she wasn’t really into men. It was an epiphany rather than as much a revelation. Then she met Sarah, the love of her life, on a blind date, set up by her son and daughter.
So, for the past fifteen years they’ve been the parishes resident out and proud gays. Apart from Tim and Glen, two committed bachelors, who’d been ‘flatmates’ for fifty-two years. Her gaydar boing-ed off the charts with them, but who was she to make assumptions.
Like her, Sarah had been bought up a good God-fearing Christian, only Sarah’s kind of Christianity was louder, meaner and way more judgemental than Mārama’s.
Sandy had been cut off from her family and church for her perceived ‘chosen’ lifestyle, as if anyone would choose to be thrown out of everything, they held dear. Mārama’s whanau hadn’t ever seen anything wrong with her gayness and her kids, like their dad, would smack the crap out of anyone who had an issue with it.
For the shared kai Sarah baked a banana cake layered with whipped cream and topped with thick chocolate icing and chopped walnuts. Mārama had created mouth-watering spicy meatballs that, with the aid of a toothpick, were dipped in the delicious, sweet chilli sauce she’d concocted to go with them. She’d packed her offering in a roasting dish wrapped in foil to keep them warm
.
.
***
It was a blow for all concerned when the Vicar’s—previously unknown—girlfriend, toppled the competition by not only producing a gigantic, mile high pav, smothered in whipped cream, passionfruit pulp, peach slices and raspberries but a bacon and egg pie, the old-fashioned kind with just bacon and eggs wrapped in a light rich flaky homemade pastry, with pastry roses all over the top.
The crowd were aghast as they were carried in by the Vicar and his lady love who he introduced as Gwenda, who wore short shorts and a tank top, showing off an awful lot of richly tanned skin.
There were a lot of very put out people.
Thank you for reading
Loves to you all
Olivia
Thank you for reading
Loves to you all
Olivia
Posted by Olivia Giles.
Kia ora everyone, I am Olivia, I am a writer, and an artist, welcome to my hectic mad world.
