Tag Archives: writing

It is nearly done – one more blog to go

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“We are travellers on a cosmic journey, stardust, swirling and dancing in the eddies and whirlpools of infinity. Life is eternal. We have stopped for a moment to encounter each other, to meet, to love, to share. This is a precious moment. It is a little parenthesis in eternity.” – Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist

My year of daily blogging is nearly complete! I began on the 3rd of January 2023, so I plan to end on the 2nd of January 2024.

The whole process has been far more testing than I appreciated when I started. And not just for me. Often the writing has had to happen in the early hours, which has slipped the blogs into a new day, although I’ve still counted them as in, ticking them off one by one.

Now the journey – this little stage – is ending. It’s given me deadlines, and it’s given me courage. I’ve learned that there is time, and how to insist on it, even though finding it has often disrupted the daily patterns of others. To them I owe huge thanks for their patience, and likewise to those who kept on reading. I’ve so appreciated and needed the generosity of both groups, especially as all I can offer in return is a project that has felt not quite real, like painting on water. Perhaps 2024 will be the year I can turn my writing into something with a little more substance.

One more blog to go …

Copyright Georgie Knaggs & The Phraser 2024

The money tree – our new housemate

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Today was my first meeting with a money tree. It arrived as a gift, exotic and strange with its braided trunk and five-fingered leaves.

Fascinated with our new housemate I’ve been doing a little research.

According to the Royal Horticultural Society the official name of the plant is Pachira Aquatica – other names include French Peanut, Guiana chestnut and Malabar Chestnut. It’s a tropical plant and if grown outdoors in the right conditions, it can reach up to 20m high. The RHS also reports that when wild and happy and fully grown it sometimes produces “spectacular flowers with five 30cm-long, cream petals and 200 or more gold and crimson stamens”.

The thought of that height and those flowers makes me look at our friend with new respect, and a touch of guilty sadness. I know that with us it won’t have a hope of reaching its full height or flowery potential. Instead (unless climate change happens far faster than we can imagine) it will be doomed to an indoor, potted future, and at best, is likely to reach a height of no more than 1.5m. I wonder if plants mind that kind of thing. I hope it won’t, because I’m looking forward to its company.

The other information I’ve found out about the plant, although not on the RHS website, is that a money tree is often seen as a gift of encouragement, especially for those involved in business endeavours. If writing qualifies as the right kind of endeavour then I look forward to working closely with this young Pachira Aquatica.

I’ll start by giving it a drink, and hope we can build our relationship from there.

Copyright Georgie Knaggs & The Phraser 2023

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The daunting process of finding an agent

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This is the time of year when family used to wearily supply me with another copy of the Writers’ and Artists’ Yearbook, which I would then hunt through looking for likely targets. I’d read up on each agent’s specific requirements, and then measure out the ingredients to send to them. Sadly for me nothing baked into anything. So I gave up.

Then today I listened once more to writers discussing submissions, and I saw suddenly that the clue is in the word ‘submission’. That’s what it feels like after aching hours of drafting and tweaking, and rearranging according to each agent’s rules, especially if there’s not even a peep in response.

Anyway, while I sit here bleating like a sheep stuck on the wrong side of a fence, I think sometimes of J K Rowling. She created a whole world, then submitted it again and again, until finally ‘kapow‘! She succeeded because she did not give up. So, even if I can’t create a world as magnificent as hers, I can at least work on the not giving up … for now.

Copyright Georgie Knaggs & The Phraser 2023