Oh my goodness! It’s my blogversary! It has been approximately one whole year since I unleashed these updates on the world. Well – that is not entirely true. I actually started the blog a year previously, but, owing to me not liking self-promotion and the concept of blogging very much, it took about a year to alert anyone to my blog’s existence. And then, by the power of Facebook, combined with no small amount of bravery, as I shut my eyes and hoped this wouldn’t all be a horrible mistake, the Four Little Seymours emerged.
A year on, I have twenty subscribers! Whoa there.
There have been 5,225 clicks on my website. Crikey.
I have not yet reached the heady heights of blog superstardom, probably because my posts are actually quite boring, according to my opinionated seventeen year-old friend, Toby. And he’s right. My stories are true, and are thus bound by the limitations of reality. “Four Little Seymours Living on a Building Site” is not exactly the title of a best seller.
But it’s OK. I am not deterred. I am exercising my writing muscles. I am earning forty two pence a year through Google Ads. I’m recording memories for my children. And most importantly, I’m entertaining twenty people.
There is one huge positive to be taken from all this. A few years ago, nobody really knew I wanted to write. It was a secret – embarrassing, pompous and delusional. But now, thanks to my many public failed attempts to have my novels accepted for publication and my wordy ponderings on this site, all that embarrassment is out of the way. I no longer care about any of that stuff. I love to write, I want to be a writer – a proper writer. And it may never happen. But I’ve shed the shame in declaring it!
The Four Little Seymours indulge me. They put up with my cartoons, which are naff. They don’t seem to object too much when I publish stories about their antics. They tolerate and oblige me, and I love them for it. They are my muse. I am their archivist.
The Funny Little Bungalow is very different to how it was a year ago. Unrecognisable, in fact. From the outside, it is a different house. Inside, it looks post-apocalyptic. Slowly but surely, it is beginning to resemble a dwelling again, as old windows move to new places, and bedroom floors take shape. I find myself eyeing up second-hand furniture, knowing that I can now store it in the dry, what with the new roof being watertight and all. In this way, I have acquired a small sofa, a wheel-backed chair, a piano, a set of colourful tiles and several sideboards. I’m squirreling things away for when they’ll adorn a shelf, and colour schemes are creeping slowly but tantalizingly into my consciousness.
So, the blog will continue. For posterity, if nothing else. But, as I do not want to become a dinosaur, I intend to branch out with other ventures. I will finish the novel that I’m writing. Maybe I won’t be able to post daily chapters – that experiment proved too ambitious. But for those people who tuned in to see what Edna was up to – thank you! And watch out. She’s coming back.
I have re-jigged my YouTube channel. This will be primarily for book reviews. If I read a book, I invest in it. Like many people, I was in those pages, absorbed and transported. And what better way to finish with a book than to share your thoughts on it? Check out Becky’s Booky Banter* for my updates, including my recent review for Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs, here:https://youtu.be/3dLCtJCgZuc
In truth, I need to write to distract me from the fact that I have run out of new school starters. This makes me sad. All the Little Seymours are now well into their institutionalisation. But to cheer me up, this evening, Boy Seymour has started his own new adventure. He went to Cubs! Seeing his little face gazing around him at ALL THOSE OTHER BOYS must have felt like utopia to a young man who lives with so many sisters. There are, after all, only so many hours in the day when you can wind your female siblings up. A chap needs a break.
*I am sitting on the fence again, this time regarding my channel title – caught between quirky alliteration and my preferred choice of name. Becky has always been a duck’s name, in my opinion. And Rebecca is rather formal.
No, marketing isn’t my strong point.
Which is unfortunate.
:-0
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