Expanding the Scottish Home

For some time now I've been writing two blogs: Wordarts is all about the business of writing and The Scottish Home is loosely linked with my online store of the same name, mainly dealing in the antique textiles I love, but also with other items including artworks and antiquarian books, many of them with a Scottish or Irish provenance. I've also been making the occasional contribution to a fascinating magazine blog about video games: passion4games .

Over the past few months, however, it has become clear that I'm spreading myself much too thinly and the result is - inevitably - that I'm not doing anything very well. And that includes blogging! Perhaps even more importantly, I find that I'm spending far too much time writing about writing, and not half enough time doing the actual creating - and that's not good for somebody who, first and foremost, likes to think of herself as a writer of fiction.

I've spent a few days taking stock, making notes but above all thinking. And the results of all that thinking are that I'm planning to cut down, consolidate and organise my time better.

I'll be taking a break from Wordarts for a little while, although I'll still be making the occasional contribution to passion4games, because that whole area of video game development, with all its implications for creativity, interests me enormously.

For roughly half the week, I'll be working on The Scottish Home, expanding my antiques business in various new directions. I have a few fledgling plans for sourcing interior design statement pieces, and tackling the newly fashionable idea of 'upcycling' - i.e. recycling with style. The freelance life being what it is, we've been doing that in this particular Scottish home for years!

This blog will be expanded to reflect these new interests, although most of my posts will retain a very definite sense of Scotland. I don't write much about Golf and Whisky (neither of which I have any aversion to, especially not a good island malt!) but I also think there is more to Scotland than those two attractions. And more to textiles than tartan. And more even to tartan than you might believe!

When I'm not working in, for and with the Scottish Home, for the other half of the week, I'll be finishing a new collection of short stories and writing a new piece of historical fiction. Not all my creative writing is set in Scotland of course, but even when it isn't, I often find that artefacts, things which people have possessed and loved, things which people have perhaps even made or embellished themselves, can play an important part in the stories I tell. I find myself weaving them in, just as fascinating designs can be woven into - or printed on - the old paisley shawls that are another of my passions!