I have a huge bag of wine bottle corks and have decided to put them to good use. I made this small framed cork board for a friend's birthday last week. Not so bad for a first attempt I think. Next I'm going to make some trivets and maybe a larger sized frame cork board.

This is definitely my kind of craft--simple materials and fairly easy to do. Not to mention all the fun I have drinking wine to get the materials. 

I had a dream last night, really this morning, that I was a detective solving a murder. (Probably inspired by my viewing of the BBC mystery series Vera last night.) Later in the morning, after waking up and taking my time getting fully awake, I was thinking about the dream and thought it might make the basis of an interesting short story. Not the murder or detecting itself, but for the moral qualms I was having as a detective in the dream. In the dream, all the evidence pointed to one person, but I was sure it wasn't her, but I had to go forward with the evidence I had.

I think I may work on it this week as I'm getting no where on the novel.

There is a short story posted on this site that was taken from a dream (I often dream in full narrative plots), and there is another dream I've written out as a long-form project but would like to turn into a screenplay. I get lots of really fantastic ideas from dreams. Good thing I like to sleep a lot.

When I first started to write long form fiction, I could only spend any time writing at the end of the day, after all other work was done. But when I got really, really into it, I found I could only write in the mornings, before I get started with the day. And it remains the same. Even when I'm not working on a novel. Once I get distracted by emails and my daily to do list, I'm done with the creative part of my day.

Sometimes I think that I will spend an evening writing, but I can never settle into it. Many writing books recommend writing 1000 words a day, no matter what. But most of the time, I feel that writing every day, or as many days as possible, is what really matters. I feel good if I can get 500 words, or near enough 500 words. I think it's more important to do it, no matter how much.