Romy Sommer

How have I never heard of Kristen Lamb before? Thanks to Rachael Johns , I just read the funniest blog post on the Top 10 Reasons to Become a Writer . Some of the blog comments are pretty funny too. Though I think I'll go with #11 - the desire to be rich and famous, and having no other skills than words to achieve it with. I'm so glad I've discovered Kristen. Not only does she have a wicked sense of humour, but she has some very useful advice for writers on her blog. Kristen is the author of We Are Not Alone: The Writer's Guide to Social Media and Are You There, Blog? It's me, Writer , both published by Who Dares Wins Publishing. Which brings me back to: how have I never heard of Kristen Lamb before, when I devotedly follow Bob Mayer, self-publishing guru, warrior writer extraordinaire and the power behind Who Dares Wins? I'm off now to correct the mistake, and follow Kristen on Twitter. And May the Pants be with you.

About this time last year I started a blog post "another week, another shoot." The sentiment is just as apt now as it was then. I've been rolling from one film shoot to the next, without a break between, hence my disappearance from the virtual world. I'm also desperately trying to steal moments to finish a novella for a TWRP anthology, the deadline for which is less than 2 weeks away. So I'm keeping my head down, and working hard. What are the rest of you up to?

My apologies that I've been AWOL for so long. I've been rolling over from one film shoot onto the next, and as I've said over on the Minxes blog today, I'm currently on Day 3 of a 5 day shoot. Which makes this the perfect time to show you where I work when I'm not at a desk ... this is today's office: Usually my office is a camp chair in the VT tent (known as the Video Village on larger shoots), and usually set up in some cow field or on a sidewalk: but on my previous shoot I had a rather more civilised set up in a professional ballet studio. At least it was out of the elements! But sometimes being on set offers real challenges ... this is my production co-ordinator (and former book editor) Ceridwen Morris on the Santam shoot I worked on in Cape Town earlier this year. Can you believe anyone would give up working with books to do this ? If you'd like to see the Santam commercial, click here .

Thank you so much to everyone who sent me birthday wishes via Facebook and email. Having all those messages streaming into my inbox really made me feel special and was the cherry on the top of a very pleasant day.

This is the office where I spend most of my days. I don't get much writing done on the day job, but this is where I read blogs, do my research and email endlessly to all my wonderful writing friends. I'm in the building on the left: The offices are glass boxes with screeded concrete floors, so not the most pleasant place to be mid-winter! And my current desk (we tend to play musical chairs, depending on which project we're working on at any given moment).

Here's a little sneak peek into my life. This is where most of my writing happens: my home office. The room is not very big, but it contains everything I need: desk, bed, cupboards. The books, naturally, have an entire room of their own in the house! And yes, those beautiful landscapes and gorgeous heroes on the desk are inspiration, not reality. The heroes (notice, the plural) of my WIP, When September Ends , are right at the top of the board. Any guesses who they might be?

For those of you not (yet!) on Twitter, this is the hash tag used by writers for a writing challenge in which writers challenge each other to write a thousand words in one hour. I started doing these a week ago, and in one week I've gone from an hourly average of 450 words to around 1,200 words an hour! The nice thing about a challenge like this is that you're not alone, you're forced to unplug from the net for an hour, and at the end of the hour you report back to the writers you've done the challenge with, so there's accountability! And everyone's a winner, no matter how many words they achieve. In the last week I've added about 8,000 words to my 'Just For Fun' manuscript, now titled When September Ends . And I've also done a film shoot in between and worked some really stupid hours! But sometimes you also just need to take a breather. I discovered, doing Nanowrimo three years running, that just pushing out words doesn't really work ...