The straw bale house, part III: Preparing the site, permissions and foundations

The small, derelict barn that we call "The Other" has been demolished (see pictures). Our American volunteer, Seth from Help Exchange, together with our neighbour's son Kaloyan and my husband Allan, took down the building and saved the roof tiles, the mud bricks and the stone. The stone was graded into three piles - small stones, large stones and stones that only Kaloyan could lift! Anything that exceeded his capacity was transported in the motor Fraser, which we hired from a neighbour. The motor Fraser is a versatile vehicle that we also used last year to transport people who attended our writing course.

From the EU to Eurovision - in The Sofia Echo

Bulgarian Prime Minister Sergei Stanishev has been giving interviews to leading international media to prepare the ground for what is expected to be a sharply critical report on Bulgaria by the European Commission. In The Sofia Echo published on June 13, Petar Kostadinov outlines Stanishev's approach to what is certain to be a vexed political issue within Bulgaria and throughout the EU, with the big question being whether the EC will penalise Bulgaria for inadequacy in the fight against organised crime and corruption.

The straw bale house, part II: Design, planning permission and location

Designing our straw bale house has taken some time. Thankfully, I've had the help of an architect, Nikolai Stoyanov, who is interested and enthusiastic. Nikolai explained the design and planning permission process as well as the costs. We began by asking the municipality to check our boundaries and produce an up-to-date "skitsa". The skitsa was available for collection after two weeks and cost 22 leva.

The Sofia Echo launches weekend blogs

The coming weekend sees more than just the newest Friday issue of Bulgaria's national English-language newspaper, The Sofia Echo: on April 5 and 6, sofiaecho.com launches The Sofia Echo Weekend Blogs. Every weekend, two writers will post blogs on topical issues from Bulgaria and around the world. This Saturday and Sunday, read what Vanya Rainova and Clive Leviev-Sawyer have to say. Weekends to come will feature a rotating selection of our bloggers.

Part VIII: The Last Write

This is my final article in the Starting to Write series. I wrote the first two articles before I went back to the UK for Christmas as I didn't want to return at New Year and be rushed. Consequently at the beginning of January I was ahead of myself and feeling smug. The feeling didn't last. Before long I was e-mailing my weekly articles at the last minute and on one horrible occasion a few days late. During the past eight weeks I've

Part VII: Encouraging creativity

Those of you who have read this column since it started will remember the Morning Pages. I hope you've found them useful and that you're still writing them. Julia Cameron created the concept of the Morning Pages and wrote about them in her book, The Artist's Way. In the same book she developed the idea of the Artist's Date. An Artist's Date is a period of two hours every week which you devote to stimulating your

Bookstores in Sofia

Where Family Matters and reading work to go hand-in-hand

What book are you reading at the moment? I'm reading one that I received at Christmastime, Homer's The Odyssey. I feared that I'd be lost in all the ins and outs of the Greek gods and their impulsive interferences in humans' lives and especially in that of poor Odysseus, but the book is a really great read, and I find myself often feeling like I'm being transported into an utterly alien and yet enchanting poetic

Part VI: Colour, music and sonnets

During the past few weeks we've looked East for inspiration with our work on haiku and Feng Shui. This week I thought we'd look West, to England and to Shakespeare. Before that, let me tell you what exercises we did last week at the VT Writers' Group. Colour We decided to take "colour" as our theme. First we read and discussed a poem called Yellow written by Jackie Kay. The poem had lots of

Part V: Sleep

I hope you enjoyed writing the haiku we explored last time. Personally, I find them quite compulsive and, if I'm not careful, find myself composing haiku all over the place: on buses, in meetings, even once in the bath! I discard most but still enjoy the process and discipline. Our theme this week is "sleep". Given that we spend approximately half our lives asleep, it should be a good source of material for writing. How

The straw bale house

I live in Hotnitsa, near Veliko Turnovo, where my family owns a house and adjoining land. This summer we are going to build a house using straw bales instead of bricks or concrete. We want to investigate ways of building in eco-friendly ways. Our criteria for the build are as follows: To minimise energy demand. To use materials from renewable sources and/or with a low environmental impact. To recycle materials wherever

Part IV: Haiku

Last week we looked at writing a short story. I hope you managed to make some headway with it. This week I thought we'd look at the other end of the spectrum and try writing in a tighter fashion by experimenting with haiku. What is a haiku? A Haiku is a three-line poem that originated in Japan in about the 12th

PART III: MINI SAGAS AND PLOTS

By now, writing the Morning Pages should be helping to free your mind and create space for new ideas. Let's assume you've done the pages for today and you're ready to start. Recently at the writers' group we did a fun exercise called "mini sagas", where the idea was to write a complete story in 50 words. A good way to start is by retelling a famous fairytale, myth or legend. Have a go and afterwards try to write a

Continuing to write…

Hints and tips on putting the pen to paper

Ok, so how did you get on with your writing last week? If you've managed to produce something, type it up, print it off and put it in a poetry/story drawer. Build up a store of your work, let it lie for a few weeks and then look at it again and see if you want to make any changes. Sometimes when we write we're so pleased or disappointed with what we've written that it's impossible to see the merits or flaws in

Starting to write

Starting to write is not easy. Faced with a blank page or computer screen I suddenly find that washing the floor, cleaning the loo, shopping or making duty phone calls are the most fascinating ways of spending my time. Why do I do that? I guess I'm just scared. A few years ago I wondered what to do to minimise this fear and increase my motivation. I'd tried those Help Yourself to Write books but found them

Building a garden in Bulgaria

We started gardening by spreading black plastic under the orangerie and around the area that was to be a woodland walk. Our Bulgarian neighbours were confused - why would we want to do this? We explained in pidgin Bulgarian that we were trying to suppress the weeds that grew like wildfire as soon as our backs were turned. At this time (2005) we could only spend short periods of time in Bulgaria - perhaps

READING ROOM: To Bulgaria by bike part 3

...continued from issue 41 of The Sofia Echo

Crossing our final border into Bulgaria was quite a moment for us and we couldn't help but feel a surge of achievement, even though we knew we still had quite a distance to travel. When we told the border guard how far we'd travelled on our bikes, she dubbed us "heroes", but the look on her face suggested that she really meant "mad people". The customs officer came out of his office to inspect us and waved us on

READING ROOM: To Bulgaria by bike part 2

...continued from issue 40 of The Sofia Echo

Our memories of Austria are drenched by rain, rain and more rain. This was the country in which the hot, sunny days of July came to an end and a wet, cold August began. It all began in a tiny, remote campsite run by a 90-year-old woman who charged two euro a night, with an extra one euro for a shower. Right next door was a lively and friendly restaurant, which she used to own but had recently sold. It was here

READING ROOM: Bulgaria by bike

Why not cycle from our house in the UK to our house in Bulgaria? We bought our house in Hotnitsa back in 2003 and have been gradually restoring it ever since. Hotnitsa is 16km north-west of Veliko Turnovo, just off the road to Rousse. We believe that we were the first British people to buy a house in the village and now more than 25 people from various parts of the UK have bought property here, many of them living