I am lazy and busy. I will reply to all emails soon. I will post good blogs again soon.
For the person who found me by googling: 'anxiety and shoes', please identify yourself and I will buy you a pint and punch you on the arm in a matey fashion.
I am trying out something I learned in the seminar I went to recently. I have made another little blog but I'm not going to do writing in that. I am just going to do links and quotes and extracts and excerpts of things that I read on the internet that I like and I think other people should have a look at too. It is going to be like a collection.
If you have written something and you want to see if I like it or not you should email me a link and I will look at it and read it.
If I have time I will look at it and read it.
If I have time and I am in a good mood I will look at it and read it.
I might not look at it and read it.
It is, for the moment, called Blurb, but it is still under construction.
To the person who found my blog by googling 'head flushing toilet twice':
I am sorry you only found a post wittering about how writing was like going to the toilet. Necessary, but not for dinner conversation. Was it a disappointment?
Did someone flush your head down the toilet twice? I am thinking of the boy I sometimes see on the way to work. The ginger boy with the too-short trousers and the green scarf. You should really wear a coat as well as your blazer. And go to bed earlier. Did they flush your head down the toilet twice? Twice? Were you soggily searching for possible after effects? Or methods for revenge? Or checking to see the bastards hadn't youtubed it?
I am thinking about my borrowers. Did one of you flush someone's head down the toilet twice? Likely, perhaps, but I don't think it was any of you. You aren't allowed on the tinterweb, are you?
Whoever you are, if you are considering flushing someone's head down the toilet twice, whoever they are, please don't. It is unkind and I want no part in it. If it happened to you I am sure you will be fine as long as you kept your eyes and mouth closed and not too much water got up your nose. Most toilets are cleaner than the tables in pubs. That's what I heard, anyway.
Ooh. Look at this. It is lovely. I found it through This Space - a blog I read regularly. The comment riled this librarian so much she felt the need to reply, which doesn't happen often. But I will be sticking with the blog all the same.
Yesterday was interesting. I went to this seminar, run by Litfest and Literature Training. I was in two minds, but it was free, and near my house, and you got your dinner and as many chocolate biscuits as you wanted. And in the end (despite not much of the info being new to me) I am glad I did, mainly because I got to meet some new people (eek!) and was directed to some interesting websites, not least the tumblr tlog of the trainer, Jacob Sam-La Rose (see how down with the lingo I am? Who knew what a tlog was? Not me.)
It also turned out to be one more of the ways in which my work work and my writing work have combined and overlapped recently (insert wittering about Library 2.0 here) and when that happens it makes me like both of them more.
Walking home in the rain after foisting the url of this blog onto the people I met (if you are here, hello, and thank you!) I decided again that there is something troubling about all this social networking. The web is full of spiders - reaching out with their hairy legs, brushing past each other in search of some nasty/tasty/useful fly.
You should click on this link here to read a story by Neil LaBute (and the wonderful comments below it) before you go on.
Done? Good. Welcome back.
Setting up a website without doing all the other promo stuff was compared to going to a party and sitting in the corner waiting for people to come up and chat (in what you thought were your best pair of shoes and eyeshadow that looked funky, but became magnified into a perfect black-eye behind glasses). I find it much easier to go to the party online, mainly because I can ditch the party shoes and, perfect for shy slow-thinkers like me, there is a time lag. I get to draft before I hit 'send' or 'publish' or 'update'.
There's something insincere and distasteful to me about friending 600000 people you don't know so you can promote your latest book/picture/song/tea-cosy but perhaps no less insincere than interacting with the world mainly through a medium which allows me to be constructed and drafted, as finished as the stories I try to write.
Whenever I hear about podcasting I think about a programme that I used to watch after school. Children got to be in it and pretend to be on a quest. The Dungeon Master (beardy man) helped them out sometimes. The one who was doing the quest had a big helmet on them which stopped them from seeing (unless they carried the eye-shield). If they were in a fix they could Spellcast, which was like a magic trick, but was also educational as it helped with spelling. I remember all this fairly clearly, sitting right in front of the television and getting told off because I was blocking the heat from the fire. I'm pretty sure I am not making it up.
The 'point' of this 'post' is to draw your attention to the podcast Melissa Mann has made out of my story, Thumb. If you want to listen to it you should click on that link and then click on the November 07 podcast which is in a little grey box on the right hand side.
I dislike Christmas quite a lot. I hate having to go to shops when there are other people there, and I hate STUFF you have to clean or put away or put together or find instructions for, and I get worried about buying presents in case I bought the wrong thing and then the person who I bought it for hates me because I misjudged so terribly.
But this year I am sort of excited because my little one is getting excited. I think she was too little to understand the lying before, but she's swallowed the Santa-fib hook line and sinker this year. It has put me in a good mood. It is, possibly, the third good mood that I have had this year. I am taking advantage and making a things that make me happy list.
1. Being in the dark and listening to the radio.
2. Going to sleep with my head at the feet end of the bed.
3. Beeping the horn on the car.
4. Having a really good handwriting day.
5. My red coat with the hood.
6. Hot air balloons.
7. My nasty, too-fat, fighting cat.
8. When one of the cacti gets a flower.
9. Listening to little one have conversations with her bears.
10. My new stripy bed blanket.
