Picture this

I did do the picture meme that has appeared on several blogs. In an attempt to protect myself from phishers I chose images that would not give away any vital info, then for extra security this morning (after reading Cally's blog) I tried renaming all the pictures with 'neutral' file names. I ended up causing mayhem , mess and general untidiness and have decided to give it up as being beyond my technological skills. For a discussion of the wisdom of doing the picture meme see discussion on on Cally's blog).

Meanwhile all that remains of my original meme is this interpretation of my first job

Here is meez

Enough of Balzac and all that serious stuff. Here I am according to Meez



It's fun (if a bit slow) but I might need to tweak it a bit for 'body size' - I didn't quite fit their templates.

Another way of working

Many of us are writing, re-writing or maybe even proofing novels at the moment and we all have our own means and methods. I came across this lovely nugget today and wanted to share it with you:

"Balzac would set off for the printer's with his camp-bed and manuscripts...for nineteen hours a day he took the pages hot off the presses, made corrections, handed them back, then wrote the next part of the novel while the corrected pages were reprinted. Twenty workers were kept busy for a month and two novels were completed. ....One of the workers worked so hard that he began to spit blood."

(from Balzac by Graham Robb)

I have seen pictures of his 'corrected' proofs and they are basically rewrites of his first drafts. Those poor 'workers'. The author of the above extract observed that Balzac was the first example of a writer using a computer,"with human beings and hydraulic press instead of microchips and a laser-printer"

Makes sitting in front of an actual computer for hours on end with cups of tea, some choice CDs and the delete key seem an absolute joy.

An award!

Thank you Cally for this lovely award. Its really heart warming being part of such a generous and sharing writing community - ooh it makes me go all gushy. But seriously, thanks.

I am now supposed to pass this on to ten more bloggers. I have no trouble finding lots of excellent ones, only trouble is you have all already received it.

What is a girl to do? Nothing for it but to award it to you all again. So Cally (bit of a boomerang sorry) , Karen, Spiral Skies, Sally Q, Helen, A.Writer, Leigh, Sarah *G* and Moondreamer please all take another bow (and no tears this time please!). And to try and stay in the spirit of passing things on, an Excellent Bogger award for someone who as far as I know hasn't had one yet - Neil for his seamless interweaving of music and politics.

What do you wear?

There has been talk on other blogs about what we wear when we are writing. A lot of people seem to go for the jim-jams option and so far no-one has owned up to doing something I was once recommended (but have never tried)- 'dressing as if for the office'. I am with Karen in agreeing that waistbands hinder writing (unless of course they are the comfy sort found on jim-jams)

I decided to do a bit of research and am now the proud owner of the following trivial information, which I would like to share:

Victor Hugo wrote in the nude in an attempt to fight writers block (on the principle that if all his clothes were taken away he would have nothing to distract him (spot the obvious flaw in that idea), Ernest Hemingway wrote naked , standing up with his typewriter at waist level (maybe he had learnt from Hugo's mistake) and Agatha Christie wrote in the bath (maybe naked, maybe in a wet suit, maybe fully dressed lying on cushions). Honore de Balzac, of bawdy story fame, wore a 'monk's robe' (actually a white dressing gown but everyone chose to humour him) when writing and of course Barbara Cartland wore pink. Don't know about Charles Dickens but apparently he practiced his dialogue by jumping up and down in front of a mirror pulling faces and talking in silly voices.

So, what do I wear? Well, without wanting to get too personal I have to confess to not owning a pair of jim jams, and as my house is generally freezing that does mean I have to get dressed before sitting down to write. In fact I am usually completely clothed, if a bit scruffy, and 'shock horror' have even been known to have applied mascara before I begin. I should add that this is not for the purposes of writing but because I often have a social interlude of a morning (ie an early coffee with friends in trendy cafe in town) and the mascara helps my eyes stay open before the coffee kicks in.

Time for some discipline

I've had it easy the last month or so - no work and plenty of writing time. Result - lots of novel written and four stories completed and submitted (Hurrah!) and big echoing hole in my bank balance (Boo!)

I'm freelance so the work flow can be a bit up and down. Well it's suddenly shot up again. I am inundated with stuff and deadlines are looming like towerblocks on my horizon. My hungry bank balance is cheering but as the work piles up on my desk I'm losing sight of my plot lines and story ideas.

Today I decided to take action. If I'm going to work (which I have to) and write (which I want to) I'm going to have to be more disciplined with my time. This is a two part plan, involving

1) demarcating specific work and writing time, and sticking to it.

2) mopping up those odd half hours in the working day which I fill with mooching around charity shops, playing spider solitaire, stopping too long over morning coffee with friends, sorting socks into pairs (the last inspired me to start a website called Socks Reunited, but then I found it had already been done!) and generally not using my time productively.

I'm also going to try to write more in the evening (although I will have to fight over the key board with My Man who has a whole load of fell running/weather watching/ local politics forums what-not going on on the internet of an evening.)

Last part of my plan is unlikely to begin tonight however as I have on my desk a video of the brand new episode of Lost. We don't have Sky but a kind friend does and managed to tape every episode for us last time and is going to do it again this time.

Hurrah for Discipline, Plans, Lovely friends with satellite television, Lost (especially Sawyer) and Still having coffee with friends on a morning but just not hanging around for quite so long

A toast to...

...everyone who participated in the Your Messages project. Last night's launch of the book was a fitting celebration of the 115 people from all over the world who contributed during November. The event was in the spirit of the original idea - warm, generous and welcoming. In the preface to the book Lynne and Sarah say that they "truly wished we could put them all in here, but failing that, we love the idea that they are still up there altogether on the Your Messages site where they all belong." It is fantastic to be able to revisit the site and read favourite pieces, including the many wonderful ones that aren't in the book.

Lynne and Sarah annonced that bluechrome are donating all the money from the sales of Your Messages to the Kids Company charity, which is fantastic. They raised £500 from sales at the launch, and it's now available on Amazon.

It was great to meet fellow bloggers in the flesh and a shame to miss those who were unable to attend. I met the lovely Leigh, was initiated by Caroline into the world of In Search of Adam (I now have a badge!) and would have bought the paperback today if Waterstones had been open at a reasonable hour (ie before my train left London), was enticed by Oz Hardwick's description of the forthcoming York Literature Festival, made note of a couple of blogs I had previously not encountered (Three Beautiful Things and Mercs World) and generally met lots of fantastic people.

Had an uneventful journey back, immersed in Sarah Waters' Fingersmith (what an amazing book). At one point though I got totally distracted by the mobile phone conversations of the woman sitting next to me - to the extent that I started to just pretend to read so I could have a good listen, and then when I realised I wasn't very convincing I pretend to doze off. It was fascinating stuff - a world of seriously rich partying , exotic holidays, dastardly exes, finanicial crisis that 'I'll just have to ride dahling' and invitations to 'the house in Chamonix'.

Wish I'd made notes but that might have been too obvious and anyway I don't think I'll forget her in a hurry. It was also interesting in light of my Messages piece - which is about an Internet stalker. By the end of the journey I had so much information about her and her life that I am tempted to Google her and find out more - does that make me sound really creepy?