Write a Novel in a Month

It's that time of year again - November is (inter)National Write a Novel in a Month time.
Kewl.
I've chickened out enough times before that I'm gung-ho this year. There's some neat technical things that I'm trying to figure out so my blog will show my live word count. There's three of us so far - I'm hoping we'll get a few more signed up in our group. Of course, while I'm sitting reading the FAQ, my writing buddies are already plotting and sketching story arcs. Curse them!Curse their cornucopia of ideas and their willingness to stay up later than me!

Don't worry, I'm playing a long game on this one. I've got the stamina, I've got the staying power, I've got a commercial supply of coffee!!
BWAHAHAHAHAAAA
Jeeze - this is going to be more fun than Talk Like A Pirate Day!

The clock starts at one minute past midnight.
Gentlemen, sharpen your pencils...

Some Days are Diamonds

...and some days are stones.

Keep moving, no matter how slowly, and the earth turns under me bringing another breath, and then another, and slowly, before anyone has a chance to turn into a fossil, things have changed.

This is faith.

A Trade to Fall Back on

Today, with the sun blazing and the light, cool wind playing over skin, eyes, hair, the difficulties of winter are vanishing and it is once again natural and easy to feel the abundance of life. Spring is such a romantic, hazy time of ease that it's hard to imagine being cold and hungry. Today is so very lovely that I can barely bring myself to be sitting here with the machine rather than be out on the grass watching the treetops dance languidly.
Writing writing writing, the words flow on and form their own alliances and sometimes coalesce into jewels, even strings of gems and ropes of treasures. Oh yes, these moments are the the glory of living! But I am in here, the classroom, the buzzing of tired brains slowly filling up with gobbling jargon as a hedge against the winter. I am stuffing nuts into my mental cheeks, collecting knowledge and skills that I can sell later if need be in case those gems aren't fetching their value on the open market.

Life Lesson: Never Spend the Mystery Money

A few days ago, some mystery money inexplicably appeared in my account.

Where did it come from? How did the great money God choose me for this timely gift?

I had no answers...

I just couldn't figure it out, it didn't add up to what was owed to me and despite recently being broke enough to beg, I hadn't actually gone ahead and sent my bank details around with a dodgy scam letter. Let me tell you, I let this small windfall go straight to my head! I rang friends, gleefully clapped my hands together, immediately went on a small (but ultimately ill-advised) spending spree, and oh the joy of this unexpected bounty from the great digital ocean!!

 

Today the mystery resolved itself, sadly, into the mundane reality of a bounced rent payment.

Ahhh....

And a dishonour fee.....

Yes, and, you guessed it - a call from the Landlord's Watchdog about overdue and now late rent....

 

I wasn't laughing this morning, I can tell you. I'm still tired thinking about the number of phone calls it's going to take to sort out (I don't need to tell *you* there was no reason for it to be bounced - that goes without saying in a comic drama). It's funny, I've read those books on money, and none of them include this important tip: "Don't Spend the Mystery Money".

 

Maybe if I email this to Robert Kiyosaki, he can write a Rich Dad book on this topic and give me a finders fee - yeah, that's a great idea - that should almost cover the dishonour fee... yeah - I can feel it all starting to flow back my way!

Unputdownable: Cliches & Made-up Madness

Well I like some alliteration as much as the next punter, but oh how I yearn for an embargo on the pointless pun, the reliance on cliche and most of all, on marketing people being the source of so much of our visual and aural culture!
*sigh*
no really, this week I was lucky enough to go to one of the big publishing houses' annual Christmas preview. There's not really a lot of publishers in Australia and less and less of them are financially capable of throwing a bit of a booze around in a nice hotel so that booksellers and their crews know more about their books. In the logic of the market, it always seems to work out that the people with the blandest (sorry! "Most Popular") books have the most money - and consequently, one really doesn't need more information on those titles, but they're the ones who throw the parties.
John Grisham is publishing a new legal drama - well, who would have thought!? I wonder who'll buy that?
Someone's written a great book? Let's give it a cover image of some steps in Greece - that'll keep it in the not-too-hard basket!
Got a crime novel about a murder? Obviously it's a "quiet and picturesque place before the horror descends".

Sitting there, in the dimly lit room, watching the wanky powerpoint display, it struck me that this is what passes for the heart of publishing - and therefore for a big chunk of that most noble art - literature - yet what is being showcased other than the house red? Why it is "Marketeer". A strain of English that dulls and numbs as it chews up the words of glory in our language and once done, turns to the German style of kludging words together to get what they want. How many times does it take, being bludgeoned with another poster, blurb or presentation claiming something is "unputdownable", before we all just give in and accept that it will be in the next edition of the Macquarie and it's our generation who put it there?

I'd really rather hoped we might sort global warming.

Some gentle words from Osho

Thanks to Rob Brezsny (http://freewillastrology.com) for these today

"Suffering is not holding you. You are holding suffering. When you become good at the art of letting sufferings go, then you'll come to realize how unnecessary it was for you to drag those burdens around with you. You'll see that no one else other than you was responsible. The truth is that existence wants your life to become a festival."
~ Osho

West Side of the Room

As the new kid in this McJob, I get the desk with the only phone that rings (and ring it does). Actually in this place everyone's pretty nice... the difficulty is in staying awake as I'm nestled against the western wall and the heat radiating out from it by 3pm hits that internal hardwired snooze button.
Each week as I make another mistake I learn one more of the labyrinthine kinks in this place's filing system. "No no no, only P/L files are red!" and so we go...

Isn't that just how life works - we all want to be the one to see the big picture and to really *get it* and so often, the difference between having a good day and a bad day can be how one 2 minute phone call goes or the milk being off in your first coffee. We're more vulnerable than we like to imagine. On the other hand, it's also easier to spread a little bit of light than you might think. Just as things seemed relentless in their dullness, the Cardigan Man gave me a slice of mudcake.
Now that's awesome.