A great deal of nothing much

So it’s been a nothing much kind of week, no earth shattering revelations or get my blood boiling moments. I went back to work and moved into the new building. Going through boxes of stuff was kind of good though, I found all kinds of things I had forgotten about including a poem and story.

Scarlett asked me if I was going to put my book up on the blog. I know that quite a lot of fellow bloggers have done this, but I’m veering away from this, I don’t find the critiquing that helpful and when I trawl through publisher’s sites there always seems to be a wee rule saying ‘never published before, including the web’. I think I need to hold onto that dream of the multi-million penny publishing deal first. I can be optimistic can’t I?

I had a look through the short story website today; it’s a pretty good database of current competitions. Through it I found a couple of sites that seemed interesting. Well there’s one that I thought was a little dubious if truth be told. The concept behind StoryWar seems to be that depending on the number of views and votes your story gets you get into this Top 50 chart. The other site was Lightningbug for beginning writers or those with a bit of a block. It has prompts and several other resources on it. There’s a page on it about what kind of writer you are, obviously you can fall into more than one category, it’s not a quiz though so don’t expect earth shattering questions.

I also had a look at the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators this week. Again this is something I’m not too sure about. They have a pretty healthy ‘chapter’ going in Paris, but I’m always a bit loathe to part with my wonga, so if anyone can let me know about this group I’d be happy to hear.

Apart from that the Rugby World Cup started. My initial reaction to his was: Oh great the metro is packed. I don’t get rugby at all; big men, funny shaped ball, fairly violent. My other observation about rugby is that posh boys play it. See sweeping generalisations and no idea about it whatsoever. We started looking at the opening ceremony on the TV after the jets had swooped by scaring the bejesus out of us. It all seemed very odd, the guys seemed to be straight off the set of Alice in Wonderland in stripy long shorts and primary coloured tops with spiky shoulders and a black pattern on the front. I like that congenial atmosphere that watching sport engenders, but I remember watching the six nations a couple of years ago. There were a whole bunch of us and Ireland needed to win by a lot to come first. I understood that, but Claire and I felt like we had wondered onto this alien planet where we no longer comprehended the language or behaviour. No, it’s just not football is it.

Right, I now have to listen to a demo and give constructive criticism about it. Jane is one proud mother and is convinced that her son, the Big D will one day be the next Folk/pop sensation. He’s pretty good from the thirty seconds or so that I heard before turning it off because I couldn’t hear a damn thing through Jane’s running commentary! Personally I’m always impressed if someone can play bar chords because that’s something I never mastered, but even with my mastery of six or so chords I can tell that this boy has talent. Still that’s not quite the sort of constructive criticism he wants though.