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31/7/2012 Dream studyToday I have been reorganising my very small writing corner. I wish I had a study with a large window. My ideal view from the study would be a Dorset landscape, preferably St Catherine's Chapel in Abbotsbury. If I had a study, it would look very much like that of John Mortimer's as seen below: inspiring visuals, favourite objects, piles of stuff everywhere... Lovely. 
John Mortimer's desk, photo Eamonn McCabe, 2007, for The Guardian's writer's rooms series.
31/7/2012 Great find!
Great find yesterday in a charity shop. For £3, I got Great Music from The Movies (Reader's Digest, 1968), boxset, 5 vinyls! From Gone With The Wind to The Third Man, Casablanca to East of Eden...
I love charity shops! 26/7/2012 The ups and downs of self-publishingI have just spent the whole day reading through Lulu.com and I have realised that I have chosen the wrong format and paper for my first novel. The ones I have picked create too many problems.
I therefore need to go through the whole process again: download a new template, format my novel within that new template... Unfortunately, this will mean that the page count and the retail price will be different - ie more expensive - and I will need to send some new info to the Nielsen agency as soon as I can confirm the new details. Somehow, I don't see this book being published early September... Oh well, one learns... But I have wasted a lot of time and it is really frustrating! So the writing of The Book of Thoth is on hold once again... Lulu lesson Number One: DO NOT CHOOSE DIGEST AND PUBLISHER GRADE PAPER! 26/7/2012 InspirationalListen and learn. Henry Rollins is an amazing guy who should be invited to go to schools around the country. 26/7/2012 Olympic Bells are PantsYesterday, we laughed our heads off and shook our heads in disbelief watching another wonderful, painstakingly, desperately embarrassing episode of TwentyTwelve (oh yes, you can love Shakespeare and appreciate the amazingly well-observed humour of that series... I have worked in offices, you know...).
It was about a ridiculous idea by an idiotic "art director" to ring church bells across the country to celebrate the Olympics, and they had commissioned a compositor to come up with a "bells symphony" of some kind, then they had a well-renown "cool" artist getting the team to pick up some noisy objects from a bag and getting them to use the improvised "instruments" for one minute exactly as a kind of participatory action/event for the Olympics. We looked at each other and smiled at the cringe-inducing scenes. Hohoho, we thought. Ah, but then this morning, I read this in a magazine: Martin Creed: all the bells work. "Cement your place in history by becoming part of Turner-Prize winning artist Martin Creed's massive collaborative performance art project. At 8.12am sharp on the first day of the Olympic games, Creed wants you to ring any bell you can get your hands on hand, bicycle, door, whatever - for exactly three minutes to help welcome the Games to the UK. Sign-up online (you can even download a special bell-sound app to your phone) and get your wrists ready." If we want people to appreciate art again in this country, maybe we should stop giving prizes and writing massive cheques to people like Martin Creed and the other Tracey Emins of this world. It's all (money-making) pants. 26/7/2012 The Hollow Crown
I do not watch a lot of TV as it is mainly awful, dumb trash.
But over the past few weeks, I have been watching the absolutely fabulous Hollow Crown series (adaptation of Shakespeare's Richard II, Henry IV Parts 1 and 2 and Henry V). Wonderful actors, superb direction, gripping action, and of course Shakespeare's wonderful though-provoking writing... Everything was pitch perfect. The BBC has shown that it can do high quality drama when it wants to, so go on, BBC, more of this! We also watched the excellent Shakespeare uncovered series of documentaries which reminded me of my 5 years of University. Watching these, I was in my element: the study of literature and history, and it made me happy... It's one of my favourite things in the world! 25/7/2012 Culture Vulture blog "I must say this stuff seems to grow on me"; Emmwood (John Musgrave-Wood), Daily Mail, 1960 (From British Cartoon Archive, University of Kent) I was going to write a blog about my intake of culture from last week, but my partner in crime was there before me, so if you want to read about the H.M Bateman exhibition at the Cartoon Museum, the Salon literature event about the Thames estuary, the Bauhaus exhibition at The Barbican and the gig that rendered us half-deaf for most of the weekend... go to Matt ArtPix's blog:
CULTURE VULTURE! 25/7/2012 Don't mention the "O" wordHow to get around the ridiculous Olympic branding guidelines? Garudio Studiage have found a way! The Peckham-based creative collective is having an installation in the shop window of Tenderproduct in the lovely Cecil Court in Central London. We were wandering around before going to the Ministry gig on Friday, and thought we would have a look at the (closed) shops - we do that often as it's one of our favourite streets in London. We stopped dead in front of the window and laughed a lot! Very, very clever! Garudio Studiage says: "We have all heard about the professional sporting events coming to London this summer. And we have all heard about the athletes, the national pride and the crowds that are expected to arrive in their millions.But the brand guidelines are fierce and the 'get involved' message so very loud and clear! These limitations on the words we are allowed to use, combined with the dread of the transport situation will indeed inspire a sense of competition among us cynical Londoners. Who can push hardest to get on the tube? Who can spend most time waiting for a bus in zone 1? Who will have the longest walk to work? Who can say where they live and what year it is without breaking the law?! Daily miseries that can be called 'alternative games'. As we are not allowed to use the 'O' word, or mention the city and the year in the same sentence Garudio Studiage have come up with the only sensible option… we proudly present the 'Stratford Sports Day'!"  24/7/2012 Now reading...Locked Rooms by Laurie R. King Another book in the Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes series... 
23/7/2012 Starting now!How very exciting... Arcane Publishing is born!
I have just received my 10 ISBN allocation from the Nielsen Agency and am now officially a (self-)publisher! It is going to be a long and bumpy road, but I am now close to achieving my dream... Now to get I Am a Muse published by early September... |
AuthorI think therefore I write. Archives
August 2024
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