This is what weekends are all about: pampering, pottering and relaxing....
Saturday, 31 March 2012
Thursday, 29 March 2012
Check out my satirical novel Moldavite, available from Amazon UK. Click on the icon!
Also available from Amazon.com for other countries
http://amzn.com/B007FS0YM4
Free samples of Moldavite and my forthcoming book Kung Fuk Yu are here:
http://www.myebook.com/index.php?option=ebook&id=120537
www.meiraeliot.com
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25 Lies Writers Tell (And Start To Believe)
Ahh. The lies we writers tell ourselves. It’s a popular topic here, because as a man who has in the past been firmly rooted in the mud of his own self-slung bullshit, I think the best thing writers can do is get shut of illusions and myths and the deception — especially that which we create. Seemed high time to jack this into a “list of 25.”A greatest hits, if you will, and then some.
Let us now extinguish the conflagration of deception consuming our pants.
Argue these, if you choose, or add your own.
1. “I Don’t Have Time!”
Said it before, will say it again: I am afforded the same 24 hours that you are. I don’t get 30 hours. Stephen King doesn’t have a magical stopwatch that allows him to operate on Secret Creepy Writer Time. You have a full-time job? So do a lot of writers. Kids? So do a lot of writers. Rampant video-game-playing habit? Sadly, so do a lot of writers. You want time, snatch it from the beast’s mouth. And then use it.
2. “It’s Okay That I Didn’t Write Today, I’ll Do It Tomorrow!”
Another temporal lie. Oh. You didn’t write today? You’ll write tomorrow, you say? And I’m sure it wasn’t you who ate the last of my Honey-Nut Cheerios. Filthy cereal-stealing cock-bird! Ahem. Do not assume tomorrow will come. Car crash, heart attack, panda mauling; no promises that you’ll see the day after today. What you do get is today. You’re here right now, so don’t waste it. Today is always the day you have. Tomorrow is always a day away. Something-something Daddy Warbucks, hard-knock-life, blah blah blah.
3. “I’ll Come Back To This Story After I Write This Other Story!”
Yeah, that’s usually how it works. OH WAIT NO IT ISN’T. Ha ha! Thought you were going to sneak that squeaky wagon of bullshit past me, didn’t you? If you and your current manuscript pull a Ross-and-Rachel and “take a break,” you’re going to go and dip your wick in some other story’s puddle of word-wax. And — alert, alert, made-up stat incoming — 90% of writers who do that never return to the first story. And it forms a pattern that will happen again and again. It’s like you leaving a trail of half-eaten sandwiches. “Oh, ham-and-Swiss oh look pastrami-on-rye oooooh hold up hold up Italian hoagie OH SWEET SALIVATING SALLY is that a roasted bonobo monkey loin on brioche? CHOMP CHOMP.” Stop that. Finish the sandwich you’re eating. Er, story you’re writing. I may need to eat lunch. Anybody got a sandwich?
4. “Oh Noes, Writer’s Block Again!”
Writer’s block is not a real thing. You can be a writer, and you can be blocked. But don’t give it a special name. And don’t let it take up real estate inside your head. Writer’s block is an excuse afforded by the privilege of not having to write to feed yourself (mmm sandwich). When you suffer a thing you think is writer’s block, as with any demon or ghost, deny its existence. “The power of word count compels you!” you scream, flecking it with the holy water of writers (aka, whiskey). You get through writer’s block the same way you get through a door that’s closed: you open it or tear that fucker off its hinges.
5. “I Can Only Write When The Muse Allows!”
To the working writer, that means, “I can only pay my mortgage when the Muse allows.” True Fact Alert: Your Muse is a twatsicle. Hell with invisible fairy spirits who breathe the heady breath of inspiration in your soul. Own your work. It’s yours! That’s awesome! It’s not delivered to you by a shining knight galloping up on a golden unicorn. (Well, it is if you’ve gobbled copious fistfuls of hallucinogens.) Your story came from within. Fuck external validation. Let it all be you. Get away from excusing your lack of productivity on the capricious whims of a fickle butterfly-winged motherfucker some Greek made up once.
6. “My Creative Spark Hath Been Extinguished!”
Your creativity is not a baby rabbit. It doesn’t die of fright. Oh, I’m sorry, outlining hurt your poor widdle cweative self? Editing made your inner baby cry? Writing that query letter or reading that bad review huffed and puffed and blew your house of cards down? Dude. Dude. DUUUDE. Your creativity is made of tougher stuff. Kevlar and gravel and cast iron and… sandwiches. (Wait, I still didn’t eat lunch, did I? Is beer lunch? Yay! Beer!) The more you try to protect your idea of some frail, quivering flower living invisibly within your mind, the less you actually put words on paper for others to read.
7. “My Characters Are In Control!”
Stop that. This is another version of the “Muse ejaculates her story into my brainpan” lie: if you legitimately assume that your characters are in control, you’ve once again ceded intellectual and creative territory to imaginary entities. I’m not saying your subconscious mind fails to work through the story elements on the page. It does. It totally does. And, indeed, it feels at times like some kind of crazy moonbat magic. But from time to time you should remind yourself: this isn’t magic. Everything that’s happening is real. You control it. These puppets dance for you. This is your show. I wonder if writers tell this lie in part because it excuses failure and in part because it absolves them of responsibility — “Oh, didn’t like that story? Well, garsh, it’s what the characters wanted. I am just the conduit for their psychomemetic existence. Blame them!”
8. “That’s Not Bad Writing, That’s My Voice!”
Yeah, no, it’s just bad writing. It’s yours, all right. It’s just shitty.
9. “I Write Only For Me!”
Then don’t write. Sorry to be a hard-ass (ha ha, of course I’m not), but writing is an act of communicating. It’s an argument. It’s a conversation. (And yes, it’s entertainment.) And that necessitates at least one other person on the other end of this metaphorical phone call. You want to do something for yourself, eat a cheeseburger, buy an air conditioner, take a nap. Telling stories is an act we perform for others.
10. “I Don’t Need An Editor”
Ohh, but you do. Writers thrive on a little creative agitation. Your work is never perfect. You need someone to shave off the barnacles and, on a deeper level, unearth those things you didn’t realize were still buried. Maybe it’s a proper editor, an agent, a talented wife, a writer buddy, or a secret hobo genius. But someone needs to be there to tell you, “This works, this doesn’t, and have you considered this?” Their words are not gospel, but they’re necessary just the same. A high-five to editors all around. *slap*
11. “I Don’t Need To Do Any Planning!”
Your story is just born out of your head fully-formed, like Athena from Zeus? I don’t care if you’re outlining, drawing mind-maps, collecting research, or spattering notes on the wall in your own ropy jizz — you’d better be doing some kind of planning lest your tale flail around in the dark. Thing is, so many writers have convinced themselves that this is a totally viable course of action that they try it again and again, wondering exactly why the story can’t get off the ground or won’t make a lick of fucking sense. (And yes, I’m sure some people can actually accomplish this and accomplish it well. Those people are secret geniuses and I hate them and refuse to acknowledge them further lest I weep openly. DON’T LOOK AT ME WHEN I CRY.)
12. “I Have Nothing More To Learn!”
Dang! I didn’t realize I was speaking to a bodhisattva of the craft! You hung around on this mortal, ephemeral coil in order to lead the way by spiritual example? You’re the zenith! The pinnacle! The tippy-top of the penmonkey tit! *kicks you in the trachea* Sucker. You’re no such thing. Nobody is. Even the greatest writers can learn new things about storytelling, about writing, about the world in which we peddle our salacious word-born wares. You can always up your game. Seek opportunities to do so. Oh! And by the way, any of those writers who tout that line: “You can’t teach someone to be a writer, you either are a writer or you aren’t” are high on their own stench and just want to make themselves feel better. What kind of fucked-in-the-head lesson is that? You’re born a writer or you’re not? We’re beholden to some kind of creative caste system? It’s in our blood, like vampirism or syphilis? You can be taught. And you can teach yourself.
13. “I Need (Insert Some Bullshit Here) To Help Me Write!”
Whiskey? Coke? Crack? Ketamine? Salvia? Weed? Video games? Febreze? Pegasus blood? A sunny day? A winter’s night? A Carpathian prostitute? You need none of these things. Writing relies on very few things, my friend. All you need to write is your brain, a way to convey the story into existence (pen, computer, whatever), and a place in which to do it (office, kitchen table, lunar brothel). That’s it! Oh, and coffee. If a dude tries to take my coffee I will staple his hand to his face and push him down a hill.
14. “I Need To Write Like (Insert Some Other Asshole’s Name Here)!”
Let that dude or that lady write like that dude or that lady. You write like you write. Your voice is your own. Write to discover it, strengthen it, then own it. Don’t chase another author’s voice, style, genre, or story.
15. “If I Write It, They Will Come!”
It’d be great if all it took was to write a kick-ass story, comic, movie, or religious manifesto. That’s the myth. “Write the best book you can,” I sometimes say. Which is true. But doing that doesn’t cause rainbow beams to shoot out of your nipples that all the publishers the world around can see — “Twin rainbow nipple spires! A bestseller is born.” Writing the story is only part of what we do. The hard part is putting it out there. A great deal of work goes into birthing a book into the world — er, a good book, that is.
16. “Money Just Cheapens The Creative Process!”
Yeah, you know what else cheapens the creative process? Feeding my kids. Paying my mortgage. Stuffing grungy garter belts with sexy dollah-dollah bills y’all. Okay, that last one might actually cheapen it. Regardless! Money is not crass! It is not some vile thing that poisons the water of your creative well. Most of the art and entertainment you have enjoyed — if not all — was created by people who got paid (or, at least, hoped to get paid) in order to create that thing you loved so much. Even classic literature often earned its authors money. Money is good. Value your work. Nobody would fault you for earning out. Except jerks. But who cares what jerks think except other jerk-faced jerk-holed jerks?
17. “This Draft Needs To Be Perfect!”
Perfection is itself the most perfect lie. Well-defended, crystalline in its beauty, an elegant specimen to hold up: “Behold. I seek only perfection. Is that so wrong?” Actually? It is. Perfection is meaningless and impossible. And, worse, it’s maddening. You can spend countless reiterative hours “perfecting” a story, which adds up to you just spinning your tires on a road of greasy mud. You have to know when done is done. When good is good. When perfection is a thing that lives in the eyes of others and exists outside your control. It’s like worrying whether something is or is not art. Let someone else figure that out.
18. “My Crap Isn’t As Crappy As Some Other Crap!”
The other side of the coin, here. You see this sometimes (oft-touted by self-published authors of dubious merit), where they note that Piece-of-Crap X by Author Y made it into the marketplace and their sanctimonious drivel is at least as good as that, and gatekeepers can’t know quality and it’s all subjective and *barf yawn.* It’s all a slippery slope of self-deception bent on excusing lazy habits of writing and, in some cases, publishing. Are you seriously aiming for, what, a C+ grade? Lowest common denominator? “Grade E-but-Edible?” Don’t be a lazy knob. Be proud! Be awesome! Put out the best work you can.
19. “But First I Need To Build My Brand!”
Nobody wants to read a “product” by a “brand.” They want to read a story by an author. You’re a person, not a brand. You have a book, not a platform. Concentrate on the story first. The rest comes later.
20. “Nobody Has Ever Thought Of This Idea Before!”
Yes. They totally have. It’s your job to make it feel original. The art is in the arrangement.
21. “Writing Should Be Easy / Delicious Misery!”
We come to believe that writing should either be super-easy (“The words should just fall out of my face whenever I tilt my head forward!”) or that it’s a miserable activity (“OH GOD MORE WRITING I hate writing so much all this telling stories about imaginary people gives me a well-deserved anal fissure”). Further, when it’s not easy or not wretched, we feel like we’re not doing it justice. Put that lie aside. Some days will be easy. Some will be hard. Some days you dig soft earth, other days the shovel hits stone. But you dig just the same because that’s the only way the hole gets dug.
22. “This (Insert System Of Publishing) Is The Only Way!”
It’s easy to bet everything on one option. But easy doesn’t mean smart, and this is a lie that can get you into quite a bit of danger. Self-publishing is not the wave of the future. Traditional publishing is not an insurmountable mountain. Kickstarter is not a gospel. Free is not perfect. Authors are at a point where we have a great many options before us, and to ignore 90% of them to focus on one path is to deny the awesomeness of having options in the first fucking place. For a long time we had one way to get published. Now we’ve many more. Stick a finger in each pie. Why? BECAUSE MULTIPLE PIES, DUMMY. Yay, pie!
23. “I’m The Last Beautiful Dodo Bird On Earth!”
You want things to work a certain way for you because you’re special or talented or because you look really good in those jeans. Don’t think the publishing world will turn on its axis for you. Don’t think that readers aren’t savvy to all the tricks. Be the scrappy underdog, not the self-assumed victor-of-Thunderdome.
24. “Writing Is Not A Viable Career / I Can Never Do This Professionally!”
A dread deception sung by those who would seek to diminish the value of art and stories in the world. I read an article recently that suggested that the average annual take-home for authors is $9000. That is not viable. That is not money on which one may live. But I’m just one example of many entrenched penmonkeys earning a real living year after year. Paying bills! Buying stuff! Porn and sandwiches and whiskey! You can do this. It’ll take work. And time. Doesn’t happen overnight. But it can happen.
25. “I Suck Moist Open Ass!”
The darkest lie we tell ourselves: that we and our writing are not worth a bag of microwaved diapers. Listen, I don’t know how talented or skilled or capable you are. Hell, maybe you’re not that great. But nobody got better by feeling bad about it. You have one of two choices: you can be destructive to yourself or constructive. You can tear yourself down or find a way to build yourself up — and I don’t mean build yourself up with compliments but build yourself up with skills and abilities and the practice that gets you there. You suck? That thought sucks. Get better. Improve. Aim big. Give yourself the chance to fail — and then give yourself a chance to build steps from the corpses of your failure so you may climb higher every time. You don’t become a writer by feeling sad about your self-worth. The only sucking you need to do is to suck it up and do the work. Everything else is a consumptive distraction.
Like this post? Want more just like it? Try these books:
The newest: 500 MORE WAYS TO BE A BETTER WRITER —
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The original: 500 WAYS TO BE A BETTER WRITER —
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Only a buck: 250 THINGS YOU SHOULD KNOW ABOUT WRITING —
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The biggun: CONFESSIONS OF A FREELANCE PENMONKEY–
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Or its sequel: REVENGE OF THE PENMONKEY —
$2.99 at Amazon (US), Amazon (UK), B&N, PDF
Amen
Wednesday, 28 March 2012
World Teachers´ Day
A hundred years ago, a teacher was somebody in the community. Now in many parts of the English-speaking world at least, the profession is rather looked down on. Please remember teachers today and think of the important work that they do:
Tuesday, 27 March 2012
The debate on airport security: what do you think?
Let us start with the obvious: in the entire decade or so of airport security since the attacks on America on September 11th 2001, the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) has not foiled a single terrorist plot or caught a single terrorist. Its own "Top 10 Good Catches of 2011" does not have a single terrorist on the list. The "good catches" are forbidden items carried by mostly forgetful, and entirely innocent, people—the sorts of guns and knives that would have been just as easily caught by pre-9/11 screening procedures. Not that the TSA is expert at that; it regularly misses guns and bombs in tests and real life. Even its top "good catch"—a passenger with C4 explosives—was caught on his return flight; TSA agents missed it the first time through.
In previous years, the TSA has congratulated itself for confiscating home-made electronics, alerting the police to people with outstanding misdemeanour warrants and arresting people for wearing fake military uniforms. These are hardly the sorts of things we spend $8 billion annually for the TSA to keep us safe from.
Don't be fooled by claims that the plots it foils are secret. Stopping a terrorist attack is a political triumph. Witness the litany of half-baked and farcical plots that were paraded in front of the public to justify the Bush administration's anti-terrorism measures. If the TSA ever caught anything even remotely resembling a terrorist, it would be holding press conferences and petitioning Congress for a bigger budget.
The argument that the TSA, by its very existence, deters terrorist plots is equally spurious. There are two categories of terrorists. The first, and most common, is the amateurs, like the guy who crashed his plane into the Internal Revenue Service building in Austin. They are likely to be sloppy and stupid, and even pre-9/11 airplane security is going to catch them. The second is the well-briefed, well-financed and much rarer plotters. Do you really expect TSA screeners, who are busy confiscating water bottles and making people remove their belts and shoes, to stop the latter sort?
Of course not. Because the TSA's policies are based on looking backwards at previously tried tactics, it fails against professionals. Consider this century's history of aircraft terrorism. We screened for guns and bombs, so the terrorists used box cutters. We confiscated box cutters and corkscrews, so they put explosives in their sneakers. We screened footwear, so they tried to use liquids. We confiscated liquids, so they put PETN bombs in their underwear. We rolled out full-body scanners, even though they would not have caught the Underwear Bomber, so they put a bomb in a printer cartridge. We banned printer cartridges over 16 ounces—the level of magical thinking here is amazing—and surely in the future they will do something else.
This is a stupid game, and we should stop playing it. Overly specific security measures work only if we happen to guess both the target and the plot correctly. If we get either wrong—if the terrorists attack something other than aircraft, or use a tactic we have not thought of yet—we have wasted our money and uselessly annoyed millions of travellers.
Airport security is the last line of defence, and it is not a very good one. If there were only a dozen potential terrorist tactics and a hundred possible targets, then protecting against particular plots might make us safer. But there are hundreds of possible tactics and millions of possible targets. Spending billions to force the terrorists to alter their plans in one particular way does not make us safer. It is far more cost-effective to concentrate our defences in ways that work regardless of tactic and target: intelligence, investigation and emergency response.
That being said, aircraft require a special level of security for several reasons: they are a favoured terrorist target; their failure characteristics mean more deaths than a comparable bomb on a bus or train; they tend to be national symbols; and they often fly to foreign countries where terrorists can operate with more impunity.
But all that can be handled with pre-9/11 security. Exactly two things have made air travel safer since 9/11: reinforcing the cockpit door, and convincing passengers that they need to fight back. Everything else has been a waste of money. Add screening of checked bags and airport workers and we are done. All the rest is security theatre. If we truly want to be safer, we should return airport security to pre-9/11 levels and spend the savings on intelligence, investigation and emergency response.
via economist.com
This seems to me to be a debate worth having.....
Sunday, 25 March 2012
Authors´Den
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</a><font face="arial" size="2">Where authors and readers come together!</font>
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Kung Fuk Yu
Check out this website I found at myebook.com
A free sample from the forthcoming Kung Fuk Yu, a humorous look at self-defence for sweetie-pies, is now available. Please do enjoy, and please come back for more!
Mozart
23 March 2012 Last updated at 13:39 ETMozart piano composition uncovered in Austria
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The performance at Mozart's residence was played by Florian Birsak on Mozart's original piano
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A previously unknown piece by Mozart, believed to have been written when he was as young as 10, has been uncovered in Austria.
The piece, thought to have been composed in 1767 or 1768, was found in a notebook in an attic.
Researchers recently determined there was strong evidence Allegro Molto is a Mozart composition.
It was transcribed into a notebook bearing the name Del Signore Giovane Wolfgango Mozart.
Although the music was not written in the hand of Mozart or his father Leopold, historians at Salzburg's Mozarteum foundation strongly believe it is by the burgeoning composer.
Music expert Hildegard Herrmann-Schneider said only Leopold Mozart used this name when writing down his son's name.
The 160-page handwritten notebook, dated 1780, also contained musical works written by Mozart's father.
Austrian musician Florian Birsak performed the four-minute piece at Mozart's childhood home on his original piano.
He said: "It's not just anyone's piece, there is already a touch of the great Mozart he later became."
In 2009, researchers uncovered two pieces of music believed to have been written when Mozart was seven or eight.
via bbc.co.uk
Amazing to think that even after all this time we could still find something new!
Saturday, 24 March 2012
The dilemma
We are in a bit of a quandary, aren´t we? On the one hand, we want to be able (some of us) to earn a reasonable living from our epublishing or whatever, but on the other we also want to be accessible to the widest possible interested public, and we want the information, music, entertainment and know-how we are looking for to be freely available to us, and shareable. This is creating some interesting situations in education, for example, where students may take a lot of persuading not to use freely available academic work when they are used to accessing music and entertainment online. So how do we define plagiarism, exactly? Previous generations were not so touchy about ownership of intellectual property. Great composers, for example, saw nothing wrong with using another composer´s composition and developing it into a different work. The Elizabethans, those great conversationalists, used to jot down witty remarks and quotations in their Commonplace books for later use. The net effect of this liberal approach was a burgeoning of genius and creativity. We so like to think of ourselves as much more enlightened and progressive than our forebears, but do we not have a lot to learn from them? What do you think?
Stephan Kinsella on Rethinking Intellectual Property
via mises.org
This is a fascinating piece on the hugely important running debate on IP and the relationship between copyright and censorship.
Thursday, 22 March 2012
To grow at any cost
Those hours were not in vain
So long as you retain
A lightness once they´re lost,
Like one who, thinking, spends
His inmost dividends
To grow at any costPaul Valery
So long as you retain
A lightness once they´re lost,
Like one who, thinking, spends
His inmost dividends
To grow at any costPaul Valery
Tuesday, 20 March 2012
Lazy thinking
"He who will not work does not get any bread but remains deluded, as the gods deluded Orpheus with an airy figure in place of the loved one, deluded him because he was effeminate, not courageous, because he was a cithara-player, not a man. Here it is no use to have Abraham for one´s father, nor to have seventeen ancestors - he who will not work must take note of what is written about the maidens of Israel, for he gives birth to wind, but he who is willing to work gives birth to his own father." Kierkegaard
Monday, 19 March 2012
Superior and inferior
The hallmark of a superior person is their delight in helping others to be better. The hallmark of an inferior person is their delight in proving others to be inferior to them.
Sunday, 18 March 2012
Mothers´Day
It´s Mothers´Day in the UK, so give Mum a call. I didn´t do chocolates or flowers this year. I sent her a couple of cases of red wine!
Saturday, 17 March 2012
Tough or strong?
Being tough isn´t the same as being strong, and being gentle isn´t the same as being weak
Friday, 16 March 2012
Simplicity
´The great artist is a simplifier´ Henri-Fréderic Amiel. Or as Einstein put it: ´Make everything as simple as possible, but not simpler.´
Thursday, 15 March 2012
Coffee
What is this thing with coffee machines?
Having low blood pressure, I drink my coffee at health-warning, resurrection strength. Sometimes I make it so strong even I can´t drink it. But I make it in a cafetiere, not a machine. It seems to me that the secret of good coffee is just to mix good coffee with boiling water in a pot. If I want to be really posh, I make it with bottled mineral water, which enhances the aroma and flavour. It´s like making good tea, except that you don´t need to brew it as long. The more you expose good coffee to clarted up tubes and machine innards, and the more of a head of steam you get up while doing it, the more aroma and flavour is lost. In the case of a lot of home coffee machines, anyway. Obviously not all. And then, coffee made with a machine is often barely tepid by the time you get your frothy little cup. And the cup usually is little. No, give me my sturdy, unpretentious little cafetiere, preheated to keep it warm, with coffee made to the strength I like it, and enough for a good top-up.
Having low blood pressure, I drink my coffee at health-warning, resurrection strength. Sometimes I make it so strong even I can´t drink it. But I make it in a cafetiere, not a machine. It seems to me that the secret of good coffee is just to mix good coffee with boiling water in a pot. If I want to be really posh, I make it with bottled mineral water, which enhances the aroma and flavour. It´s like making good tea, except that you don´t need to brew it as long. The more you expose good coffee to clarted up tubes and machine innards, and the more of a head of steam you get up while doing it, the more aroma and flavour is lost. In the case of a lot of home coffee machines, anyway. Obviously not all. And then, coffee made with a machine is often barely tepid by the time you get your frothy little cup. And the cup usually is little. No, give me my sturdy, unpretentious little cafetiere, preheated to keep it warm, with coffee made to the strength I like it, and enough for a good top-up.
Wednesday, 14 March 2012
Instead of ranting and raving
I almost blush to think how long it took me to realize that I am an oddball. When I think of the years I wasted trying to be approved of and to fit in. Now, at long last, I am beginning to learn. I just can´t fit in, and actually I don´t want to. The other day I was teaching a small class of boisterous 11 year-olds, most of whom have been labelled underachievers, and we were playing a team word game called Stones. The idea is, you have two teams and draw a series of empty stones on the whiteboard at the front of the classroom. The teacher then gives each team a word to translate from their own language into English, or the other way round, and a member from each team writes the translated word on to the stone. The first team to fill up its stones with correct words wins. The great thing about this game is that everyone in the class can take part without feeling overfaced by the achievement pecking order. Everybody just chips in and has a go. They have nothing to lose, they have a lot of fun, and they learn quite a lot in the process. The problem is, they get so enthusiastic that they start jumping up and down and making a lot of noise. This is the point at which the school principal decides to take a stroll down your corridor and, hearing the pandemonium coming from your classroom, opens the door and asks you what you are doing. The implication being that if your kids are making a lot of noise, then you aren´t doing your job properly. Having made his point, he then wastes no time and takes himself off to your office, where he duly informs one of your colleagues that he has just had to intervene in your class.
Now, there was a time when I would have been quite upset about this. I would have ranted and raved and felt very put out indeed. I would be lying if I said I wasn´t a bit annoyed, but now I tend to see incidents like this as signposts. Irritation can be, well, irritating, but it can also be an opportunity to take a step back and think about what you are really doing, and why. I love my teaching, but I know I am not like other teachers. I just don´t fit comfortably into institutions. What I do fit right into is being a writer. Much as I love teaching, if you told me tomorrow that I would never teach another lesson, I wouldn´t be that bothered. But if you told me I would never write again I would feel as if my life was over.
So being irritated can be a welcome prod from the universe, to remind us who we really are and what we really want to be investing our time and attention on.
Now, there was a time when I would have been quite upset about this. I would have ranted and raved and felt very put out indeed. I would be lying if I said I wasn´t a bit annoyed, but now I tend to see incidents like this as signposts. Irritation can be, well, irritating, but it can also be an opportunity to take a step back and think about what you are really doing, and why. I love my teaching, but I know I am not like other teachers. I just don´t fit comfortably into institutions. What I do fit right into is being a writer. Much as I love teaching, if you told me tomorrow that I would never teach another lesson, I wouldn´t be that bothered. But if you told me I would never write again I would feel as if my life was over.
So being irritated can be a welcome prod from the universe, to remind us who we really are and what we really want to be investing our time and attention on.
Tuesday, 13 March 2012
In lean times
In lean times we have a chance to focus on what is really important to us. In the last major recession, cheap and nasty stores, expecting to come into their own, found with a shock that customers were going for value. Now we are an octave higher up the scale: people are going for values.
From value to values
Found an interesting site about social media herehttp://theengagingbrand.typepad.com/the_engaging_brand_/2012/03/social-media-marketing.html
Monday, 12 March 2012
When two people do the same thing it isn't the same thing
The spirit in which we do something may be as least as important as what we do
Sunday, 11 March 2012
Seth Godin's 2012 booklist
Take a look at this interesting suggested reading listhttp://www.squidoo.com/book-list-2012-first-one
The Hammer
"When the only tool you have is a hammer, all problems start to resemble nails". Abraham Maslow
Little Ecowarrier
Helmeted up and out on my bike around town yesterday, I got cut off by some jerk in an SUV. Can't help thinking: The Bigger the Car, the Bigger the Idiot
Saturday, 10 March 2012
A Bit More Fishy
And then of course the fish world would have its special agent, Bubble-O-Seven, whose name is Pond, Gill Pond. Obviously I don't get out enough.
Friday, 9 March 2012
Some Fishy Ideas?
You know how it is, when it's Friday and you're feeling a bit lightheaded. My son and I were just doing a bit of free association and we wondered what would happen if there was an ereading device for fish. Would it be called a Findle? Sorry, just codding around. Talking of cod, would the late great mind of the much-missed Christopher Hitchens have been a great writer in the fish world? Fishtopher Hitchens, perhaps, writing a book like Cod is Not Great. Or the Trial of Henry Fishinger. Perhaps fish even have cartoons, like the Shrimpsons. Oh boy am I ready for that Friday night drink!
Christopher Hitchens on GKC
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The Hitch
The story behind Christopher Hitchens’s March 2012 essay
By Benjamin Schwarz
via theatlantic.com
Thursday, 8 March 2012
Moldavite Kindle edition
My novel Moldavite has just been published as an ebook! Hope you enjoy and do please review if you would like:
For the UK click
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Moldavite-ebook/dp/B007FS0YM4/ref=tmm_kin_title_0?ie=UTF8&m=A3TVV12T0I6NSM&qid=1330945448&sr=1-1 For the US and elsewhere please click Amazon.comhttp://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&field-keywords=Moldavite+Meira+Eliot&x=15&y=13 Moldavite will soon also appear on other retailers and aggregators such as Barnes and Noble, Waterstones, Follett, Gardners, Firstyfish and many more.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Moldavite-ebook/dp/B007FS0YM4/ref=tmm_kin_title_0?ie=UTF8&m=A3TVV12T0I6NSM&qid=1330945448&sr=1-1 For the US and elsewhere please click Amazon.comhttp://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&field-keywords=Moldavite+Meira+Eliot&x=15&y=13 Moldavite will soon also appear on other retailers and aggregators such as Barnes and Noble, Waterstones, Follett, Gardners, Firstyfish and many more.
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