The Girdle of Melian

I'm about two pages away from being able to scrawl The End on the manuscript! Also, since I already started editing before it was completely finalised, I'm roughly halfway through that as well - on Chapter 20 of about 35. Yet for the past couple of weeks I've been finding it hard to get motivated - or disciplined, whichever you prefer - and have mostly been futsing around with my research notes and typing up already-written scenes and printing it all out to see what it looks like. If anyone knows of a YA contest or even a short-story contest for YA or middle grade writing, please let me know! I need some flint and tinder to spark up my kindling. Meanwhile, I've been reading quite a bit (so what else is new?) but as December comes in tomorrow, I've *got* to finish all the books that I'm still in the middle of, in order to do a year-end review of my Books Read list (see sidebar). I wish I had kept these lists from about age 10, but it's also exciting plan a lo...

besides Earl Grey, of course :-)

Courtesy of Snail's Tales: Part One Part Two

I tagged myself off Linda 's blog! Now I'm tagging you! 1. There are way too many quotes in my head. No, not poetry, unfortunately, but The Simpsons, Seinfeld, Red Dwarf, Fawlty Towers, etc. 2. I just don't like tea. I mean, I don't mind it, and I love the idea of it, but give me a latte any day. 3. I memorise numbers. I can't do much with them, but I remember them all, old phone numbers, combinations, etc. Also, if I have a list of things to remember for a test, or as part of a To Do pile, I can remember them all if only I remember how many items there were. 4. Currently, I've got 6 knitting projects, 1 nearly-complete novel, 1 complete but unedited novel and 3-10 new writing projects on the go. And yet I'm a total time-waster... 5. I can bend my pinky finger all the way back to touch the top of my hand. 6. National anthems make me cry :-)

Here it is !

Between my birthday yesterday and a very busy work week, I've barely done anything but catch up beta reading and post fly-by comments on certain blogs, the forum and our accountability circle . Not to mention poor Sven , who's probably wondering what became of all my high-falutin goals. My only goal for the rest of this week is therefore to write at least one scene. Maybe two. There's a great post about that today on Sven's page. And to catch up on all the pontificating going on, including this great thread over at the accountability circle... Also waiting for news from Australia :-)

Sven 's back! Round four of the Seventy Days of Sweat started yesterday - I'm meant to be writing and/or editing at least 850 words per day. Here's hoping the Accountability Circle helps keep me on track! In other news, Jo's website is up! Visit her here .

...So Little Time is the title of a recent post by Snail's Tales , about how many interesting books there are on Google Books , and how there's just not time enough to read them all. I can't read books on the computer, my eyes glaze over and I get distracted; instead, my method is to print them, four pages per sheet and double sided, which sometimes causes squinting, but at least I can curl up on the sofa or in bed or carry them on the train, etc. Most importantly, I can make notes in the margins; sometimes these 19th Century books have some squiggly sentence structure and some equally squiggly ideas. Here are a few that are on my To Read pile: A Scots Grammar of Turkish: Tom Brown at Oxford by Thomas Hughes, sequel to Tom Brown's Schooldays, which is sadly out of print: Journal of A Tour in the Levant, in three volumes: Trickster Travels: A guide to single women from 1936 (this one is not out of print, but I'd like to read the original edition): A book of classic E...

Which one of these doesn't belong? On the left is some well-preserved Ballantine's and on the right some aged Buchanan's. But what's that in the middle? Why, it's Coroner's Whisky! That's right, Sodden Death - topped with a skull and crossbones. Here is a close-up: Following which, we have an exhibit of some old glass bottles, featuring Pepsi-Cola: And an old bottle of... Yes, it's wine. Gaziantep Burç (horoscope/zodiac sign) Wine from Turkey. Unlike the Ballantine's and Buchanan's, this bottle was empty, and so could not be tasted. Somehow I doubt it would have aged half as well, however. Continuing the dusty theme, but returning to writing, here is one final item. I wish I had bought this and brought it home:

It's ba-ack! Starting 10 November. I really need Sven to get me into gear, and back into Austin's world...