...and wear an awesome t-shirt.

I just couldn't resist getting out my "Buffy staked Edward" t-shirt, especially considering that both Tuesday and Friday have worn theirs in their videos of the past two weeks.

Apart from that, this week's (or last week's) video is a slightly rambling affair, mostly due to the fact that I was procrastinating about a vast number of things whilst being distracted by this stupid game on my iPhone. Stupid, addictive game... My cat makes a random appearance though, so huzzah for that!



In other news, my holidays are pretty much over and I am completely unprepared for the impending return to work. On the up side, in a bit under two weeks, there shall be LorFers down here in Melbourne and it shall be awesome fun! I CANNOT WAIT.

I refuse to believe that my holidays are almost half-over! It can't be true! I have rather successfully wasted a lot of time and taken it rather easy, though. And I have made a start on some of the things listed in this week's video:



I am quite interested to hear answers to the question I ask. It's something that has fascinated me since I read about an author who really wanted to write romance but ended up writing fantasty instead. Sometimes the genre we want to write in isn't actually the genre in which we write the best.

So which genre are you secretly tempted to try?

Last week was quite good, actually. I meant to write about it here - several times, in fact - but work kept getting in the way. Work even got in the way of my video, which had to be posted on the weekend this time around.

There are good and bad sides to everything really. For instance:

Good: Work is more interesting these days and involves far fewer library-oriented tasks.
Bad: It also involves fewer actual breaks.

Good: People keep complimenting me on my (apparently) awesome taste in shoes.
Bad: This fills me with uncertainty every morning as I choose my footwear AND causes me to wonder if I should have a lot more shoes.

Good: I was complimented within an inch of my life on Friday.
Bad: I'm not quite sure if it's OK just to say "thank-you" or if I should return the compliment if at all possible.

And now I am on holidays and am being kept company by actual, real internet! Internet that's much faster before! Ironically, I spent the first day of said holidays far from this fast internet and instead in the company of people from Ober.net. (Although, as you can see here, we were all very close to mobile forms of internetness...) It was a splendid day! There was an almost-rained-out picnic, followed by unintentional spending of money in Minotaur. This required us to sit down in Borders with a beverage of some sort... followed by further unintentional spending of money.

But seriously, Borders had the "Buffy staked Edward" t-shirts! As part of a stand of Twilight merchandise! How were we supposed to resist, especially when they look this awesome?



I don't have mine on because I wanted to preserve the integrity of my gypsy outfit. *cough*lazy*cough* Oh yes, I didn't mention the gypsy outfits, did I?

We were wearing gypsy outfits.

There you go. It was part of our theme for the picnic and we didn't actually stand out too much, thanks to the fact that we were in the city on Talk Like A Pirate Day. However, according to various bystanders, we could also double as:

1. Authentically-dressed Russian villagers


2. Pirate wenches


3. Pre-Buccanneer-era pirates

Of course, the 3D glasses add considerably to our authenticity in that pic. We were just waiting to see Up in 3D, which is possibly the most gorgeous movie I've seen in ages.

And once all that was over (although none of us wanted it to be), I got right on to my delayed video. Unsurprisingly, it's writing week again and this week's theme is to do with authors we admire or who have influenced us. Since I was in a rather grateful mood all week, I decided to make my video into a thank-you to all the authors who've inspired me in one way or another. Watch to see who makes the cut!



I'd love to know which authors you guys would like to thank, even if it's for trivial reasons. Comment! Make a video! Send me a smoke signal!

Of course irony would ensure that when I finally think I have something useful to say during writing week, it ensures that no-one can hear it. On the up side, at least the video quality is a little better than on my netbook...



As you may be able to guess from the oh-so-witty pun in the title of this week's video, we're talking about tense for writing week. My tense of the moment happens to be present tense. For some reason, I tend to champion the aspects of writing that are burdened with the worst reputations. First person, present tense... they're my favourites. And it's mostly beause they present a challenge. How do you write them so they don't annoy people? How do you try to bring a modicum of respect to their existence?

When we talked about POV, I learnt that first person annoys a lot of people to the point where they won't read or write it. I'd be interested to know: does present tense create the same sense of annoyance and rejection?

(Oh, and I'll be providing 200 words of original fiction next week to make up for my MWF-induced failure to produce 100 this week...)

We have moved! Successfully! Mostly!

Let's not talk about the stupid bits and pieces still hanging around the old place because I AM SICK OF THEM. I never want to see that place again. And, strangely, I'm not sitting here, wishing I was still living there. I thought I was going to hate it here, simply because it's not my lovely old place in the quiet street under the giant tree.

But it turns out I kinda like this quirky place on the hill.

We are still without internet, as we decided to change to the type that doesn't require a proper phone line. This means we have to wait up to three weeks (for faster internet, admittedly) rather than a couple of days. In the meantime, I am subsisting on mobile broadband and my iPhone.

I still managed to upload a video this week, though! It's very short and the quality is not fantastic, due to the fact that I recorded it on my shiny little netbook. I thought it would take forever to upload on mobile broadband, but it actually took about two minutes.

Oh, and I make a rash promise in this video, so watch on to find out what it is. :D



And now, I have breakfast to eat, so I shall run off and take care of that business.

I have stolen the last chocolate royal and it is good. Apart from the fact that it has strawberry marshmallow filling instead of vanilla. That's just wrong. You lied to me, chocolate royals packet! Or... at least concealed certain vital facts from me.

Still, there is biscuit, there is marshmallow and there is chocolate and this makes for happy times.

Something else that makes for happy times is the fact that I think I did a great job with this week's video. Well, an OK job. A passable job. I did it, anyway. The subject of this writing week is point of view and I pretty much shoved my way to the front of the queue and shouted "OMG, GIVE ME FIRST PERSON POV OR I'LL CRAWL INTO A CORNER AND ANGST UNDER A DARK LITTLE RAINY CLOUD".

Because I rather like first person. It is made of many, many types of win. You will hear me expand upon its win-ness in this week's video:



I wasn't always a fan of first person, mostly for the reason stated early in the video: all of my characters seemed to sound like me. Strangely... :P Then I read Tanith Lee's Law of the Wolf Tower and started to think differently about writing.

Then I started writing Postcards and thought differently about first person POV and voice and style and all sorts of lovely wordy things.

So where I used to write in third person and past tense, now I write in first person and present tense. There's so much scope there for rule-breaking; so many chances to try something different and to see exactly what you can do with words.

Please tell me: do you have a preferred POV to write (or read)? What makes it your favourite?

So yes, I am writing this post on the actual LJ entry page on the actual LJ site on ACTUAL LJ (in case you couldn't pick up the theme there). After... quite some time of being blocked at work (I didn't want to say "years" there, because it reminds me that I've been here too long), it's now un-blocked. Sort of. It went a bit like this...

Firstly, the students and staff combined managed to exceed the school's download limit, which resulted in our being shaped yesterday. It was quite ridiculously painful, especially considering I was trying to update the website via a web interface. So our handy technician came in and changed our proxy, allowing us to use another source for the internet.

It is faster.

It is shinier.

It allows me to access LJ.

Huzzah!

On the down side, however, is the fact that I have just discovered that YouTube is blocked. Hmm.

Now that I'm home, I can safely embed this week's video for your viewing pleasure. Or something.:D



This one was inspired by the fact that I'm going to a thing at which one of my favourite authors, Isobelle Carmody, will be present. I know I don't see eye-to-eye with her on the whole editing thing, but I still love to re-read the books I devoured with such enjoyment at fourteen. Obernewtyn was the first book that I wanted to read again the very second I finished the last page; that sort of thing has an impression upon a teenager.

Anyway, thoughts of this encounter led me to wonder which other authors I'd like to meet... which led to wondering which three authors I'd go so far as to invite for dinner. And I only came up with two, although now I'd quite like to add Diana Wynne Jones to the list.

So watch on for my three two authors and please let me know which authors you'd invite for dinner and why. Please note that they do not need to be alive. I'm not sure how entertaining a dead author's corpse and/or skeleton would be, but I won't let it stand in the way of a good dinner.

Coming soon: proof of my triumph over my phone in its attempt to detain my photos without charge!