Two for the price of one...

Two links today. The first I'm really pleased about because it started as a suggestion here, which is the list of writerly do's and don'ts... Clare's written one here - I really love the image of someone standing behind the writer and making comments - a backseat writer. (Can I borrow that, Clare?) And Lane's done her own list too, which reminds me all over again just how important notebooks are. What interested me too is that we did this in my writing group last week, and deadlines came up there as something that helped - seems we writers buck against structure but need it too. Actually the more I think about writing at all it's about tensions, choices between two things.

The second link just made me laugh a lot. Because of course I had noticed that the today programme and radio news do keep saying 'The Prime Minister Gordon Brown' in a way I'm sure they didn't en-title Tony Blair, but it's the beauty of humour - when they just pick up something so simple and twist it perfectly. Ouch.

(Actually, keeping on Gordon Brown, so this is a real bargain post - at the 46664 concert last night there was a moment when the screen above the stage flashed to Nelson Mandela in his special room and who should be on the sofa but the Prime Minister Gordon Brown. Laughing. Yep, that's right. We all turned to each other and asked the same question, 'Was that really GB laughing?' If I were his campaign manager, I'd be suggesting more of the laughing-business. He actually looked quite nice, although I did spend a lot of the Simple Minds set wondering what they might have been talking about. Not Zimbabwe for a start.)

(And talking of Zimbabwe - it's ok, I will go eventually and you can get on with writing or reading or whatever it is normal people do on a Saturday night - Debi Alper has a great post up about what we can do. If you're feeling as hopeless about it all as me, I urge you to read and follow through. It might not be the first post now btw so please scroll down.)

How could I have forgotten...

.. how much I love detective fiction?

I've read so many short stories, cartoon strips and essays recently and, much as I love them, I've found my concentration span has become that of a gnat. I'll pick up something and before I've finished the first page, I'm already flicking through to see how much is left. Now, I LOVE short stories, of course I do, but it's proved to me that variety is all.

Luckily, two books, picked out of my 'to-be-read' list, got me back on the straight and narrow.



First up is one I got sent by Scott at the Friday Project. Unlike other bloggers, I don't get sent many freebies, but those I do, I treasure because they're normally from people who know my taste. And I really did enjoy Darren Craske's The Equivoque Principle. It's a completely surreal story of the circus, the Church, and, like all good quests, the search for everlasting life. I thought the ending was a bit of a gallup to the finishing post, but by then, I was so charmed by the characters, especially Madame Destine, that I was willing to be carried along. Some really juicy gruesome bits too, including a tongue-ripping out scene that made me literally put my hand over my own mouth. I do love a well-judged bit of gore. Pure escapism, perfect for February and the best thing is that it's part of a series.




By contrast, Debi Alper's Trading Tatiana sent me not so much to the hot chocolate and duvet, as to the computer to look up some statistics about European sex workers in this country. The narrator of Debi's book can't help but help, even when there's a buttock flashing fascist chained up on the roof of her block of flats. So coming to the aid of Tatiana, a refugee and escaped prostitute, is never going to be in question. What I liked most about this book is that it never felt judgmental, or as if the issues discussed - and there was more than the obvious one - were being explained to me by a schoolteacher. If I wanted to read it and enjoy it for what it was, and it really IS a good read, then fine. But Debi creates real characters, and also real situations. At the end of the book, Jo realises that everyone she's come across has benefited from dealing with the Ukrainian Tatiana's life in some way, including, and most uncomfortably, herself. I know it doesn't sound funny, but this is the other surprise. It is. I was gripped right up to the end, and it really made me think.

And next up is this:



I'm looking forward to it even more after reading this quote from Raymond Chandler:

"The most durable thing in writing is style, and style is the most valuable investment a writer can make with his time. It pays off slowly, your agent will sneer at it, your publisher will misunderstand it, and it will take people you have never heard of to convince them by slow degrees that the writer who puts his individual mark on the way he writes will always pay off."

Missed it!

How have I only just found out yesterday was Blog Action Day? That will teach me for skipping one of my favourite blogs - still plenty to read on the website though.