How about this for my new publicity photo? Is my hair OK? You can get five versions free - of you and your friends, not just of me, although I suppose you could... - by going to the Bless This Chick website. Christmas pressies sorted, eh?

Love stationery? Love films? Good game here....

The more I look at other blogs, the more I realise that mine lacks an identity. I'm not particularly intelligent, or arty, or angsty, or even the ultimate fashionista I've been dreaming of becoming ever since my days at fashion college. I'm just .... bitty. So I was going to try to remedy that, and come over all writerly and focused, but then a friend sent me this: and I've been trying not to put it up for days, but I just can't resist. This is absolute bliss. So, Writer's News crossed with Heat crossed with Vogue - that's what you get here and I'm not going to be ashamed of it any more. This is MY writing journal after all, and you're all very welcome to browse!

Another story to be read. How lucky are we that the internet throws up such gems? Anyway, I've been struggling with dialogue recently - does it move the story forward? Is it pedestrian? Does it feel real, get the feel of the character, sends the reader to sleep.... So a joy to read this story, A New Gravestone for an Old Grave by David Bezmozgis, which does the job perfectly in my opinion. I'm going to have fun dissecting just how he's managed it.

Thankfully much longer than six words (see below), John McGahern's last story, Creatures of the Earth, can be found here. Am going to print it off and read it tonight - a treat for this nasty December night!

So how short can a short story be? Over at Wired, they have six-word short stories from many different writers. The idea is apparently based on Hemingway's own six word story: "For sale: baby shoes, never worn." which he called his best work. One of my favourites is Margaret Atwood's: 'Longed for him. Got him. Shit.' How many books waste so many words saying just that?

With a currently dodgy internet connection, I'm not able to carry on normal life. Or my life as I normally lead it, which is half on the ground, and half via the computer. I can't rely on blogs, emails, websites to add that little frisson. Heavens, if this continues, I may have to speak to real people instead. But today I seem to be 'on', which is good news as I have been waiting to listen to the 'new voices' at the national poetry archive. Not surprised that Dylan Thomas is the most requested voice, but it's Siegfried Sassoon I want to hear.

And just to add to my miseries, here's an Internet Addiction test. At least there's a blog for us sufferers to log on to and talk about it.

Oh my. Go here for this amazing photograph of an elephant foetus still in the womb. I can't stop clicking back to it, and am counting the days off until the tv series, Animals in the Womb comes to Channel 4. What I find fascinating is how these different animals are already developing the skills they will need in the outside world. The dolphin foetus learns to swim apparently 'in its own private swimming pool' in the mother's womb, and the ever-clever dog,

'is no less remarkable. In just 63 days, the dog foetus is armed with all the basic tools necessary to survive, including a highly acute sense of smell and the ability to detect sounds beyond the human range of hearing.'

I'm a bit worried about this, to be honest, and it's back to the usual bad mother question. When my second child was born, she must have already been subjected to hours and hours of watching that loveable dog, Spot, while, heavily pregnant, I slummed it with my first child on the sofa watching the videos. There's no doubt that, once she was born, she responded every time she heard the song. What I'm trying to work out now is what possible evolutionary use it will be for her. I knew I should have been listening to Shakespeare instead, but oh, I did (OK, still do) LOVE Spot.

Well, I'd hoped to be a novella at least in this 'Find Your Literary Personality' quiz, but apparently I need to mature a bit before I reach those heights...

You scored as A coloring book. Children love you--and so do many adults. They find you approachable, simple and friendly, all of which perfectly describe you. Instead of throwing big words around, you communicate in the international language of pictures. In order to be as open as possible, you present yourself simply, allowing those around you to customize you to their liking. Sometimes this results in you turning into a primitive masterpiece, and other times you resemble a schizophrenic's daydream. So long as the one talking to you understands you, you're happy. Zen and the art of crayon-sharpening. A coloring book 71% Poetry 57% A classic novel 57% A college textbook 57% The back of a froot loops box 54% A paperback romance novel 39% An electronics user's manual 39% Your Literary Personality created with QuizFarm.com

When my friend Anne told me about a scheme to knit scarves for the lions in Trafalgar Square, I thought she must be joking. But Stich and Bitch are doing exactly that. Groups from all round the world are busy knitting bits of the scarf (or possibly four so the lions don't squabble), and they'll be joined together to make a magnificent 43.5 foot scarf, which will be draped around the lion(s) in the New Year before being auctioned off for cancer research charities. One of the groups taking part is Men Who Knit. I don't know why their website salutation 'Good day to you manly knitters' should make me so uncynically happy, but it does. Almost as much as the news of how another London knitting group, the Cast Off Knitting Club were once asked to leave the Savoh Hotel after complaints of impropriety when they held an impromptu knitting circle there.

I was teaching a dayschool yesterday on using setting in writing, and we came to the conclusion it was impossible to be neutral about place. Interesting then to see this project about a very different map of London, organised through the Museum of London. Londoners - and presumably visitors - are being encouraged to write in with their memories of a particular road or place in London, and these are then mapped and categorised under different emotions - so you can take a virtual walk through a London seen through a focus of Beauty/Horror or Joy/Struggle to take two examples. One of my favourites is from the guy who remembers building a treehouse in Bolton Gardens with his school friend, from which they used to fire waterpistols at passers by. They thought they were safe because it was a private garden but one man they soaked apparently jumped over the fence to get them because he was so incensed. I love this - it makes me want to go to Bolton Gardens and write about those boys. I can just imagine the mixture of fear and excitement they must have felt when it happened...

“The most wasted of all days is that on which one has not laughed.” Ralph Waldo Emerson

(And thanks to Dovegreyreader for the link.)

"An adult is one who has lost the grace, the freshness, the innocence of the child, who is no longer capable of feeling pure joy, who makes everything complicated, who spreads suffering everywhere, who is afraid of being happy, and who, because it is easier to bear, has gone back to sleep. The wise man is a happy child."

ARNAUD DESJARDINS

I know this isn't the comfy armchair I've been searching for, the one that just lets me put my legs up, sit cross-legged, whatever, while I read and write, but how beautiful is this, and other fruit-filled creations from Tom & Smith. Do look at the Bulbs chaise lounge if you visit their website.

I witnessed a wonderful 'senior moment' over a pub lunch with my father and mother-in-law recently. My father had asked my mother-in-law something about her childhood.

M-I-L: Do you know I can't remember.
F: Never mind, I can't remember what I asked in the first place.

And then they both carried on eating their lunch.

For another poem about writing, here's Billy Collin's Tension, which has as its epigraph, the instruction:

“Never use the word suddenly just to create tension.” Writing Fiction

Phew! I have been saved from the need to buy the Goddess Guide for the time being by this very funny article in the Guardian by Lucy Mangan on a week living to the rules of modern etiquette books (which comes via the Book Bar). Or have I? Re-reading the article, I see no mention of living like a Goddess. And besides, The GG comes with a recommendation from India Knight who we all have a strange passion for in my family. I can't even say it's interestingly unreciprocated, because she has absolutely no idea we exist, whereas we try to read every word she's written. Is that stalking? Is there a guide to that?

At least, the cookery Goddess, Cream Puffs in Venice, has sussed out how to get the right advice - she asks herself what she should do in tricky situations. (And if that's what being a Goddess means, I'm definitely getting that guide). On her blog, CPinV writes:

"Is it wrong to eat an entire raised almond coffee cake all on your own?

No?

Phew! I was worried there for a second.

Ciao!"

Oh, but look... I've stolen her raised almond coffee cake to eat on this blog too; it's just that it looked too delicious for her not to share. Can you blame me?

Life Lines: Six Poets For Oxfam
Winter Poetry Reading 2006
Tuesday, November 28, 7.30 pm
Oxfam Books & Music
91 Marylebone High Street, W1

Ros Barber (new collection from Anvil due out 2007);

Katy Evans-Bush (widely-published poet featured in The Like Of It, Baring & Rogerson);

Ruth Fainlight (winner of the Hawthornden and Cholmondeley Awards; author of Moon Wheels, Bloodaxe, 2006);

Tobias Hill (novelist and poet, author of The Cryptographer and Nocturne In Chrome & Sunset Yellow);

Michael Rosen (broadcaster and lecturer; Selected Poems is forthcoming from Penguin, February 2007);

Eva Salzman (author of Double Crossing: New & Selected Poems, Bloodaxe).

Hosted by Todd Swift, Oxfam Poet in Residence

Admission free, suggested donation £6
Please contact Martin Penny to reserve seats
Telephone: 020 7487 3570; email: oxfammarylebone@hotmail.com

I can't stop thinking about one of the strangest stories in the papers over the weekend. A couple, Lynda and Ian Gammons, went through a kidney transplant together (Lynda donating one of her kidneys to Ian) and now apparently he is turning into her - sharing her love of shopping, cooking and - hurrah - dogs. All things he says he 'despised' before. Although she tries to explain the shared hobbies by saying they're just spending more time together, and presumably he's pretty grateful to her for the gift of a kidney, they do admit that they even think the same thing at exactly the same time, something they put down to the memories held in cells. I love this quote from him:

"Strangely, my old tastes and interests haven't changed — now I just have extra dimensions. So I listen to Black Sabbath while I bake the scones and I still love bird-watching and rugby."

The first signs that something was changing apparently happened in the supermarket when he turned to her and said he was enjoying it, and did they need more eggs? I would have loved to have seen the look on her face. I know I'm generalising hugely here but have you noticed how many husbands just cling to the trolley for grim life in case they'll be asked for an opinion on washing powder, while their wives dart in and out of the aisles filling it up - a bit like a dog on a walk who covers twice the distance. Anyway, the possibilities with this story for character development in writing are endless. There's something particularly moving too about how, when they first met in school, he fancied her straight away because she carried a briefcase while the rest of the girls had satchels. It's all in the details, and surely only a matter of time before they make the movie.

I've said before on this blog how much I love the free weekly cartoon sent to my inbox from Harold's Planet. There's something about the stupidity of Harold's face that makes me laugh, so I was pleased to get notice of their Christmas Show, SMIILING-IS-FREE, to be held at the Dray Walk Gallery, 91 Brick Lane, London E1 6QL, from Friday 15th December to SaturdY 23rd December. They promise original artwork from £5 to £500, and not just my man, Harold.