Sarah's writing journal

I hadn't heard of the term Blooks before, but apparently it's blogs which turn into books, and the first Literary Prize for a blook has just been won by Julie Powell for her book Julie and Julia. I couldn't be more pleased - I LOVED this book. It's the story of a woman's successful attempt to work her way through Julia Childs, albeit in a tiny little New York kitchen, with very little knowledge of most of the ingredients. It's a love letter really, to Julia Childs but also to her husband, Eric, and - although I know this sounds sappy - to the internet too. Here's a bit when she's just starting off...

'After we'd finished our very good and buttery steaks and cleared away the large pile of scraped artichoke leaves, I sat down to write. I made a witticism or two about artichokes - 'this was my first time with artichokes, and more than liking or disliking them, I am mostly just impressed with the poor starving prehistoric bastard who first thought to eat one' - and then posted a few short parragraphs onto my blog.
The next day I got thirty-six hits. I know I got thirty-six hits because I went online to check twelve times that day at work. Each hit represented another person reading what I'd written. Just like that! At the bottom of the entry there was a spot where people could make comments, and someone I'd never even heard of said they liked how I wrote!
I was going to eat lots of French food, and write about it, and get compliments from total strangers about it. Eric was right. This was going to be brilliant!'

I just love it, in writing, when people are so enthusiastic and positive because you know they're heading for some kind of disaster, and, let's face it, that's always good to read about, especially when written by such an engaging author.

And my writing prompt for today is ... a compliment from a total stranger.