Bibliomama

When we were at Sandbanks this summer, we rotated campsites for dinner. The night it was at our campsite, I offered to walk Collette next door to her campsite with a flashlight at the end of the night since she didn't have one. We went to the comfort station together, then we got to my campsite and she said "I'll be fine getting to mine". So I turned away with the flashlight, she walked three or four steps and said "HOLY CRAP, get back over here, it's WAY too dark." I thought this was hilarious. Back at the beginning of November when I was starting NaBloPoMo, and trying to wean off my antidepressant, I felt sort of the same way - like I'd set off without a light and I'd completely forgotten how dark the dark was. So this is a most fervent and heartfelt thanks to everyone who stopped by this month and walked with me for a bit. Nicole and Hannah , the best computer friends a girl could ask for;  Mary Lynn and Julie - World Trivia Night is not

Today's prompt on the BlogHer NaBloPoMo site is: "Do you feel you have found your voice on your blog? What techniques have you tried to develop your voice in your writing? What are some characteristics of your personality in your writing?" "Voice shape" by Jacob Whittaker Answer to first question: Hell yes. I've said it over and over again. When I tried to write short stories, I couldn't develop a credible character. I started writing a cheesy mystery romance novel once. My husband read the first few chapters and said: "She's you." I said "She is not!" He said "she's in graduate school for comparative literature and she's of Polish descent." I said "shut up, she has different coloured hair and she's plucky and confident." He said "isn't this other character just your Irony Professor?" I said "I hate you."  I wrote two short stories in six years that I thought w

Last year when I was about to embark on my -- hang on a second -- FOURTH NaBloPoMo (I was about to say 'third or fourth' and then I remembered that a couple of weeks ago I asked my friend if her husband's law practice had been open for more than a year and she told me it was FOUR, so I counted), a friend warned me that NaBloPoMo had killed her blog. I always think it kind of resurrects mine - the fact that I'm obligated (however artificially) to post every day removes a lot of the pressure to post only weighty or worthy or thrice-polished material, and it gets me back in the habit of writing, after a fall season where school and activites have started and my resolve is often flagging. When NaBloPoMo ends, I usually post again the day after or the second day after, and I think "yeah! I've GOT this! I'm going to keep posting every day! Or almost every day!" And then another day or two goes by, and I've got an idea of what my next post will be, but

I wrote that post title last night and then stared at it for a while and then went away and whined on Twitter about being brain-dead and spinning my wheels and feeling creatively bereft, and some lovely people commiserated and offered words of wisdom and comfort. So I took a deep breath, did some loin-girding and.... decided screw it, and went out for a beer. But I came back today. While I was staring at my post title yesterday, and then procrastinating by looking at Facebook and checking if my assignment grade had been posted yet and uploading pictures to print and then emailing Kim when I saw a picture of her at my house last Christmas and remembered I hadn't answered her last email, Eve was across the table with paint, construction paper, toothpicks and pumpkins. She had been home sick with a cold for the day, and after I got groceries I came home and asked if she felt well enough to go get pumpkins. She said yes, so we went to the pumpkin patch and she picked two big ones

Scintilla Day 3:  B:   Talk about a time when you were driving and you sang in the car, all alone. Why do you remember this song and that stretch of road? I'm finding it difficult to get any real traction on the prompts this year. Last year I had to reach but it still felt within my grasp; this year I'm just starting to emerge from weeks of leaden, joyless trudging, and I'm wondering if maybe I'm just not up to this right now. I'm torn between not wanting to submit what feels like mediocre splattering and wondering if just making the effort will help me move out of the Slough of Despond. I don't think I drive anywhere alone without singing. Once a year I drive four or five hours to Barrie to visit my best friend, and I think I usually choose the music for the drive before I decide what clothes to bring. Angus and I used to measure how long it took to drive to somebody's house by how many times we could sing the Spiderman theme song before we got there

For something fresh and original, I slept too late today and got up feeling vaguely disgusted with myself. I'm not sure what I did with the transcript I ordered so I could apply for my exemptions for my library tech program, I haven't put away all the Christmas decorations and I'm feeling anxious about picking up Eve for piano and buying groceries. That's right - I'm ever so slightly intimidated by A GROCERY STORE. I've done quite a bit of reading about neuroplasticity over the past couple of years, and I'm a little worried that the years of behaviour generated by the years of sleep apnea have wired my brain in a way that's going to be very, very difficult to rewire even with the CPAP machine. It might not be possible. Or it might involve a lot of.... shudder..... HARD WORK. Anyway, I'm now going to continue my tradition of stealing Hannah 's meme for Year in Review posts, along with the tradition of doing it at least a week into the new year

Should blog. Don't feel like blogging. Anybody want to blog for me? I just spent half an hour noodling around on the internet trying to find the title and/or author of a book I read that I really liked, so I could check if the author had anything more recent. I realized, as I was googling, that all I can really remember is that the main character was an alcoholic female police detective. I can't remember what the mystery was or even what the setting was - Hawaii, maybe? So perhaps, in the event that I do remember which book it is, I should just reread that book instead of looking for a new one. In related news, I am not going to divest myself of the hundreds of books in my house and just keep a dozen or so, on the assumption that, by the time I work my way through all of them, I will have forgotten enough about the first one that it will then be new to me again. Matt is telling us about wandering around a park in Tokyo where they have designated spots in which you are allow

People were blogging about BlogHer yesterday. People were blogging about BlogHer AT BLOGHER! If I went with my instincts, I would be blogging about BlogHer a week from next Thursday at the earliest. I am WIPED. I keep waking up at 4 a.m. and wondering where the hell I am. I nearly started sobbing in the grocery store today when I couldn't find the plantains. I beam loonily at everyone I see and wonder why they don't seem to find me delightful like everyone in New York did. There are a lot of reasons to go to BlogHer. Improving or Tightening-the-focus-of or Monetizing or Branding your blog are certainly among them, but they weren't among mine. I bought my ticket on a whim last summer when Marilyn said I didn't have to be 'more serious' about blogging to go to BlogHer, I could just go and hang out in New York with some girlfriends (and that she would room with me), and I consulted my husband and he was for it. After buying the ticket and booking the flight, I

T minus 48 hours before I leave for BlogHer and I've never felt more conflicted about blogging. Is that ironic? Or just pathetic? I've said many times that I've gotten everything I wanted out of blogging: an outlet for writing; a great community; a bunch of wonderful, creative, hilarious new friends; and a few free books.  I am opposed to the concept of unrestrained growth. I hated when I worked at Chapters and they were always on us to push the stupid rewards card on everyone - look, some people just want to come in and buy their frigging book of crossword puzzles and pay and leave, okay? People who regularly come in and buy a buttload of books probably already have the card, and people who don't want it just get pissed off when you ask them AGAIN if they want it. (Mysteriously, I've never taken an aptitude test that suggested I would be good in sales).  I don't like the idea of constantly having to grow my blog, expand my readership, create a brand, find

Scintilla Day 9:  Write a list of 23. (23 things to do, 23 people you owe apologies to, 23 books you've lied about reading, 23 things you can see from where you're sitting, 23 ten-word hooks for stories you want to tell....) Notwithstanding the fact that any project that mentions LYING about reading books is momentarily on VERY SHAKY GROUND with me, here is my list of ... lists. I couldn't think of anything to list, and going random just seemed too easy, so I googled list of, and then got caught up in all the lists there are. Which then makes this kind of random, doesn't it? Look, my husband's away and I did dance class AND playoff hockey last night, okay? AND the other team almost tied it up in the last four seconds. My nerves are SHOT.   1. List of colours . Colour swatches from domain-specific naming schemes, and a bunch of other stuff I don't understand, but the names are cool. Android Green. Dark Byzantium. Caput Mortuum (that means 'dead he

I was surfing the NaBloPoMo blogroll this morning, as I have most days this month. The first blog post I read was about the blogger's one-year-old and it was cute, but she closes comments and requests emails instead because "it will mean more to both of us". (sound of loud annoying buzzer like the kind that means you guessed WRONG on a game show) I LIKE leaving comments. I don't leave one unless I feel it's meaningful. I rarely get one that I don't consider meaningful (assuming it's from a real person). Also, when I click on 'email me' on a blog, I get this email form that doesn't work, so I have to click over to my email and type the address in. In other words, she would have had me as a reader and now she does not. The second blog was a cool book blog - instead of full reviews each post was just general musing about whatever part of the book the blogger was at. But a few posts down was a post saying he was doing NaBloPoMo but was stil