Stop press

VT crit partners rock.
Plus, I now have a first scene that isn't boring me.
Yippeeeeeeeee!
Message ends.

Hard work and good news

We're back. Lots of working, lots of talking, lots of eating, not so much sleeping. Your standard confab of writers. Sydney was lovely if humid.

I woke up after not quite enough sleep to find out the Wolf has finalled in the specialized category of the Great Expectations comp : ). Even to make things better the VT has finalled in the YA category!

And the day job has been obliging and agreed to me taking leave to go to RWA national in Dallas in July!! My first US conference - I can't wait. But I refuse to work out how many sleeps to go just yet.

Now all I need to do is some BIAW words...

A change is as good...

As you can see I've had a bit of an template change. I was inspired by the VT (who has a blog now and also cunningly found Psycho which makes the template thing easy!).

It's still a work in progress so stay tuned....I'd like to make the middle column wider for a start.

But now, there's revising to be done.

Cake!

Happy Birthday to the VT!

Long may she reign in sappiness and VT spookiness.

Let there be cake.

If only to distract me from the fact that her being a year older means soon I shall suffer the same fate!

Tutus and technology

I went to the ballet today.

My mum and I subscribe to the Australian Ballet and go five times or so a year. Kind of a gals day out thing, she comes down from the country we have lunch, eat cake and watch the dancing. It used to be me, mum and my sil until my brother decided to get a job in another state. Now it's me, mum and gwen, one of mum's friends.

Between the three of us there is much in-depth artistic appreciation, particularly of the cute male dancers ; ) (come back Angel, come back) and giggling at the commentary provided by various oldies who sit behind us at the matinee which generally covers topics such as "this ballet is too long", "what ralph said to mavis's george at bowls", "things were better in our day" and on one particularly classic occasion "you can see her stockings" in scandalised tones (not sure how long it'd been since that guy had been to the ballet).

Today we saw Gathering a program of two works developed jointly with the Bangarra Dance Theatre. The Australian Ballet is a fantastic company and I've seen them perform works choreographed by Bangarra's choreographer before but to see the two companies together, combining the traditions of classical ballet and aboriginal dance was fascinating. There's a completely different physicality to the two but a lot in common. And the abilities of the dancers are amazing. Some of the things they can do with their bodies are just wrong : ) Believe me, I do pilates and ballet dancers do pilates and I can see glimpses of pilates moves in certain things but they do for hours things that make us mere mortals groan and collapse if we have to do 'em for a few seconds.

My muse loves the ballet. Even in some of the traditional, older ballets which we've seen before and which, to be honest, can sometimes be high on the prancing and low on the story, there's always at least one moment where some simple combination of steps or the lift of an arm or the tilt of a head says something that catches your heart. Those are the moments I go for, apart from the general love of dance, the ones that seem to speak directly to the storyteller in me and say something important about emotion or life. The ones that make the girls sigh in satisfaction.

The other thing I love is the use of colours and design. Theatrical design intrigues me. I'd love to have that kind of brain that could say hmmm, if I drape this fabric and light this pale blue and have a shadow here, suddenly a whole scene is evoked. A lesson for writers in setting with touches. Setting is not my forte. I love writers who can do it beautifully like Barbara Samuel but I also don't notice if there's not much setting at all if the characters grab me. Still I'd love to learn that trick of bringing something to life with a line.

So that was most of my day. Up early to do the usual weekend chores, then lunch (with a special guest appearance from my uncle over from Tasmania for the Comm Games) , then the ballet. Then I came home and decided to finally set up my digital TV properly.

A bit of background here. My TV was old and I was thinking it was going to die sometime this year in the back of my mind. My folks bought a pretty big digital TV sometime last year and it worked well. Then Mum decided it was too deep and looked messy (I don't know why, strange are the ways of mothers). So when I went home for Christmas, they'd acquired a new flatscreen TV which is even bigger than their old one, but thinner so Mum is happy. To cut a long story short, they made me a deal I couldn't refuse on their old TV, despite the fact it's really too big for my lounge room (Mum insists it looks better at my place). So shortly after Christmas I had a new TV, along with the set top box you need to get digital TV here. Only problem was they didn't remember the set top box remote and technology being technology, you can't install the set top box without the remote (great design idea - not).

So the virgo twin and I set up the TV non digitally after a bit of cursing on my part. Of course after I'd called her to say "come help" she arrived and two seconds later I realised what I'd hooked up wrong and hey presto it all worked. Maybe she moonlights as a TV technician. The set top box remote was duly delivered a couple of weeks later but I never quite got round to hooking it up. Hello, my name is Mel and I'm a procrastinator... well, actually it was more the thought of more technology hassles. I can follow an instruction book as well as the next person (hey, I can even put Ikea furniture together) but the instruction books for tvs, vcrs and dvds always seem to leave out some basic bit of info.

But tonight was the night. I thought "this looks pretty easy", so I changed the batteries in the remote and set to unhooking the old set up and reconnecting stuff via the set top box. Nothing but a big blank blue screen.

Hmmm.

I jiggled cables, rechecked diagrams and nothing. Cue grumbling.

I rechecked the connections at the back of the TV. Ah. Wrong SCART port thingy used. So I switched it over. Still the big blank blue screen of "ha ha you suck at technology you pathetic mortal".

Cue virgo stubborness. More jiggling. More in vain button pressing.

Grumbling increases to muttered cursing.

Pause to feed the cats who are doing some grumbling of their own about service levels around here.

Go back to jiggling cables. Aha. There's a tiny weeny switch on the bottom of the SCART connector where you would notice it only if you're:
a) insanely flukey enough to find it by sheer dumb luck; or
b) the type of person who thoroughly inspects all the pieces before assembly - I'm a virgo but I'm not that anal, again great design idea - NOT.

Flick switch. Now we have black screen of death "bad signal". But the menu is working so I manage to reset the darn thing and five minutes later it's all tuned in (that bit of the design works fine, so I guess one out of three is better than none).

Digital TV we have lift off. Tthough seriously, it's not much to get excited about - yes the picture is clearer - but given there's maybe 2 or 3 extra channels on the free to air stuff that's about it as far as benefits go until the analogue signal is shut off sometime next decade). Or until I get rich enough to succumb to Hugh's blandishments to get Foxtel.

As an added bonus the DVD still works.

Feeling clever, I turn my attention to the VCR, always a fun thing to play with and retune. Only to find the cable is not long enough to reach from the VCR to the set top box on top of the TV. Sigh. One trip to KMart or somewhere coming up tomorrow for a longer cable.

To sum up, no writing done, ballet two thumbs up, technology two steps forward, one point five and bit back. Typical.

2 steps forwards, 1.99 back

Well, this week has turned out to be not so good for writing. Busy days at work, followed by a family drama thursday morning that wrote off my day off on friday and saturday. Apart from finding some good hand stretches, writing progress, approximately 1 line thought of drifting off to sleep last night. On the other hand I did listen to Joss make mucho sense about story choices and other general geniusness on the Serenity commentary which I was listening to in the background while doing housework last night. (Do I know how to party on a Saturday or what?)

Today was my crit group meeting so that at least is writing related but not actual writing of the producing words kind. Still much fun was had, much good work critted, one imminent bub celebrated, two puppy updates received, one report of cute medicos in the Ferntree Gully region and one weirdo naturopathic diet tested (kudos to the virgo friend for willpower above and beyond the call of the female love of chocolate in the face of not one but two boxes of mint slice balls and assorted other temptations). And I acquired a Robbie Williams calendar for a bit of inspiration (thank you Borders bargain calendar prices). Still total writing progress approximately one line and a few ideas for tweaking the pages I had critted.

Tonight will be playing catch up on the various weekend adminish type tasks necessary to keep the house running and balls in the air for the coming week. Projected writing, still zero. Sigh. And sigh again. But there is NOTHING on TV (unless there's any iceskating on the Winter Olympics coverage), so if I zip through some stuff and manage to wake up from my too much sugar and junk induced energy slump, maybe I could do a page or two.

Otherwise, new goal for next week - finish chapter three and get this sucker of a partial in shape. Onwards and upwards as they say.

The stars are watching

So I write. I write romance in various forms and the muse has lately expressed an interest in throwing some fantasy into the mix so we'll see how that goes. I'm not yet published but making progess or so I like to think.

I've got a great crit group and some great writing buddies. And hopefully we'll all have a great 2006. Hopefully the stars are favourable. Speaking of stars...

So I have this friend - she shall remain nameless but she's the one who was born 8 whole days before me and therefore shall forever be older than me. Yay her. The other reason this is good is that we are very similar. The sort of similar where we can end up rolling on the floor laughing our butts off for ten minutes over just a look we exchange when no-one else in the room gets the joke. Quite possibly they don't get the joke because no-one without the particular type of weird virgo brain that we have would think there even IS a joke. She's the twin sister you have when you're not having a twin sister.

I never really believed in that whole astrology thing until I met her. Our lives are scarily similar even though we didn't meet until we were both over thirty. Apart from the whole she managed to get someone to marry her bit and I am still apparently free as a bird. We think the same a lot of the time even though she is, tragically, more inclined to sappiness than me. And weird coincidences happen to us ALL THE TIME. ALL THE TIME. I blame the stars. There was the time we both bought new track pants. For a trip we were going on. We shopped separately. We didn't discuss the fact we were going to buy track pants. And we bought the same ones.

Things like this happen frequently and if you don't believe me - how's this -

I was reading joshilyn jackson's blog. She's very funny. You
should check it out. Um, it's called Faster than Kudzu and I haven't yet figured out how to link so that's all you're getting. Because I was procrastinating madly, I was reading her archives where she mentioned a form of exercise called 'yoga booty ballet'. As if, right? I mean who would even think up such a thing??

I checked out the link and it exists (and it looks kind of fun). I knew the virgo twin was looking for a yoga class to do, so as a joke sent her the link.

And here's the reply I get back (bear in mind we both live in AUSTRALIA).

"I **AMAZINGINGLY** picked up a pamphlet for these guys while I was
waiting at a bus stop in LA outside one of their studios. The pamphlet is in my bedroom "

Them stars. They're spooky.

And now, given that my page count for today so far is approximately 2 paragraphs of editing, I have to stop playing with this and go write.