Kurt Vonnegut's Eight Rules of Writing Fiction

1. Use the time of a total stranger in such a way that he or she will not feel the time was wasted.

2. Give the reader at least one character he or she can root for.

3. Every character should want something, even if it is only a glass of water.

4. Every sentence must do one of two things -- reveal character or advance the action.

5. Start as close to the end as possible.

6. Be a sadist. Now matter how sweet and innocent your leading characters, make awful things happen to them -- in order that the reader may see what they are made of.

7. Write to please just one person. If you open a window and make love to the world, so to speak, your story will get pneumonia.

8. Give your readers as much information as possible as soon as possible. To heck with suspense. Readers should have such complete understanding of what is going on, where and why, that they could finish the story themselves, should cockroaches eat the last few pages.

(I found this at Jane Espenson's blog)
(she found it here: Bagombo Snuff Box: Uncollected Short Fiction (New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons 1999), p. 9-10)

(bye, Kurt.)

Red socks, silver keys and exquisite corpses: A Birthday Story

#1 Jellyfish Books: Matilda by Roald Dahl, Let the People Sing by JB Priestley

Alabama Redsock hated playing the tuba.
It was the most unattractive instrument in the world. When she was playing it, it looked like she was wearing a large, golden dog poo wrapped around her body.
The Walla Walla Middle School Concert Band was hardly the coolest musical ensemble to be a part of, but it would have been more bearable if she'd had a better instrument - a clarinet, maybe, or even a cello. But she'd wandered in to music class late one day as usual, and found Miss Jbunic, her insane Polish teacher, shoving the massive tuba in her direction. 'Remember to practice!' the crazy woman chanted at her, before handing over a 'Learn to Play Tuba in any Key' book that dated from about 1970 and featured a lot of photos of a fat German man called Alphonse in lederhosen.
Great, thought Alabama. I am doomed to years of music practice, trying to draw inspiration from some tubby old Nazi in braces and knee-high socks.
Which was pretty much how it had turned out.
To make matters worse, you couldn't just throw a tuba in your school bag like a flute - you had to drag it along behind you on a trolley.
This must be what it's like having a disability, thought Alabama as she miserably heaved the instrument into the school bus each day.
And so Alabama made a promise to herself: I will find a way to get out of playing the tuba before my fifteenth birthday, if it kills me.


#2: Canoe Books: The Story Girl and Anne of Avonlea, both by LM Montgomery

And so Alabama made a promise to herself: I will find a way to get out of playing the tuba before my fifteenth birthday, if it kills me.
She then sat herself down in the old faded armchair and took up the sheet music she was supposed to learn. Outside it was raining and the colour of the sky was a dark forbidding grey. She took out a pair of scissors and proceeded to cut the sheet music to pieces. She used the notes and letters of the title, pasted them onto black pieces of material and then arranged them on a piece of paper that read:

TONIGHT, THE TUBA PLAYER WILL DIE

The white 'T' on the black background looked particularly threatening.
She placed the note in a box, locked it with a padlock and sent it and the key to the music teacher. The music teacher unlocked the padlock and the lid sprang open.


#3 Snaz Books: The Secret Garden, by Frances Hodgson Burnett and The Naked and the Dead by Norman Mailer

The music teacher unlocked the padlock and the lid sprang open.
Just as quickly, tears welled in her eyes and spilled down her cheeks like a cup too full.
Inside, she had found an infant's sock, red as a pomegranate and as small as the foot of the child she had lost not yet five years hence.
Taking the delicate object in hand, she closed her eyes and remembered.
After one extended, exquisite moment, she opened them again and let the monotony of the past five years flood back in; numb, even and familiar. Her curse.
But then - oh! - she spied one more object, nestled unassumingly in a corner; a tiny silver key. How cruel! How infuriating!
To remind her of a wound long since healed, and scarred over, and then confront her with this...
The key had been her undoing, and it filled her with rage.


#4 The Short Man Books: Easy Riders, Raging Bulls, by Peter Biskind and Away With All Pests, by Joshua S Horn

The key had been her undoing, and it filled her with rage. Intensely, he took the key back downstairs to rejoin the party. After reloading his camera with the film he approached her to confront her about their situation.
After the many months and years working independently on film sets in far-flung parts of the earth, it was obvious that all their indescretions would come to the surface.
The key had been to their best friend's apartment, which they had stayed in numerous times. For him to find the key at that time, in that place, had made it obvious what was going on.
He hadn't even been to the continent for eight months. She had been 'away on business' for a month previous to the party.
With no real destination, flitting from office to office, he never really knew where she was, even though they spoke daily. This situation would be the making of his next major solo photo exhibition. So this had been more than a little fling.


#5 The Munkey Books: The Silmarillion, by JRR Tolkien, and The Pirate, by Some Hack I Forgot to Write Down.

So this had been more than a little fling.
'Damn them both to Hell!' cried the Count, pounding his fist upon the sideboard. For a moment, he was overcome by jealousy and grief at Marion's infidelity.
But quickly this gave way to anger - a white hot malice directed squarely at his competitor.
'How dare that shabby stable-boy have his way with my bride-to-be?' he fumed aloud.
He reflected on the first time he'd met Jonathan - when he had first hired him as a stable-boy at the manor. The Count remembered the cheapness of his clothing, the unrefined awkwardness of his speech.
'It cannot be!' he cried. He ran past the marble statues of the Manor House, rushing into his study.
He dug his finest dagger from the drawer of his desk, and tucked it inside his boot. As he stormed from the house, his blood boiled in his veins. Images crept through his mind, images that made his fury grow hotter and more hateful by the second. The lips of this common country lad had touched his beloved! It was intolerable.
At last he reached the stable-house. He scrabbled in his vest pocket for the key and opened the door. In his rage, without pausing to think, he thrust himself towards the cot where he knew Jonathan slept, drew the dagger from his shoe and plunged it into the sleeping body.
But the shriek from the bed was not that of a man, but a boy.
Drawing the covers back, the Count was appalled to find not the stable boy, but his brother David - just twelve years old. The hilt of the knife protruded from David's head, the blade buried deep in his eyeball. The Count reeled in shock - instead of his rival, he had mistakenly murdered a harmless child.


#6 The Mistress Books: Hollywood, by Charles Bukowski, The Dark Angel, by Mika Waltari

The Count reeled in shock - instead of his rival, he had mistakenly murdered a harmless child.
That night, upon concealing his crime and fleeing on horseback (at such a speed that branches and thorns scratched at his face, his horse's mouth foamed and the cold wind numbed his face), he returned to find a great banquet underway in the main hall.
Beseeched to attend, he sat in morose silence. Consumed by thought of his ill deed and tirtied soul; while those around him caroused and cavorted like garish drunk meat puppets - expelling filthy air from their insides, masticating the meat of slaughtered beasts in their vile, cavernous mouths.
A ruddied blonde, with meaty folds of weathered skin spilling out every which way from the cheap fabric of her ill-fitting dress, tore a mouthful of bloodied beef from her fork and proceeded to lick the oozing red juice from her chin.
He could feel the acid rise in his throat as he fought to calm his heaving stomach. The world was folding in with overwhelming sounds and smells. His head spun. But then, he saw her.
She wore crimson velvet with a matching feather in her glossy dark hair.
Esmerelda, with her long neck and bright eyes.
He thought of velvet ropes twined tightly around her creamy thighs - the golden lock cinching them togheter. Metal and velvet, both biting into her milky skin.


#7 Byron Books: The Enchanted Wood by Enid Blyton, Biggles Sees It Through

Metal and velvet, both biting into her milky skin.
The pressure on her wrists was almost unbearable. With every movement, the cold steel cut deeper into her flesh.
As she glanced in the mirror opposite, she noticed the colour of her wrists matched the deep crimson of the scarf binding her mouth. She bit down hard, and her tongue stuck momentarily to the warm, wet fabric, stifling her speech.
Her eyes traced their way up. She was mostly intact. Broken in places nobody would see, but outwardly still the same woman who had walked so willingly into this mess. Her hair, slightly out of place, hung limp, framing her angular face like the deep red welts eather side of her.
His foot was the only thing she could see on the other side of the room. The ankle with the strange 'Q' design imprinted deep beneath those first few layers of skin.
Once white, now a greying yellow, it was the only thing she had left of him, both in her mind, and in the cold, damp room with so little light.
So little fucking light! How Where was the key? How on earth was she supposed to locate the tiny silver object on the damp concrete floor?
She couldn't move. She tried to scream, but realised it was perhaps the one thing that would do her no good.


#8 Lili
Books: Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons, and The Forgotten Story by Winston Graham

She tried to scream, but realised it was perhaps the one thing that would do her no good.
She was stuck there. Stuck in this trailer park that for the little boy was a house... a home.
She stared at him.
He held up a hand, and she bit her lup.
His fingers were webbed, with a fine greenish film.
He sat in the mud, a webbed, finned child in a trailer park, oblivious to the world around him. In his green webbed fingers he held the key. She felt the knots unravelling before her.
'Really?' she asked him. 'Is this really finally the end of it all?'
The little boy smiled, and held out the key.
She could hear the distant strains of a reality tv show wafting down from the pimped-up caravan. The child scratched his nose, leaving a streak of mud wiped diagonally across his face.
The woman reached out and took the key, sighing.

It
all
finally
made

sense.

Preamble

I turned 26 yesterday.

To celebrate, my very bestest friends came over for lunch. I cooked roast lamb, we opened many bottles, and fun was had by all. They made me a cake with a bear on it (wub!). Then came the Activity.

Everyone brought along a book to read from. On arrival they were presented with a second book, tightly tied up with string. One by one, each person had to go upstairs to my Writing Room, with their two books. Inside the second book, was a hollowed out cavity containing two items (ie. a key, a baby's sock, an eyeball, a roll of film). On page 69 of the book was a highlighted word. Each person had to write a page of narrative which included: the two items, the highlighted word, and the corresponding word in their own book. They also had to use the previous person's last line as their first, but without reading the rest of it.

Later today (or, depending on how many hot cross buns I eat, tomorrow), I'm going to blog the exquisite corps of a story, along with what books people brought, and idealised self portraits
of each writer, executed with craft materials on a coloured egg.

I would like to take this opportunity to thank my lovely, lovely friends. Not everyone can say 'hey! I'm going to have a party that involves secret creative writing activities', and have their friends leap into it with such gusto. I heart you all.

Scatterheart cover

Markus Zusak in the Residence

At the risk of cross-posting, I need to mention that Markus Zusak, author of The Book Thief and many other wonderful things, is the current writer in residence on insideadog.

He's being particularly wonderful and interesting, by regularly posting sections of a work-in-progress, with comments on the writing process. It's a must-see for all writers and readers. And everyone else.

More than a game

So last year I read this book which made me determined to learn to like football*.

I had, I realised, been going about it completely the wrong way. I saw it like this:

Football = Louts + violence + beer + pies = boring.

I should have been looking at it like this:

Football = fascinating socio-historical practice + hot men in little shorts touching each other + beer + pies = not-boring.

Why fascinating? I'm glad you asked.

In 1830-something, a kid called Tom Wills was playing a kicking-balls-around game with some local Aboriginal kids, near Ararat in regional Victoria. Part of this game involved seeing who could jump the highest to catch the ball.

When he was 14, Tom was sent to Rugby in England. His ex-convict father didn't want him to grow up with the 'stain'. When Tom came back, age 21, he became one of Victoria's top cricketers.

The problem with cricket though, is it's a summer game. And all the cricketers were getting fat over winter. In 1858, Tom wrote a letter to a local sports rag asking if anyone would be interested in playing a game of football. That game was played in Richmond, and the following week, Tom umpired the first Australian rules match between Scotch College and Melbourne Grammar, on the land that is now the MCG.

Tom became one of Australia's top footballers, until he had to move to Queensland to help his dad look after their enormous property.

One day, after droving cattle around the place, Tom returned to the homestead to discover his family and all the other workers slaughtered by local Aboriginals (thought to be revenge for something nasty that happened).

Tom returned to Melbourne and married. But he couldn't reconcile his fond memories of playing with Aboriginal kids as a child, and the brutal violence that he had witnessed to his family. He became an alcoholic. One morning, when he was only 44, his wife came in with his breakfast. He asked her to pass him the scissors, and as she did so, she knew exactly what would happen. Tom Wills stabbed himself in the heart with the scissors, and died.

That's why I think football is interesting. Also, that it is such a democratic game. Audiences have always been 50/50 men/women, from day one. It's also attracted people from all socio-economic backgrounds. Ooh, and (slightly ironically) it's done amazing things for relations between the Aboriginal community and the rest of us land-stealers. Michael Long, anyone?


The point of this rather long story is this: I went to the footy last night**.

It was not a great game. St Kilda beat Melbourne by an embarrassing number of points, and frankly neither side were particularly impressive. However, the meat pies were still hot, the men were still wearing little shorts and touching each other, and the night air was crisp.

I will return. I may even buy a scarf.

___________________________________
*That's Aussie Rules football, or AFL, in case any non-Victorians are wondering.
**When I mentioned this to my manager yesterday afternoon, he did the kind of double-take I haven't seen since the D-Generation. 'You?' he said. 'Going to the football?' Then he laughed.

Lili vs Shop Assistant

(the following takes place in a bustling clothes shop in Melbourne Central)

Lili: (hands over item of clothing and credit card)

Shop Assistant: How's your day been?

Lili: Fine, thanks.

SA: Got any plans for this afternoon?

Lili: Going back to work.

SA: You work around here?

Lili: At the State Library.

SA: The what?

Lili: The Library. The big one over the road.

SA: ???

Lili: It's that really big old building that takes up a whole city block. Pillars. Lawn. Statues.

SA: Sorry...?

Lili: You really can't miss it. It's been there for 155 years. Just up those stairs? You can pretty much SEE it from here.

SA: No... Sorry.

Lili: Give me back my credit card.

Bongo Schmongo

I'm trying to figure out if there is anything more irritating than bongo drums.

Specifically, bongo drums played by some kind of dirty, rhythmless hippy at a party. A hippy who is under the awesomely misguided impression that s/he (although it's usually a he) is providing some kind of jovial, convivial atmosphere.

IT ISN'T, HIPPY.

NOT AT ALL.

IT IS, IN FACT, INCREDIBLY ANNOYING.

THE RANDOM BANGING OF ANIMAL SKINS IS NOT MUSIC. IT IS A VERY LONG WAY AWAY FROM BEING MUSIC.

PLEASE TAKE YOUR INSTRUMENT OF TORTURE, AND YOUR WHITE-BOY DREADLOCKS AND GO AND HAVE A BATH.

(but remember to save the water for your garden)

Seriously, is there anything more irritating?

Verbing Jane: a rant.

(if you can have spoilers for a biopic, then there are probably some below)

So last night I went to see the new film about Jane Austen. It's either called Being Jane or Becoming Jane or possibly Boring Jane, I can't remember which (let's just call it VERBing Jane).

It is a truth universally acknowledged that Jane Austen was a genius. One of the many things that made her a genius, was her ability to weave every single aspect of a story together so closely, that every thread affects every other one (this is why Austen films often fall a little short of the mark - because it's harder to cut stuff out to get it down to 2 hours). VERBing Jane was more a loose tangle of threads. What purpose did the deaf brother play? (yeah, I know she HAD a deaf brother, but she also had three other brothers that weren't in the movie.)

(whoever wrote this film was not a genius. not by a long shot.)

Did I fall asleep and not notice, but what made Lefroy turn from being a boxing, drinking, whoring lout into a Sensitive New Age Guy? I was truly shocked when Mr Insulting and Falling Asleep When Jane Reads Her Work suddenly pushed poor Jane into a bush and declared "I am yours". (and don't tell me it was 'love', because i didn't see him fall in love with her. Sometimes, baby, love just ain't enough.)

And was it just me, or did the film seem to be saying she only wrote P&P? Where were the rest of 'em? I know P&P is the most famous, but all the little nudge-nudge-wink-wink references to it in the film were really grating. Particularly since I couldn't see any similarities between Lefroy and Darcy (apart from the fact that Jane didn't like him very much at first). If he's like any Austen character, it would be Mr Crawford from Mansfield Park. Or even Mr Wickham (the flirting and then the sudden engagement to someone else and then leaving that person to elope?). He showed none of the nobility and responsibility that Darcy had.

Jane Austen had a boring life. She had one marriage proposal which she accepted then refused the next day (I wonder why they changed his name from to Bigg-Wither to Wisley?). She also had a brief 'mutual flirtation' with a young man called Lefroy, which didn't go anywhere.

The thing that makes Jane Austen astonishing and wonderful is her writing. To make a film about her rather uneventful life just feels like a mockery. To frame her life as somehow tragic because she didn't get her man is even more so.

If you want Austen, read Austen. Or watch any of the wonderful screen adaptations.

123

E Lockhart (author of some fabulous books that I have to make people send me because they aren't yet available here), mentions the 123 book meme, where writers post the first paragraph (or so) from page 123 of their works-in-progress.

Here is mine:

...

She was just drifting off to sleep, when the bunk next to her creaked. It was Long Meg.
Her hair had all been cut off, and her head shaved. Two great red welts streaked diagonally across each of her cheeks, oozing blood. One of Meg’s eyes was blackened and swollen shut, and her lip was split.
‘Meg!’ said Hannah. ‘What did he do to you?’
Long Meg said nothing, just lay down on her bed and turned away from Hannah.

Spotted on a placard outside a church

Would you worship Jesus if he scored 10 000 test runs?


Okay. I am a heathen. I need a little help with this one.

Is it a trick question?

Thanks to Google Analytics, I’ve decided to give you people what you want.*

It all happened at Text Appeal, the Literary Dating thing at the State Library of Victoria. I got shanghai’d again to participate (there is curiously enough a bit of a dearth of single women here at the Library).

So there I was, sitting at a very long table, talking to lots of Strange Men.

The first guy I dated was called Magnus. He’d brought along a copy of Where’s Wally, and was looking at me very strangely and… sniffing. I felt a bit like I was being stalked by a Black Rider from Lord of the Rings (albeit a Black Rider wearing a stripy red and white vest and a little red hat).

‘Is everything alright?’ I asked.

He sniffed again. ‘Are you wearing Olene, the perfume by Diptych?’ he asked.

I raised my eyebrows. ‘Yeah, I am.’

‘That’s Nicole Kidman’s perfume,’ he said with a nod.

‘O-kay.’ This guy was either a) a stalker, b) a superhero/genetic mutant with advanced olfactory powers or c) gay. But a gay man would have brought a better book.

Boy number 2 was Horatio. He had a copy of Robin Klein’s People Might Hear You, and looked as if he were in Year 9.

‘That’s a great book,’ I said.

He squirmed a little. ‘Yeah,’ he said, his voice breaking a little. ‘I really like that bit with the wedge tail eagles fighting each other.’

‘Uh-huh.’ I said. Surely if you hadn’t read the book, you’d make up a more convincing lie? Like I really liked the thing she said to him when they were at that place doing that thing.

I looked down at my fingernails and wondered if I’d been sucked into some sort of time vortex where three minutes lasted for a whole year. Horatio squeezed a pimple, and grinned at me.

‘Wanna pash?’ he said, wiping the white gunk on the tablecloth.

‘No.’

Man number 3 looked strangely familiar.

‘Have we met before?’ I asked.

He shook his head and smiled enigmatically. His book was Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood, and he had a theory that the chapter headings were actually a secret code that spelled out the location of the Holy Grail. His voice sounded like gravel in a blender. There was something strangely appealing about his craggy, brownish-red face and his excess of black hair and his prominent brows. I still had a nagging feeling I’d seen him somewhere before.

He’d just told me that his favourite movie was Sesame Street’s Chariots of Fur, when suddenly there was a deafening high pitched squeal.

‘U-G-L-Y, You aint got no alibi…’

About fifty of the well-known crazed Melbourne Zombie Cheerleaders burst into Experimedia and started attacking the daters.

I got to my feet, knocking over my chair. Could we still count the 80 people there in our KPIs if they were brutally slaughtered at our event?

My date also stood up, and pulled an electric guitar and microphone out of his terribly well designed Mary-Poppins-style carpet bag.

Of course! I realised. It was Mr Lordi, the lead singer of Eurovision-winning Orc Band Lordi!

Then he began to sing the lyrics to Hard Rock Hallelujiah.

The cheerleaders couldn’t handle it. They fell to the ground, clutching their ears and writhing in pain. The other daters rushed over to the zombie cheerleaders and started beating them up with their books, wrapping the decorative fairy lights around their necks and scratching them with the thorns from the roses.

And so books and love and Mr Lordi overcame evil. Hurrah!

________________________________________________________________

*This blog post is entirely fictional, and should not in any way represent the quality of participants at Text Appeal. You were all really nice.

WA Kids Dig Dead French Chick

I just heard that Joan of Arc is on the West Australian Young Readers Book Award Shortlist (WAYRBA).

The list is about 30 books (local and international), voted for by Young People.

I'm on a shortlist with Lemony Snicket! Go me!

This frightens me

What's on my mind right now...

1. Religion. I have finished The God Delusion. I'm going to post about it in more detail later. But I am horrified and angry and scared (by the book, not at the book, if that makes sense. I'm not angry with Richard Dawkins.). The world is a scary place, containing some very scary people.

2. Copyright and plagarism. I wonder when we got to a point where for something to be good, it had to be new. Today, Shakespeare never would have been published because his work is too derivative. Campbell's Soup would have sued Andy Warhol. What's wrong with me taking something you made, and making it better? (as long as it doesn't affect you in a negative way). Thomas Jefferson said this: He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me.

3. My novel. And how I should be working on it RIGHT NOW, and how I will regret writing this blog post and eating lunch and watching Grey's Anatomy (and this clip of TR Knight on Sesame Street) and sleeping, when I get terrible reviews about how underpolished my book is.

4. I think that a large part of my love for Barak Obama comes from his resemblance to Jimmy Smits's character on The West Wing. Is that wrong?

5. Scrotums.

6. How I am such an ubernerd that the Web 2.0 video that everyone is talking about made me cry.

6. The fact that Spiderman's radioactive sperm killed Mary Jane. Do you reckon they were having safe sex, and it just burnt through the condom? "Oh God, I'm sorry! The doctors didn't understand how it happened! How you had been poisoned by radioactivity! How your body slowly became riddled with cancer! I did. I was... I am filled with radioactive blood. And not just blood. Every fluid. Touching me... loving me... Loving me killed you!"

Bay leaves

Jane Espenson recently mentioned something on her blog that is resonating with me, in a somewhat painful way.

It's a less violent variant on the 'kill your children' writing advice.

Jane likens some ideas to bay leaves. You really need them to get the sauce started. They help develop the flavour. But when it's time to take the sauce out of the saucepan, you gotta get rid of the bay leaves.

There are a number of scenes in my novel that are bay leaf scenes. A couple I have changed radically, most I have simply deleted. It's sad to see them go, but I know the book will be better for it.

This post is brought to you by the letter L

Penni has, like a literary fairy godmother, bestowed the letter L upon me. I shall use it to talk about things I like that start with L.

L is for

Lemonade. I rediscovered lemonade on New Years Day, when my body obviously needed to replace some things that hadn't come with me into 2007 (like sobriety).

Small l liberalism. Hurrah for Mr Obama! I'd vote for you.

Canting words that start with L, like Lickspittle (a traitor) and light-heeled wench (one who is likely to end up on her back) and line of the old author (a dram of brandy).

Link Hogthrob, one of my favourite Muppets. Apparently when Jim Henson was doing Manly Things like carving the Sunday roast, he'd put on a manly Link Hogthrob voice.


The Library where I work. There is something very satisfying about walking up those grand steps and under the pillars every morning.

...and because Penni mentioned this clip when she bestowed L upon me, L is finally for La la la LINOLEUM.

An Apology

Dear Meg Cabot,

I am so sorry. So. So. Sorry.

Last night, The Princess Diaries 2 was on TV. Being an enormous Meg Cabot fan, I cooked paella, opened a bottle of wine and invited my friends over. Hurrah! Two whole hours of Cabotty goodness!

I should have known, really.

The first clue was in the opening titles when it said 'based on characters created by Meg Cabot'. Uh oh.

Then... what's this? Mia is graduating? She's 21? Her coronation is in a month?

How come she's forgotten about Michael?
What happened to the other SIX books all set before now?
Why isn't Fat Louie fat anymore?
Where the hell is Mia's mother?
Does Raven actually serve any narrative-related purpose?

and worst of all

Why why why why why is Lilly suddenly a glorified PA?
What happened to her IQ of 170? Where did her strident feministy liberal views go? (and no, wearing a World Wildlife Foundation tshirt isn't enough) What happened to her cable access tv show?

Oh Meg. You must be so sad. I mean, it was a while ago and I'm sure you're over it particularly since you just signed a book deal with Scholastic that includes the words 'world domination', but still. I can imagine that you went to the premiere and you wore a new dress and you were all smiley and lovely. And you sat down in the cinema, politely declined popcorn in case it made the dress greasy, and the lights went down, and you were so excited.

And halfway through you probably had to get up and pretend you needed to pee or something, because you just couldn't bear it anymore.

So I am sorry.

Lots of Love,

Lili.

p.s. Shonda Rhimes, you should be ashamed of yourself. Seriously.

Summer Holidays #3

At Sandy Beach...

Munkey: Would you rather bob for apples in pus, or hit a pinata full of diarrhea?

Snaz: (tremendously excited) Pus! Pus!

(everyone stare at the crazy girl)

Snaz: What? I'm really good at bobbing for apples!

A Question about Harry Potter

Author Gail Gauthier recently pointed something out on her blog which gave me pause for thought.

-In this news article, JK says that she finished writing HP7 on Jan 11, 2007.

-On her website, she mentioned in December 2006 that she was writing scenes which had been planned for twelve years.

-The publication date of HP 7 is 21 July 2007.

It can be deduced, then, that JK was writing original material last December, implying that the draft she finished two weeks ago was the first draft.

Leaving five-and-a-bit months to edit, redraft, re-edit, redraft again, pageset, copyedit and proofread an 800-plus page novel.

Now, I know I am a new author, and my books probably need more polishing than average. But I am currently working on draft THREE of my novel, which won't be published until August!

Hmm. Answers a few questions I had about the quality of the last two HP books.