You're Not The Only One

But just before I go...

You're Not The Only One, a collection of intimate and personal stories from bloggers, is now available for purchase here. The book costs £12.50 but of that, £6 goes to the charity War Child which is a fantastic cause. It's available as a paperback book and downloadable pdf file.

I submitted two posts but neither of them made the cut - I'm trying to
a) not to take this personally and
b) learn from it, my lesson being to always re-read, edit and re-write everything before I submit it. Both posts were sent off on the fly and I just didn't take the time to look over them.

So I'm feeling a little knocked back - but also chuffed for my blogging friends whose posts did make it, a huge congratulations to them and to Peach who organised the entire thing.

I've bought my copy - have you?

Pause

I've decided to finish the fourth story this week, and to help matters I'm not going to blog for a while - no distractions!

HYmini Wind Power

Came across this today:

HYmini is a handheld, universal charger/adapter device that harnesses renewable wind power / solar power and conventional wall plug power to recharge almost all your 5V digital gadgets.

Anyone who has ever had their head taken off by the Dublin wind will appreciate this little gadget. I've lost count of the times I've been blown onto the road while walking down streets off the Dublin coast. Ok, perhaps that only applies to five foot nothingers like me, but I'm still convinced that your gadget of choice would remain chocablock with energy from one of these babies.

Timing and Diving

An interesting article that challenges the 'slow is best' attitude to time management.

Watching today's second Euro 2008 match, Portugal vs Turkey, so far both teams seem more interested in outdoing each other in the diving department than playing football. Very entertaining!

Why I Don't Skip

Decided to break the monotony of editing by designing a new blog banner. Let me know what you think.

Will Knott suggested I should write about the slog, wondering why I don't skip. Here's why:

1. There is nothing I hate more than reaching the last page of a project and realising that it's not finished, because I've skipped parts.

2. Especially as I'll most likely skip the difficult or tricky parts, which are even harder to edit and rewrite if you have to dip back in later.

3. Working from beginning to end, story one to story ten works best for me because it's very difficult to get back into the plot, characters, tone if I’ve been skipping sections. So if it's slow going now, it'll be even slower going later.

4. Taking your time in places is often better in the long run - I've been averaging 700 words a day this week, which is lower than my preferred daily word count, but I've been working through some difficult scenes and dialogue and I'm pretty happy with the result.

Will

Making slow but promising progress on my story four rewrite and ploughing through the 1000+ pages of Infinite Jest.

For some reason the will and the ability to write a proper blog post has left me though. Temporarily of course.

Dublin Events in June

Miracle of miracles, the weather is still stunning in Dublin. In fact the weekend was so pleasant that I thought I was on a city break, hit the tourist office and did some June-time event digging. Here's what I found:

Bloomsday is the 16th June and the James Joyce Centre has organised readings, walking tours, a very cultural fry-up and other tributes to Joyce's Ulysses for the week starting 9th June.

The Dublin Writer's Festival is hosting a myriad of readings, discussions and events to suit all tastes from 11th to 15th June.

The AIB Street Performance World Championships is taking place on Merrion Square from 13th to 15th June.

The Darklight Festival is hosting an eclectic series of screenings, seminars and workshops to celebrate cutting-edge film, animation, art and technology from 26th to 29th June.