... just a few things

it's been about a month and there's no marvel in that at all. while i take comfort in knowing i'm not the only one amongst my friends who's not very... diligent about updating their blog, i continue encouraged and challenged by those other friends of mine who manage to blog several times a week. by turns i feel less distant from some and more distant from others all the time.

for a period a year or two ago i attempted to blog every day while i was at work. i'm pretty sure i only managed it for a week but this time around i would like to manage it for a month. a big step? perhaps. i might put some poetry up or maybe serialise a story i'm playing around with. (crikey, i almost spelled "serialise" with a "z"!) we'll see how it goes. the trick will be to work out exactly when during my day this is going to happen.

there was a 'zine writing festival held several months ago here in melbourne, similar to one which will soon be hitting newcastle in the next couple of weeks, and one of the many things i bought that weekend was a diary for writers. it has buckets of information in it about places to send your writing, some stuff on competitions and whatnot and on each week-to-a-view opening it has a small grid with "word tally" printed next to it. one space for each day. i don't use the diary yet - quelle surprise, i know - but i have a sneaking and not entirely unfounded suspicion that even if i were using the diary those blank boxes would be probably remain almost entirely blank. i suppose i'm thinking that if i can blog every day for a month, perhaps i can turn that time investment into a regular investment in time spent in disciplined writing exercise or even actual creative writing. who knows?

for anyone who's interested, the diary is "the 20xx australian writers diary" published by flat chat press. of the 232 pages, only 118 are given over to diary- and calendar-space; the rest is information for writers from a whole gamut of sources and order forms for the 2008 edition are available online at the website.

my housemate and i went to go see hairspray last night at pinewood in mount waverley. it was lots of fun, more entertaining than i would have expected and john travolta surprisingly short of pork products in his portrayal of edna turnblad, mother of the heroine of the film. a marvellous array of nods to john waters' original film and the broadway production as well.

for me, i'd have to say that the best part about the film was finding out that my housemate still has the song "good morning, baltimore" stuck in her head this morning.