I need to write more. I like writing, but I've not done much since Scope and can feel myself getting more workmanlike. The key is probably this blog -- I need to get back into the habit of posting. The trouble is, I just don't like it very much right now.
I need to spend some quality time with Movable Type 4, getting this site design (and crucially the typography) to the stage where it's sufficiently pretty that I want to write text to show it off. Things like the old swash-italic drop caps used to spur me to pick opening words I knew looked sensational -- notably not 'I,' which looked rubbish. And I need to re-impose Markdown formatting, because practically everything I type these days is Markdown.
I also need to fix the comment system. It's working right now, but people seem scared off by the new default 'isn't actually a user registration scheme, but sure looks like one' behaviour. Plus, published comments look like crap.
Finally, I'm taking more pictures with my N95 (it's a rubbish phone, so I might as well use it as a camera), but uploading pictures is still more hassle than I'd like. I need to sort that -- and ideally get to the stage where I can moblog properly.
Oh, and it pisses me off that my Facebook status lines are trapped within Facebook, so I might start doing Twitter -> (Facebook & blog).
Time to sweep everything away and start over, I think.
Oh grief, writing. Yes. I have much of that notdone, too.
And I’ve got your email about MT, and will reply appropriately.
Keep blogging man. It’s the only thing gets me to turn on my computer in a morning.
I found that reading something different helped me enjoy writing more. So after years or reading poorly-written rock biographies and other such material, I made an effort to fill in the gaps created by my modern Scottish comprehensive education. I made a dent in the classics. I started with Hardy’s ‘Far From The Madding Crowd’, and then read Stevensons ‘The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde’, plus ‘The Body Snatcher’ and ‘Olalla’ that were in the same volume. Last night, I closed the last page on Oscar Wilde’s ‘The Picture of Dorian Gray’, which I interspersed with short runs at the Coghill translation of Chaucer’s ‘Canterbury Tales’. Next up is HG Wells’s ‘War Of The Worlds’.
I have found that doing this has helped me think about sentence structure and ways to lighten quite heavy concepts - this is paricularly true of Wilde. It’s something that I can use in my work too.
Heh. You’re quite right that reading odd stuff (and, in my case, watching more video - you’d be surprised how little I see) helps keep on fresh. And yes, it’s about use of language and sentence structure, but it’s also about narrative structure and story flow.
But in this case, it’s not the writing I dislike - it’s this blog.
It’s… ugly.
I mean… Trebuchet MS? Eu.
Use TwitterSync:
http://apps.facebook.com/twittersync/
to have your Twitter comments duplicated as your Facebook status (it doesn’t work in the reverse direction, sadly - at least, not yet).
Thanks, Andy - I hadn’t realised I’d naffed up the link to Plastic Mind - fixed now, and the entry makes more sense. But yes, I’ll give Twittersync a look.