Tag Archive: PostAday


DID TOLSTOY NEED PROMPTS?

War or peace - which would you prefer and why?

The WordPress post-a-day challenge , sooner or later, hits on the point that any blogger experiences the writer’s equivalent of the pain barrier.

Today, I reached that point.  How, I mused, do I  sit down and write when I can’t think of anything to write about?

It’s not exactly a block, just a temporary ( I hope!) lack of inspiration.

Those who have written epic novels must have had days when they’ve thought – sod it, I’m going back to bed. But if they had all succumbed to this weakness we’d all be reading short stories and novellas.

Most wise words from writing coaches advise you to steel your heart (and sharpen your imaginary pencil) and get something/anything down anyway. Continue reading

I HEART HUGS

Valentine’s Day and getting spammed for offers of penis enlargement -erm, no thanks.  (Do the market researchers tell these people that today is the day when size matters most?!)

Feeling the weight of the postaday challenge as I have no great insights to offer to the Blogosphere aside from the fact that today should really be a day for making connections with loved ones and, perhaps even more urgently for those who feel nobody loves them.

The free hugs campaign was established with this in mind. My daughter went to an event a few weeks back which we as concerned parents were worried about (free gropes is what we imagined).

It turned out to be a really positive experience and the spirit is captured in this video by another group in Sondrio, Italy :

“Knowledge is not intended to fill minds – it is intended to open them” – George Siemens.

While the mass media can give us more information, not all of it amounts to greater knowledge.

Bloggers can provide a vital filter by giving a more personalised perspective. That’s one of the thoughts that has kept me motivated for the Postaday challenge (and I am pleased that I have at least made it to the end of January without missing a day – suckcess!!)

Individuals can give a unique slant on movies and books beyond simply relaying plot synopsises and opinions. I like for example the concept behind the Very Hungry Bookworm wordpress blog where books are reviewed and then viewed from a culinary angle.

Since music is such a recurring theme of this blog, and such a big part of my life, I have decided that in the future book and movie reviews I will try to answer some or all of the following questions: Continue reading

KEEP SECRETS AND KNOW YOURSELF

The daily prompt form WordPress for those of us who recklessly signed up to make a blog post every day suggests:

“Write about one thing you’ve never told anyone and explain why”.

I have just read Don Delillo’s novella Point Omega and am preparing to write some impressions of this.

Some lines of his that I underlined give an articulate  summary of why I will be ignoring this WordPress topic:

“If you reveal everything, bare every feeling, ask for understanding, you lose something crucial to your sense of yourself. You need to know things the others don’t know. It’s what no one knows about you that allows you to know yourself”.

Somehow I don’t think DeLillo uses Facebook!

How do you feel about posting secrets in cyberspace?

Fancy a quickie?

How often has it happened to you that you have read a novel and then can’t remember a single thing about?  It happens to me all to time and as old age kicks in is bound to happen more.

In the days before blogs existed (remember those?) I resolved to write down some thoughts about books as soon as I finished or abandoned them.

I wasn’t able to keep this up for every single book but there are quite a few and these will prove useful to copy and paste on this blog to meet my commitment to meet the WordPress daily post challenge this year.

When reading a recent interview with Jonathan Franzen there was a reference to the controversy that Philip Roth‘s autobiographical novel  ‘Portney’s Complaint’  has met since it was first published back in 1969.

Have I read that ?, I asked myself.

Delving into my archives, sure enough I came across a short review – the savagery of which explains why I blocked this particular literary experience from my memory.

This is what I wrote:

Holes, dug by little moles, angry jealous spies, got telephones for eyes…..”  – Mercury Rev.

“….first this hole, then when I tire of this hole, that hole over there….and so on” – Phillip Roth

Roth sees women are holes; a series of cunts to be filled. This is a book not so much about love and sex as about sex and misogynistic rage. “Whew! Have I got grievances!” he writes or rather he has Alexander Portney say in the midst of his definitive rant against repression, against the mental tap his parents and the world tries to pin on him. Continue reading