Gone Baby Gone

After much deliberation and a bit of frustration with Blogger I've decided to make the switch and move my blog over to Wordpress. 

Come and find me.

P.S. Fellow bloggers, if you have linked to me (for which thanks) I'd be grateful if you could update to my new home.

Bye bye Blogger...

Hot Diggity Dog - We Have A Weiner

Thanks to everyone who participated in my first contest on this blog. There were some great answers, making my decision difficult, but after much deliberation a bit of thought, I have chosen our three fabulous winners:

Lyra for using mathematical terms in such an inventive way: "joy squared" and "divide by coffee"  - wonderful.


MacDougal Street Baby for the clever pun on "sine". I've mentioned before how much I love puns.


Deb for her win at all costs approach - as I read her answer it was clear that she had flown over to England, peeked in my window and jotted down what she saw me doing when I'm trying to write.


Honourable mention to Teri who threw in the towel, refusing to even try to answer a math question - a woman after my own heart.


Winners, take a bow and email me your postal address so I can send you a  teeny tiny prize.


Have a great weekend everyone!

25 or 6 to 4

I've mentioned before that I don't do math. But The Hub was travelling and The Boy had math homework, including this question:

After some thought much anguish, I was able to help The Boy figure out the right answer mathematically. But I got to wondering about this author who wrote four pages in three hours. How long would it really take her to write 24 pages if we kept ridiculous things like math out of it and focused on more important factors like:

the lure of the internet 

writer's block

the critic in her head

(Here I must stress these are entirely hypothetical factors...)

So what's the real answer? Class? Anyone? Anyone? Bueller?

A small prize will be awarded for the three best answers received by 3 p.m GMT on Thursday 17 February.**

 **A participant selected as a potential winner must comply with all terms and conditions set forth in the official rules, and winning is contingent upon fulfilling all such requirements. The decision of the judge is final. Prizes have no cash value and cannot be exchanged for other prizes. (Why yes, I am a former lawyer? How did you guess?)

Shakespeare In Love

In Shakespeare's will, the only bequest to Anne Hathaway was his second best bed. Here is Carol Ann Duffy's take on his gift.

 

Anne Hathaway

'Item I gyve unto my wife my second best bed ..."

The bed we loved in was a spinning world

of forests, castles, torchlight, clifftops, seas
where we would dive for pearls. My lover's words
were shooting stars which fell to earth as kisses
on these lips; my body now a softer rhyme
to his, now echo, assonance; his touch
a verb dancing in the centre of a noun.
Some nights, I dreamed he'd written me, the bed
a page beneath his writer's hands. Romance
and drama played by touch, by scent, by taste.
In the other bed, the best, our guests dozed on,
dribbling their prose. My living laughing love -
I hold him in the casket of my widow's head
as he held me upon that next best bed.

-from The World's Wife


Happy Valentine's Day.

Hey Batter Batter, Hey Batter Batter, Swing

You know those automatic pitching machines that thwack out baseballs at an insane speed? That sums up Wednesday night's lecture. I felt like there were all these great ideas and theories and films and books being thrown at me. I couldn't keep up: a swing and a miss... . When I got home and looked at my notes scribbles, they were bush league at best. 

Some random balls:

Is there absolute truth in factual non-fiction?

The Suspicions of Mr Whicher or The Murder at Road Hill House by Kate Summerscale 

Has docudrama run its course ?

The Soccer War by Ryszard Kapuscinski

Why is a novelist teaching non-fiction?

Lady Worsley's Whim: An Eighteenth Century Tale of Sex, Scandal and Divorce by Halle Rubinhold

Bryers is a big believer in the arc of the story. 

Blood River by Tim Butcher

Some topics, by their very nature, will have a built in readership before they are even written - WWII is of interest to many more people than your sex life backpacking through Turkey. 

King Leopold's Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror and Heroism by Adam Hochschild

The best non-fiction books work a new angle. What's your conceit?

The Great War and Modern Memory by Paul Fussell

If one of your characters is more interesting than the story, they become the story and it becomes biography.

This Thing of Darkness by Harry Thompson

You can use historical non-fiction to make a point about your current society.

Phew! Despite my life-long preference for fiction over non-fiction I was inspired. And all of these books sound fantastic. Oh, and for homework, we have to research some documentaries........online. That's right. I'm surfing the net because "Teacher said I had to."  Sa-weet!

What about you? Fiction or non-fiction?...  Baseball or cricket?