Q) How do you get to Carnegie Hall?

I impulse bought Writing Magazine in WH Smiths today. In spite of it's Womans Weekly-ish cover it does have some interesting tit bits. It's always educational to hear the insights and advice of other writers.


More educational were the poor proofing and spelling errors in a magazine about writing. Billy Piper? Another article uses an extract from a Katie Fforde book but can't quite decide how to spell her surname so alternates between a single and double use of the letter 'f'.


I'll stick to the Writers Handbooks from now on I think.

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The Counter is steadily rising down there under the 'Downloading Communism' poster (thank you Keith Topping). This reflects well on my work since I entered the 'blogosphere'.

The sad reality is that I get at least four hits a day from people searching for pictures of Kirsten Dunst (intel by Statcounter). I was thinking of removing the picture but why worry? It's all about footfall in this game. Apparently.

If you have come here looking for Kirsten Dunst she's just a little bit further down!

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Back at work since Monday but still doing my hour a day. An hour doesn't seem a lot but at least I'm making slow progress instead of no progress. Concentrating on a submission for the SFX Pulp Idol competition at the moment. I'm halfway through the draft. It will be finished this week (even at an hour a day!) without any worry.

In other news Emma and I went to the Comics Expo in Bristol on Sunday; despite the best efforts of biblical weather. It really inspired me to have a go at writing a comic script. With that in mind I've had the germ of an idea for a 2000AD Future Shock, the ideas really come thick and fast when you're writing every day.

Also at the Comics Expo I was lucky enough to meet Paul Cornell. They say you should never meet your heroes but I found him to be an enthusiastic and friendly man perfectly willing to indulge a nervous, damp and probably incoherent fan. This was the perfect end to a week of concentrating on my writing. There are people out there doing it every day and he's one of them.

I know I could be too.

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I've discovered a web site called Story War. You can post short fiction or poems on this site and people read and rate them. These ratings are tallied up into a league table of stories. This means you can watch your story get voted up and down the table at the slightest whim of a bored index finger. Sounds horrific doesn't it?

It's blighted by some conflict between users at the moment but I've put a few old stories up there out of curiosity. It's well worth a look.

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A) Practice, practice, practice.