The writings of 12 February 2003 are not the first entries to be contained within my LiveJournal for I have since gone back and back-filled it with transcriptions of earlier attempts at diary writing or with flashbacks from my memory. This last decade has been my single, longest attempt at writing any kind of diary.

So where was I in 2003…?

Job then: Electronic Content Quality Controller. Basically the guy to make the online versions of some scientific journals like the (Thrice) Monthly Journal of the Royal Astronomical Society.

Job now: Web and Digital Media Officer. The web designer for the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences at Oxford Brookes University. I also look after the social networking and do a bit of video work. Its a lot more creative work than a decade ago.

Writing then: I was in the wilderness years. The then titled Blood & Fire was started, but writing wasn’t go so well, so I was busy revising my previous novel Flyht. I still have a fondness for Flyht and may yet dust off the cobwebs to it.

Writing now: My second novel, Mr Tumnal, having published my first, The End Of All Worlds during the last year. I’m nearing the end of this one, after which I will have to revise it, edit it, and then decide whether to try the traditional route of publishing it or take the Indie route again.

Life then: Single. Dreadful levels of self-confidence. Recently bullied at work, starting this journal was part of a plan I had to try and get more confidence in me. About the same time I also became a First Aider at work and joined the Social Committee. Approaching my 30th birthday. Wore no jewellery. At the time of starting my journal I had no pets, although I would soon take on my first cat, Pepper.

Life now: Married. Met Emma on match.com we now have 8 cats, 3 chickens, 2 bunnies, 1 hamster, and some fish. I wear a wedding ring and a necklace – usually amber (I purchased an amber pendant whilst on holiday in Estonia in the summer of 2003), but sometimes Obsidian or a small piece of Celtic glass, or (rarely) Murano glass). In the intervening years I have had coaching for Aspergers, been made redundant from my job at (then) Blackwell Publishing (replaced by a machine), had a spell at OUP doing something similar but with online books, a short spell of unemployment, and been ‘restructured’ once whilst in my current job. I’ve also met my best friend, online, and since married her.

Not that I write these pages to be read, but for my own memory and enjoyment, but, for the fun of it, a poll…

I’ve changed my resolve now. I’ve posted what’s written now, and will move forward from here and catch up with backdated entries where I can. This year is going to be a great year with lots of change and interest. I’m going to keep on top of documenting it.

Thank you.

…if only, that is, to correct an inaccuracy in the details.

2. I’ve had three crits so far on chapter nine (part two: chapter three), and once again my fear has been misplaced and it does basically work. That said I seem to have swapped the bad habits of ‘looking’ too much and over-enthusiastic dialogue tags, for too much use of ly words, and in particular slowly. Slowly does it, I’ll get there in the end…

3. I think I might have eaten (slightly) mouldy bread. I was half way through my second sandwich when it started to taste a bit funny – kind of mouldy. It’s several hours later and no ill effects though, so maybe I’ve got away with it.

4. I will be backfilling this journal shortly. I’ve missed so many days, although I have the posts all typed up in a word document. Hopefully normal service will now resume.

Normal service will resume presently.

My first day’s posts can still be found here. Not the greatest works of literary genius I grant you, and far be it for me to say that things have improved since then, but it’s a start, and from small starts bigger things do grow.

So how best to mark this auspicious occasion? A deep and meaningful, friends locked post about the State of Thomas four years on? No. I think rather, a rant. A positive little rant, all things considered, but a rant none-the-less. This one, originally made today, by me, in a thread on the merits or not, the quality or not, of self-publishing over at the CritiqueCircle message boards…

I still think there is a confusion here about what self-publishing means. Yes there are the truly awful books that are published by their authors purely as an ego boost to make them feel that they are a ‘proper’ writer (whatever one of those is), but don’t forget there are also hundreds if not thousands of books published each year by the ‘big’ publishers which are also suitably awful but are published none the less, not for the quality of the writing, but because the author is a ‘name’ that will sell.

The days when publishing by the big publishers is about valued judgements about what is a good book are long over. It’s a business that’s all about making money, and if celebrity biographies and ego-trip-novels by wanna be celebrity writers is the thing that publishers can market easily then that is what they will publish. Which of course means that there is less money in the pot to publish the books of quality that publishers really ought to be publish. Where should these publishers be published then? Well, with luck there will be smaller publishers starting out who can’t afford the quick bucks of the celebrity novel/biography who will take a chance at the new/existing talent writing quality books…

…but it’s getting increasingly difficult. Publishers (even the smaller one’s) are not just looking for the good book these days, but for the ‘marketing hook’ in the writer that they can use to sell the book. It shouldn’t matter how many left arms the writer has, or what heroic they did back in battle of Waterloo before being rescued by aliens and transported hundreds of years into the future (although that probably would make quite a good story!).

It should be the quality of the book in question that is the deciding factor. So who can make that decision? Who is qualified to make that decison? As long as the decision is being made in an objective manner who cares whether it is an established publisher, or new one-man outfit making that decision. And who’s to say that the self-published author’s book is any worse than the one’s being published by the guys with a ‘track record’…?!!

Come on guys, where are you? Why have you deserted me?

But how to begin? I did have an idea for a film today – well when I say today – it’s been brewing in my head for a few days now. It’s a kind of Richard Curtis/Love Actually inspired, ensemble kind of film. There’s a multitude of stories that surround four to six separate groups of friends. The connecting link between these groups, is the internet (for the sake of argument) LiveJournal world. It’s a bit of romance, with twisted plotlines – the central, overarcing story is this internet romance that comes good, defying some of the real life relationships happening in the stories spun around in the orbitting groups.

In the words of one friend: “so kind of using the little stories as dynamoes to generate meaning for the larger overarching story”

So the internet story ends up being more real than the life version. Me like that. It’s the opposite of what you would expect.

Of course, this said, I’m not sure if it’s the kind of story that I have the ability to write…

Doh.

I apologise for my needlessly introspective ramblings over the past few days. I’ve been an idiot. Someone please agree with me. Tell me I’ve been an idiot.

I promise you, normal service will resume on these pages soon.

I’ve been thinking lately that I have a very odd mixed attitude to my online identity. On the one hand, I’m very proud of my site and my journal. I’m happy for people who Google for me to find my website, and my website has my real name and my city on it which, to be honest, would be enough to find me in the phone book if I’m not ex-directory (I can’t remember – I’ll have to check). And yet I’ve only very recently made my livejournal email address avaible to my friends via my profile. Which is insane because anyone with a small amount of knowledge about LJ could deduce the existence of that address anyway. And LJ will mangle it to protect me from spambots. My birthday and location are still set to be private (which makes me wonder why I’ve filled them in) even though that much location info is already available on my website (and, taking a closer look, in my bio) and I’m not that sensitive about my age or anything. It doesn’t make sense.

What seems to happen is that given an plain text area, I’m able to be pretty relaxed about what I reveal about myself. However, presented with a checkbox saying “Hide information x from the general public” I almost always seem to choose the most paranoid setting I can possibly put it on. The only thing I can ascribe it to is a lifetime of checking the “Do not send me fucking junk mail or send my info to other people who might want to” box on every form I fill in – the legacy of being the daughter of a cynical advertising exec. In the cold light of day though, the whole thing seems inconsistent, so I’m going to overcome my nerves (what the hell does it matter if anyone knows my birthday anyway!) I’ve decided to mark it all as public. It’s possible that this will result in a flood of support requests over IM/email for me, but I am the master of the polite brush-off

Another thing I’ve been thinking about is putting some more concrete contact details online but here I’m not going to rush in here. If you don’t know me in real life, you could, given a stalker-like determination, get in contact with me IRL but the dividing line between contact in meat space and contact online is pretty clearly drawn at the minute, although there are a few of you who blur it on occasion. I’ve seen a lot of people put contact information in friends only or filtered posts, but I don’t really quite feel comfortable with either. I don’t necessarily want everyone who’s entries I want to read to be able to ring me up, but I think I’d find the choices in creating a custom filter for that pretty tricky. In the end, I think I want to control any transition from online to real world relationships at least to a certain extent and there’s a certain element of need-to-know. There’s not a lot of point in just randomly giving out my phone number – most of you will never want or need to phone me. So I guess this is something I’m going to put on a need to know basis. I’m not saying I won’t give it out – I just won’t be sticking it up for everyone to see.

I found the mood and direction of these thoughts to be strangely echoing some of my own thoughts earlier today. You see, I think I can understand where tinyjo is coming from with the uncertainty of online v. in person existance. I was just thinking earlier today, of my decision to not let the opinions of (a few) unhelpful and unkind people dictate what I want to do, and to be myself – starting this journal almost a year ago was part of that, to put myself out there and try some new, fun things.

This being so, why have I made the first three posts of this year *friends only*? Why have a great deal of my posts towards the end of last year been friends only? In part this latter question can be answered by explaining that these protected entries have been put behind a *writing* filter, as these may not be of interest to all people, but there are others…? Having discovered recently that there are some people who I would perhaps not have chosen to read my journal have found it, I guess I have subconciously elected to screen some of my thoughts into places that they cannot see. Why? I don’t shout about my journal but if I really minded people finding it I wouldn’t have put it so clearly within the framework of my website … it’s not even if I care particularly what they think or might say, as I don’t value the opinions that people of that mindset have.

Hrmm… it’s all very odd, and this post probably doesn’t even make any sense?!! I’m probably being overly-sensitive (as is my way) and make many more of my posts open to all. What do you think?

Is it funny how the smallest things, when not going your way, can really make you want to throw down your keyboard in disgust, string the mouse up by its tail and go and read a book … and then the relief (and self-satisfied pleasure) when in the twinkling, you tweet one bit of code and suddenly its all lovely again.

(ah well, now just got my friends, and calendar to do now…)

I’m revising Flyht at the moment, and it’s going quite well. Last night I finished working through chapter three Linked that is to say, half way through the old chapter two and have completely obliterated from the story the character of Tom Godwin. He was very very minor character, an annoying little squirt and I’m glad to be shot of him – quite frankly I don’t know how he lasted so long! I think he was remnant of the very early draft one who outstayed his welcome.

Still, I now have the new and “knows where she’s at” character of Little Sarah Broker who succeeds in messing up the head of Clayton and stopping him from getting down to the real business of finding out about flyht…

(it was a good post too!)