Oo-er, I've won an award!

Gushing thanks to Margo at Urban Psychopomp for nominating me for this award.

Here's the rules:
1. Thank the giver and link back to the blogger who gave it to you.
2. Reveal your top 5 picks and let them know by leaving a comment on their blog.
3. Copy and paste the award on your blog.
4. Have faith that your followers will spread the love to other bloggers.
5. And most of all - have bloggity-blog fun!

So here's me nominations:

Cagnolino, a new but perfectly formed blog.

Rising speculative fiction star, Colin F Barnes.

Writing thoughts from St Force.

Stylish thoughts from Joe Young.

And last but not least, my own offspring Scott has ventured into the blogging world. Please give his blog a try here.

10 Most Annoying Lists

You know those lists you often find on message boards: Ten things to guarantee rejection or Five ways NOT to start your novel. Well, maybe I've been knocking around the internet too long, but these lists are really starting to annoy me. I'm not sure why. Maybe it's the arrogance behind it; I know the Secret Formula for success, folks. Just follow these simple rules.

Because there are no rules, however much we like to think there are.

However I realise I am swimming against the tide here so in keeping with bloggers' love of lists of rules, here are my 10 Most Annoying Lists:

10 Things that are probably wrong with your manuscript.

10 Ways to alienate an agent.

10 Ways to guarantee you never get published.

5 Things you shouldn't put on toast

20 best writing aids

10 most cliched story ideas

10 least likely romantic pairings

20 Blogs you should read

10 presents you should never give your granny

20 things you should never write in your query.

Absolutely Astonishing

What a week of surprises!
No, not just the return of winter here in the UK, or the dreadful earthquake/tsunami in Japan. I got another award! Thanks to Carol for giving me this Stylish Blogger Award. It's a major surprise because I've never thought of myself as stylish. Unlike some bloggers I don't obsess about which pair of shoes to wear - for me it's the wellies or nothing, I'm afraid. However I accept it with humble gratitude, and in line with the conditions attached here are 7 (slightly) interesting things about me:

1 My first full time job was as a nutter. No, really. I worked in a chocolate factory putting the walnuts on Walnut Whips.

2. I have only eaten crab once and it made me violently ill. I've never risked it again.

3. My feet are size 5.

4. My hat size is 7 1/4.

5. The first story I remember writing was about St George and the Dragon.

6. I once won a million pounds in a bet with Elspeth Hopper that the sun was further away than the moon - and she still owes me!

7. My pet hate is bad spelling.

So there you go. Here are my nominations for this award:

Rosalie Warren - Reeling and Writhing

Novel Thinking

Sophie Playle

Steven Chapman - Writer

Trees Are Not Lollipops

And The Award For Bravery Goes To...

I'm passing this on because when I read it it made me smile and we can all do with reasons to smile, can't we?

Many blogs (not the ones I read, I hasten to add) seem to concentrate on the negative aspects of this writing life. Every post is like a side swipe at unpublished authors. You're never good enough, you're doing it all wrong, you can't get published that way...etc, etc, yada yada yada. And yes, it is tough - I'd never pretend otherwise - but is it really necessary to be so negative about people's efforts? Rejection is tough enough without some smarty pants blogger telling us how rubbish we are. So that's why this blog post made such a nice change.

And to all authors, published or unpublished, new or accomplished, rich or poor, I salute you. It is not an easy road we walk, and it takes brass cojones to even attempt it. You're all stars in my book.

Parodies Lost

Feel like a laugh? I have joined with a group of online friends to launch a new blog called Parodies Lost in which we post parodies of the Classics. I already posted my first attempt, a reworking of James Bond in the style of Cormac McCarthy. Please take a look if you have a minute, and we welcome any comments.

Twitter Stories

I joined Twitter a while back, only because everyone kept going on about it and as you know I always follow the herd. I wanted to know what the fuss was about. At first I confess I couldn't see the point of it - who apart from fans and stalkers cares what minor celebs get up to between gigs? And let's face it most of us aren't remotely interesting in the minutiae of our dull dreary lives. Or so I thought.

Over time it's really grown on me. I don't follow a huge number of people, about forty or so, enough to get an interesting cross section of thoughts and activities. So there's usually at least one interesting post when I visit. And if there isn't, well it's only a sentence or two so no time wasted. Unlike blogs people have to get to the point pretty sharpish. I like that. And over time you see a pattern emerging in people's posts that is more revealing of them as people than their more showy blogs and websites.

So it's taken me a while but I finally see the point of Twitter. It's a rare skill to condense your meaning into a few words - anyone who's wrestled with poetry will appreciate that. Yes, we all know about the joy of unrestrained prose and being drunk with words, but those words we're drunk on are usually more rewarding to ourselves than those we're communicating with. Mostly it's unmitigated drivel. Restraint is good. It makes us artful - every word must count. Real writers respect words and know their power; diluting them is wasteful.

So I wonder if it's possible to write a story in a Twitter post. 140 characters, including spaces and punctuation. Beginning, middle, end. You know the drill: get to it!

The Ego Trap of Blogging

Blogging is fun, don't you think? What could be nicer than chatting away about your interests and seeing your words in print. It's every writer's dream, after all.

But therein lies the danger.

In the Bad Old Days, before the Internet freed us all from the limitations of our everyday lives, we had very little cause to spout forth our opinions. Even if anyone ever bothered to ask they probably wouldn't stick around long enough to listen to the answer. Not so these days. With our own blog the world is our audience and oh, how seductive that can be. Before long we can be so carried away with our own opinions we fall into the trap of thinking we're actually worth listening to.

Some blogs can get so pompous and full of their own importance they have the opposite effect to the one intended, ie to attract a readership. I've been turned off a couple of high profile ones for this reason. Preaching to the point of nagging, lecturing and criticising your readership are some common faux pas. Yes, it may be true that some of the folk out there trying to write a book will never accomplish that aim, but endlessly reminding them of how awful they are isn't going to win you any friends.

So always beware of the Ego Trap of falling in love with your own opinions. They're never as fascinating to others as they may seem to you. And while it's nice to be important, it's also important to be nice.

Why Blog?

Why should people blog?

This question came up recently on a writers' board and it got me thinking. There have to be thousands if not millions of blogs out there - some of them hardly ever read by another living soul - so why do we all bother?

Well, I blog for my own benefit as much as anyone else's. It's a good discipline to write with the possibility (however remote) of being read. And it's fun. Sometimes it gives me a chance to show off about my successes, moan about my problems and vent some spleen when some injustice winds me up. It's frustrating sometimes not being able to say exactly what I want to say, for fear of giving offence or being sued. But that's part of the discipline. Writing is more than just pleasing yourself, after all. You have to have the reader uppermost in your mind at all times.

There are lots of different types of blog out there. The most boring ones are not the personal, meandering type, but the ones that nag endlessly about the same few subjects. When the blogger stops writing about their own impressions and starts shamelessly preaching I get turned off. So in my opinion some of the most high profile blogs are actually the worst. Small scale and personal are usually the more interesting. I'd far rather read one person's honest reactions than be lectured.