First, I have to preface this entire blog post with the fact that writing for BellaOnline was an honour. I am grateful that they selected me to write for the site, and I learnt a lot from the experience. I was signed up at the very end of January 2007, and have written for them for just over two years. Just a few days ago, I resigned from my site, and am no longer writing for them. My articles are still available on the Formula One section of BellaOnline but only until they are overwritten by the next editor. (I haven’t decided what to do with them yet.)

Did anyone else realise that along with the new redesign of Delicious, they’re pushing delicious.com instead of the del.icio.us crazy url? Apparently they’ve always had the .com domain but redirected it. Now they’re a bit more popular, the crazy url is a bit too complicated, so it’s delicious.com from here on in. I’ve stopped embedding my delicious links in this blog, in the hopes that it will make me write more. There’s more guilt if no new content goes up, than if you can say: “Well, at least there’s a link or two…”

We had the previous tech dilemma of whether to buy Photoshop to help me be more interested in pictures, but not really being able to justify buying Photoshop because I don’t take enough pictures. Here’s another. I want to blog more on Smarter Than Your Average, I have things to say about the state of the web and I want to share them with you. But I find that I just don’t, and I don’t really know why that is.

Design revamp for ‘$100 laptop’ I always thought the old one looked like a cartoon, and whilst aimed at kids, I found it quite off-putting. The new one looks beautiful. Twitter: Something Is Technically Wrong Well, I gave up already. Gyllenhaal confirmed for ‘Prince of Persia’ Firstly, I didn’t know there was a film. Secondly, that Gemma Arterton is everywhere right now, and I still haven’t seen her in anything.

Twitter appeals to the short-form writer in me. I used to run a site called 101 Words, which essentially a short post every day about random stuff, but that was crucially 101 words long. Exactly. It became quite an art to fit all your thoughts for the day into 101 words. Twitter is the same kind of thing. There’s something about having a short space to get your message across that makes it a much easier place to share things. You don’t feel like you have to explain things, because let’s face it, you couldn’t even if you wanted to. There’s no room to go into detail, people are either going to get it or they’re not.

Ever since I saw Live Writer, I knew that Microsoft had it in them to be good. They know what they’re doing when it comes to marketing to the masses but for us geeky individuals, they leave a lot to be desired. Live Writer has the essence of greatness, in that everything you need to blog to many different platforms is all in one place and it is unbelievably easy to use. My only problem is that Wordpress screws up the metadata for each image you upload, which means you have to go into the Admin screens anyway, so you might as well just right it in there. Ultimately, that’s a problem with Wordpress though, and not Livewriter.

I don’t know if I mentioned it, but I sent a script off to the BBC. BBC Writersroom encourages unsolicited scripts, and they’ll get read and examined for scriptwriting talent. I got my script back yesterday, just over two months since I sent it in, and obviously, they didn’t like it. Big shock. It’s only the second story I’ve ever finished, and the first script I’ve ever written, so I’m surprised I had the audacity to send it in, really.

We met up with a friend a while ago and went for a drink with him. Discussing our jobs, I expressed dissatisfaction with mine, and he said: “What would you rather do?” “I want to be a writer,” I replied. Oh. My. God. I said it out loud. I want to be a writer. I went on to talk about how I want to write scripts for television and that I had written one comedy/drama type script.

With a couple of spare evenings, I thought I’d get some more writing done. I’ve not been doing very well of late. There was a brief period when I wrote three chapters in quick succession and then everything came to a halt. I’ve been struggling with a conversation that two characters have to have to make the story progress onwards. I can’t seem to get the mix of dialogue and the right chemistry to make the scene progress smoothly. It’s driving me crazy.

Writing I’m always telling myself that I’m a writer, but just lately there has been very little evidence to support that theory. I’m too much of a perfectionist and every time I start to write something, I can’t get past the first chapter without thinking it’s absolutely useless and quitting right there and then. The new plan is to actually get things written. I’ve been writing a few things, and getting my mother to read them, and I think this second opinion is really starting to help me let go of the desire for perfection. If someone else is looking through it as well, then they can suggest any necessary changes, whilst I am writing the next part. And it seems to be working.

I’ve been looking into some interesting software for helping people get the most out of their writing. Whilst mine has very much taken a back seat for the last year or so, it’s still something I think about from time to time. I note down ideas, plan chapters, scribble out some dialogue, that sort of thing. I downloaded a nifty little piece of software called Writer’s Cafe, and I really like it. It gives so many options to plan and store ideas and chapters and snippets and notes, and anything else you can dream up.

I’m trying to do lots of things with this page, but I’m getting confused with all the folders and stuff. Mostly, it’s just experimenting which is fine, but I have lots of things that I want to use and no real outlet to use them. I also need to think of a new name, given the lack of stories that have appeared on this website, I can’t really warrant having the name storyteller.

I was inside and I decided I wanted to go sit out, so I got out the blanket that I sit on and everything, I just got settled with my notepad to write some poetry and then just as I started getting creative, it started to rain. Damn the English weather!

Today, I was driving through Dartmoor and winding around those intriguing roads. Into my head popped an amazing story, and I was visualising it being adapted from the book to television, on the BBC. Of course, the big obstacle is writing it, but at least the dream is there.

I hate computers… I updated this once already today, well, yesterday and it just disappeared. Typical. Today was the longest day of my life, second after second ticked by slow as ever. I even wrote a poem called Bored. Says it all really, doesn’t it? When I got home, took a nice shower then settled down to watch some Buffy. Looks like I’m gonna have to speed watch and get through all the series’ before I lose access to them… It’s unlikely I’ll manage to finish them. Never mind.

I’ve spent most of the weekend sorting through all the junk I came back with from my trip home. I found a poem I wrote when I was eleven, I didn’t realise I wrote stuff when I was that young. I thought it was a recent thing. We were also looking through this old tin box with toys and things in and then we came across these really old exercise books, dated September 1913. In them, written by my dad’s grandma, lots of poems and songs and things, in lovely flowing handwriting. I could have sat there and read them for hours. It was a real find.