Still clinging onto life, except I have developed an odd illness whose main symptoms appear to be joint pain and dizziness. At least it's stopping me from talking. I managed to talk about Willy Brandt for an hour for my oral exam, which would have been great except I was only meant to talk for 10-15 minutes. Willy Brandt is just interesting ( Read more... )

I've taken the plunge and started showing my creative writing to other people. I gave my German tutor a short story I wrote in 2010, as she's the sort of person who always has a Kindle to hand: she's actually got my notebook with all of my RPF in it. (Before you scream, I only write G-rated stuff. Maybe PG. Rated for mild torture and dysentery.) ( Read more... )

It was my birthday yesterday. It managed to be spectacularly crappy: massive, unexplained and unexplainable mood swing; a camera wielded with all the subtlety of a guillotine; and my brain decided to go off on tangents. I mean, I started with "What would have become of Willy Brandt if World War II had never happened?" to "If daemons were real, what ( Read more... )

I'm currently feeling quite stagnant. I've just finished "Goodbye to Berlin". Now I'm in between books. I guess I could read Wedekind's "Fruehlings Erwachen" in the original German but a) I already know it's ten shades of depressing and b) I want to listen to the songs from the musical and that will require literally minutes of searching through a ( Read more... )

I have finally finished War and Peace. Right through to the end of the first seven-year time-skip epilogue. As the second epilogue (What sort of book needs a second epilogue?!) was one massively boring essay about the forces of history, instead of clearing up what happened to everyone apart from the main group of characters, I skipped that. I'm not ( Read more... )

I am feeling so much better than I did last week - or last month, for that matter - that it's hard to believe. I'm on fire. I'm an unstoppable writing machine. I'm writing, I'm reading, I'm thinking... it's great ( Read more... )

At the moment I think that recommending books to people is my major talent. I'd much rather be able to write books - but at the moment I just don't feel like sitting down and writing even though I promised myself that I'd finish my '10 Nano this year. On the other hand I'm making people happy by sharing books I like with them. And it feels nice ( Read more... )

Man, I'm late ( Read more... )

So it's Little Christmas Eve and I can't even remember the last time I posted. I think I celebrated the end of Nano ( Read more... )

I couldn't get to my German lesson this morning. I rushed out of the house onto the driveway, and in the amount of time it took me to think "Gosh, the pavements look icy!" I had stepped onto a river of ice frozen across our driveway. I slid over to the wall, and while catching my breath I watched a car turn on to our street. It slid around and ( Read more... )