Tired now

[desperance]

So this is Friday, and what have I done? I have planted rhubarb and elephant garlic, just a couple of days before the big freeze hits. Hmm.

Also, I have put books into boxes and padded envelopes, with suitable enclosures and address-labels and such. Many books, many packagings. If I'd wanted to run a mail-order business, I would've - well, I would probably have been a bookseller, most likely. As apparently I am. Aye, well.

Now I am going into town to post all these packages, buy more packaging materials, and meet people for lunch: people who will give me flyers and posters and promotional materials, that I will distribute in Huddersfield on Sunday, where I am running a workshop. If I had wanted to be a teacher and a promoter of other publications and events, I would've - well, behold, I am a writer and I can be all these things.

What I cannot do, apparently, is write. To anyone's satisfaction, most of all my own.

Never mind. Busy busy. Books are like money: they come in, they go out, we keep them moving.

Or, of course, we hoard them. Me, I keep my own in motion and hoard other people's. Apparently the National Trust has instructed its staff to stop dusting the books in its grand houses, because the dusting does more damage than the dust. They've declared a three-year moratorium on dusting. Which is exactly the wrong interval; I want to remind them all of the late great Quentin Crisp's dictum, that the dust doesn't get any worse after the first four years...

Comments

[shewhomust.livejournal.com]

What I cannot do, apparently, is write. To anyone's satisfaction...

Fishing again? That's too blatant, I'm not going to rise to that.

[desperance.livejournal.com]

[sound of raspberry, satisfactorily blown]

(it's another of those things I can't do, is blow proper raspberries)

[papersky.livejournal.com]

I loved your story in Glorifying Terrorism, I think it was the best in the book. So you certainly can write, you're just feeling a bit glub.

[desperance.livejournal.com]

Glub indeed, is how I've been feeling - but comments like this turn it all around, and now I feel positively bulg...

No, but seriously, thank you. I'm really glad you liked the story. My first SF! Ever! (As an adult...)

[julesjones]

I know you'd much rather have egoboo from a publisher because that pays the bills, but I finished The Devil In The Dust last night, and yes, you can write.

[desperance.livejournal.com]

Aww. Thank you...

[davidbarnett.livejournal.com]

Did I do a wrong thing by ordering a book, then?

[desperance.livejournal.com]

Noooo...! No, you did a good thing, a right thing! Many more people should do this thing, instanter, here... (http://www.chazbrenchley.co.uk/short/phantoms.html)

I don't think I was going to write anything today anyway, I'm just glad to have stuff to do that keeps me busy on the bad days. Honest. Order more books...