Embracing the dress

I have realised that dresses are probably the best garment ever.

No more hunting in the drawers for a top that goes with the trousers / skirt you are wearing that day. Just chuck a dress on and you are done.

Dresses work in all circumstances. Dress it up with shiny shoes and sheer tights, dress it down with boots and colourful, knitted tights.

A dress means you are never under-dressed, but you are also unlikely to be over-dressed.

There are dress styles for all shapes, find the one that flatters yours and you will never look back.

Embrace the dress - you won't regret it!

Happy cats

We lost one of our cats earlier this year. It was sudden and unexpected - he was only 7 years old. I'm not sure if it is possible for someone who have not had a pet to understand how devastating it can be. He'd been with us for 7 years since he was a 3-month old kitten. That's a lot of days of making you smile with silly playing, lots of days of cheering you up with a purry cuddle session and lots of days being greeted at the door by a chirrup and a headbutt.

It left a huge hole in our everyday lives. It was also very upsetting for his litter brother who was still with us. That was a whole other level of sadness, seeing Link look for Max and get all lethargic, not wanting to do anything. It broke my heart all over again to see him grieve and not being able to do anything to help him.
Having never been alone, Link did not take the loss of Max well. He ate less, didn't want to play and spent most of his time curled up somewhere close to us. He also became very, very needy for attention. It must have been awful for him to go from always having company to being alone for hours on end as we were at work.
So in the end we decided that we would have to find him a friend to keep him company. We did a lot of reading up trying to figure if it was better to get a new cat in soon while he still remembered having someone else around or whether you should wait for a longer time. Cat or kitten? Same sex? Same breed? What if he hated the newcomer and we just made things worse? The most common piece of advice to all these questions was: "It depends."

Cats have personalities and they will react to a situation differently, so there is no right or wrong. Just guesswork and hope. So after reading and talking, we ended up with the idea of getting two kittens. That way they would have each other to play with while Link decided whether he liked them or not.

So we went looking for a local-ish Bengal breeders with litters available. (After having Bengals it was impossible to imagine having any other type of cat.) We went to see a pair of almost newborn kittens (snow spotted), but ended up falling in love with an older litter at the same breeder that would be ready to go to a new home in a few weeks. There were 3 available kittens. Two blue seal lynx spot girls and a brown marble boy. Initially we were looking more at the two girls, but the boy just completely stole our hearts. As soon as you approached him he purred like a little tractor, he was unbelievably loud. And when he played it was with complete abandon until he was exhausted enough to simply not be able to anymore.

So then we needed to decide which of the two girls to chose. They were both outrageously cute with their pale fur and big blue eyes, but had completely different temperaments. One was very outgoing and super-curious, one was shyer. Of course we ended up with the shy one. After seeing her sitting on the sidelines when the other three played with the feather toy, one little paw lifted as if she really wanted to join in - how could we not pick her?

When we finally brought them home it took sometime to get her confident enough not to scurry under the sofa whenever we came into the kittenroom, but she has come on leaps and bounds. She still often allows her brother to get the toy even though she could take it herself (she is scarily fast when she does go for something), but she is not skittish anymore. She is shy around strangers, but will tell us off in a very strident voice if we fail to turn on the water tap for her to drink from.

The integration with Link has been hard and slow. We started with the kittens living in their own room, then gradual visits, then they got to be out while we were at home and then finally allowing them free rein in the house all the time. The kittens have been very curious of Link, the boy in particular quite obviously wanting to be friends. Link has not approved of the kittens. However, in spite of hissing and growling at them, he never outright attacked them. They might get a bat if they got too close, but he would then rather stalk off than get physical. Over time both the hissing and the batting has gotten more and more half-hearted and less and less frequent. The changes were so small and gradual that at times we were worrying that we had made the wrong choice and that Link would forever be unhappy with the additions.

This last week or so it has all been worth it though. There might be the odd hiss or bat if the kittens annoy him, but mostly they all get on fine. And the last couple of evenings they've all played chase together! Link is almost back to his old self from before Max died. He is perky and curious and playful. It is amazing. At the weekend he even groomed the little girl kitten. I'm betting we'll see all three of them curled up together this side of Christmas.

Color Me Beautiful

My textiles/sewing teacher back in primary school had us do the Color Me Beautiful thing on each other when we were about 13 or so. You know the thing were depending on skin tone, hair colour and eye colour you were either Spring, Summer, Autumn or Winter. I was quite intrigued by this concept and was really interested in having it done properly. But it isn't cheap and I was quite happy doing my own thing in picking clothes and colours.

Fast forward 20 odd years (eeep!) and I've spent a few years feeling like I've lost my clothes mojo. I look at clothes and just feel overwhelmed. Just buying a pair of jeans I have to pick between 7 different models with no real idea what kind would suit my build best. I've gotten sick of being in a clothing slump and turning 35 seemed like a good time to do something about it, so I booked a session with an image consultant as my birthday present. 4 hours one-on-one to discuss colours, colour combinations, shapes and cuts.

It was great! It felt strange to talk about me and focus on me for so long, but it was a very interesting experience. CMB has moved on somewhat over the years. Instead of seasons there are 3 pairs of opposites. Soft & Clear, Deep & Light, Warm & Cool. All six are different, so you will usually quite obviously belong to one group. However, you will probably have a secondary group as well. For instance, I am Soft which means muted colours. Clear, bright colours doesn't look good on me. But as a secondary I am Deep, which means that within the Soft colours I should aim for the darker ones as the pale ones make me look washed out. It all made perfect sense when I saw the pictures she used as examples.

She also had huge amounts of pieces of cloth in any conceivable nuance, so she would put them next to my face and next to each other so I could learn to see for myself which ones to look for. Simple, but effective. Plus I got a wallet full of swatches of colours that suit my group and she marked the ones that were particularly flattering for me personally.

When it came to body-shape, she explained that the classic hourglass shape is still the most sought after and the one most people see as most attractive. So the idea is to figure out what shape you are and then try to make it look like you are in fact an hourglass shape. As an example, I am a rectangle. If I had a waist I would be an hourglass, but no matter my weight, I just don't have much of a waist. So what I'm supposed to do is to avoid any clothes that show that I don't have a trim little waist. Instead I should aim for things with an empire waistline or something straight that can be worn with a hip belt. Either option hints at a waist, but without showing up the fact that there really isn't one.

I'm hoping that by knowing what to look for and what to put straight back on the shelf will make me less likely to have clothes that I never wear. I'm sure I'm not alone in buying something because it looks nice, but then never wearing it. It just keeps getting down prioritised compared to other clothes that somehow just are more appealing to wear.

So this weekend I am determined to get around to going through my clothes ruthlessly. Is it the right colour? Is it the right shape? Do I actually ever wear it apart from when everything else is in the wash? Then I'll have a better view of what I might need more of and I get to go shopping, which I am hoping will be a more enjoyable experience now that I know what to look for.

Happy New Year

Autumn is here, summer is over. Afternoons might be warm but mornings are chilly and the air has that smell of seasons changing.

As my friend pointed out, autumn definitely feels like the time of changes and starting afresh. Maybe it is an ingrained response to all those years in school, when starting back at school was when things really changed. January 1st or December 31st are not really any different from each other. It is still winter and nothing is actually different.

Birthdays are pretty much the same, you are technically a year older, but your life doesn't change because of it. (Unless of course it is a birthday that allows you to do something new/legally - have sex, buy alcohol, drive a car.) A new school year, however, is when things tangibly change.

During summer (at least when working in an office), things tend to slow down somewhat. Colleagues, suppliers and clients are all taking time off at various intervals during the summer months - leaving business moving at a slower pace than normal. That combined with your own summer holidays means that when autumn comes you are energised and ready to make changes / get going again.

So in the spirit of this, I have some New Year's Resolutions.

1) Gym
Looking at the scales and in the mirror, I could stand to lose a few kilos. I'm technically not overweight, but only by a kilo or two.

There also the fact that my lifestyle is completely sedentary. Apart from small bouts of walking (like to the station or to get lunch), I spend the bulk of my awake time sitting. 95-100% of my working time is spent in front of the computer. 2 out 5 days I work away from the office meaning no proper monitor, no proper chair or foot rest, so my posture is even worse than normal.

Most everything I do in my spare time is done while sitting. Going to the movies, reading a book, playing on the computer, socialising. So I desperately need some regular physical activity.

My goal is to go to one lunchtime class per week every week and to try to do two classes a week most weeks. Sure, 3 times per week would be great - but I am trying to set a realistic goal that I have a chance to reach, with a stretch goal to try for.

2) 5 a day
I am rubbish at eating fruit and veg. Sure you get some through things included in lunch and dinner, but to fill the daily quota you need to snack on some too and this is where I fail.

I used to buy fruit with the idea that I'd eat it mid-morning and mid-afternoon as a healthy snack. Unfortunately, I'd then promptly forget about it until it was time to go home.

It is one of those things that I know is good for me, but where the actual doing has no particular appeal in its own right. So in an attempt to up our fruit/veg intake we've bought a blender to make smoothies with. Half a litre of fruit mush with some orange juice or diet lemonade to make more liquid, that should surely count as a few of my 5 a day.

We actually used to have a juicer a few years ago and as much as it was very tasty, it was a pain in the behind to clean. As long as you did it straight away, most of it was very easy, but there was one part that was just impossible. I don't know what it is called, but its surface looks like a fine grater with very sticky outie holes. The only way to get rid of the bits of fruit stuck to it is to scrub it with a toothbrush - every time. Ugh!

The blender on the other hand is very, very easy to clean. After making the smoothies, it takes a couple of minutes to clean the it. Rinse, quick wash, leave out to dry for tomorrow's use. And of course you get a goodly dose of fibre as well, which you don't get with juicing. Win win really.

The goal is to do this three times a week. Twice in the week and once on the weekend. If we can manage four or five some weeks, then great - but that is the stretch goal.

3) Singing

I'm already enrolled for the autumn term (just over a week to go - squee), but I need to get into the habit of practising. So it's time to go pick up a nice, cheap keyboard so I can play scales for warm-up exercises. I tried warming up just by singing some random easy songs, but it doesn't work. Without doing scales that push me to warm up to both ends of my range, I cannot reach the notes I can reach easily when properly warmed up.

My goal is to practise at least once a week between lessons - stretch goal is twice a week.

4) Blogging

I am enjoying writing and I am managing to write down a lot more drafts, but that's no use if I never go back and finish them and hit "Publish".

So the goal is to post at least once a week from now on, more is better, but less is not acceptable. Friday will count as the last day of the week.

In the past deadlines have usually helped me get past the draft / editing stage into the finishing / polishing stage, so hopefully this will work.

5) Clothes mojo

Finally, I need to make a push to sort out my wardrobe - big job (long story, will probably turn into a blog post of its own).

This is more of a project than something I need to get into doing each week, but so far I've not gotten around to it. Autumn is when I swap the summer clothes in the wardrobe for the winter clothes in the loft, so it's an ideal time to create some order.

• Wardrobe cleared out of all unused items - by Sunday 12 Sept
• Wardrobe updated with any necessary autumn/winter items - by Sunday 26 Sept

So that should keep me busy for a while. :-)

If I had money - would I work?

Big, fat NO!

Whenever you discuss the idea of getting wealthy enough that you wouldn't have to work - some people say that they would still work. You are getting an extra 40 hours (or more if you count commuting time) per week to spend on doing whatever takes your fancy - and you're going back to the office?

Personally I would start by having a few months off. After close to three decades of having to get up every morning to go to school / work - I would love to live off the clock for a while. I'm sure that moseying around the house would get a bit less shiny eventually, but there are so many things one could spend time on.

Healthy stuff like going to the gym 3 times per week and cooking food from scratch - I'm sure these kinds of things would feel much less of a chore if you weren't trying to fit them in around work.

Courses - horse riding, Italian, archery, fencing, psychology, sewing - all those interesting things that it is difficult to find the time for.

And I would definitely sign up with a local amateur musical theatre group. At the moment I am wary of the time commitment needed for this. I did a lot of amateur theatre at university, so I know the amount of time required to get a performance to happen. You might start with only one evening of rehearsals per week, but as the opening night gets closer another night gets added and some weekend workshops. And you might need to help out with work on the sets or costumes, depending on how many off stage people are involved. To fit that around work and other hobbies can be tricky. But if you are not working it is easy. :-)

Time management envy

Imagine a life where you do your work - I know, you'd rather imagine one without work, but let's be realistic.

Anyway, so you work, you go to the gym regularly, every evening you make dinner from scratch with nice fresh ingredients and lots of yummy vegetables. You cleanse and moisturise twice a day, your house is clean and tidy and bed linen gets changed like clockwork. AND you have spare time to fill with hobbies and socialising.

That is what I want to be like. I am seriously envious of people that manage their time well enough to achieve all of these things.

Personally, I have a very low willpower threshold for boring stuff (like household chores) - so the obvious solution is to win the lottery so I can hire a cook and a cleaner. ;-)

There is yet time

Turning 30 passed me by without a hitch. We were busy buying our first house together and I'd recently changed jobs, so there was lots of things happening. Then the year after came the proposal and the wedding planning started for the year after that. However, things have been kind of slow since then and that was the main thing that hit me as I was about to turn 35.

I am boring!!

I used to always be so busy, doing this, that and the other. But when you work full time (at least in London) it is so easy to allow yourself to not do a lot. You get up in the morning, do your 1 hour commute, work, commute home for 1 hour, stick in a wash, have some dinner and then there's not an awful lot left of the evening. On the weekend you have to do all those chores that cannot be done during evenings - more washing, cleaning the house, shopping, mowing the lawn etc etc

And that's of course why WoW fits in so perfectly as a hobby. You play from your house, so no travelling to and from other places in the evening. It can take up as much or as little time as you want it to. I'm not saying WoW is a bad hobby, in spite of the end of expansion blues I still have a huge bucket list I aim to get through before Azeroth gets terra-formed by the coming Cataclysm.

But there are so many other things that I keep thinking I'd like to do, that I never get around to. Taking a course in something, writing, visiting the Fringe - once I started thinking about it the list kept growing.

There are lots of very good excuses for not doing these things, but they are just that - excuses.

Starting singing lessons was a great first step. Yes, with my slightly wonky work schedule it will require some planning to make it work. But in return I get to do something I really, really enjoy AND it gives me buzzy energy that makes me want to do more things.

Of course there is a limit to how much I can actually fit in. With working full time, commuting and doing all that boring adult stuff, I cannot be out and about most evenings of a week as I will then feel over stretched and exhausted. So I will keep my singing lessons, I will try to write something each week and once that is part of my routine I might consider adding one more thing to the mix.

Because, you know what, there is yet time - I don't have to do it all at once.

Scruples according to Lula

"You know what your problem is? You've got too many scruples. One or two scruples is okay, but you get too many of them, and it clogs everything up."

"I got some scruples, but I know when to stop. There's a point where you have to say enough is enough and screw scruples."

"There you go with the scruples again. You gotta learn a real scruple from a worthless scruple."

Lula is a recurring character in Janet Evanovich's books about Stephanie Plum, bounty hunter less than extraordinaire. She is one of my favourite characters in that series of books. From evanovich.com: "A black woman with a rubenesque body and a Vegas wardrobe that’s four sizes too small. She’s a former ‘ho working as a file clerk at Vinnie’s office and wheelman for Stephanie."

I stumbled across these books many years ago in an English-language bookshop in Rome of all places. They had the three first ones (One for the Money, Two for the Dough, Three to get Deadly) and I just loved the cover art and I bought all three on the spot.

Summary of the first book from Wikipedia:

"Stephanie Plum  is out of a job and there isn’t much work for an ex-lingerie buyer. After caving under pressure from her mother, Stephanie goes to her cousin, Vinnie, who is a bail bondman for some filing work. When arriving Vinnie’s assistant, Connie, tells her that the filing position has been filled. Connie tells her about apprehending people who skip out on their bonds, pulls a file out of her top drawer, and shows her Joseph Morelli’s file. Morelli is a vice cop who is wanted for murder one and has a history with Stephanie which includes two sexual encounters in high school and a hit-and-run when he didn’t call afterward. Connie suggests Morelli because Stephanie will get percentage of the bond that sings to the tune of $10,000. Stephanie has had to pawn off the majority of her possessions and her car gets repossessed, she thinks bringing in Morelli will fix all of her financial problems.

Stephanie decides she wants to join up and blackmails Vinnie about an incident with a duck in order to let her try to get Morelli. With the help of some friends and the best bounty hunter in the business, Ranger, she slowly learns what it takes to be a badass bounty hunter. Along the way of trying to find Morelli Stephanie gains the unwanted attention of a heavy weight boxer that has a history of making women disappear, gains some hookers as friends, steals Morelli’s car, and enters into an agreement with Morelli himself. Then on top of all that she still has to deal with a pushy mother, a crazy grandmother, and a father who would rather not watch.

It's one hell of a way to spend the first two weeks on the job."

Stephanie is a great main character. She is actually quite normal in the sense that she barely knows one end of a gun from another and has to make things up as she goes along. From what little impressions I've had of New Jersey and the people that live there - she is a Jersey girl through and through. This means that she gets through scary and embarrasing situations on pure attitude (and a fair amount of comfort food). The other characters in the books are slightly insane in different ways, but it all kind of works - though I now probably have a very skewed idea of New Jersey life.

I've got every single Plum book that's been published and have just finished the latest one (Sizzling Sixteen). Unfortunately I have to say that they are not as good as they used to be. The problem is that each book is based on the same formula. Stephanie gets or stumbles upon a case that is way out of her league, but with help from friends and family (including her 2 beaus Joe Morelli & Ranger) she somehow manages to get through the ordeal and solve things.

There's nothing wrong with the formula per se, but it feels like the main characters are not developing any more. The last few books have all been the same. It is like the characters are in stasis. And that's a shame - because they are good characters.

I have seen reviewers of the later books on Amazon commenting on that you would kind of expect that after 16 books (and that's only the main ones, not counting novellas etc) - Stephanie would have more of a clue of what she is doing. The other main comment is - two guys want her and she can't make up her mind? After all this time surely they would have both moved on to someone else.

I can live with the fact that Stephanie is pretty much still as clueless as she was when she started, but I agree that the love life angle is getting very stale. I can understand that the author doesn't want to resolve it, because Steph in a stable relationship would be very different and it might not work out.

All in all, I highly recommend the first three books. The ones after that are good but I would caution against reading them back to back as with any formula-based books you can overdose. As for the later ones, it'll depend on how much you enjoy them I guess. I read them as they come out once a year and enjoy the light entertainment, but I do also miss the darker, more character-based plots from the earlier ones.

Moar gadgets or How I learned to love Apple

So the work purchase of iPads fell through. There aren't that many of us and some people didn't want one. *boggle*

Not that I would buy one, but if someone wants to give you a new, shiny gadget to use - there is only one answer. Surely?

With my singing lessons I've gotten back into listening to music so I decided it might be time to invest in one of them new-fangled empeethree majiggies. Now I am not an Apple fan (it all comes back to a very traumatic experience with an Apple laptop in university - it frowned at me. Long story.), but looking around iPods are kind of the standard fare when it comes to mp3-players. They may or may not be the best, but they seem to be the standard others are judged against. This feature on this player is better than the iPod, that feature on that player is not as good as the iPod. There are a lot of players out there and as a first-time buyer it is a bit of a jungle, so I ended up deciding to just get an iPod and be done with it. My husband used to have an iPod Nano and he was very happy with it and the audio quality. Seeing as he is very sensitive to audio quality and I'm not - that was good enough for me.

So off we went to the Apple store to buy a pair of iPod Touches. Out we came with iPods, bits of plastic to protect the screens, colourful back protectors and headphones (I hate in-ear headphones). After assembling them and having a play for a whole minute or two, we were both completely in love. The interface is so intuitive, what with the scrolling up and down, side to side and the resizing by moving your fingers together or outwards. The responsiveness of the touchscreen is spot on. There may very well be products out there that are better, but I love my iPod Touch to bits already.

And that is before even using it for what I bought it for - to play music...

Today I spent part of my commute watching an episode of a TV show on it and I was seriously impressed. I've always thought that watching something on such a small screen would be a bit pointless, but I was wrong. The quality was great, the picture was really sharp and I got completely sucked in - it came as a bit of a surprise when the train pulled into the station.

Loving it, would recommend it and I will probably get an iPhone when it comes time to replace my current mobile. Yes, I like it that much.

How my Blackberry helped me get started writing

Time
I keep having ideas for blog posts and for fiction stuff, but I rarely used to get them written. One issue was time. When do people find the time to sit down and just write?

At work I am at the computer all day long, but as the word might indicate I am working. I did try using my lunchbreaks for writing rather than my normal round of checking up on certain forums, websites and Google Reader. It quickly became clear that trying to get into the flow while trying to finish lunch in a timely manner did not really work (and there's the whole breadcrumbs-in-keyboard and mayo-on-mouse issues).

I do have a computer at home, a lovely 3XS Black Widow one which allows me to play WoW with high fps and low lag. So you can guess what I end up doing when I'm at the computer at home. ;-)

So one day I was on the train and very bored. My DS was out of juice, so no Sodoku, and I didn't have a book with me. On impulse I picked up my Blackberry and opened up the MemoPad. I'd had this idea for a blog post floating around my head, so off I went.

Turns out the Blackberry is ideal for writing on the go. It is small and you can get away with writing one-handed if necessary. That means that even when squashed onto a busy commuter train with no personal space whatsoever and using one hand to cling to a pole for when the driver stands on the brakes - you can still write. It's amazing! All that time I spend on trains, tubes and buses can be used for something useful.

Writing vs editing
The other issue I've always had with writing is that I am a bit of a perfectionist. I'll start writing and then get stuck because that word didn't quite sound right or maybe that paragraph needs to go further up. Kinda ruins the flow.

When you are writing you are not trying to create a masterpiece ready to go to print. You are just creating a first draft. It is all about getting the ideas from inside your head and onto paper. To allow things to flow, unhindered by self-criticism. Only once you have captured your story is it time to tame it.

That is when you take off the creative writing hat and put on the critical editing hat. You go back over the story correcting spelling and grammar, but more importantly you critically assess the writing. That is the time to ponder the exact word that would best describe the hero's tone of voice in scene 5, chapter 10. To move things around to create a better flow, to trim a bit here and plump up a bit there.

You do NOT interrupt your writing flow for these kinds of things. I know I am not supposed to do it, yet I keep getting bogged down with it while writing. I lose the flow and the story withers and dies under the weight of self-criticism. It is a hard mental shift to make. To allow yourself to write in cliches, using sub-optimal words - for the sake of allowing the story to be born, to have a chance to live and thrive.

The Blackberry has helped me with this too. I think maybe it has something to do with the fact that you see so little of what you have written on that small screen. It is somehow easier to let things just flow and do what they want when it disappears off the screen so quickly. It is quite liberating.


Sent from my BlackBerry® wireless device

Withdrawal and writing woes

Withdrawal
My singing lessons are on hold for the moment as the music school is closed for the summer break. It's only been 2 weeks since my last lesson - I'm suffering from withdrawal already.

Speaking of withdrawal, one of my favourite TV series is also on a  break, so I have been filling the void by avidly reading ... *gasp* ... fan fiction. I know that there are very varied opinions on fan fiction from people that despise it via those that don't understand why anyone would write or read it to those that love it.

Fan fiction
Personally I adore fan fiction, probably because I have been creating it since I was a wee youngster - only I've never written it down. I've been a voracious reader from a young age and I have a very vivid imagination. I would get really caught up in the stories I read and then be really disappointed when they ended. So I made up more stories set in the worlds I'd read about. Once I got older and was introduced to long-running TV-series, some of those worlds captured my imagination as well. I never bothered writing any of it down, which I quite regret now as it would've been fun to look back on. And I definitely would never have dared mention it to anyone for fear of people thinking I was really weird for getting so caught up in the stories I read / saw.

But the last couple of years I have found these repositories of fan fiction out there on the intarwebz and have marvelled at how many others there are in the world that enjoy it too. I find it fascinating how different people pick up on different things just in one episode of a show and it sets them off on a storyline that can keep going for many chapters. Sure, a lot of fan fiction is romantically inclined, whether between existing characters or existing character plus original character. But why is that a bad thing? There is a reason the romance genre in books and movies has always flourished - it is obviously popular.

One complaint I've seen is that people only write fan fiction, romantically angled ones in particular, to get to put a character in there as an avatar of themselves. Again, to me that doesn't seem like a bad thing - as long as the original character is a good one that fits in. In fact modelling a character on yourself can be an easy way to get going with writing. And one has to consider that fan fiction is written because the author enjoys it, not because they get paid for it.

Wish fulfillment proxies
I won't deny that I have seen a lot of original characters that are complete wish-fulfillment proxies. They have the beauty of a model, the body of a porn star, the intellect of Stephen Hawking, the martial art prowess of Jet Li, can shoot like a sniper, the cooking skills of Nigella Lawson AND everyone likes them. They have no flaws, are just amazing at everything and the canon characters just don't know how they got along without the original character around.

Now browsing around a bit I came across the term Mary Sue that seems to be used to describe this phenomenon. There are even tests out there that are supposed to tell you whether your character is a Mary Sue. My main problem with the Mary Sue concept is that it seems to focus inordinately on whether the character is an avatar of the author rather than whether the character is a wish-fulfillment proxy.

In these tests a lot of questions are about whether the character has a name like the author's, dresses like the author, has the same interests as the author. To me this is completely irrelevant. What matters is the quality of the character development and the writing in general. At the end of the day I'm never going to meet the author, so how would I know that the character's hobbies are based on theirs?

Easy mistakes to make
Writing a main character that is over-the-top unbalanced is a common mistake made by novice writers. It is, hopefully, all part of the learning process. But it is very unhelpful for the development of the writer if the focus of the critique is on similarites between the character and the author rather than on the balance of the character itself.

As a reader I have encountered many stories where I really enjoyed the idea, but it got pulled down by certain common mistakes / cliches. And in most cases it is such a shame as the story itself was good - the character/s just needed a little more rounding off and / or the writing needed a bit of polish.

A balanced character
The key problem I have seen is that of the balanced character. Someone can be good at something without having to be the best in the world ever. A character that happens to have a good singing voice and enjoys singing is fine. A character whose voice is so amazing that they really should be a superstar and regularly mesmerises people with their angelic song - a bit OP*, as we say in gaming circles. (*over powered)

On the flip side, someone can have emotional baggage that makes them struggle to form long-term relationships - but it doesn't have be in the form of abuse / violence / being kidnapped by slave traders. We humans are quite capable of being complex emotionally without having endured things that would have you spending the rest of your life in a padded cell gibbering incoherently.

Descriptions
Descriptions are good, but another common mistake is to pile them all on top of each other. The author probably has an incredibly clear image of what the character looks like and it is easy to get carried away when trying to put across this to the reader. You don't want to start the story with a paragraph (or more) listing the character's hair colour, eye colour, body shape, clothes and every single accessory. Think long-term - you want to drip-feed the reader descriptions over time. You are not trying to give the reader a colour photograph, you want to give them a rough sketch focussing only on the important details - their imagination will do the rest.

The crew
The final thing on my list is not to do with the character itself, but how everyone else in the cast is written around it. One of the questions on the Mary Sue tests is whether all other characters like the original character. The question is relevant, but a bit too broad I think. When you meet a new person it is highly unusual that you will instantly like them, but it is equally unusual that you will instantly dislike them. Most of the time our feelings for a new person will be neutral and when we feel neutral, don't-really-know-you-yet towards someone new, we will usually be nice to them. Unless there is a very good reason to trust / distrust them, of course. So being treated ok is definitely not a sign of a wish-fulfillment character. It is the over-the-top reactions to the character that might signal that - whether it be positive or negative.

So, ehm, end of lecture I guess... I got on a bit of a roll with that one. ;-)

(Yes, I might just be working on a piece of fanfic - but after unloading all my opinions I may not dare let it out in public view. It is after all a lot easier to edit others' work than creating your own. :-) )

Failing at Mix & Match

I wonder if I am alone in the world to fail at the mix part of Mix & Match? I don't think I have ever owned a shampoo from one brand at the same time as a conditioner of another. If I don't get on with my face moisturiser, I will go look for a better moisturiser - and then buy the matching facewash. I just cannot help myself, it just Doesn't Compute.

I may soon be getting an iPad (in spite of the hideous name) and I am concerned that it will trigger a need to buy lots of Apple products. Could get expensive...

The joy of singing

Last night I had my 3rd singing lesson. I'm still buzzing!

I have no illusions about being the next winner of X-factor or Britain's got talent - in fact I doubt that my voice will ever be good enough for solo performance. But that is not the point for me.

When I was around 10 I joined the church choir in my home village. I don't remember how long I stuck with it, but I guess 2 or 3 years. Mostly I just remember enjoying singing, to the point of even attending a regional choir camp one summer (no, it wasn't anything like band camp...).

When I was 13 I moved to a different stage of schooling which meant a bigger school with more students. The music teacher made every single student audition for a spot in the school choir. I got handed a sheet of music for a song I'd never heard and was told to sing it. As I didn't know how to sightsing I did not do well and so didn't join the choir.

At university the student theatre always did one play each year that included singing, I only acted in one of those. It was a harrowing experience. It wasn't one of the easiest pieces out there (the lyrics were set to Mein Herr from Cabaret) and I realised I knew nothing of the craft of singing.

I read somewhere Stephen Fry describing his problem with singing was that he was tone mute, rather than tone deaf. He said that he could hear music perfectly in his head, but he didn't know how to reproduce it. That is my problem. I have no musical training, nor am I a natural at it. I can look at notes and see up and down, but that's about as far as it goes.

A few years ago I attempted one of those "Find your voice courses". The blurb said it was for complete beginners and it started very basic. Breathing exercises and stuff like that - but within a couple of weeks we were onto singing different songs. For someone that was a complete beginner it was a largely pointless exercise. How am I supposed to find my voice while singing in a group and doing a different song each week? You spend your time learning a song, not how to sing.

Since then I have been yearning to be able to sing. Just knowing that if I open my mouth to join in with communal singing of any sort what comes out is not hideous. Or maybe even one day being able to actually join a choir (an amateur one obviously).

So I finally took the step of having proper 1-1 singing lessons. I was incredibly nervous before my first lesson. I had no idea what to expect and most of all I was nervous that it would turn out that I couldn't be taught.

3 lessons later and I'm hitting the right notes based on the piano pretty much every time. This was one of the things I was most nervous about. I wasn't sure how one goes about hitting certain notes with one's voice just based on the piano - and it is quite an essential skill if one wants to aspire to joining a choir. But I can do it!! And with practice I will hopefully learn to trust myself instead of glancing at my teacher at the start of each scale to check that she is smiling and nodding to indicate I got it right.

My homework this week is to work on the blade (I think that was what she called it) - how you get your voice to carry through projecting via your sinuses. Last week I worked on learning "Early One Morning" and now I have learn to sing it while making it all nasal to project it. It sounds pretty hideous, but I'm told is a phase you have to through as you are learning. Once you are able to project the voice properly you learn how to round it and make it sound good. One step at a time, I guess. :-)

Fringe - a study in gender stuff

Watched Fringe last night. I love that series, they manage to make the outrageous stuff going on believable AND it has several interesting plot arcs both for the overall plot and for the characters. Great stuff!

One thing that I particularly admire is the gender role reversal for two of the main characters. One main character is an FBI agent - a strong character that wields a gun and is able to make hard calls. One main character has a brilliant father that needs baby-sitting and there's the emotional issue of them having been estranged for many years while the father was locked away in a psychiatric hospital.

Traditionally, you would expect the strong, gun-wielding agent to be a man and the person baby-sitting their father and trying to repair their relationship to be a woman. But in Fringe it is the other way around. I love that! I think it is great to see characters that are a bit different to the norm. Their gender is obviously part of what makes them who they are, but it doesn't limit them or lock them into stereotypes. Just like real people.

To my mind men and women are different in many ways. Physically and mentally we have different strengths and weaknesses. But the same is true about people in general. Some people are smarter than others. Some are better at maths, some are better at drawing. Unfortunately when it comes to gender there are still issues out there with regards to equal opportunities, equal pay etc. A large TV show having characters that break the gender stereotypes while still being of their gender is a great thing.

When I say "of their gender" I mean that the character is not portrayed as overly being / trying to be like the other gender. Using examples from Fringe, Olivia is a very strong person, she has to be in such a tough job. But that doesn't mean that she has to masculinise herself to do a good job. She has long hair (though usually pulled back - understandably, you don't want hair messing up your aim), wears some make-up - does girly things with her sister and niece. Peter seems to have no issue that Olivia is the leader of their little team. He follows her orders and does not carry a gun. If there is any defending to do it usually falls to Olivia and/or other agents as he is not trained for it. And he is baby-sitting his bonkers dad 24/7. But he is still very much a man.

The more of that kind of thing enters our everyday culture, the better it will be. The more natural it will be for people to assume that women and men are not limited by their gender in what they want to work with / spend their free time doing.

Being a female that likes computer games and gadgets is viewed by many as unusual as they go with the geek stereotype being all male. Out of the people that I know that have such interests I would say that the majority are male, but it is not a huge majority by any means. And it wouldn't surprise me if there are a lot of girls out there that have the interests but keep it private. As with many other things people will make judgements about you based purely on that one facet of your interests.

Harry Dresden

I stumbled across the first of the Dresden files, Storm Front, a few years ago and was seriously disappointed when I got to the end of the lot that was currently published. They are incredibly more-ish - not helped by the fact that once you start one you cannot put it down, so you finish them at warp-speed.

I finished book 11, Turn Coat, the other week and I'm already drooling after the next one. I could actually get my hands on the hard-cover version of Changes, but I love the look of the paperbacks I've got so I'm going to try to stay disciplined. Time will tell I guess.

If you haven't read them, I cannot recommend them highly enough. It's hard to describe them in a way that does them justice though.

It's all written in first person from Harry's point of view, but don't let that put you off. I normally don't like that style at all, but it is done really well. The pace of the books is one to leave you breathless. You get sucked in and they are absolutely impossible to put down, each chapter leaves you wanting to know what happens next.

What it is about? Well, that is a good question. Harry is an impoverised private investigator, who also happens to be a wizard (the only one in the yellow pages, so he says). The whole magic, supernatural thing is introduced in a very believeable way. Like most series, the first few books are quite stand-alone (though of course reading them in order does make things make more sense) - but by book 11 there is a huge amount of overarching side-plots going on as well.

Weaving a complex tapestry is the phrase that comes to mind. However, even with reading one book a year there is never any problem getting back into who is who or what is what as the author does slip in little comments to jog your memory in each book. Amazingly, these little reminders never feel forced or out of place. As a writer-wannabe I truly admire the ease with which he slips in these little things to help out the memory of old readers and quickly explain stuff to newcomers.

Anyways, I guess it is back to re-reading Eddings for the fifty-eleventh time while I wait for the next Dresden paperback. At least I now have a shiny new set of the Belgariad, Malloreon, Elenium and Tamuli. (Asked for the lot for my birthday as our current copies have been so well-read they were falling to pieces.)