My writing week 3 (50)

Hi all,

I spent more time writing last week than I have for months. Most of my energy went towards an article I was writing for Divine online magazine. I really earned my money this time, because I changed and edited it at least 20 times. I finally emailed it to the editor this morning.

I managed to spend some time on my novella, getting it a few sentences, I hope, from the end. I have the final line, I just have to fill in a few words to get there. It has taken me way too long to write its 21,000 words.

My new Kindle arrived. I have used it for two days and it still works. Amazon are a fabulous company and they deserve to totally dominate the world publishing industry. Hopefully that raises the karma quota between me and them.

A courier just left with the broken one. I must have telekinetically caused something to go wrong with it because I kept the box it came in, in case I had to return it. I was lucky my mind caused it to malfunction within the 90 day warranty period. Maybe I just wanted to interact with the excellent customer service staff at Amazon.

I forgot to mention that a couple of weeks ago I read that Christos Tsiolkas, author of the much awarded Australian literary novel The Slap, recently re-read Couples, by John Updike. In my review of The Slap, on Goodreads, I had mentioned how similar it was to Couples. They were written 50 years apart, but both are about the hopelessly compromised and unsatisfied lives of the middle class.

Just read in The Age that book sales are down as much as 10% for this Christmas in Australia. The article reckons it is because of a general lack of spending and not Amazon.

To those who are inclined, hope you have a good holiday season and that you give and receive many books purchased from Amazon. I also hope the teenager next door gets a set of headphones for his ipod, from Amazon, and uses them. If not, my news year’s resolutions may focus around encouraging him to move out of the garage and live somewhere else. Perhaps the Amazon customer service officers might have some ideas.

Seriously, how many times can a teenager listen to the same CD full of doff doff doff? Evidentially hundreds. Over and over and over again. Someone should give him a book, purchased from Amazon.

Graham.

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