My Writing Week: Issue 4, Year 5.


Hi all,

Communication problems was my theme last week.

Byline Missing From Divine Article

I had a new article posted on Divine last week. The article was about hiding my ulcerative colitis from the world. I failed to notice the article lacked a by-line. Some readers might have thought that I wanted to remain anonymous and still hid my disease. I was notified of the problem the next day and the article is now attributed to me.

I have received a number of comments on the article on the Divine site and on facebook. As a result, if I wrote the article again I would include another reason for not telling the world I had ulcerative colitis: people offering dietary and medical advice. Over the years I have come across lots of natural therapies and dietary changes that supposedly cure ulcerative colitis, none of them have worked.

A big problem with ulcerative colitis is that it comes and goes. So say it is active and I decide to try one of the various “cures”. I choose a cure of standing on one leg while singing I’m too Sexy for my Shirt. After a couple of months of no sign of the disease, I might become convinced my cure has worked. But the disease returns a couple of months later leaving me feeling slightly gullible.   

Typos in The Dervish House

In my last blog post I pointed out three typos I had seen in Ian McDonald’s novel The Dervish House. I then added a comment about a further two typos. I did not point these typos out as a complaint, just an observation. The typos have not influenced my enjoyment of the novel. I finished reading it last night and hope to post a review sometime this week.

Problems with Technology

Karl Marx was convinced chemicals were added to bread to make it go stale faster. Maybe they are. I am convinced that electronic manufacturers start sending bugs over the web to computers and printers two years after the machines are first used. These bugs eventually cause so many problems that a consumer gives up and buys a new machine.

The first two IBM second-hand computers I bought lasted five and seven years respectively. The current Compaq began acting up about a month after its two year warranty ended. I doubled its Ram memory and the computer behaved for about seven months. But now it keeps having start-up problems.

The first printer I bought lasted over seven years. The last two, including the one I destroyed in a fit of rage last week, lasted about two years each before they started acting up.

So Hewlett Packard and Cannon, I am aware of what you are doing.  

My Novel Writing

My printer and discussions about my article and blog post, took up a lot of writing time last week. As a result, I added the least weekly amount of words to my novel since I started writing it at the beginning of November: a paltry 1300 words.

This week has not started any better. My computer decided to have start-up problems this morning. A blue screen said something about a corrupt file. As requested, I did yet another restore, the third in two weeks.

And the cricket starts tomorrow. And it’s My Birthday on Wednesday. And then Australia Day on Thursday. And I have to spray the fruit with malathion on Saturday…

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