Friday is not equal to Tuesday

Though they do both end in Y.

Apologies to my scores of fans! I meant to post Tuesday, but after a long week of Real Work (you know - the stuff that I get paid for), I let my goal slide. But I'm making it up today. However, lack of real energy means that all I'm going to talk about today is pens, pencils, highlighters, and all sort of writing equipment. Including font.

When I was teen, I loved to type in fancy fonts. I would write entire novels in fancy colours. I would write in script so cursive that I had to squint to see what it said. But my goal was to make it beautiful no matter what. OR interesting. Or creative.

And I did the same thing with pens. One of my favorite notebooks had black paper. So I had to write in it with these colourful, merky-inked pens that made the entire thing look something like a chalkboard. Though a whole lot neater.

But nowadays, my style has changed and I find that I like writing in PERFECTLY NORMAL FONT and in PERFECTLY NORMAL COLOURS. Unless I have writers block, because then a little pink goes a long way toward encouraging me to write down some new words.

How do you like to write?

Upcoming Titles

Big news in the writing world was released today: the title of J.K Rowlings next book. Since this fits in so well with what I blogged yesterday, I knew I just had to continue. The title - for anyone who hasn't heard - is "The Casual Vacancy".
I'm thumbs down on this one. First, I had to look it up multiple times to remember what it was, which to me means it's not memorable. Second, why use a word like casual in the TITLE of a book? Casual implies laid back, slow, khakis, beige, vanilla, and worst of all B-O-R-I-N-G. And Vacancy, the second word in the title: absent, empty, void, available, unwanted, and worst of all B-L-A-N-K.
This book could have otherwise been titled The Boring Blank.
The Beige Void
Khakis Unwanted.
It doesn't sound like it is going to be interesting at all.
Now this isn't to say the book will be bad, I love J.K. Rowling's writing and I love Harry Potter - but at least Harry Potter was about something and not nothing. So, disappointment in title aside, I'm crossing my fingers and hoping that there is tangible goodness in this novel to be released in September. And I'm wishing that they decide to change the name.

And...

Titles are the worst thing. I've never been good with titles. Every time I write a story or a book, I spend minutes and minutes trying to think of the best title for it. Blog titles - a new one every week - are the worst. So let me apologize for my of creativity. I find my ideas are always to literal. For instance, I once wrote a story about a house, and I called it Uzelman's House. Because that's whose house it was. But I don't think it creates interest. And I believe titles need to perk the reader up, to make them jolt and reach for the shelf, or click on the link or tilt their head to look at words more closely. The best titles should require contemplation. Why is it called that? Where did they get that idea? Some great examples of famous titles that I love are:

The Sun Also Rises

The Tell Tale Heart

The Distant Hours

The Lord of the Rings

As I'm coming up with these I'm realizing that they all begin with "the". Now for some examples that don't begin like that:

A Hundred Years of Solitude

Lady of Mazes

Forbidden Brides of the Faceless Slaves in the Secret House of the Night of Dread Desire

Sense and Sensibility

and my favorite: Pride and Prejudice

That's and interesting one, P&P, because as most people know, Jane Austen originally titled it First Impressions. I can see why she choose that, becau

se that is almost exactly what I would have called it, since the book literally is about first impressions.

Maybe that is why the last book I completed was titled "Tales of a Redheaded Sea-Witch", because that is precisely what it's about. Below I've pasted a picture of some mock cover art I drew about a year ago. I found this picture earlier today, which is what got me thinking about titles. And now I know what I have to do: I have to quit naming things so literally, and think about names creatively.

Look what I remembered...and someone else forgot.

It's Tuesday and I'm blogging! For the first time since I've set my goal, I've met my goal. I feel that this a time for trumpets, for celebration and crumpets...wait...does anyone know what a crumpet is? (Look up - apparently a cake) Do people still eat crumpets? I'm pretty sure we don't in Canada, so maybe I will settle for an extra piece of dark chocolate instead. But still - celebration all around.

On the weekend I walked downtown to do some banking. As I was walking, I came across this pair of shoes below. I had to take a picture of them, the poor lost shoes, as I wondered just how they had gotten here, who had left them, and why. Then I began to wonder if perhaps they were magic shoes with some evil power (like the Red Shoes), only these were blue. I was tempted for a moment to take my shoes off and put these shoes on, just to see if anything were to happen. Maybe they would teleport me to Hawaii, or the large hadron collider, or the moon...that's where the fantasy's stopped: when I realized the moon has no oxygen and I would end up D-E-A-D. Where do these shoes take you?