Bricks and Bracken

I'm going to be spending less time at paid work and more time at unpaid work (ie writing fiction ie "the novel") in the coming weeks and months, which means I'm going to be listening to a lot more music and getting tired of the same old stuff on my hard drive and seeking out new and exciting albums that I can kinda sorta ignore as I create a fictional masterpiece (and write insanely long sentences).

But until then, I will settle for going on brief kicks with old bands I haven't listened to in a while and find pleasingly good upon re-listening, a la The Proximity Effect, On Avery Island, Grind...

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As if on queue, Richard Ford has a piece in the Guardian about "The Writing Life". He nicely sums up the pros of being a writer:

[You] run your own operation; you have at least a chance to admire what you do and feel a kinship with the greats; you get to make excellent use (by sticking it in your work) of the constant flood of life's jetsam – the daily freshet that drives most people crazy; and you have a chance to please total strangers with your efforts, and at least potentially, marginally make the world a better place.

Okay, so in isolation that sounds quite schmaltzy.

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Non sequitur of the week: I think Bricks and Bracken would be a good name for a law firm. Or a crime fighting duo (did Thomas Bracken, who penned God Defend New Zealand have superpowers? Probably not, if he was expecting God to step in and save the country when saving was called for).

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Frances Mountier has a short story, 'Bailout', online at Renegade House... WITH PICTURES. I was the external assessor for Frances' MA manuscript in 2009 ('twas a book of short stories) and it's nice to see this story come to life, so to speak.

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If you're in Wellington and you're looking for a younger-crowd book club OR you wanna hear me talk about myself (rather than just reading what I write about myself here...) you should come along to the Capri Bar Eatery next Tuesday, 10 May, at 6pm. Details here.

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Something I didn't know until I started taking photos of birds:

A flock of starlings looks like this...

But at any one point, there'll be birds that look like a pair of lips...