Fun Factoid

Fun factoid: I’m crap at commitments like this! 

I think I’m finally settling in to Basingstoke… I say settling, it’s really an awful place, but you know, needs must, and it’s pretty well located for escapes and adventures etc. so it’s not all bad.

I was meant to start a ‘Creative Drawing’ class with the local college, but it’s been cancelled due to lack of interest. I was going to make a comment about how this sums up Basers in one, but I shan’t.

Fun factoid: the internet is a bit like the postal service. 

NaNoWriMo Part Deux

Okay, so my NaNoWriMo isn’t going too well. I intend to properly catch up this weekend, but already the bite-size chunks of writing have added up to something intimidatingly large.

I’m determined to do between 50,000 and 60,000 words this month, I just need to get my head around it.

FYI, my working title is ‘Anna Gorett’. Not exciting, but I like it. And it doesn’t really make sense without reading it. Obviously.

In other news, I had a terrific bonfire night and visited Westonbirt Arboretum at the weekend. Pictures will hopefully follow, but perhaps not until I get back on the NaNoWriMo wagon.

National Novel Writing Month

National Novel Writing Month is (almost) upon us! I’ve just discovered this and I’ve decided I’m going to jump on it like an Indian commuter.

This will be my first definite foray in to the world of writing, and so if anyone has any tips, encouragement, even horror stories please share them!

I’m not sure how it’s going to go, but if anyone taking part in NaNoWriMo would like to keep tabs on my progress (and vice versa) my username is Sara C Grady. Pretty standard.

You can get involved at nanowrimo.org.

Paradise Lost

So, an absolute gem of this weekend was my trip to the Bath Book Fair. This is an annual event (though it was the first time that I’d been) and it was simply magical.

I love books, I love reading too although I don’t read that much anymore, and being surrounded by so many really old books was a little overwhelming. After flicking through a few with attractive looking spines, I headed to Richard Selby’s stall and spotted a lovely (and prettily illustrated) copy of The Water Babies (a childhood favourite!) What a treat. It’s definitely going on my Christmas list.

Then came the big guns, as it were, James Burmester has the most incredible collection of really rather old books. I skimmed along the titles of various Austens and landed on a particularly ornate Paradise Lost by John Milton. Amazing. I get a bit funny about these things… I haven’t been quite so excited about a book in a while; it was old, like, really old, and in such good condition. I was happily flicking (more like carefully turning) through its pages and then I turned back to the cover to try to find the price. Tucked in to the second page of this third edition, 1678 version of Milton’s classic was a scrap of paper with a few notes about the text jotted on, and a few numbers: £1,750.

No, thankyou.

So that little dream was over quickly. Such a shame, I do like old books.

I realise that I mentioned ‘big guns’, plural; I can’t really recall anything particularly spectacular apart from that one and a few copies of Mrs Beeton‘s almanac from John Clifford. Milton was a bit dazzling really.

Besides that little trip, we paid a visit to The Bertinet Bakery on St. Andrew‘s Terrace (the top end of Bath) and treated ourselves, or rather I was treated, to a pain au raisin and a brownie.

A Question of Dedication, Really.

Right, so I’ve been pretty awful recently.

I write these posts and I find them interesting, but I must admit, my heart isn’t in it. Sara at work is the Queen of Advice (good advice too) and she says that I should ‘be my own voice’. So true. If I want to be taken seriously as a copywriter I’m going to need to use my own voice, have my own identity and succeed by being myself and using my own ‘tone’.

Anyone can pretend to be someone else.

With this in mind, I’ve been a lot cheerier over the past few days. I feel little bit sorted for a change, I’ve been reading all of those motivational blogs for writers and I’m going to put their tips and tricks and whatnot to good use. Also, I’m going to finish at least two books a month (and not buy any more in that time).

So that’s an update of things past (also, I was in Dundee last weekend which was amazingamazingamazing), now, futurewise:

The Bath Book Festival is coming up this weekend and I’ve managed to snare a couple of free tickets (to be honest, they weren’t tricky to acquire, I just asked for one) so I’m very much looking forward to that.

I also have the whole weekend off! Whoopee! I cannot wait to waste it. All of it.

I’m hoping to have an amazingly non-shiney MacBook Pro within the next month. When I say hoping, I mean really really really really hoping (really).

I’ve just started creating our Twitter and Facebook pages at work. This is great; a project for me, something which involves advertising, and hopefully it’ll work and we’ll be superbusy around Christmas time.

So just a brief update; I’ll report back on the Book Festival at the weekend.

The Lynx Effect

So well ‘done’ that you can’t mention Lynx without thinking of this effect… nevermind the cat family from which the spray takes its name, their latest viral allows the viewer to interact (well, sort of) with the YouTube video to humorous effect.

This one popped up when I was looking at the Creative Review site earlier today, they deem it more suitable for Lynx’s ‘adolescent’ market, but I think it’s just funny. It’s nice to see an ad which isn’t just trying to sell you something; it’s being playful whilst also mocking the clichés of the target audience (a self-awareness which is comforting).
And the interviewed’s confused look at the end of the video makes it seem like he wasn’t really present during the 5738 version. ‘Lie back and think of England’, anyone?

Generally, I like the Lynx adverts. I particularly like the ‘Even Angels will Fall’ one for Excite… the soundtrack (an Air cover) has kept me humming along all summer (much to the dismay of my colleagues as I cannot sing.) The Amazon-like angels helplessly finding themselves in (ye olde) Italia are greeted by god-fearing mamas and papas as they converge on a clueless dude with, wait for it, a Vespa.

Well, it might be a Vespa, it might not, but understanding Lynx and their apparent love of a good cliché, it probably is.

I later read that BBH have a follow-on from the Angels concept; I’m not sure if and when this will be released as I haven’t seen it on TV as of yet. Regardless, it’s nice to see continuity in their adverts for a change: the other Lynx adverts that I recall are sporadic and different, the Lynx Effect being the only similarity!

Just a quick update then, but I wanted to share my thoughts on todays findings. What a great use of a day off!

Gosh/ And Another Thing

My goodness it’s been a while.

It’s not even as if I’ve been particularly busy. Well, there’s always something coming up or that needs doing, but now I’m struck by how much I miss my Dad’s telescope.

At the back/ entrance to my house/ flat there are lots of other houses, but no street lamps. This means that of an evening, you get the most wonderful view of the night sky. It’s entirely uninterrupted save for the odd bedroom light here and there. The awful orange haze from street lights is blocked out by my building and it’s so peaceful that you can stand and get quite lost in your thoughts.

The thing is though, I really want to capture how amazing my little section of sky is, but none of my cameras are quite up to the task. It’s a bit of a shame really because my attempts so far have resulted in a kind of fuzzy black picture. Which is just nonsense.

Also, I’ve temporarily renounced Facebook, and as a result my Twitter account has seen a lot more action… this is good and bad. It’s good because I feel it’s acceptable to post/ tweet all the hasty snaps that I take on my phone. Because let’s face it, an album on Facebook devoted to punny and rude signs is a little bit gauche. Thanks André Leon Talley for that one. Whereas an appearance on Twitter every now and again doesn’t seem half as bad. However, this has led to me not blogging quite as much as I would like to, and this blog itself is beginning to lose some of the quasi-structure which I began to maintain at the start of the summer. Don’t worry, I’m going to work on it.

Also, I’m popping up to Dundee soon, so that should be a hoot, though it does leave me feeling a little bit lost about Hallowe’en.

And also, I’m feeling really Christmassy already, and as I refuse to buy any presents pre-December if anyone who’s reading this is stuck for a present let me know and I can suggest things! I’m supergreat at presents for people, I’m just perpetually poor.

Also, an advertorial that I had the smallest part in helping with for work is in this months issue of The Bath Magazine… check it out. By smallest I mean tiny, but it was a great chance to see things outside my shop-shaped box.

I’ve finally finished unpacking too! Oh and have you seen the new E4 program links? Well, heard them… their frankness is astounding! What other channel could, indeed would, describe The Devil Wears Prada as Sex and The City but not Sex and The City? Excellent!