my writing week 2(30)

Hi all,

The only way I will meet this month's deadline is if aliens abduct me and my computer and zoom me off at light speed, slowing time outside the ship. Then, after deciding I was not the threat I appeared to be, returning me at the end of the week. But I would probably spend all my time trying to get onto facebook, myspace and twitter.

I am two-thirds of the way through editing chapter seven of Stalking Tigers. I had planned to be at the end of chapter nine by now. Bloody tax office: it was all their fault. I spent over an hour on the phone to one of their customer service people. She didn't have a clue, and then passed me onto a tech person who seemed to be be reading from the same manual: our clients are morons, treat them as such. All I wanted to do was put in a tax deduction for a work related course I had done, but stupid Etax wouldn't let me. So I kept on fiddling and wasting time, all for a tax saving of $15 or so (the deduction was for $85). Aliens should abduct them, they're the real threat. I should know, I've worked for the ATO.

I critiqued a story. Yaaa me. It was an okay story, but had a convoluted twist at the end where the main character suddenly did something without there being any clues to her motivation for doing it. You can have twists, but they have to make sense, like in the movie Drag Me To Hell, which had a coin/button in the envelope to explain it. I should have seen it coming.

I didn't have time to write my final post on the Emerging Writer's Festival, hopefully I will have post it on Thursday.

The Melbourne Writer's Festival guide appeared in the Age a week or so ago. It was sub-titled: War meets Humour, Mystery meets Sci-fi..., so I hoped for a few science fiction sessions, but all I found, after wasting my time trawling though its 27 pages, was one session with the only science fiction writer mentioned, who wouldn't even be there in person: China Melville interviewed via satellite. Woowee. I am not going.

Graham.