Thought-provoking stuff I’ve seen around but didn’t blog till today:

A sticker seen on a jeans ad that doesn’t look like it’s selling jeans at all. You know the kind of ad I mean: supermodel leaning forward, lots of skin, pouty shiny lips, the half-closed come-hither eyes… jeans? What jeans?

I was impressed. Some sort of sticker-wielding vigilante had slapped this, bold unadorned black text on a white background, right across the image. It was gone the next day. I hope enough people saw it; I hope the vigilante hits many other ads. Even more, I hope people get the message.

This is the sub-header on a blog I tripped across (sorry, no, I didn’t take down the URL, duh):

It made me think about how we self-censor as we blog, how we (some consciously, some unconsciously) take the time to choose the exact words we want used to describe our lives, our beliefs, our thoughts. It’s all about how you paint an image. It’s all about audience, and our sense of self. It’s about communication.

(Inter)National Novel Writing Month. 50 000 words in 30 days.

Hmm.

Art for art’s sake does wonderful things to you. It makes you laugh. It makes you cry. It makes you want to take naps and go places wearing funny pants. Doing something just for the hell of it is a wonderful antidote to all the chores and “must-dos” of daily life. Writing a novel in a month is both exhilarating and stupid, and we would all do well to invite a little more spontaneous stupidity into our lives.

It sounds like a heck of a lot of fun. Insane, yes, but fun.

The other reason we do NaNoWriMo is because the glow from making big, messy art, and watching others make big, messy art, lasts for a long, long time. The act of sustained creation does bizarre, wonderful things to you. It changes the way you read. And changes, a little bit, your sense of self. We like that.

I’d cheerfully throw myself into it, except… well… then I’d have to put aside the Great Canadian Novel for a whole month. And I really don’t want to do that, because as we all know, putting something aside means the likelihood of getting back to it decreases dramatically.

I could always write two novels concurrently, I suppose.

I am insane.

November is such a dreary month, though, with no holidays, dark skies, and chill and damp and depression. Naming it National Novel Writing Month is a great way to make it special. (Even more special that our annual November Sucks party.) I have no commitments in November, no holidays planned… nothng to get in the way.

I’d have to have a really good idea to start off with, before November begins. I’ve kind of had a young adult story kicking around in the back of my mind since I began the Great Canadian Novel, but it’s still nebulous. I’d have a couple of weeks to clarify it, though.

I think what attracts me about this project is that fact that it’s pure personal discipline. You aim for word count; you aim for doing it, pure and simple. No one reads it; no one evaluates it; it’s yours. You do it for the joy of writing. And to stick your tongue out at the omnipresent Internal Editor that criticises your choice of word, your attempts at style and tone.

And, face it; it’s insane. It’s a personal kind of insane, though, not the rifleman-in-the-clock-tower kind of insane. A glorious way to treat your inner child. Let’s write laughably awful yet lengthy prose together says the home page.

This requires serious thought.

Three days until the special edition of Beauty and the Beast comes out on DVD! (Home theatre – it’s the way to go, honestly!)

Hmm. From the small flurry of concerned e-mails that landed in my in-box this morning, I appear to have mis-communicated my feelings in my entry on stress yesterday.

No, I’m not currently stressed (well, except about the bath thing no longer being relaxing); I’m just sympathising with Kate about her general stressed-ness, because I’ve been there, and been there often. Although I’ve had a nasty sinus headache for three days now, which I am dealing with by taking Excedrin Extra-Strength and using lavender oil; thank you for asking.

Work proceeds apace on the Hallowe’en costume. I dug out the pattern again to create a second layer, kit-bashed a bit more, and came up with an ingenious way to attach it to the first layer. I’m a better sewing engineer than I thought! We took pictures of the costume last night so that I will have a record of how good it looked before I sink my nice shiny shears into it. You know, in case my idea doesn’t work. It will, of course. I’m just covering all my bases.

However, I’m on the verge of running out of thread, which amazes me since I bought two spools at the outset to be extra-sure I’d have enough. This makes me wonder how long I’ve actually spent on the outfit so far, and after calculation I’ve come up with the following:

Eep! And I still have a few to go, including embroidery and those two slashes. I didn’t factor in shopping time (of which Ceri and I invested a few hours) or the anticipated time to be spent tracking down the right colour of hose, embroidery thread, and other little finishing touches. (I can always dye them – hmm.)

Hallowe’en party/due date for costume: 24 days, and counting. Go me!

Joy, joy, joy!

I’ve been increasingly frustrated with my mouse lately – it catches, horizontal movement is jerky, vertical motion is sketchy at best, and so forth. I’ve taken it apart, I’ve cleaned it, I’ve tried different rolling surfaces… nothing works. It’s also very flat, which causes me to hold my wrist is a rather “broken” fashion.

Today, while surfing, I nearly smashed the ruddy thing – is it too much to ask that a mouse, I don’t know, mouse correctly?

Then I remembered that in my laptop case o’goodies that MLG gave me a few months ago, there was a mouse. A useful addition when you get fed up with the little button that the laptop has for mouse movement, or if your hands are the size of my husband’s, for example, as opposed to my own tiny fingers. I tend to use keyboard commands while working with the laptop, so the little button isn’t a problem.

I dug it out. I plugged it in.

Glory! Will you look at that! Smooth pointer movement; a nice arch to the hand-rest; and a gentle click (so quiet, in fact, that I can barely tell I’ve selected something). No more mouse-abuse on my desk!

Marc, I so owe you. Are you keeping track?

While my husband and I were out and about on Sunday, we stopped in at a Renaud Bray bookshop, where I should never, never go because among other cool stock they sell many blank books and pens and inks.

I browsed through the bottles of ink and debated buying a jar of copper-coloured ink and a jar of chestnut ink, which, I reasoned, was a different shade of brown than I had at home already so I might be able to justify buying it. And then, I looked down at the dip pens.

I have dip pens. My mother-in-law bought me a lovely dip pen ensemble of nibs and a wooden nib holder a Christmas or two ago, and on top of that I have older nib holders and nibs that my father passed along to me.

These, however, were works of art. Stained wooden nib holders turned on a lathe and shaped with knobs and ripples. Metal nib holders of brushed steel. Painted wooden holders with metal ends.

I was deciding between the brushed metal and the knobbly wood when my eyes dropped even lower to the kits on the bottom shelf. And there, in a kit with three nibs and a bottle of ink, was the most Victorian nib holder I�ve ever seen. Long, narrow, with scrolls of flowers and vines inset into the middle. It�s exactly the style I�d always envisioned using. I�ve wanted a metal pen for ages � something about the weight, I think. They�re narrower than the wood holders, too.

I bought it.

I love it.

It�s the best-weighted pen I�ve ever used. And the nibs are dreamy and smooth, unlike all my others which are scratchy. I wish it had come with black ink, but I�ll use the blue. (I already have a bottle of black and a bottle of blue� I prefer black, that�s all, and I�d have used it up sooner.)

Someday, I�ll use my lovely swirled glass inkwell for ink instead of storing my extra nibs, too, but then I�ll have to find another place to store my nibs. Maybe I�ll look in flea markets and antique fairs and start collecting inkwells. That would be nice and eccentric.

So I have lovely new pen, and wonderful nibs, and a little stack of blank books� and nothing to put in them. I feel awkward about blank books; I don�t want to ruin them. If I were composing the Great Canadian Novel longhand, I�d use one, but it�s directly to the laptop. Perhaps I�ll begin by copying my favourite poetry or something, although copying bores me after the novelty of spacing things out and making my handwriting as attractive as possible wears off, and the goal becomes getting it done instead. Mistakes creep in; I get frustrated; the project gets put on hold or abandoned.

In the meantime, I have scrap paper, and I�m writing out the alphabet in as many different scripts as I can remember, in different colours. I�m making my �to-do� lists in lovely coloured ink and flowing cursive. Looks like I�ll have to go back for those copper and chestnut-coloured inks� I enjoy the consistency of these Aladine inks much more than the two Windsor & Newton inks that I have already. And I need a green, to balance out all the black and blue that I have.

If you�re as in love with dip pens as I am, you have to check this site out. Swoon!