7 Quick Takes about the 80s, Blogging, and Reviewing

It’s Friday. Let’s wipe the sweat from our brows and settle into our weekend routines after sharing our days. Hosted by Thisain’ttheLyceum: Friday’s 7 Quick Takes.

~1~

Our host Kelly did some getting-to-know-you abouts today, but there’s frankly not much I can actually add to my own factoid. I’m a Catholic convert and have been for a year now; I’m painfully shy even around my best friends; I like looking after people, particularly those affected by mental illness or broken homes; I’m interested in linguistics, with a focus on semantic and syntactical differences between age and socioeconomic status, and I can read and write decent Latin, though I am out of practise studying it academically.

It’s great to read about the steps forward people have taken, and maybe one day, I’ll be welcoming new readers onto the blog with something more like a life story and less like a link to a bunch of facts you can read on my about page.

~2~

I’ve been listening to a lot of 80s music recently. I loved the 80s: full of life and vigour and madness, particularly in those hairstyles and outfits.

Head Over Heels – Tears for Fears

I do rather like this video. It is less crazy than some 80s videos.

~3~

I found Cait G Drews’ post on Negative Reviews very interesting. Personally, I prefer reading negative reviews, as I find these are the most objective and most likely to reflect my tastes in writing styles. If I don’t like a book, it will probably be detailed in someone else’s review. We do need negative reviews as well as positive ones, but I do understand that we need that balance between the two, and not end up with “it was rubbish” ‘reviews’.

~4~

I led Creative Writing this week – call me a ‘guest speaker’, if you will – about blogging. Appropriate, even if I never intended to correspond my anniversary with the talk. We had quite a surprisingly-large turn-out, and leading actually wasn’t as hard as I had thought – much easier than leading a philosophy session at least! We got some decent discussion going about what constitutes a blog and a vlog, what should and shouldn’t be in a blog (both in terms of content and writing style), and what makes a blog interesting. The only times I really faltered was keeping my creative writing chums’ discussions in line!

~5~

In the creative seminar this week, we focused on being better Betas – better Budgens to others’ Joyces – and, of course, the discussion turned to plot and how to much such forward. As you may know, plot is something I particularly struggle with. I like the quiet novel and there is absolutely nothing wrong with that, but commercially, fiction sells if it has action, suspense, mystery… Y’know, the clichés. 😉 So, that got my mind whirring.

~6~

I did some writing. Yippee, haha, despite it not being very much:

~7~

“Humph,” replied the good doctor. “Just show me these artefacts.”

A glint from the warden’s eyes. Almost a chuckle.

“Right this way.”

He guided them into the linen tent, the long pegs of the structure digging into the dust-and-dirt. Beyond the entrance lay a tent divided in two – on one side, a stack of chairs, wooden, three legs splintered, against the external wall. The other end of the tent held the residence of the table of goods.