I’ve just written the end scene of my book. The last scene on the last page of the last book of the trilogy… probably.

Oh well, only two and a half books to go before I join it up with the completed section. If only I could focus on actually completing the first part of the story, there’s an outside chance I might finish a whole novel before the Muffin pops… probably…

Then again, I’m a great believer in writing the stuff that “wants” to be written first… and the other one… “Nothing in plumbing is forced. Neither is writing.” In other words, if you can’t write the bit where you are, write a bit where you aren’t… and unless I have to rewrite it, it’ll save me a job later…

Probably…

Mmm, red letter day today, time for our huge hairy cat, Chewbacca, to have his shots. I book him in for 10am so he can go out have a quick patrol of the parameters and then when he comes back to sit on my lap and purr from about 9 onwards I can lock the cat flap and stuff him into his box before he knows what’s hit him.

Good plan huh?

Yes.

Except as usual, the wheels fall off.

He goes out at the usual time and that is when we realise that our neighbours, either side, have clubbed together to have new TV ariels fitted at the same time. Their gardens - and ours - are full of strange men, friendly but strange nonetheless. There are power tools, noises and smells which do not compute and Chewie does a bunk.

Bollocks.

I wait until he is too late for me to make the appointment before ringing the vet to cancel. Within seconds he is at my side, chirruping merrily.

Git.

I ring the vet and explain he has just turned up. They agree I can be late.

Phew.

Once in the surgery, I open the box. He is sitting with his back to me, sulking. I up end the box and without changing position he slowly slides to the bottom. Finally he is weighed, checked and (hoorah) the vet administers a worming tablet. He is now asleep, upside down, where he shouldn’t be but I will allow him to spend the morning there, to make up for the trauma!

On a completely different note, I have found an interesting website. It’s one of these write stuff and earn rewards sites.

If any of you are up on this kind of thing you’ll know what I’m about, if not it’s places like epinions, ciao or dooyoo where you write product reviews in return for points.

The points add up and if you’re lucky after about… ooooh… ten years or so? You earn enough to redeem them for a £5 Amazon voucher. However for all the sweat blood for bugger all aspect (actually you can earn a good living off them but only if you treat it like a job, submit something every day and read practically everything else which appears so people find out who you are and begin to read your stuff) they have their uses.

Many years go I went to a book signing. I told the writer, Terry Pratchett, that I wanted to write a novel but that it wasn’t going very well because what was in my head was very detailed and somehow I just couldn’t do it justice, on paper.

I asked if he could give me some advice. He said I should just write stuff. Write something every day, write letters, e-mails or write about how I can’t think of anything to write. He said that if I did that long enough, I’d learn to drop the details in, in passing, by instinct and it would all come together. He’s dead right. It hasn’t come together quite yet but it’s improved enough to prove that yes, practice helps.

Anyway, as a writer, before I started writing this blog, I used to write reviews for review sites on the grounds that for those days where I couldn’t think of anything to write, I could pick something to review from their ready made categories and earn a very small amount of money for following Terry’s advice.

I still do this when I’m short of inspiration and then I submit the results to as many article and review sites as I can. In my view, since I’ve written the stuff anyway, I may as well get as many pennies for it as I can, they all add up eventually and/or give me another link to ingratiate me with those nice people at Google.

So, recently, I’ve found this site called Quassia which does pretty much this but it also follows the trend of article sites - you publish lots of articles with links to more information on your own site and it counts as an incoming link andGoogle loves you and yada, yada, yada.

Well, because it’s new, Quassia pays you more points than many other sites. Interestingly, it’s entirely geared to website promotion so you sign up add a website you want people to visit and then go about the process of earning points. The more points you earn the more your site is promoted - a bit like paid listings on Google, only sliding scale, the more you “earn” the higher your link is placed. You can also affiliate an adsense account with your area on the site - which seemed quite a good idea to me.

So… You get credits (they call them Quasia dollars but since they’re points and are not a financial thing, I prefer to call them credits) if…

• you tell someone else about it and they join.
• you write an article, yourself, points vary depending on whether the work is original to you, published for the first time on Quasia or elsewhere and how well it gets rated by other users.
• you look at new articles or “screeng intels” as they, rather pretentiously, call it, written by others and rating them on a quality level A - Outstanding, B - Good job, C - Decent enough, D - Below average, E - Awful or even F - Fail [Reject] although you can fail articles which are not in English, incomprehensible, about Quassia itself or pornographic.
• further units if your rating is the same as the majority
• further units if you are the first person to read and rate an article.
• Any article you submit has to be rated by 10 other people before it goes live.

When you’re rating other people’s work, you get extra credits for being the first to read it and if your rating agrees with the majority you also get bonus credits. I’ve managed double credits for most of the articles I’ve “screened” ie read and rated.

What’s on there? So far I’ve read some interesting recipes, some pretty good SEO and web editing hints and some absolutely AWFUL lyrics and poetry! I got 100 credits for submitting a bread recipe… which was nice, especially when I guess the nearest comparable site would be, DooYoo which gives you a mere 50 points for submitting an article - 50 points which have usually expired before I have earned the minimum redeemable points allowance.
In summary, it seemed like a good place to put soundbites, like yesterday’s thing about cats and static, it seemed like a good place for me to dump writing and earn something useful - optimisation (however little of it) for my business website in the form of links - I doubt I’ll do it enough to get actual promotional value - but if, like me, you have more than one blog or website to promote, it has a handy extra of allowing you to add as many sites as you like, so long as they belong to you.

I’ve no idea if it will work but it will be another useful thing to keep me writing a times like now, when inspiration is thin on the ground and it seems I can earn about 100 credits with absolutely no hassle from rating new articles as they appear. I just stuck the site up in a background window, go there sporadically, refresh the page and then read and rate the two or three new intels which have appeared.

I’ll let you know more when I’ve managed to link it up to my adsense account - which I stupidly linked with this site before I realised adsense on WordPress is verboten.

Still, I know some of you are quite active promoting your blogs (or at least, it looks like it to me although that might just be because I’m comparing your efforts with mine and I do, frankly, bugger all to promote this blog) so I thought the odd one of my readers might be interested. If you are and you want to join then if you go in via my page here I get some credits which would be very nice.

Oh yeh and a word of warning… they don’t respond to my kind of humour very well!  I don’t think I’ll be earning huge amounts of points for any of my material.  After explaining that kneading bread with nail varnish or false nails was a no-no I got, and I quote “Very interesting but lost my attention with the false nails part…yuck!“

I’ve been looking at my tags… you know, clicking and seeing what other blogs come up. I reckoned that, second to having a beaky at other people’s comments and dropping in on any blogs belonging to the witty ones, this would be an excellent way to find like minded blogs from like minded looners.

It’s not.

Nobody thinks the way I do. My tags - and categories, are almost universally unique. Even the (I thought) ubiquitous “general wittering” only has one other taker.

So. Tags in common with the rest of the world? Bugger all. Oh dear. Hmm… not sure whether to be proud or annoyed.

Never mind, I have finally got around to publishing a poem on Triond… if people visit it will earn me tenths of pence! Anyway, have a butchers if you like… here’s the link. If you like it and you know how to digg/technorati/stumble upon it, please feel free! Otherwise… enjoy!

Incidentally… if you click on the name attributed to the poem, you get my blurb with a picture of some completely unrelated woman in a hat who I’ve never seen before in my life!  Interesting.

I have fluked it a bit, today. I was meant to book a blood test for today or during the next 3 days which means I should have rung the surgery last week.

Needless to say I forgot and it was only because I was looking through my huge National Health pregnant lady’s folder, this morning, to find out what week I was supposed to book my Midwife’s appointment that I realised I was supposed to have it today.

Even so, somebody up there is obviously smiling on me because they had a cancellation for 12 o’clock which means I’m off the hook and despite being CFC* and generally cack I got to have them today, when I was supposed to, anyway! Mwa ha ha haaragh!

This was quite good for me. You see, I’ve been a bit down. I guess partly because I’ve been coming to terms with the fact that I’ve not made any money through my art, not sold any cards and that the shops that have taken them in town - plenty - are not selling them either. That the first novel in my trilogy, though nearly complete, is unlikely to make me the next JK Rowling and that, basically, I’m not going to make millions through any of my artistic talents, allowing my husband to give up his hateful, high stress, 24 hour a day, why won’t the fuckers ever leave us alone? job.

In other words, I can’t produce my cards for the kind of money people are prepared to pay - about £2.50 a pop or at least, not if I want to do it at anything over cost (25p a card). There is a market, I know there is a market because I canvassed a lot of people from all walks, ages and sizes of life and they all said they’d buy them if they saw them for sale. They’re not the famously tight East Anglian in the street, though and the only access I have to them is on-line… so I have 5o packs of Christmas Cards in my local shops, not selling and 200 packs here at home which I am spectacularly failing to sell as well.

Ah…

Worse, not only does every fucker I talk to suggest I submit to Phoenix, who persistently tell me to sod off, but Phoenix works kind of like tupperware, kleeneze or the like in that they don’t sell in shops but through a network of agents who sell their cards at charity bazaars, schools or through coffee mornings at home. The net result being that not only do they not like my designs but when I find out about school fetes, church sales, bazaars etc the lady from Phoenix has always already booked and I am therefore barred on the “we only allow one card seller and it’s the lady from Phoenix” rule. Grrrr! For fuck’s sake!

Then something happens like this morning and I realise that I do have a special kind of luck. Ok, so unlike one of my sisters in-law, I’m not the kind of person who can write a book and meet a publisher at a dinner party the day I finish who thinks it’s so fantastic from my description, alone, that they swear to find me a children’s book deal on the spot - and I never will be that much of a jammy bastard (more’s the pity but I’m feeling this one particularly keenly at the moment having fallen foul bloody Phoenix again, only by a different route).

Then again I am able to sail through life, completely disorganised and inefficient, without nearly as many cock ups as there should be, including a number of things which I forgot about when I was at work which, if they’d turned out the way they should have, would have undoubtedly resulted in my getting the sack long before I was made redundant.

Throughout school, one of the few things I never got into do-do for - and trust me, my mere existence was enough to get me into do-do with many of my teachers - was forgetting to do my homework. Yes, ok so I had untidy handwriting which meant I would never get an A (because at school neatness and presentation is always more important than getting the right answer - just as being tidily dressed allows you to be the shittiest little bully on earth, make the lives of countless others a complete misery and still end up a prefect - not that I’m bitter and twisted or anything oops, put the baggage away BC, where was I? Oh yes…) I could tell the teacher I forgot and they would not only believe me but let it go so long as I did the work in lunch hour or by the next day. This when others would wind up in deepest, darkest poop.

So although I’m feeling a little disheartened because I have had to accept that I’m not going to earn my fortune doing things I’m good at because I’m too shit at selling them, completely lack any market analysis skills and don’t have the kind of luck required, either. Although, I’ve had to accept that my career is never going to be anything more than a hobby and that my priority is going to have to be all the things I loathe but do for love; housework, dusting, cleaning making the place tidy… more to the point, things I’m REALLY super-shit at. In the long run, I’m sure this stealthy, almost unnoticeable jamminess is a useful skill which counts for something…

Mr BC will be stuck in his job until he is 60 and there is nothing I can do to save him, all I can do is offer my crap support and keep up my hobbies of writing and drawing when I have time in the hope they’ll save me from becoming super-boring. The fact I fear this, worry I won’t measure up probably makes me super-selfish… Mr BC clearly has no such worries so at least that’s reassuring.

So… I guess I’ll just put my faith in the amazing properties of stealth jam and hope… oh yes… and tell myself it’ll get easier when I am not pregnant, with my hormones all shook up!

* CFC: Completely Fucking Crap!

Addendum: If you are pregnant, I suspect you will feel your own version of this at some point… I’m sure it’s exactly the same for me as it is for everyone else! If you are pregnant and actually ARE feeling like this right now… well… at least you know you’re not alone.

Last night Mr BC and I are watching TV after dinner when the cat walks in. Being long haired he sometimes sits up on his hind legs and kind of shakes, to get all those long strands comfortable. It might be a vanity thing. The cat version of the way women in adverts for hair care products are pathologically unable to keep their heads still. He walks under the coffee table and decides this is the perfect place to stand up and shake down. There is a loud bong as he smacks his head on the glass above him and he walks away nonchalantly, trying to pretend nothing embarrassing has happened.

Mr BC and I chuckle.

I am sick as a dog today but I haven’t been to my belly dancing class for about 5 weeks so I really have to drag myself down there. Only a couple to go though, I reckon. I’ll need to cook a chilli first. Mr BC is so overloaded with work and it’s not fair othewise…

On the upside, the novel is going well. I have one scene pretty much in my head ready to write down but it’s the preceding one I have been working on today. It has gone very much better than I expected. I thought the other one would get in the way. Lots to go, it’s a big key scene so I have to do it right. I’ve really enjoyed writing it though. Even better, the writers group is round tomorrow so I’ll have something new to read. Smashing.

I also have a couple of art commissions, one cobbled together from library images the second a full on 7 letter name. I may have to try and get that on A4 though because the sister’s is and a bigger pic for brother would not be tactful, I fear.

So… it’s all go.