Feeling yuck (by sarah)

Hmmm Christmas plus birthday plus accidentle ingestion of cows milk has resulted in me loosing wieght a bit too quickly once again, ulcers bleeding and I think its even managed to act up the arthritis - can arthritis be an allergic reaction too food? I am once again suffering the mild affects of anemia as well - with nose bleeds, blurred visoun, palpatations and the like.

I think its time for another trip to the doctors as things are obviously complicated by the pain killers I am taking etc...

Of course it could all be stress...

Yesturday I ended up in bed alot and so am feeling that I have achieved very little. Sorry to be winging yet agian but I thought I should explain why I haven't/wont be making it to alot of stuff in the next week. (Sunil I am really really sorry about your birthday).

Soya Stupidity (by sarah)

Currently suffering from having drunk cows milk in abundance I recalled that I wanted to write about what I think of as Soya Stupidity.

Now I tend to order drinks with soya milk when out becuase the chances of them having goats milk is remote and the only other non-diary option they normally offer is Rice Milk which I really can't stand (Jean loves the stuff). To my utter astonishment I have ended up with drinks made with soya with cream ontop :/ For me this completely defeats the point, but several times now in different coffee shops I have been told that poeple generally do want the cream and they have been shouted at for assuming that the person doesn't want the cream. They get shouted out far less just adding the cream unless you specifically say you dont want it.

This seems bizar to me as all the reasons I can think off for using soya milk would seem to me to render the use of cream a bad thing - to wit:

• You are vegan and therefore do not consume any animal products including cream.
• You have a food intolerance or other health problem that means diary products make you sick - this would I'd have thought made the cream probably worse for you than just having the drink made with cows milk without the cream?
• You are watching your diet either for weight lose or something like cholesterol control - again this would all surelly be voided by the presance of the cream

The only thing I can think of is that some people prefer the taste of soya milk but still like cream - personally I hat the taste of cream unless it is the pretend foam stuff in squirty cans and was always disappointed when things turned out to have real whipped cream on them.

It is an odd situation I feel.

Feast Meeting and where it may lead (by sarah)

So tonight I sat in the AGM of the Village Feast Commity - they organise the deer roast in the summer and the blues night ect... that we have unceromoneously dragged people too 😉

The out come of this? I want to make a website containing the history of the village feast as we have just been given a second archive in two years including programmes and stuff, I think I have possibly been press ganged into a chior and an art class - Sarah looks at her busy life and think - hmmmmm....

Still the choir would share weeks with the writting class which would be cool as it wouldn't mean giving up yet another night, it is gaspel choir and I am still a bit in two minds about it all. I really miss singing but I dont really like sticking to one type of singing. The actual village choir is very very coral and a gospel choir I assume just does gospel? I really miss the Haverning Youth Choir with its diversity from Magrigals to african chants, through in a bit of jazz and folk and I'm almost happy - well as long as I have access to my guitar and my Tori Amos music book not to mention the Nivana one. These choirs dont cost anything to belong to which is a bonus - I am a bit nervous of making commitements on Tuesday and Thursday nights as I am hoping to go back to college and they are the nights of the actual lectures you have to attend.

The art class you do have to pay for but is actually held in the farm just up the hill from us, it is a course rather than a perminant thing but the financial cost has me umming and ahhing at the moment.

Oh for a time dialation machine and a money press :/

Failure to Write Fantasy (by sarah)

Sorry to be writing about writing again :/

I wouldn't mind but its not even like I am a proper writer I've only ever had poems published - they seem really easy to get published for me bizarlly and I dont even like poetry :/

Anyway, I have been trying to write some fantasy and failing miserably, I always start off fine with dragons or fairys or witches, monsters that lerk and then at some point - generally during about the thrird chapter I suddenly realise that what I have described is gentic engerneering, a world with different physical constants or nanotech by a different name. It doesn't matter what I dream up there ends up being some scientific explaination.

I think this is becuase for me a story has to hold together and that means the world, realm, universe, or where ever else it is based has to hold together logically. Everything in that world has to obey the same rules or subsets of otherwise the story becomes laughable. Those rules may be vastly different from those that govern the 'real world' but they have to be consistant through out or if they do change they change in a consistant way.

To me though once you realise this all you are doing is making worlds with slightly different physical constants or different amounts of elelments or some such and then I find that though on the surface the story looks like fantasy it has become scifi suffering from the problems all my attempts at scifi have as I make tables of what does what and why.

As a result of this and the scifi problem I have far far too many stories started, some quiet far through. I wonder sometimes if I'll ever finish any of them - n the plus side if I do start finishing them I'll have lots of finished books all at the same time :/

Ella's efforts during Write a noval Mounth have made me think that perhapse I am being a bit too pick nicky but I cant help it and most of all I want the sort of stories i want to read - this is more important to me than being published. I just wish I could actually settle to these stories rather than writing all this silly Romance :/

Writing Style (by sarah)

Having writen yesturdays post I felt I should write this post which I have been meaning to do for awhile.

I get told at writing groups anf clsses that I've been too that I have a distinctive style, Alaric had reackoned that it was bordering on Cyber punk and has therefore been steadily giving me books such as Nueromancer and Snow Crash to read. And yes it was close to my style but not quiet write, the dark intensity still wasn't there, I have to try and water the intensity down if I want the story to be a noval. People kept telling me that I had such a unique and strong style. I felt that I had seen it somewhere else but couldn't quiet place it.

I then thought it was time I got through my back log of books I'd been meaning to read for ages. Amoungst these books was one of those old thine penguine books that my friend had given me after seeing me hungrily devour Forty-Nine Steps on our last field trip - I had finished my book and several other peoples as my back had gone so had to be stuck in the coach whilst everybody else was crawling over rock faces. I'd picked up the slim orange book in the youth hostel and read it avidly.

This book was green and was called The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler and I opened it and my writing voice, my 'unique' style echoed back off the page at me. Thinking I was perhapse being arrogant I took it too Alaric and he agreed this was my writing style though without the scifi horror content.

So why was my style so cyberpunky? When it was obviously based on all those old black and white films I used to watch with my Grandmother on a Sunday afternoon? Films with Humphry Bogart in, one of which turned out to be the very book I was reading.

A quick trip to wikipedia solved the mystery : cyber punk was trying to emulate the style of these books, and some how I had come up with this concept all by myself having been brought up on classic scifi and Anne McCaffery I had no concept that the genre I was trying to write had been around for awhile and felt lost and duanted in the vastness that it possed but now it is populated by other authors who I can go and read (I will shoot anyone who comments that that should be whom - ok!).

The style of The Big Sleep was I feel a little to intense but that was fine becuase it was a slim volume which ment that it wasn't too exhorsting to read but I think for the sort of size novels you get at the moment it would be too heavy.

Another thing that I have discovered is that I can emmulate styles very easily much to the suprise of the writing group who had assumed I was 'stuck' writting the same sort of stuff. One of the excersises they do is to give you the first line or sometimes paragraph of a book and you continue it for ten minutes. I even had them confused with one of these excersises as even those who had read the book had trouble deciding if mine was the original or not - and I had no idea what the story was actually about! I think it was called 'a metamorphosis' or something like that. The story had a natural feel to me and I followed where it lead which scarily produced something so close to the origonal as to be almost indistiguishable. This supports my current theory that the stories have a shape they want to be and that I am just moulding them - I have this when I'm carving or making things with fimo too - they want to be a certain thing I am just helping them to be that shape.

It makes no logical scense thats just how it feels to me when I fall through the page or paint or do maths (yes I know thats a weired mix).