Blog-novelling

Had this idea of writing a novel on the Blog, adding not so much as a chapter a day, but a chunk a day, or thereabouts....although with Opera Alive going full-bore at the moment, writing anything is getting to be a major achievement. I've just wiped a whole screed of the writers' list emails because I just haven't had the time or energy to work my way through them. And of course I haven't heard back from InfoTech, so I can assume that Adrienne Perry wasn't excited about my latest query.

But if I was to write a 'novel' on here, even as a kind of draft version, it would sort of commit to presenting it in serial form, as though that was the final form, rather as they did in the 19th century, when Dickens and co wrote their novels as they went along - genius of course could achieve such a task.

Not on this subject at all, I've just come across a (rather badly designed in terms of colour) site called The Desertlight Journal, which focuses on the distress many men are caused through divorce, through non-access to children and so forth. Interestingly enough in their latest newsletter they mention the outrage that New Zealand lawyer Denise Ritchie caused from men's groups when she allegedly said that men should regard Father's day as a day of shame and should see it as a day to apologise for all the sex abuse of children that goes on. Her original comments aren't as provocative as subsequent responses made out. A supreme example of the ability of people to jump the gun by not reading what the person said. However, the responsees were right as well. In a sense it isn't fair that innocent men should be lumped together with those who are guilty in order to apologise for the actions of all men. This is a typical PC approach to problems: blame everyone and make everyone feel guilty. It applies across the board to the way law is now made, as well, with the innocent being forced to deal with the problems of the guilty because the law doesn't seem to be able to discriminate being right and wrong parties. It's what has happened with the Maori situation in NZ: everyone who is descended from those who were here in the 19th Century is somehow at fault for the sins of their forebears. In fact, it doesn't matter whether you had forebears here in those days; if your skin colour is not black (and of course, brown counts as black these days) then you are to blame. The Chinese even get lumped in with the whites in this approach.

I thought there might be a reference to the men's shame thing on Soapbox, but I can't see anything. Perhaps I should write up some of the thoughts above, and post them there.

Well, all this is a far cry from starting a novel...so maybe that will have to wait for another day!