Hello again.

The most exciting news from my little world at the moment is that I have myself a new printer, which does a couple of things my old printer did not do, the most of important of which is that it prints things out for me.

I know! How novel.

So that means I've been writing more things, on account of how I can print them out. Now I have no excuse for not getting to that next phase and redrafting everything within an inch of its life. I have also been reading the book that I purchased in order to avoid reading Crime and Punishment , which means I now have to read Crime and Punishment , which I am sure will be excellent, but there's something about reading classic literature that makes me kind of dread the experience (having said that, I have enjoyed almost every "classic" work of literature I've read, pretty much without exception, so what all of this says about me I'm not sure. Possibly that I'm an idiot).

By the way, I would like to congratulate the second sentence in that last paragraph for its recent nomination in the Longest Sentence of the Year Awards. Richly deserved.

The book I've just finished, Blue Water , by A. Manette Ansay, was so different from Read This and Tell Me What It Says (her short story collection), and Vinegar Hill (the only other novel of hers that I've read) that I almost wondered if she was a different A. Manette Ansay from the one who came to our Boston College writing class and spoke gruffly about what made her a writer. I had thought then that she was a hero for the writer who just writes because she always wanted to. She didn't seem to be trying to match her work to a structural formula, and was quite happy to write about the tiny details and skip the big themes of life and death and love and whether or not forgiveness is possible in a small town (all of which are covered in this recent book). In fact, I think I had transformed Ansay - in my head - into a casually misanthropic, accidentally cutting-edge "fringe" writer. But, since being selected for Oprah's Book Club (having her print circulation multiply many tens of times over), she could hardly match that description and still be selling as many books as she is.

It's funny how an author can be mistaken for a genre. You read one book and you expect them all to be the same. I often find this confusing myself, when I write. I write something quite unlike something I've written before (which is necessary for my own sanity) and I find myself missing the "old" writing - trying to crowbar some of it in between the cracks of the new stuff. 'Tis a merry dance, this writing caper. I don't know why everyone isn't doing it.

Also, isn't behooved an excellent word?

Definition according to dictionary.com: to be necessary or proper for. eg: "It behooves you at least to try".

I think that last sentence alone - "it behooves you at least to try" - could form the sturdy basis for a character. Probably a British one.

Geraldine: But Boris, it just isn't possible. I mean, I've -

Boris: Oh for heavens sakes Geraldine. It behooves you at least to try.

(Boris storms out, in the direction of the Parlour room. Geraldine looks bereft and stares blankly through the bay windows).

In The Weekend Australian this weekend, there is a full page advertisement in the glossy weekend magazine. The advertisement is "An Australian Government Promotion". Its purpose is to encourage eligible persons living in Australia to apply for Australian citizenship "so they can fully participate in this great nation of ours" (to quote Andrew Robb, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Immigration and Multicultural Affairs).

The hook? "Australia's spirit and beauty prompted the 2003 Nobel Literature Laureate, John M. Coetzee, to become an Australian citizen".

Presumably the rationale behind this "promotion" is that people who read The Australian will be spluttering into their morning coffees and saying aloud at the breakfast table, "J M Coetzee did it? Where do I sign?"

A "literary crowd" at Coetzee's ceremony this year apparently "witnessed the Minister for Immigration and Multicultural Affairs, Senator the Hon. Amanda Vanstone, lead Mr Coetzee in his pledge of commitment to Australia", which must have been a singular joy.

Coetzee is quoted saying that taking on Australian citizenship creates responsibilities and duties. Robb (would you believe it) agrees, saying, "In Australia we value basic rights, such as democracy, equality under the law and equality of treatment and opportunity".

For reports on how well things have been going for the Aboriginal communities up North, you'll have to sift through the rest of the paper and try and find the words "basic rights" and "opportunity" in amongst the words "third world living standards", "infant mortality" and "paternalism". If you'd like to know how the asylum seekers who are about to have the law changed on them (again) feel about "equality of treatment and opportunity", you might have to wait a teensy while longer.

Still, why complain? The soccer seems to be going rather well, and a millionaire North Shore Sydneysider who lives in the United States is going to put a frock on and get married tomorrow, so that should be fun to read about until August.

I'm going for a walk.

Writing's not hard.

Who said writing was hard? What idiot said that? Writing's excellent fun. As if you'd do anything else. Having fun with the writing today, which is typical because it's back to my other work tomorrow. Oh well. Round we go again.

Ironic that the person who showed me the following link is a producer, but Rita is a good producer and this story is about a bad producer. Producers are kind of like witches in that way. Some are wicked and some are nice and look after Judy Garland and help her get to the Emerald City when her house falls on their wicked counterparts. Anyway go here for a story about Richard E. Grant's producer, which I must admit I haven't listened to yet but I'm willing to bet it's worth a listen. Richard E. Grant, for those of you who don't know, is my boyfriend. Or to put it another way, we've never met but I quite liked him in a movie I saw once.

Now, in more important news.

Tim Stitz, who is leaving us on Monday to go to acting school in America, organised a trivia night last night to raise money for his plight. It was a most hilarious evening, and if you haven't seen Stitzy's Chinese Grandmother character, you reeeally have been missing out. The quiz itself was impossibly difficult for those of us who are ignorant in a range of areas, which I thought was rather unfair. Where were the questions like "Describe in general terms one of the articles you've read in the newspaper this week" or "Provide a Marxist critique of The O.C". What's with the yes/no answer bias at these things?

Anyway my friend Jeremy won the raffle. My other friend, Honor, won two tickets to the theatre. And what did I win? Well, I didn't win anything, but Stew won a myotherapy session with a hilarious friend of mine, and I paid for the raffle ticket that won it. So anyway that will be excellent when I get around to booking it.

So well done Timmeh. It was an excellent night although trivia depresses me because people think I read a lot and know about Literature. I know nothing. I hereby resolve to read one of the classics next. It's about time I got serious about this reading business.

Either that or I'm going to read this other (much breezier) book that I've had my eye on, and I'm going to not read the classics EVER and then tonight I will go and see Polanski's Oliver Twist and I will get all the Jane Austen books out on DVD and I will listen to an audio tape of Nabakov.

Happy Monday, everyone!

I logged on to our website this morning and found one of our new photographs was on rotation as the homepage photograph - an extreme close-up of two enormous iced vo vos. Most alarming. Paul the Website Superman must have deemed them (sensibly) to be worthy of placement as a central motif for Standing There Productions - the end result of course being that I'm kind of hankering for an iced vo vo with my morning cup of tea.

Yesterday I went to a play reading at The Fairfax Theatre in Melbourne. The reading was of a play called Asylum, by Kit Lazaroo, which won the Wal Cherry Play of the Year. Two Standing There Productions Peeps were taking part in the reading: Tim Stitz (who has been in everything we've ever done) and Carly Shrever (who was in People Watching). Both Carly and Tim were (guess what) excellent, as usual. I then went to ACMI to watch a whole heap of AFTRS short films, including The Birthday Boy, which I had never seen before. I went alone. This detail is important because had I not been alone, silent, with headphones on, in a booth tucked away in a corner, maybe they wouldn't have locked me in by accident when they closed for the evening.

I had to rush up to the guy just as he was pulling this enormous wall closed over the section I had been sitting in. Adds a whole new level of fear to moviegoing, let me tell you.

Then last night I attempted to go to a show called Vaudeville X, which I had called up about earlier in the day and they had assured me I would get a seat. Due to the fact that "someone" had told me the wrong thing on the phone, they didn't have a seat for me. I walked there in the freezing cold, hung around waiting for thirty minutes, and then was offered a "standing-room" ticket for TEN DOLLARS. What a sweet deal! Or, to put it another way, what a great excuse to go home and watch The Society Murders on TV.

Anyway, so my attempt to have a culturally interesting day was thwarted by people attempting to lock me in buildings and other people trying to charge me to stand up for an hour to watch musical theatre. Next weekend I think I'll go to the footy.

In other news, Penny Tangey's show Kathy Smith Goes to Maths Camp, which was on in the Melbourne International Comedy Festival and which was directed by someone who almost spent the night at ACMI last night, has entered the Australian vernacular. Go here to see how Penny's show is a measure of the zeitgeist, in that nerds being hip, cool and happening is the simple, undeniable truth. This was reiterated last week when I received a flurry of phone calls from people telling me to watch Catylist, because there's a young girl on it who is partaking in a maths quest and who declares with heartbreaking honesty that she finds maths tables more interesting for the walls of her bedroom than posters of hot guys. In other words, Kathy Smith lives.

Today I got into the writing thing a bit more. So much more in fact that I missed my tram to meet my friend for lunch and ended up being fifteen minutes late, which would have been surprising for said friend, who does not know me as intimately as most of my friends do, especially Standing There Producer Rita Walsh, who I have noticed has started leaving the house at about the time our meetings are due to start. This is, I assure myself, on account of my reliability. I am reliably around fifteen minutes late, counter-balanced by another, rather more useful characteristic, which is the number of pens I tend to carry on or about my person, in a range of colours and with a range of nibs. Everyone needs pens, people. Eventually, all of you smug bastards who arrive to things on time... Eventually you'll need to borrow one of my pens. Then let's see who wishes they'd stayed home maintaining their pen supply for that extra five minutes before they looked for their house keys for another ten minutes and then left the house, huh! Who's laughing NOW.

Rita, I realise this is a complete misrepresentation quite possibly besmirching your good name but you are more likely to forgive me than anyone else is, and I am taking advantage of that fact. On the internet. Oh yes I am.

So on the topic of me being a rewarding friend, my friend Michael sent me some excellent things in an email. Now, if I ever send excellent things to people in emails, I expect equally witty and well-considered replies, more or less immediately. Michael, on the other hand, received nothing.

Which was no surprise to Michael, who has known me for a much longer time than my lunch-time friend has. However, contrary to my declaration yesterday that everyone was fired, I have now re-hired Michael, who I credit now with thanks for providing the following excellent links:

For those of you who would like the inside story (as they say in the trash mags) on the Sydney Writers' Festival (which does not get enough coverage in the trash mags in my view)... then go here, and scroll down to the Writers' Festival posts, because Arnon Grunberg (who I've mentioned in posts on the Writers' Festival before) has certainly got a way with writing snipey things about people who make money writing books about time travel. And about people who think they're funny. And just about people generally.

And Oh. My. Lordy! For all you West Wing fans, go here. Michael, I know I just hired you, but you're re-hired. Absolutely cannot wait to see a full episode of this.

Also, and nobody sent this to me, I read it unaided in The New Yorker ... Check out this review of The Da Vinci Code, which I haven't seen but Anthony Lane is my favourite film reviewer and this is one of the rare reviews of his which is entirely, whole-heartedly, grumpy. Excellent.

For reasons too humourous to mention, it was a public holiday yesterday. Which makes this last weekend a long weekend, which makes this week four days long.

So I took today off.

I've finished reading Tourism, which I had to finish on account of I started it.

Favourite bit: the bit where he tried scones, because it made me hungry...?

Then I read a book I thought I had already read, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time, which it turns out I hadn't read and which made me cry. See here for a review and description.

Favourite bit: the bit where he pretends he's in space and "All I could see would be stars. And stars are the places where the molecules that life is made of were constructed billions of years ago. For example, all the iron in your blood which stops you being anaemic was made in a star".

... I love that bit because it describes so many different things and alludes to so many others and also it's about something really simple. Imagine getting the infinite universe, molecules, time, space, and the inside machinations of the human being all into the one paragraph.

Smart arse.

On Friday night, I went to see the new Pixar film, Cars, which (even though traditionally I'm a Pixar fan) I was sure I was not going to enjoy. Not only is it a movie about cars, called "Cars", starring a racing car and not starring a socially responsible environmental message or a commentary on how stupid racing car driving is (!), but even worse, it's animated cars! So, you know, little cars with huge eyes and expressive windscreen wipers and stuff. BORING! Also, clearly this is a targeted grab for merchandising bucks from small children annoying their exhausted parents.

Anyway, needless to say I laughed until I was snorting like a piglet.

Favourite bit: a hardened old four-wheel-drive teaches a bunch of SUVs from the city how to drive off-road. Also, I find it genuinely hilarious when bits fall off people's faces when they're shocked. It's an old Pixar trick, but my Lordy does it make me laugh.

But the highlight of my weekend was definitely the Belle and Sebastian gig on Saturday night. It was unspeakably good. Anyone who can get the expression "you couldn't act your way out of a wet paper bag" into a song is a friend of mine. Also, by God they're good musicians. For real fans (ie massive nerds) go here for hours of procrastinatorial fun.

Favourite bit: whole thing just brilliant. Cannot possibly pick one song because would be unfair to other songs. Who have feelings.

Lastly, I watched the soccer/football/frenzy of excitement last night as well.

Favourite bit: the bit where I found out that one of the Aussie blokes, Scott Chipperfield, used to be a bus driver who played soccer for "The Wollongong Wolves". Now he's running around on a soccer field in Germany, jumping onto piles of other blokes in celebration whenever someone gets a goal. The best part is, fans in the know have apparently been chanting "Hail to the Bus Driver" from the sidelines. Excellent work.

As a result of the above, I now want to be: a child again, a member of Belle and Sebastian, a soccer player, a voice in a Pixar film, possibly a bus driver, and a scientist (I've also been reading Surely You're Joking Mr. Feynman).

You'll notice "writer" is not in there. It's a tad slow, the writing. Just a little bit slow.

There'll be a breaktrhough any moment, I'm sure.

I'm half way through Nirpal Singh Dhaliwal's book, Tourism, which (as promised) I am reading in the bath, and sometimes cheating a bit and reading on public transport. Not the sort of book you want to be reading on public transport and have someone read over your shoulder, though, if you get my rather pornographic drift.

It's not what I thought it would be at all. I thought it was going to be something challenging and innovative and exciting, even if I didn't agree with what it said about race, or women, or sex. But actually I think it's just another pseudo-existentialist monologue about an enraged, solitary, non-communicative boy who can't express himself, but loves describing how broken and manly he is, and desperately wants to have sex with the only clever woman in his life who isn't his mother. Which is a story I've read before, and was boring even the first time.

But of course, I'm keeping an open mind.

Could be rip-snorter from here on in. Who knows.

So I found a quote in the weekend paper attributed to Aaron Sorkin, who, for those who follow a different religion, is the guy who invented The West Wing.

Sorkin says, "Most of my time spent writing something is spent walking around the room not writing".

Oh... my... GOD I AM HAPPY TO HEAR THAT. I am so happy to hear that, it really is pathetic. My heart feels healthier. My blood pumps harder. I sat there ripping it carefully out of the newspaper and thought to myself, "This couldn't be better. It couldn't be better! From now on, everything is going to be okay. Ohhhh life is good. Life is rich with goodness and tart with the tang of as-yet-unwritten brilliant television dialogue."

And then today I thought maybe there could be one small change to the above quote. Maybe I would feel even better if the quote had read, "Most of my time spent writing something is spent walking around the room, eating bits of stuff out of the fridge, surfing the net, doing the dishes, and reading articles about the situation in East Timor, the question of nuclear power, and the significance of "gym culture" in relation to the western world's three most recent terrorist attacks (seriously, go here)".

But, coming just short of that, Aaron Sorkin has pretty much justified the last few, dreadfully unproductive, days of my life.

For that, and for the wonderful, hilarious, downright spunky character of CJ Cregg, I thank him. And I take the first series off my shelf and I decide there shall be another viewing. Just in case there's anything I missed the first eight times.

PS. If there is anyone out there who is an accountant or a tax lawyer, I would very much appreciate advice on whether everything I purchased over the weekend is now tax deductable as a result of the above Aaron Sorkin quote. I am willing to testify in court if required.

Want to get a different perspective on a really stupid news story?

I never thought I'd end up having an opinion about Brad and Angelina's baby, but there you are. Check it out here.

In other news, almost finished my Aleksandar Hemon book, which is addictively beautiful, especially now that I have his accent in my head. The character in his book is always talking about being painfully aware of his accent, so now I retrospectively want to reassure Hemon, the author, at the Writers' Festival, while he's signing books, that in fact his accent is lovely, and so is his book, and so is he.

You would think that by now I would understand that the author and the character are not the same thing, but somehow (J K Rowling excluded) I can never quite draw the line...