A writer is defined as one who:

- writes (books or stories or articles or the like) professionally (for pay)
- is able to write and has written something

... this is very depressing because it is ten past two in the morning and the above description not only fails to mention "stays up all night fiddling about with images in photoshop" but it also seems to imply that an ability to write or proof of having written is necessary in order to claim that one is a writer...

I must enrol in a course of some kind.

Check this out.

It's the comic timing that's so perfect. And the use of the word "like".

Who needs writers? We'll always have Paris.

It's the worst fire season in the history of Victoria at the moment. We went to Lakes Entrance on the weekend and we had to get the train back through the smoke. It was eerie, cruising through the brown, flat, smokey, empty land. Melbourne was clogged with smoke when we got home. Anyone who doesn't believe in global warming is:
a) entitled to their own opinion
b) a complete tool
and in my opinion there is a right answer.
Anyhoo, in Standing There Productions news, we are as busy as little bees with a plan or two for some new projects, none of which we can announce at this stage because they're "in development" - the least exciting stage for a project to be in, for everyone other than the writer.

And here's the "IF I STILL WORKED IN COMMERCIAL RADIO" story for this week here for your enjoyment.

So I've been missing from the real (and the virtual) world lately. I've been writing something. With the four fingers on my left hand. It's a slow process, I admit, but it's no slower than writing by candle light in the eighteenth century, so complaineth me not.

Meanwhile, Rita has been marooned in Ararat, where "can I please have a salad sandwich" gets you a white bread roll with cheese, tomato and ham, and the "vegetarian option" on the film catering menu turns out to be bacon quiche.

Cut back to me in the city during my day job listening to city traders discussing how much it would cost to install snow machines up the top of Little Bourke Street so that people could toboggan down the hill from Queen Street to Elizabeth Street during breaks in their Christmas shopping (apparently nobody wants to pay the insurance bill, more's the pity).

Working in the city also meant that I last week witnessed one of the "Melbourne Conversations". A rhetorically broad topic with vastly different speakers including the very hilarious and ever so slightly clever Barry Jones and a naughty Dorothy Porter, who wrote one of my favourite books and who read a beautiful poem (not her own). The next day, one of the other speakers, Alex Miller (crush city) was having a coffee in the cafe I was in and I became breathless and self-daring and had fantasised many witty exchanges but when I looked up he had been replaced by a spotty boy in a stripy T-shirt with a Tintin tuft of bed hair.

Meanwhile, a toast tonight to absent friends. To the friend who wants me to keep January free because she might get married: you're on. It's cancelled. Whole month. Disappeared. To the friend who wrote me a funny, meandering, perfectly descriptive novel in the form of an email and who I haven't seen since 1999: I owe you one, just quietly. To Nick: fly home and keep the money. We'll doctor up some photos. And to Rita in Ararat: I hope they don't read this and give you vegetarian sandwiches made of Ox tongue.

Got to go. This took longer than candle light. Definitely longer than candle light.

Today's "If I Still Worked In Commercial Radio, This Is What I Would Be Talking About" News Item is obviously this story.

In other news, today I went to get a haircut because I was not looking forward to the potential Mr Bean episode that would inevitably result if I tried to wash my hair with a broken arm in a plastic bag, balancing using a chair and trying to avoid getting soap in my eyes. I think maybe I'll get a haircut once a week until this cast comes off.

Any jokes about how funny it is that I have a "cast" on my "write" arm should be kept from me because I am wielding heavy plaster. That also goes for Stewart, who wrote the high-larious cast related pun in the subject heading above, when I clearly trusted him to type what I was writing. He went free form. He's fired.

What does a writer need? According to Virginia Woolf, it's a room of your own. I would add that probably the use of one's writing arm should also be condideration.

On Saturday night, Stewart Thorn, who shot our short film, won a cinematography award from the Australian Cinematographers Society for his work on another short film, Hollow Bones (directed by Nicholas Verso and produced by Rita Walsh). See it all in lights here. To say that I was a little bit pleased and proud of this would be an understatement. But in retrospect I could have expressed my pride a little more eloquently than by falling over and breaking my wrist.

Yes, I fell over on a slippery floor and snapped my wrist. My writing wrist. I am learning to type one-handed, and the frisbee won't be coming out for at least six weeks, but possibly the worst thing is that I have to bathe wearing a plastic bag. Also, it's kind of cruel that the film that I was celebrating was called Hollow Bones. Do you think someone is telling me something?

Congratulations to Stew and Nick and Rits. Very, very proud. Obviously.

So I admit to being a bit of an Aaron Sorkin nerd, and I am currently watching The West Wing, Sportsnight, and Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip concurrently (alternating episodes).

Seriously though, you absolutely have to watch this (scroll down to watch the clips).

It's a show about making television, which of course makes me squeal like a pig at a child's birthday party, and it's been reviewed here. For the more nerdy among us (pick me! pick me!) there is also a blog. Oh yes there is.

If you're wondering why all the talk about TV, it's because life has consisted mostly of staring at a computer screen this weekend. Went to the beach and wrote a whole lot of stuff that I've since deleted. Yay for progress.

Aaaanyway, I have now returned home to play with my friends, most of whom are called Tim.

None of them is this Tim, though, which is something I'm hoping to change. One can never have too many Tims at a dinner party, I find. So, more Tims and also I find there are insufficient people called Snuffy in my life at the present time as well. Let's everyone see what we can do about that.