A comprehensive catalogue

When I first started writing, I was advised by my course tutor to focus on writing articles rather than fiction, since articles actually paid good money. I took this advice, and the articles did pay; not heaps, necessarily, but a reasonable amount.

One of the books I read during this time was Writing Articles that Sell by G J Matson. The book was one of five smallish books that came as part of the writing course. It was a book I read and re-read, and it proved its worth.

I've just come across an extract from it that I copied back in 1993 in which he discusses the need to keep cuttings or clippings of articles and newspaper notes. These clippings were useful not just for article ideas, but as backup material for when you did write articles. Evernote serves the same purpose for me now, though I don't write much in the way of articles anymore. And of course it's vastly more easy to catalogue and search. I do write blog posts, of course, and the 'clippings' are useful for that too.

Anyway here is Matson talking about his cataloguing system:

This [initial] classifying was a crude arrangement, and the titles of the various folders, as near as I can remember them now, were Anniversaries, Natural History, Stage and Cinema, Religion, Celebrities, Unusual Experiences, History, Geography, Science, Art, Literature, Domestic Law, Handicrafts, Customs, Political and Miscellaneous. As soon as a folder became uncomfortably full, I divided the cuttings again, this time into foolscap envelopes. Thus Natural History was divided into Ants, Dogs, Elephants, Grouse, Mice, Rabbits and so on. 

A few of the subjects, selected from my collection at random, may be of interest: Air Mails, Antipathies, Basket Making, Bibles, Careers for Boys, Chiropody, Corks, Dew Ponds, Duels, Entertaining with Table Napkins, Foolhardy Feats, Giants and Dwarfs, Handwriting, Horse Brasses, Icebergs, Jest-books, Keeping Cool, Lighting, London Oddities, Marbles, Miniatures, Newspapers, Noses, Olive Harvests, Pacifism, Peat, Queen Elizabeth I, Refrigerators, Rings, Safe Deposits, Seaweed, Teasels, Unclaimed Fortunes, Valentine Day, Wassailing, Yom Kippur and Zebras. It will be seen from these examples that the range of subjects covered is a very wide one. It is because I collect cuttings on every subject I possibly can. It pays me to do it – and it will pay you.

What a marvellously diverse list! I had both folders and foolscap envelopes in my much less organised system at one point, so I must have paid some attention to Mr Matson, though I can't say I ever went quite so wide in my choice of subjects. I think his point was that you can write about anything if you have the background information to get you started. 

These days, we'd probably categorize Foolhardy Feats under The Darwin Awards. And if you don't know what a Teasel is, it's apparently a tall prickly Eurasian plant with spiny purple flower heads. It seems a slightly curious subject to write about, but perhaps they were more common in gardens back when Matson's book was written. 

Giving Column 8 a new lease of life

Back in the 90s I wrote five and a half years of weekly columns (apart from the holiday period each year) about all manner of subjects under the title Column 8. I'm now gradually adding these to this blog as I get them typed up again.

It was great having a free hand like that - the sort of benefit few writers probably have just to let their hair down and go for it. Sometimes having such a wide range is inhibiting, strangely, but in general something got written each week that was worth reading, and, in a few cases, worth forgetting.

The column began in October 1990 when the previous columnist announced, rather out of the blue, that he was quitting. I rang up and - amazingly - got the job on the strength of a couple of hastily-written pieces that were eventually among the first published columns. It ended even more abruptly when I received a letter from the editor (a change from sending him one, I suppose) telling me that due to 'restructuring' (that wonderfully abstract word) my services were no longer required. This was in April 1996

I had one more column to write and in it told the readers that I'd been summarily dismissed - and amazingly, got away with it. I don't know the real reason for my dismissal, though I suspect it might have had something to do with the column I wrote (one of my occasional religion-focused ones) in which I said that in spite of their claims, the Mormons were not part of the wider Christian church.

It may have had nothing to do with that. It may have been that the editor felt the columns were getting tired. (Sometimes they were.) It may have been that I was employed by one editor and fired by his replacement. It may have been that they preferred to save $50 a week (or was it $30?) and use the space for advertising.

Certainly they did restructure the paper, quite some time later. Columns were no longer included - at one point there had been several writers going on about their favourite subject week after week (like fishing). Gradually similar columns have been re-introduced over the years, and we now have policemen/women writing, or politicians. (The fishing column has moved to the daily newspaper.) The paper has survived, which is extraordinary in itself, and it's actually one of the best freebies I've come across.

I have plans to post some of the old columns on this blog, randomly, in keeping with both this blog's title, and the nature of the original column. Column 8 wasn't my choice of a name, by the way. It was decided by the editor: all it meant was that the column began in the eighth column of the newspaper, which was conveniently placed inside the first page. It actually occupied columns 8 and 9, in part, but we won't quibble about that. Suffice to say it that it was a prime spot in which to blog...I mean write.

An interview with writer, Rosanne Higgins

Hi, Rosanne, thanks for being willing to be interviewed about your first book, Inmates and Orphans, which I’ve recently read ˗ and enjoyed.

Can you tell us a little about yourself?

First of all, thanks for doing this, Mike!  I am glad you enjoyed the book. I am an anthropologist and small business owner living in Western New York. My husband and I own two doggy daycares. My business keeps me busy for about 60 hours per week so I do my writing and research in the evenings and on the weekends.

60 hours a week, and then you do your writing! So when did your passion for writing begin?

Very recently.  Until now, all of my writing has been for scholarly publications.  I have been a reader all of my life but I never thought I could write fiction.  It was a struggle at first, but after a while the characters just told their own story. Now I’m hooked!!

How many books have you written to date?

So far I have written Orphans and Inmates and A Whisper of Bones. These books tell the story of the Sloane sisters and their experiences at the Erie County Poorhouse and the Buffalo (New York) Orphan Asylum during the early nineteenth century.

Tell us about your first book. What was the idea that sparked it off?

For the past 15 years my scholarly research has focused on the asylum movement in the United States during the nineteenth century and the health consequences of poverty. While going through the inmate records for the Erie County Poorhouse, I came to know the people who sought refuge there.  I felt compelled to share their story, and I decided the best way to do that was to write a novel. 

Do you find your characters come alive as you write, or are they already real people in your mind before you start?

A bit of both, I think. I have a sense of the character before I begin to write, but often one or more of them will do or say something that takes me by surprise.

Yes, I know that feeling: in the first draft of my next book the characters kept arguing (as it were) as to who was going to be the real villain! Did your story change at all while you were writing it, or was it pretty much as you planned?

Orphans and Inmates came out much as I had planned, but that was not the case for Whisper. Some characters I hadn’t thought about showed up and a few threads in the story did not end as I had expected they would.

Was writing the book  a harder journey than you thought it would be?

Yes and no. Telling the actual story was easier than I expected, I suspect because I have been thinking about these people for so long. The problem for me is that I am terribly disorganized, and it took me a long time to develop an efficient system of notes that I could refer back to when I needed to recall certain aspects of a particular character, place or event.

Some people say that being a writer is the loneliest job in the world. Would you agree?

No, actually, I would not agree. I have become a “regular” in the research library at the Buffalo History Museum and I enjoy visiting with the staff and the other people who use the library. I have also met many kind and extremely talented people (like you!) along the way. I think now that we have so many social media options like-minded creative people can find each other very easily. When I am actually writing, I am never alone. My office is usually shared with two German shepherds and a standard poodle. Often I am stepping over furry bodies when I get up from my desk!!

I know that feeling. I've been babysitting two large dogs recently (we have a small dog of our own) and trying to find room to walk is sometimes an issue. 

What kind of writer are you, that is, do you write to a schedule or do it when the zone takes you?

I am very efficient and usually productive when I set myself to any task (I drive my husband and my son nuts!). I think because I juggled an academic career with a family for so many years I learned to use my time wisely. Those skills have served me well now that I juggle my business, family, research and writing. With a house full of dogs and kids, I learned to work well under pressure and in complete chaos. When I set aside time to work I always get something accomplished. If the characters are not talking to me, I try to outline the chapter I am working on or go back to organizing my notes (a never ending battle for me!).

Sounds like good advice for most writers. So apart from struggling to organize your notes, what's the most frustrating part of being a writer for you?

Marketing! I am still shocked that I wrote a few books that people outside of my family actually want to read! The hard part is taking this tiny amount of success and growing it larger. Like so many other writers I am short on both time and money. The trick is finding that cost effective way to generate interest in your work. I am trying to build a network of talented and innovative writers in the hopes that together we can figure it out!

Yes, a lot of self-publishing writers, I think, hear the stories of those who made it big in what seemed a matter of weeks. They don't hear about all the thousands who have sold just a few copies and wonder what they're doing wrong. So what has been the greatest lesson you have learned since becoming a writer?

I think the greatest lesson learned is that the self-publishing process is not that difficult. Any writer can produce a high quality book at a reasonable cost and distribute it through platforms like Amazon or Smashwords. Getting people to buy it is the trick!

How involved are you in deciding on the cover?

I am very lucky to have an incredibly talented husband and business partner. I describe to him my ideas for the cover and he puts together a sketch for the designer. We work with a company called Ebook Launch, and they have done a fantastic job translating the concept sketches for both books into great covers.

You sent me an example of how the cover of Whisper of Bones evolved from your husband's sketch to the finished product. I thought it would be interesting to let readers see this [sketch and final cover at left] 

What are you currently working on?

I am working on the third book in the Orphans and Inmates series. I am also working on a non-fiction piece on the cholera epidemics in Buffalo, New York, during the early nineteenth century.  I don’t think that will be a book, but there is a story there that definitely needs to be told.  I may just write a series of blogs.

How important is networking for you?

Networking is very important for all writers. I have learned so much from all of the people I have met along the way. Speaking as someone who grew up before computers were in every household (before computers at all!), I find it a small miracle to have connected with people like you, who live all around the world! I used to correspond with my cousins in Scotland as a child and it took weeks to receive a reply to my letters. You and I can communicate daily! In many ways that makes networking much easier, but the building of relationships still take time. A solid network of creative, innovative and motivated people is critical, I think.

Yes, I'd thoroughly agree, and it's not something that you can just jump in and do. You have to have online conversations with people, learn to trust what they're saying, and discover what you can offer each other. It also concerns me that some young writers ("I've written ten books" I saw one posting today) haven't really done more than produce a first draft. They don't realise that books take a lot of work. 

What, then, do you think is the biggest obstacle for writers getting their books out there today?

I think all too often people jump in the pond, so to speak, and become totally overwhelmed. There are so many other writers out there trying to do the same thing. I think the biggest obstacle is trying to build a network of like-minded people who can all help each other toward a common goal.

What advice would you give to any budding writer out there?

Go with your gut. If it make sense to you, do it. Don’t be afraid to ask questions and say what you really think. Start with the people who know you and build your audience and your network out from there. Above all else, keep writing.

What platforms do you use to promote your work?

As far as social media, I use Facebook and Google+.  I also have a blog and a website. I am very fortunate that my scholarly research is similar to my novels and I do local speaking engagements to promote both.

Many thanks for being willing to be interviewed. Finally, where can people find your book?

Here are three places to start:

Amazon 

Barnes and Noble

Smashwords

Dunedin wins gigatown

To immense jubilation on the part of the supporters, Dunedin won the Chorus gigatown competition last night. I wasn't among the crowd in the Dunedin headquarters (formerly the National Bank in George St) but watched the live streaming from Wellington in which the announcement was made, and then saw the gradual build up of tweets and Facebook comments and photos and videos as people got sufficiently over their initial excitement and shedding of tears and began to digitally announce to the world that we are Australasia's first giga-city.

It's a huge achievement. There were times when it seemed as though Dunedin didn't have a hope. We were well down the board in the earlier stages of the competition, and then did a major leap as a result of one particular effort. After that we remained pretty much in the top five. Thankfully.

I was involved from about March, mostly tweeting, but some had been competing since late last year when the competition started, tweeting day after day and putting up photos and so on. A massive effort from the long-haul people.

But then, when the tweeting/FB side of it came into the last stage, hundreds of people came out of the woodwork, it seemed, and some of them spent a phenomenal amount of time tweeting and retweeting and commenting, until, on the last day for that side of the competition we nearly managed to break Twitter in NZ. It got so overwhelmed that it couldn't keep up. That was extraordinary.

It was at that point that I discovered there were people who'd been involved from early on that I'd never encountered. Which was strange considering how much retweeting had been going on for months.

My only unique contribution to the thing was that I seem to have introduced the word 'twibe' to describe those who were tweeting faithfully day after day in Dunedin. I'd borrowed it from a blog post I wrote some years back, in 2009 in fact, and it took off. Last night a number of my friends on FB were congratulating me on how much I'd done in the competition. I had to remind them that the reality is that I was one of the minor players, especially towards the end, when some people easily outshone me as the sun easily outshines the earth. It was good to know I contributed something, but let's not go overboard, people!

Of course now the gig thing will gradually come to pass in the city. Home users probably won't see any difference for some time since many parts of the city aren't yet connected to fibre, and won't be until 2015, 2016 (in our case) or even 2018, which officially the discounted price will be over and done with. Hopefully businesses will be enabled to get on and use it in the more central parts of the city. That's certainly going to be a plus for many of them.

Payu2blog gone?

Over the years I've done a lot of posts here for a site called Payu2blog.com. It seems that they've run right down, however. I've had no assignments for a few months, and they're not answering any emails (not that they were ever very good at that). They've begun to use Twitter as an alternative to blog posts, but the Twitter approach doesn't seem to be working. I never got paid for the one assignment they offered that I've tweeted, and the latest assignment along these lines is so confusingly laid out, I've had read trouble trying to figure out what they're talking about.

It's a pity, because Payu2blog was a reasonable source of small income over several years; my PayPal account was kept topped up by it. Ah well, that seems to be the way of the Net. Some things have their day and then suddenly they're gone, when the crowd moves on...

And while we're on lists...

What you see below is a copy of the Popular Posts from this blog, as at the 9th March, 2014. Yet there's something rather strange about this. These posts show up almost all the time, as though they were continually being viewed. The reality is somewhat different. When I look at the stats for yesterday, which should give us some indication as to popularity, only one of these posts appears, and that's the first. Buechner on Marriage is also there, but well down the list. It seems to me that these 'popular posts' get up on the list at some point and then just stay there.  Here's yesterday's list of top five posts, all but the first being quite recent arrivals.

Commonplace post 13 Feb 2011,	62
Wimpy keyboards 8 Mar 2014,	34
Irritation in #gigatowndunedin 8 Mar 2014,	31
Making mugs of us all 8 Mar 2014,	17
The Best Offer 7 Mar 2014,	17

POPULAR POSTS

• 

  Commonplace post

  One of the fun things about Google desktop, and also about Evernote, the programme that allows you to store virtually everything you like ...
• 

  Skinny ties

  Phew, nearly had heart failure... Okay, that may be a bit of an exaggeration, but when I saw a site advertising skinny ties I certainly g...
• 

  Random thoughts on the Zirka Circus

  Went to see the Zirka Circus with some members of my family today. Very noisy, music-wise, but the music itself was good and very suitabl...
• 

  Some Presbyterian views on the Christchurch earthquake

  There have been some messages sent through to a group I'm on (and they've gone to other groups too, I understand) from two or three ...
• 

  James Berardinelli

  I found a bio of Berardinelli on the Rotten Tomatoes site . I've taken the liberty of quoting it here, almost in full: ...born in Septem...
• Mrs Chrissy Johnson

  I find it hard to believe that a post I wrote back in 2007,  partly on the city of Boise in Idaho (where the young lady one of my sons is d...
• 

  The Graveyard Book

  I picked up Neil Gaiman's The Graveyard Book while in the children's library the other day (all the best fiction is in the child...
• Circus Aotearoa

  Last year my daughter, grandson and I caught up with the Zirka Circus , a mostly Asian troupe. This was a circus that relied heavily on ...
• 

  Two and a half movies

  From the sublime to the ridiculous and back again.   One might say. I watched about two-thirds of Peter Watkins ' 1974 made-for-TV mov...
• Buechner on Marriage

  I've been reading Frederick Buechner's Whistling in the Dark again, after a break of several years. It’s an alphabetised collect...

Move along to the next blog, please

At the top of most Blogger blog pages you'll find a line where you can search your own blog, share you blog post with Google + or other social media sites, and then the curious box which says, Next Blog.  Click on this and your into a magic world of discovery.  It's a bit like Google's 'I'm feeling lucky' link - you never know where it will take you.  And it never goes to the same place twice.  Before I started writing this I picked up two Library sites, but they're now gone, and the first up is Alchemizade (take that, spellchecker!).  Alchemizade focuses on poetry by Rumi.  It makes intriguing reading.

Next in line,appropriately, is Line Art: Poetry in Review; this is run by someone called Jason Gray.  It seems to skip between quick posts about poetry readings in different places, to links to other poetry sites, to comments about particular poems.  I think poetry has finally found its true home online.  I have quite a reasonable number of poetry books - they take up about three shelves in one of my bookcases (and remember that many poetry books are very skinny).  I've had more, but cleaned a few of them out recently.  But I probably read more poetry online than I do in books these days....and I discover more poets that way.  The world is full of poets, even though it's not a subject taught in schools, or encouraged by parents, or funded by great aunts, or...

The next site up is Words in Place.  This one focuses on short story writing, and it's interesting to note their mention of flash fiction, something I've been doing quite of lately.   The next one is an art-focused blog, with the curious name of Post-NeoAbsurdist Anti-Collective.  It seems to take a similar approach to Line Art in its use of a blog.

A slight change of pace with the arrival of a blog called 'What? - music, movies, mayhem and more.'  The most recent post here apologises for not having put anything on the blog since 2010.  I'm going to quote most of the short post - it'll give you an idea of the writing style: I'm a couple years older. Couple years wiser. Quit my day job. Not because I hated it. But because I wanted to pursue my graduate degree full time. Moved away from my hometown. Went back to college (for grad school). Work two jobs. Volunteer when I can. Trying to get involved in my church. Meeting some of the most WONDERFUL people. Figuring out some of my life. Some of my career. Some things about men. Some things about God. Learning. (Trying to be) Caring. (Attempting towards) Sharing. (All the time) Growing.

Learning things about men and God.  Yup, two pretty difficult subjects!  LOL

And now it's nearly time for the evening meal, so cheerio from this little round-up.

Making the most of the time

Just came across a long extract from William Barclay, on the subject of writing that I posted on one of my now-defunct blogs. There's some very good advice for writers in it, but one particular thing struck me afresh. He writes: My second rule is Keep Going. One of the greatest time-wasters, I find, is the habit we have of saying: 'I've only got twenty-five minutes. It's not worth starting.' But I find it is always worth starting. To return to John Wesley, he did most of his reading on horseback. It is amazing how much you can get done in the odd quarter-hour or half-hour. There is not one unit of time that cannot be used.

Wesley, according to Barclay, preached forty-two thousand sermons in fifty-three years, averaged four thousand five hundred miles per year in travel, and wrote or edited four hundred and fifty books.

I think this is something worth noting, that we don’t use those odd minutes well.  I used to be able to cope at a job in the Dunedin City Council where the phone would ring constantly, and you had to get on with your other work fitting around the phone calls. You learned to move from one thing to another without difficulty. It was somewhat the same at the bookshop: you’d be in the middle of something when a customer walked in.  Drop one thing, take up another, and then come back to the first. Yet I was very productive in those days.  In my last office job, it used to annoy me when the person senior to me would interrupt my work, especially if it meant putting something aside completely; but in fact it was no different a matter than in those other places. 

These days it's not a matter of interruption so much as of making the most of the odd minutes I do have (yes, retired people can be surprisingly busy in a day!) Some piece of creative work can be moved forward a paragraph or two in quarter of an hour - it's not the same as getting a sustained period of time,  but it's still of value. The thing is to do that rather than flitting through Facebook or Twitter or something else. Or writing blog posts about doing it!

John Wesley: Riding a Horse Whilst Reading a Book
by Richard Gilmore Douglas

Barely written about...

Sometimes people come across my blog by pursuing things or people I've barely written about.  Two recent examples were the poet, Robert Nye and the pseudonym, Felicia Marronnez.  The links will take you to each of the blog posts in which they appear on this blog.  And in neither case are they actually the subject of the blog....so obscurity reigns in this case.  

HitTail turned up two other phrases in its weekly report research question about Facebook and Ian and Chrissy Johnson.  The latter of these two relates to a post I wrote a long time ago which keeps resurfacing because of the second person in the couple.  I've since written about her - and her husband - several times, though it can hardly be said I've added anything new to the original post...

Why the other phrase should bring up my blog I have no idea.  It certainly doesn't when I put it in.  

  

Books from other places

The next topic on Aotearoa Affair’s April Blog Carnival  is books from other places.   For most of my  life, I've been reading books from other places as a matter of course.  It's difficult to do anything else when you live on an island at the bottom of the world which has a much smaller literature than the big guns overseas.

Admittedly many of the books I've read have been from England or America, and in some ways these places aren't that different, culturally, from the world I know.   But the reality is that any book that's written outside your coastline is going to be give you a different perception of the world: the language used will be full of slang and expressions you have to learn in order to read the book; things will be talked about that are common to the writer but not to you.  Places are not your places, and have a different feel about them.

In these days of widespread television and movies, it's easier to have an appreciation of what British and American places look like (and I've actually travelled to the British Isles more than once, and once to a small part of the States).  But all this is still within my cultural (Anglo-European) reach - it doesn't step outside it and give me any huge cultural shock.

So what books from other places have really changed my perceptions?   I think one of the strongest was Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart.  I'd come across a list of books* that someone wrote about in a magazine; they were books that had influenced him greatly.  Things Fall Apart was one of the two from the list that I actually got on and read.  Set in Nigeria, here was a world in which humans appeared, and behaved like humans, but everything beyond that was alien.  Furthermore, the story of the father and his three wives and the way they interacted was like something out of the Old Testament.  I kept thinking: this must be how Jacob had to deal with his two wives - and two concubines.  It's all very well to say that the Old Testament is patriarchal, but in fact the women in Jacob's family would have had similar concerns and feelings and hurts and pains to the three wives in Things Fall Apart, and patriarchal society or not, they were as vividly human as the rest of us, and just as strong-natured as the women in this story are.

The other book from the list was V S Naipaul's A House for Mr Biswas.  This brought me into a strange world (a world that no longer exists, I think) in Trinidad, in which large families of husbands, wives, innumerable children and grandparents all lived together.  The ongoing consequences of being the one person - Mr Biswas - who rebelled against the enclosing and oppressed feeling was the subject of the book.  When I first read this book, I found it a delight.  I read it again recently, and what had delighted me the first time seemed sour and gloomy.  Mr Biswas, for all his ambition, never manages to get far up the ladder; something always knocks him down, and it's very unsettling.  It's the antipathy of those books that state we can achieve whatever we want to achieve, if we put our minds to it. (I read this quote by Emmanuel Katongole the other day: "The idea that we can be anything we wish to be is one of the most insidious lies we can ever entertain." Mr Biswas is hampered by his family, particularly his wife, and by his circumstances.  The second reading turned out to be quite depressing, in spite of the humour and wit that pervades the book.

I said above that New Zealand has a small literature.  That's true to a point: in the last few decades there have been hundreds of books published in New Zealand that show the culture from the eyes of those who live in it.  And we've been a publishing nation for quite some time; it's just that we didn't always mange to see ourselves as different.  In recent years the fiction that's been published that features New Zealand has tended to take a fairly gloomy tone - this is particularly true of those books that aim for the 'literary' market.   Sometimes this is satisfactory, but there are times when it's nothing but depressing.  (Stuart Hoar's The Hard Light is a prime example of this that comes to mind.)

However, thinking about books I've read from New Zealand that have changed my view, I guess one would be The Matriarch, by Witi Ihimaera.   I read it a number of years ago.  While the characters inhabited a landscape that was familiar, the characters themselves were not.  Partly this was because they were Maori, and because they were seen through Maori eyes.  It was also because in the part of the country where I live (the South Island) we see a relatively small number of Maori people; most of them live in the North Island.  Consequently we South Islanders have a different view of Maori people; we don't tend to be involved in things that are specifically Maori, down here, anywhere nearly as much as people up north.  The Matriarch opened my eyes to the difference culture that exists in my own country - a different culture, yet it's one that's well and truly mixed up with the culture that predominates, a culture that is Anglo-European in tone.

So books don't have to be from other places to give you a different perspective.  In fact, my feeling is that the closer a book is to home, in a country like ours where we still find it strange to read about street names that we actually know, the more strange it seems.  This is a process that takes place as a country grows to understand itself.  We're still in the middle of it.

*25.10.12 I've just found the original list. 

Blog and Sudoku

I just discovered this morning that comments on my Daily Writer blog haven't been getting through to me by email, so possibly a number of commenters have given up on me, thinking I'm too rude to respond.  For some reason this particular blog, even though it's part of the Blogger family, doesn't act the same, and there are certain differences I can't quite get to grips with.  It shouldn't be the fact that it's an older blog (dating from 2005), because the one I'm writing on now is even older (by a few months).   Yet this blog has kept up with the various Blogger changes while the other one seems to be stuck in an earlier age.

On a less messy note, I wrote to the Otago Daily Times the other day because it has puzzled me for some time that the medium Sudoku puzzles published in their paper were often harder than the hard ones.   They passed the email onto Doug Hendry from The Puzzle Company.  He replied: 

The series you [the Otago Daily Times newspaper] run is one where we actually tried to create more difference between the medium and hard puzzles.

We can make puzzles on quite a few different settings. The actual level of difficulty in each varies widely, and the biggest range seems to lie within the medium setting. As Mr Crowl pointed out, they can be as challenging – or actually harder – than a puzzle made on the hard setting.

One solution we came up with was to make more difference between the levels. We took the Easy and Medium settings down half a notch, and left the hard unchanged.

I’d be interested in getting Mr Crowl’s opinion on the attached puzzles.

I’ve put three medium and three hard from your current series on a layout, but not identified which is which. If he has the time and the inclination, I’d really appreciate it if he printed the sheet out and tried them, then emailed to say which ones he thinks are medium and which are hard.

This isn’t a test of his Sudoku ability, it’s a test of our puzzle making.


Well, firstly it was nice to get such an immediate response to a query, and one that was offering a solution as to why the puzzles varied.  I tired all six of the puzzles and this was my reply to Doug:

1. fairly hard
2. hard (didn't finish it in fact, which is sometimes the case with Sudoku in the paper)
3. definitely the easiest. 
4. fairly hard
5 hard
6 hard (again I didn't finish this one because I got stuck and couldn't move forward on it - might need more perseverance)


Doug replied:

I printed out the puzzles I sent you and gave them a go. Usually I can only solve Easy puzzles, and occasionally rise to the heights of Medium. Hard, never.  [He says he's the company's crossword expert, while his wife is the Sudoku master.]

I managed to solve No1 (which was a Medium), but it took me 25 minutes. I got seven numbers in No2 (Hard), then gave up. I think I could have solved No3 (Medium) but went wrong somewhere after having filled in more than half.

It took me 10 minutes to get four boxes in No4 (Hard), then I gave up.

No5 (Medium) – I got stuck after taking 15 minutes to get half of it filled in.

I didn’t bother trying No6.

So, I was able to solve – with a real effort – one of the mediums, and might have got another. The three hard puzzles were totally beyond me.

You solved all three Mediums and one Hard.

This was only a test on three of each type, but you and I both found the Hard puzzles more difficult than the Medium, and you found the Mediums simpler than I did.

There will be occasions when a Medium puzzle at the upper end of its difficulty scale will be as hard – or maybe even harder – than a Hard puzzle which is at the bottom end of its range of difficulty.

So there you have it.  An interesting exercise, and a gracious response on both occasions.   How to do business, in other words!

The Sudoku in the picture is a finished example from this Dan Rice's site. 

Changing looks and computing plays

A few days ago I decided to change the look of this blog to Google's new dynamic approach, which means that not only can the writer of the blog change how everything appears on the page at the drop of a hat, but so can the readers.

However, there are some frustrations with this new look. firstly, it's much harder to search on it.  For one thing on some of the dynamic pages you can't even find a search box.  Secondly, all the additional matter that you've so carefully added to the page over the years seems to go AWOL.  The Google ads are still there - on some versions of the page - but not consistently.  Links to other sites seem to vanish completely, and other interesting bits and pieces are all hidden away somewhere that I haven't been able to discover since I did the change.

So tonight, as the observant will note, I've changed the look again (or the 'template' to use the correct term).   In fact I've done it on all the blogs I have on Blogger.   Given them a facelift, but left them so that they're still easy to follow and won't go swishing all over the page as soon as you touch something.

I quite enjoyed that, but I didn't enjoy trying to find some information again on one of this blog and spending far too long doing so.  In fact, anything that's older than this year, it seems, just comes up as a complete chunk of stuff: all the posts from 2008 will arrive if you ask for some info on a post that was done that year.

Not so hot.

Incidentally, what I was trying to find were the dates of the plays I've acted in over the last decade.   It's been quite a productive time in that regard, with roles in nine plays, and music written for a tenth.   Here's the list.

1.      Mr Beaver in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, [second production by Narnia Productions], 2004 (Teachers’ College auditorium)

2.      Uncle Andrew in The Magician’s Nephew, Sept 2005 (Teachers’ College auditorium)

3.      Mr Dussel in The Diary of Anne Frank, 2006 (The Playhouse)

4.      The Father in And Then They Came for Me, May 2008 (Globe  Theatre)[also co-directed]

5.      Reepicheep in The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, Sept 2008, (Mayfair Theatre)

6.      Ormonroyd in When We Are Married, May 2009, (Playhouse Theatre)

7.      Jacob Marley and Mr Fizziwigg in The Christmas Carol Nov 2009 (Mayfair Theatre)

8.      Pianist for Love – or Nearest Offer Apr 2010 (Playhouse Theatre)

9.      Rev Harry Harrington in Shadowlands, May 2011, (Playhouse Theatre)

10.  Paravicini in The Mousetrap, October 2011 (Mayfair Theatre)

I've kept a journal since 1987 (the first entry discusses my daughter waking up in the night with a rat in the room - the only time such a thing has happened - and dropping it down the toilet to get rid of it) you'd think it would be easy to track down the dates of these productions.   But for some reason there are chunks of time when I didn't make entries in the journal, and often they seem to coincide with the productions of these plays.  Furthermore, I've often written about these plays on this blog - or so I thought.  But in fact I hadn't.  I only seem to have mentioned Anne Frank in passing - after it was finished - and the two earlier Narnia plays barely get a look in.  Odd.

The Star newspaper is supposed to have some references to a number of these plays, but when you click on the Google search results, invariably you find that you locked out of the archives.  So you try the Star page...worse still.  The search box that's supposed to be available according to the help page is missing and when you try to access 'all' newspapers, it happily gives you nothing more than 2011. 

The photo is from The Mousetrap: all cast members on stage in Act II (Natalie Ellis, who played Mrs Boyle, doesn't appear in the second act).  I'm sitting comfortably on the couch keeping the audience guessing as to my role in the situation.  The photo was taken by Andy Cook, who designed the set.

Update as at 30.3.13: I've now completed another role, or rather two roles: Rev Hinton, and the Doctor, in Harvest Field, the Ministry of Rosalie Macgeorge.  This play had its world premiere last night, and its one and only performance, as part of the Dunedin City Baptist Church's 150th Celebrations.  The script was by Greg Brook, who also directed.  The play was performed at Otago Boys' High School Auditorium.
And, while I haven't acted otherwise since my part in The Mousetrap, the first part of last year was greatly taken up with Grimhilda! which I'd written with Cherianne Parks, composed the music for, played the piano during rehearsals for (and occasionally stood in for the Music Director).