♥ As I type, I’m listening to fireworks. Today is Swiss National Day, when everyone in Switzerland sets of fireworks, eats too much, drinks too much, and commemorates the signing of the Federal Charter of 1291. From what I can gather, this involved three guys meeting in a field and agreeing not to kill each other, and promising to to defend one another against the evil Habsburgs.
♥ As I mentioned last week, I don’t believe in a Writing Muse. The old butt-in-chair routine is the way to go. However, there are days – and sometimes even weeks – when it just flows. This was one of them. I added 10,000 words to my WIP; polished my first four chapters; wrote a short and a long synopsis; and entered two RWA chapter contests. Honesty (and Irishness) compel me to add that my synopses are really bad. Hopefully, the chapters rock. 
♥ I’ve been rolling with the spurt of enthusiasm for writing, so I was neither a prolific reader nor a productive blogger this week. I read two books. My favourite was Brenda Novak’s Body Heat (my review will be up on the 9th of August). I liked the first book in her Hired Guns trilogy, but this one made me look up her backlist. I gave it a B+, but I’m still thinking about the hero several days later, so I might go back and upgrade it to an A-. Note: I rarely change a grade I’ve given a book, but some just stay with me, and I think those stories are worth another look.
♥ This week, the annual Romance Writers of America conference was held in Orlando, Florida. I’ve enjoyed reading blog posts from various attendees, but some of the coverage on Twitter was…odd. There were a few people at the conference who insisted on tweeting every damn thing that was said in a workshop or speech, or constantly tweeted between events. It made me wonder if they ever took the time to interact with their fellow attendees.
♥ I noticed that Where Shadows Dance, the sixth book in C.S. Harris’ excellent Regency mystery series, is slated for a March 2011 release. I want to read this book now, but it looks like I’ll have to be patient. 
Enjoy your Sunday!
{ 4 comments }
Now that you mention it, maybe there sure is a thing as too much tweeting … especially when some tweets were identical to others … it’s such a personal thing tho, isn’t it?
That is bizarre, isn’t it? I think some people want to be the “first” to mention something, but then it becomes a weird competition, and it does make you wonder if those people are enjoying being there and existing in the moment or more concerned with dishing the “dirt”. I’d be taking notes during the workshop, not tweeting. But that’s just me.
@Janet W: I realise there is no “right” way to use social media. My husband, for example, never chats on Twitter, whereas I do this regularly. However, a flurry of conference tweets and retweets which all contain the same (sometimes inaccurate) information is tedious.
@Stacy ~: One of my pet peeves as a teacher was students texting and taking phone calls during class. And I taught ADULTS in my last job! I was so taken aback by the blatant rudeness of it that I didn’t know how to react at first. After it had happened a few times and disrupted my lesson, I banned all phones from my classroom. The students were not happy.
I barely had time to check in with Twitter, let alone time to tweet something useful (like that I hadn’t been trampled by the crowds queuing for the Literacy event) — so forget taking the time to tweet useless stuff like, “Ooh, Nora said ‘carbon paper.’”
Although, you know, I was thinking about it — my first novel was written on a manual typewriter. It sucked, too. The novel; the typewriter was kind of cute.