Movin' On

Rose-coloured regrets? I have none: this has been a wonderful blogging experience ever since that delightful day in March 2007.

But now I'm off to www.rebeccarosenblum.com, courtesy of the fabulous Stuart Lawler at Create Me This. Thank you for being a rose-coloured reader, lovely friends, and I hope you will hit the road with me to the new space (and change your links/feeds/spycams accordingly).

RR

The News

So the news is, in case you have not been picking up on my extremely subtle hints, that Rose-coloured is moving to its very own dedicated URL with a splendid new design from Create Me This, and life is good. Ok, life is actually incredibly hectic, so I've been building up to the big unveiling by not posting much--I'm sure you've been crushed by my silence. But see below--lotsa cool stuff:

1) May is the Month of the Short Story. I sort of knew this last year, but not really, because I spent most of May in Japan, where was probably not the Month of the Short Story and even if it was I wouldn't have understood. Anyway, I definitely know it this year because Steven WB has moved 31 Days of Short Stories to now and that's so amazing. Although my first thought when I saw the first post was, "Hey, that's not until August!" I have a hard time with change. At least it's not one of those 30-day months or I would really have lost it.

2) Amy asks (in the comments on the last post) what I say when I'm asked by a random person at a party what I do--writer or editor. It depends on the party--I go to a lot of parties where people are both writers and editors and other artistic people and sympathizers. In *that* crowd I always say writer (if we talk for long, the other will come up though) because they are likely to get it and be nice about it. *However* if the party consists of people of unknown professions, I say "editor" because I'm scared they will be mean to me if I say "writer." That's, mind you, a stupid stereotype of people in the non-obviously creative professions (in fact, most people need to be creative to get their jobs done). However, some people *are* dismissive, and I get really sad when someone, even a random stranger, is mean about my writing. It's like they insulted my significant other--the conversation cannot go on. And although rare, this *has* happened.

Pharmaceutical exec: So, what do you do?
Me: I'm a writer. I had a book of stories come out in 2008.
PE: A writer? Really, so you just sit around and write all day?
Me: Well, actually...
PE: Man, that would be great--sleep in, make coffee, write a little story. No crazy commute, no DVP, no stress..
Me: Well, actually...
PE: (long detailed discussion of PE's exact route to work, timing, possibility of accidents, etc. Seriously, 10 minutes!) A writer, wow, I should get on that. That would be the life. No stress at all! You wouldn't believe what I have to put up with.
Me: You must wish you were dead.
PE: What?
Me: I wish *I* were dead?
PE: What?
Me: Oh, look, the hostess just put out a new kind of cheese. Excuse me.

Ok, I might have made a little tiny bit of that up, but largely, it's accurate, and so very depressing. I'd rather just say "editor" and talk about my bus route to the office. Which makes me, I know, a giant wuss, but it's less stressful by far.

3) Lindsay has a new website too, and it's really pretty. Spring is the time of web renewal, apparently!

More to come soon, I promise--and brace yourself for the big change (I think this is a change I will be able to handle) of URL, coming soon!

RR

Bad Blogger

Dear Rose-coloured,

I am so sorry that I completely blanked on our third anniversary, last Wednesday. I truly believe that we are an excellent couple, Rose-coloured, and together we have so much fun, make such lovely new friends, and waste so much useful time that could have been spent getting the tomato sauce off the wall. I could never have imagined that what began as a self-absorbed fling could blossom into the long-term, with digital recorders and long distance interviews, shout-outs on serious blogs, and such kind comments a vast improvement in my nonfiction writing skills (and some actual publishing of it), all in pink pink pink!

Look how far we've come! When we first met, I had three jobs and was scrambling to finish my masters degree, and yet you always inspired me to write nonsense about busses and snacks and friends, no matter how tired I was. Now I have, um, two jobs and a book to finish (hm, not that far after all), and yet I totally haven't gotten sick of friends, busses, snacks, or blogging. Maybe I am a little (tiny bit!) tired of pink.

The forgotten anniversary is only reflective, rest assured, of those above busynesses. My love is pure, and I promise I will make this oversight up to you...what would you say to a new house?

Love and inanity,
RR

Net Noise

Twitter

118 posts in, I'm still finding Twitter largely pointless. It's just not *enough* for me to care about--Facebook has these big huge profiles and blogs have as much space as you would like, but there's almost no way to determine who you are dealing with on Twitter unless you know them already. And most people *don't* distill well into 140 characters (I count myself in this group)--Twitter is boring because most posts are a) links to articles or other people's twitter posts that I am not going to follow because there is no commentary provided and I don't know where the "tiny url" will take me, b) comments on other people's twitter posts that I didn't read at the time and now can't find (why on earth don't think link the comments to the posts? why?), so the comments make no sense to me, or c) boring.

I've been told that I'm bored by Twitter because I refuse to accept it as it's own medium, and keep waiting for it to be Facebook or a blog (witness the above refusal to call Twitter posts "tweets"--I just can't anymore). Even those Twitter friends of mine who Twitter amusingly, if they (used to) have a blog I keep wishing they'd expand the point (you know who you are).

Someone said that I would like Twitter better if I followed celebrities, and when I said I don't know any celebrities, said I didn't have to. Apparently Twitter is less like Facebook, where you friend people you know in real life in order to keep up with daily adventures and thoughts and share your own (well, that's what I'm doing on Facebook) and more like a blog, where you offer thoughts and opinions to the wide world o'strangers, and see if there's anyone out there who is interested in them.

So I'm trying, and have a (very) few celebrity Twitter recommendations of Twitter feeds you might enjoy. I like the tiny stories of Arjun Basu (although they often strike me as installments of one larger story). I also follow novelist/short-story writer/playwright AL Kennedy, who is very wry and funny about literary celebrity in Britain (she's always unwell, on a train, about to go speak to a conference of people for reasons she does not understand.) And I'm not even sure how this happened, but for a while now I've been following someone named Nerdy Girl, who turns out to be the publisher of This Magazine, Lisa Whittington-Hill, and also is hilarious.

Blogs

I'm still reading Penelope Trunk's blog. I know, I shouldn't, but I think it fills the gap in my life that people with TVs fill with reality shows about sex rehab and how renovating your house can wreck your marriage. She's such a self-righteous, self-important train-wreck, and yet she's not stupid and occasionally makes good points. For example, you could read certain bits of her post of frugality and be reminded of how we all choose our own financial constraints--those who consider life not worth living without a two-car garage will be stuck paying for that, and will have to work accordingly. Those content with a driveway--or a bike--will have more flexibility in their career options and/or more discretionary income.

Great points, and inspiring for those who feel their jobs might become too much at some point (hi!) But then she goes off on how what really matters is having household help so you can devote yourself to work, as well as a flash car to impress clients, and you realize she's a lunatic capitalist. But it still makes for fun reading.

There's better reading afoot in the blogosphere, however. Have you seen Mark Sampson's new(ish) Free-range Reading blog? It's got book reviews and lit news, but a bit unusual for a lit blog is that there's been a couple really interesting posts about journalism (which MS is when he's not busy being a novelist). It's a whole other kind of writing, that journalism thing, and kind of cool to get to read about it from the inside. Also, naturally, he reads good books and writes about them well!

On a more mundanely self-absorbed note, does anyone know how the "next blog" button (up at the top of the screen here) works? I never even noticed it before this week, when the statistics on this site started to say it was referring a lot of people through here. My first thought was that maybe the blog behind me in the queue had gone way up in traffic, but there is no "last blog" button, so I can't go there. Also, I've found that hitting "next blog" several times from the same blog leads you to different ones, so I think my theory is fundamentally false. But I don't have a better one--do you?

RR

12 sentences

Another way people of the blogosphere (do I overuse that word?) are recapping the year is by posting the first sentences from the first post of each month in 2009 together, to see if they form a narrative. Mine don't, but it was fun for me to cruise through all my old posts and remember all those good times. Also, to realize that I write really really long sentences; gotta work on that!

12 random bits of 2009:

These 365-day units do not necessarily break off at useful points--I'm having trouble encapsulating the past year or imagining the next one because I'm in the *middle* of so many things.

So you live in an apartment for ages, get used to all the tricks of the door locks and the shower faucet, keep your shorts available during the winter because you know the heat is unpredictable, realize there is a tiny bloodstain on a floortile here or there and don't worry about it because it's probably yours, tape things to every available surface, install splitters on the phone jack and a power bar on the electrical jack and generally just assume that the place is your domain and you know it cold.

Saturday February 28, 2009, dawned a bit watery, but the dawn did come before 7 am (only the third day of the year that we got light before 7!) and by the time sun was fully in the sky, the flimsy cloud cover had delicately burnt off or blown away, leaving us with a ravishing yellow and blue to breakfast by. In

As you might have been able to glean from the occasion dysphoric comment here at Rose-coloured, or my eye-rolls in person, my current manuscript is not coming together as well as I'd like.

I'm reading reading reading student stories this week, and they are *good*!

This is week is one with way too much fun in it, such that of the events below, I'm only actually able to attend a couple.

Colour vapour labour odour realize analyze vapourize glamour (but glamorous) jewellery ageing cheque judgment lasagna gonnorhea etc.

I started thinking about story (and poem) submissions to literary journals when a friend said she was going to start sending some out.

Joyland Stories will soon be a part of the daily dose of aweomse that is CellStories, a site that sends cell phone and Blackberry (etc.) users a new short story every day (you can also read the stories at the link above).

Mr. Turner is an important author for me (although really also for Canada) for various reasons, not least his was one of the first literary readings I ever saw, and at said reading, the very first pornographic film I ever saw.

Reminder that Amy Jones, Kathleen Winter and I are reading tomorrow at the Drawn & Quarterly store in Montreal, 211 rue Bernard West, at 7pm.

The Advent Books blog is up and running.

RR

Two thousand and what?

I was going to recap this past week of vacation at some point, but then I realized that I should also do a 2009-in-review post, and then people started going on about the end of the *decade* and now I am just utterly overwhelmed.

I've been reading other people's lovely 2000s retrospectives instead, happy that some people can do this right. A lot of them are fairly personal, even if they are on blogs focussed on reading or writing or whatever (my interests are pretty narrow in scope). Which only makes sense--ten years is a huge meaningful block in anyone's life, and it's hard not to get emotional thinking of what's been wrought in that time, even if a lot of good books got read in there, too.

Though I never particularly felt that the aughts had any kind of decadey tone, that might be because they were the first decade in which I was semi-functional in the world (there probably are people who are fully conscious agents in their own lives before they turn 21; to them I say, bravo). So to me the aughts are not just a decade where certain things happened--it's the decade when *everything* happened.

This was driven home to me last night when the party discussion turned to where we spent Y2K New Year's. I spent mine at the City of Hamilton's outdoor celebration, because the band featured wasHoneymoon Suite, which was a (semi-ironic) favourite band of mine and my friends. I was visiting my parents outside of Hamilton on break from my third year of university.

If present Rebecca could somehow go meet me in the past, my younger self would probably only say, "How did you get your hair like that?"

I had no idea then how my life would go, and no idea how I *wanted* it to go, so I really don't think I would have known how to ask a pertinent question. But I would have been really impressed with future self for getting my hair (mainly) under control.

And looking back, I still can't form a meaningful narrative looking at the decade as a whole. Having this blog, and doing some interviews and profiles when *Once* came out last year, really put this in perspective for me. I can make certain events and relationships seem to cohere into a logical arc by extracting them from the long silly series of events that is my life and putting them only in the context of each other.

But to me, and I think to most people in the process of living, there is no narrative--just the things that happened, and what we did about them. It's the act of writing (ah, this post has a point!) that creates a story, whether or not the events are true--the selection of what to leave in and what to omit, how to frame, what tone to take, whose point of view to honour. This blog in certain ways is the story of my life over the last 3 years, but it's highly biased since I do all the telling, and I leave most of what doesn't really pertain to reading and writing (usually) (for example, an edited version would include boring stuff like what I ate at every meal, dumb stuff like that time I got stuck in the back of the couch, and incriminating stuff like how I tried too hard to pet this cat that she went ballistic and tried to eat me).

I found a really interesting little section in the journal Ars Medica about how to write about real life:

"...[In reading fiction] we sometimes encounter unprocessed details...that have specific, charged meaning for the teller but are unclear to the reader. These pieces in many ways resemble journalling or therapeutic writing. The author is too close to the events or uses personal code and shorthand, which leave gaps. As a result, we are not fully invited into the experience. Stories of trauma and loss are often fragmented, because they remain so for the writer and have not yet been crafted through the personal and creative steps that render them coherent and universal.

"Writing personal narratives may indeed be healing, but to be literary there needs to be distance, and "observer's eye" that allows us to to see the full picture."

So that's what I lack, I think--the observer's eye that allows be to see my life from beyond my own headspace, to really think in terms of my own fictional self as living a story. And this is why I don't write much autobiographical fiction--I'm bad at it. I know the details and their import so I leave them out, I get stuck on a particular "truth" and thus can't make the story truly resonant with people other than myself.

The blog is an opportunity to try to craft mini-narratives that still sorta stick to the truth, but you might have noticed that I don't often do that--Rose-coloured consists much more of essay/opinion/rant-type writing, or else snatches of contextless dialogue, rather than actual beginning-middle-end type stories from my own life. Those are just too hard--how to find an "ending" to my anecdote when I'm still alive.

So I find it weird to be looking at my life in a ten-year chunk--no narrative seems available. 10 years ago I had a roommate, I lived in Montreal, I was writing a weird novella, and my favourite food was probably chocolate macaroons. Are those the salient details of me at that point? Who knows? I don't even know the salient details of my life now, and I certainly don't know how to take the relatively simple but to me wonderful, baffling, sad, exciting, and scary events of the last ten years and make it seem like I had a plan, an arc, or even a clue.

How does anyone ever write their autobiography?

And thus, to begin 2010, apparently this is a post about why I write fiction.

I hope your next 10 years, and mine, are wonderful and baffling.

RR

En vacances

I thought that I might not have the time or internet connection to blog during vacation, but here I am with both of those. What I lack is anything to blog in regard to. It is funny to get through a day without writing or editing or talking to people about writing, or even eavesdropping on people on the bus (somehow, I consider that part of my work). As it turns out, this vacation thing is very pleasant. There is currently a blizzard going on where I am (Charlottetown, if you are curious), which limits activities to reading, eating, talking, and playing cards. Also, napping, which is not really an activity but does fill gaps in the day quite nicely.

Lulled on sleep and sugar, I am unable to come up with much that's interesting to say. I have learned that PEIslanders are very friendly and call Gin Rummy "Queens" but it's still fun, that I probably have some kind of chronic sinus issue that I need a professional to look into and if possible destroy, that I like lobster as much as I suspected I would, and that the innovators issue of the New Yorker is pretty good but they still shouldn't have done away with the winter fiction issue.

I swear to you, that's all I've got. I...uh...I'm gonna go work on a story now. And then maybe commute to nowhere, just feel a bit more like myself. Either that or take a nice midmorning nap.

RR

In very brief

1) Montreal est magnificique! J'etais la pour un presentation des livres a Librairie Drawn & Quarterly avec Kathleen Winter et Amy Jones (on peut voir leurs perspectives sur notre presentations si on lit ses blogs. Notre publie Dan Wells a conduit son minivan, beaucoup des livres, Amy et moi (je pense qu'il y a un probleme de verb avec cette phrase, et peut-etre la plupart de cette paragraphe) et c'etait un adventure magnifique.

2) I was the Inconstant Muse for Hallowe'en! It was was awesome. Like most of my highly conceptual [confusing] costumes, this one requires some explanation: I picture the Muse a bit coquettish/flirty/slutty--she is all eager to hook up and give writers great ideas, but then she takes off and leaves you to execute the idea all alone. So my costume was a brief toga, some laurel leaves, and great first lines of books written in Sharpie all over my arms and legs. Conceptual, I tell you.

3) This hydro-metre thingy is the best: a way to be environmentally friendly in a vaguely competitive, entirely trackable way: you get to see your hour-to-hour, day-to-day energy use, and pinpoint where you are over-indulging in "peak" (ie., most expensive) energy. I don't have most of the big appliances (dishwasher, laundry/drier, air conditioner) so even at optimal efficiency my savings would still be minimal, but it is so attractive to see it all laid out in colourful drafts. I hope I don't get obsessed.

4) My post about TTC seating etiquette got picked up on the Maisonneuve blog. This is a silly thing to post here, as if you are a regular Rose-coloured reader, you've likely already read that piece, but I am chuffed the Maisonneuve-sters thought it was worth reposting, and Rose-coloured is for all things I'm chuffed about (except the post in question, actually, which is rather snarky).

5) Tomorrow night, I head for the hills, by which I mean Edmonton and the mountains beyond, as well as my incredible friend AMT. I'll only be gone 5 days, and likely there can be some remote posting, but whenever I leave my comfortable internet orbit, there is a risk of non-access, so you may not hear from me until next week. I'm sure you'll be just fine without me!

RR

Blogging Tips from the Big Screen

Well, it had to happen: I saw Julie and Julia and loved it, and even better, I got over some of my retro gender stereotypes and saw it with someone of the male persuasion, who loved it too!

Better still (or at least equal), this is the first movie I've ever seen about a blogger. Well, half about a blogger...the less interesting half, according to pretty much everyone who has reviewed the film. And it's hard--Meryl Streep is perhaps the best actress in popular cinema today and Amy Adams is...not bad. Julia Child revolutionized cooking in America and Julie Powell wrote a fairly interesting blog for a while. Julia had Paris, Julie had Queens. It's sort of depressing to continue in this vein, because the character I identified with was Julie.

And I liked the Julie sections of the film, because they are still pretty interesting though not revolutionary or Parisian, but also because they addressed issues I've never seen dramatized before, issues dear to my heart--blogging issues.

*And* this gives me an opportunity to do a blogging-tips post here, which I've been wanting to do for a while. The reason I haven't is, though I love Rose-coloured with all my heart and it is very much as good as I can make it, it is lacking some things that make a great blog. So I really needed an example like Julie Powell, who seems to do everything right (in the film; I haven't read the actual blog; ironic?) for a little segway into the "do as I say, not as I do" territory--onwards!

1. Make it a blog *about* something, ideally something ongoing: a story that readers can follow and get involved in. Political blogs have the right idea: every day something new happens, myriad new things in fact, and the blogger with an informed and interested mind has his or her pick of things to write about that people will be interested in. A travel blog about an extended trip; a parenthood blog about a baby's first year; a tv blog about America's Top Model--I'm not saying I would read all of these, but conceptually they are very sound ways to organize a blog. Like some of the above, Julie made her task slightly harder by being herself responsible for the ongoing thing that she would then write about; that's two tasks, by my count.

Are you already sensing how Rose-coloured doesn't fit this rubric? Cause the day-by-day "happening" I'm supposed to be covering here is me being a writer, but if I limited posts to announcements of publications and readings, I'd be lucky to post monthly, and if I tried to cover each time I actually wrote fiction, a) I'd never actually write fiction and b) we'd all be bored. Which is why this blog turned out to be a miscellany, linked more or less by the themes of writing, reading, and me (which is of course far too loose--I'm learning to write reviews, but posting one of a shoe is dubiously far from the original theme of writing. Sigh.)

2) Want to do it. Julie's blog was so satisfying to readers because it was satisfying to *her*--it was her idea and she was proud of herself and eager to share her experiences, thrilled when people related to them. One of the most depressing conversations about the state of publishing I've had recently was with a group of writers who felt they "had" to start blogs to promote their books and didn't want to. They wondered what it would be like, how much work it would be, how many books they would sell. I said I loved my blog, considered it my hobby, and found it little effort compared to what I learn in the process and get back from readers. But I wasn't sure the blog had in fact sold any books. Someone responded, "Well, discounting "hobbyists" like Rebecca, what do we figure the sales increase would be?" Oh, yeah, I want to read your daily musings. (note: not exact transcript of conversation; I may have added snark).

I hope if nothing else, it's clear from Rose-coloured that I love Rose-coloured, and look forward to posting. I wrote for months when it was basically Scott and Fred reading, and if all I could keep were those two, I'd go right on. Blogging is my golf, or my knitting, or macrame or whatever; it is the companion to the fiction I write. Yes, I started the blog partly as a publicity thing for the last book, but writing the wide variety of prose I've been experimenting with here has also helped immeasurably as I write the *next* book.

3. Post regularly. Julie had 500+ recipes to make and report on in one year; I'm guessing it was a pretty well-updated blog. A blogger can totally set her definition of regularly, from a couple times a day to once a week, to...whatever you want. But I think it is important to set a loose standard that blog readers can expect. Julie rants on the phone to her mom about being accountable to her readers to do what she set out to do, and within reason that is true. You shouldn't be putting off real life to blog, but as a blog reader, I am so sad when someone who's daily comment I look forward to goes AWOL for weeks. By the time the blogger returns, maybe I've licked my wounds and moved on.

This is why #2 is so important. If you don't want to blog, you won't--blogs are not necessary to anything, no one pays you, and friendly readers are only that. You'd be suprised, if you surf around, how many blogs are mainly just apologies for not posting more, interspersed with long silences. And really, the silences are fine--it's the apologies that are silly. With the advent of Google Reader, I no longer have to go looking for updates on most blogs, because they come to me, which is perfect for those blogs that really are just publication and reading announcements for writers I like. That's not the way to get a large and devoted fandom or a book deal--but we're not all after that.


4. Have a personality in your blog. Some bloggers tell everything about their jobs, friends, family and sex lives (I've stopped linking to Ms. Trunk even for comments like this; argh!), some talk strictly about their subject matter and never even mention what they ate for lunch, but a distinctive and human (and humourous--Julie made lots of witty asides about her own ineptitude) voice is what draws well, me, anyway, to a blog. You could info on Wikipedia, after all.

5. Read it over before you post. Ok, I have no idea if Julie did this and, ok, I totally get that blogs are new form of nonpublishing publishing and that they aren't held to as rigid standards as say a newspaper. I've seen typos in my own published posts and *let them go* because I know if it was posted more than 3 days ago, the post has probably had most of the readers it is likely to get. But if there are flying leaps of logic, non-sequiteurs to the point of illogic, so many typos things can't be understood, if there are no paragraphs (common and v. annoying in the blogsphere) it seems like you didn't care much about the piece at all. So why should the reader?


That's it--the best Julie and I can come up with with regard to blogging. I know I know: there are like 100 000 blogs don't conform to all this, including mine, and some are pretty good--please don't feel like I'm rigid on this stuff. But I do feel that many people get excited by and then frustrated with the blogging experience, and these might be some good ways to keep the excitement going. Anyway, it worked for Julie.

I go where I go on my own two feet
RR

Oh, look!

I don't usually link to blogs that haven't been going for a while, in case they don't continue, but I'm too excited to wait to tell you that The New Quarterly has a blog now, The Literary Type. And really, I have no doubt that TLT will thrive with all the good energy and talent that lives at TNQ behind it, and with their wonderous managing editor Rosalynn Tyo at the helm.

Yay!

The flower said it wished it was a bee
RR

Saving you from boredom, one link at a time

Did you know that AMT has a blog? And that's it's fabulous, and contains regular updates about dogs, the Weather Network, and all the other various ways life is amusing? I have been dreaming of (and campaigning for) this for *years*, and now I am happy. You go read and be happy, too.

Another thing I've been wanting for a while is the re-emergence of rob mclennan's fascinating series of author interviews, 12 or 20 Questions. And now it's back, and being posted regularly on rob's clever blog. Hooray! (Am I now going to get everything I've wished for? That would be odd. Maybe only blog-related things I've wished for.)

Finally, Penelope Trunk has a good post on prioritizing. Actually, it's a slightly snarky post about how people who don't read blogs are dumb and slow (I don't agree with that; much as I like blogs, they are a personal choice, like a New Yorker subscription. Or heroin.) But she makes some really good points about how we have time for what we care about, and less time for what we, consciously or not, regard as unimportant. This is a good truth to acknowledge for me, and it's stuff like this that keeps me reading PT although she a) is mean and b) talks a lot about her sex life for no reason. But actually, neither of those things are boring either!

Happy reading!

Thank you stranger for your therapeutic smile
RR

Books in tents!

Ah, less than I week after I swore to never post pictures to blogger again, I've posted pictures to blogger. But, in my defense it's on Thirsty, so technically that wasn't part of my foreswearing. And in blogger's defense, there was something I was doing wrong that made the process that much slower. So you never know: there could be pictures on Rose-coloured again someday. In the meantime, if you are into Japanese book fairs in train yards (and really, who isn't?) the above link is for you!!

I don't want to change the world / I'm not looking for New England
RR

Tragedy

Please note: evil Blogger ate my really long, really fascinating post about teaching. I am sad and frustrated, but will eventually not feel that way and then recreate the post. Although I doubt it will be as amusing as the first version. Until that time, please think about kittens.

No excuse to be so tragic
RR

Not Terrible at All

Today this blog turns two years old and, possibly, enters its hair-pulling, tantrum-throwing, finger-in-light-socket years. We hope not. It's been such a great ride so far.

One year ago I was here, being glamourous and alarmed. Two years ago I was starting this blog, and the first non-meta-blog post was this, about snark and story-telling.

Five jobs. Several publications. Myriad irritations. One book. Braces, illness, surrealism, and confusion. And...whatever post is after this one.

Cheers to that, and thanks for reading, responding, laughing and scoffing. It's been so very much fun so far.

RR

Quel anti-climax

I'm now truly sorry I complained about my lost courier package last week, since a shared mystery demands a shared denouement, and the denouement in this case is stupid.

It was not a summons, it was not a dairy product, it was a set of advance-screening movie tickets that I "earned" through a corporate rewards program. These are a) small enough to fit handily in a mailbox, b) not relevant for close to 3 weeks and c) probably worth less than the cost of delivery. I have no idea why anyone would have couriered them.

And, before you ask, they are to a truly embarrassing movie, much as me and my partener in cimatic silliness are looking forward to seeing it. I shall never ever ever reveal the title, lest it sully my reputation as a serious person (even more).

Dire times call for dire faces
RR

Elsewheres

I've been posting elsewhere again, Writers Writing Blogs and This is a call, both at Thirsty. You are encouraged to read, and, if so inclined, answer the call!!

But I never answered his letter
RR

Be a friend to books!

I'm going to start doing the occasional guest post over at my publisher's blog, Thirsty, and to kick things off on the right foot, I've done a little photo essay on how to be kind to the books in your life. It's called Books Are Our Friends!! and I am sure you already know all my hints and tips, but perhaps you would like a little refresher?? I hope you enjoy it!!

We ain't gonna live forever
RR

On Alert

There is nothing like the vertigo you experience when someone says, "Hey, I read that thing about you," and not only do you not know the thing they are referring to, the information is in some tiny way incorrect.

Most people will twitch violently if they see their name misspelled on *anything*, including a *TV Guide* subscription sticker--any representation of self ought to be as accurate as possible. Of course, that way lies madness--how long, exactly, are you willing to stay on hold with the *TV Guide* people? But one likes to at least keep track of what's being said.

Hence the incredibly self-absorbed step of setting up a Google Alert for my own name--I just like to know. Mainly, the alerts contain my Rose-coloured posts, articles and reviews I would've heard about in other ways, and the occasional negative thing that no one wanted to mention to me. I also see the odd gem that I actually wouldn't have seen sans alert. Love it!

A random bonus to the whole alert thing is that I set it up wrong, for only my last name rather than first-n-last, so I get notices when *any* Rosenblum does anything. I'm not innundated, there aren't that many of us, but actually, I didn't know about *any* of these folks before the Alerts, so it's kind of fascinating and impressive to see what others are up to:

--Michael Rosenblum is an innovator in TV news.
--Mort Rosenblum is a journalist who wants to save the world.
--Matthew Rosenblum is a composor and professor of music
--Walter and Naomi Rosenblum are photographers
--Mary Rosenblum writes mysteries and science fiction novels.
--a whole bunch of Rosenblums make wine (I'd actually heard of those guys before--it's a pretty respected winery, I'm told)

I'm not related to any of these folks, or at all familiar with their work, but it is nice to know that they are out there, doing the name proud.

I wonder if this post will turn up on *their* Google Alerts, and what they'll think about that?

Except for the drilling in the wall
RR

Journals, Diaries, Logs, and Blogs

I've always been rather worked up over journals. As a bookish kid, I was forever being given pretty little notebooks in which to record my deep thoughts, and thus was perpetually disappointed that I didn't have any. So many adorable diaries, fabric-covered or pleather-covered, some with little tiny keys, and only the first dozen pages filled. Even when I managed to keep one for a few months, it was deadly dull going--a routine litany of school, piano and arguing with my brother. And months-long absenses, followed by passionate exclamations of self-disgust, and resolutions to be more faithful. The most interesting material in those old journals is all rather meta-journal.

And yet, the absolute worst thing imaginable was my journal falling into the hands of a parent, sibling, school frenemy or, horror of horrors, a stranger. Who knows, I don't actually remember now, but I think I was actually keeping those books as a record of my *artistic progress*, or possibly as notes for my autobiography. Oh dear.

Good thing the internet came along and allowed me to be a bit more focussed in my journalling. Of course, as an adult, I can make a better effort at the interest factor--I no longer play the piano nor argue with my brother (much), and I definitely don't feel bound to keep anything so dull as a *record of what actually happens to me*.

Because, you know, who cares? Of the 1000s of actions anyone takes in a given day ("make microwave oatmeal," "have 3-minute conversation about insects with neighbour," "get hit by door on way off bus") only a few are even vaguely interesting, and even fewer are relevant to people who aren't going to be eating that oatmeal (or plagued by those insects).

Rose-coloured is mainly a public space for me-as-a-writer--what I'm writing, what I'm reading, what's being said about my work, what I'm saying about other writers. I try to keep interesting. For more boring matters, I do keep an everyday workbook, on paper, wherein I describe the work that I managed that day on whatever story I am absorbed in. Those entries are quitte regular and quite painless, being mainly a sentence or two each. And then I keep a reading log, where I write don't titles and authors and, again, a sentence or two about what I thought.

I guess I *am* a record-keeping type, after all, in my way. Making this blog was my reward for finishing my Master's thesis, and I've rarely so enjoyed a self-given gift. I like to write through my ideas to know what I think, and I like to know what others think, too. It definitely makes my day when someone responds to something I've written, be it in print or on-line.

So, if you've read this far, thanks for reading, and thanks for thinking about stuff I think about. I guess I natter a lot, but I do enjoy it.

Something underground / gonna come up and carry me
RR

Intra-blog Naval Gazing

I've had a site-metre thingy hooked up for a while for Rose-coloured, but I don't get much use out of it. I don't know if it's a hard to intuit one or I'm just lazy (I suspect the latter, but it's Google Analytics, so you can check it out and judge for yourself) but I find it hard to learn anything useful from it. Or maybe there's nothing useful to learn from a site metre except for the number of people who look at this site every day. And GA *does* tell me that, with a helpful day-by-day line graph. I am pleased to note that in recent months there are more people reading this site than I have personally discussed the material with, which would be the point of having a blog in the first place. So we are moving in the right direction.

Hello new friends, anyway.

Sometimes, when I get ambitious (read: bored) I try the more advanced site tracking features, like the shaded map. From the varying shades of green, I now know that people in Sweden and Belgium have read this blog, which is puzzling, but hello to both of you anyway. I have also learned which sites link to mine, which I already knew, except for the one with "p*rn" in the title, which I refuse to click on to discover the connection. We shall let that remain a mystery.

And, after much skidding around the GA site, I figured out how to find out what people Google to get Rose-coloured (I have done this before, every six months or so, but then I forget how again). I know this is often very entertaining for bloggers, as people somehow wind up on lit-type blogs after searching "emo chicken gargoyle" or something equally inexplicable (and bound for disappointment on a lit-type blog). Less interestingly, but more profitably, readers of Rose-coloured generally search some combination of my name and the title of my book, or sometimes other authors that I have mentioned here. In fact, in the top 50 searches, there is only one that is funny, and that's a sort of sad one:

infected ink pen puncture

because I made a joke about that once, and I am sure the person who wanted info on that subject was not kidding. I am sorry, whoever you are, that I was flip about something that would be a serious problem if it actually happened. I hope that it is not very badly infected.

If something needs to be changed/now is the time to change it
RR