Momentum of the Muse

Every time the weather switches rapidly from raining to sunshine in a matter of two hours, I start day dreaming about being in a float plane. You know, breaking out of the clouds into the big wide world.

Only, this is way cooler.

Dinner in the sky!

The perfect first date for anyone you’ve ever met in the grocery store. Or in a bar. Or on the internet. Or the skytrain. Or when they beat your ass and make you cry like a little girl in laser tag.

You know, whatever.

Laser tag in the sky? Maybe I’m onto something …

I’ve been fooling around on this site.

You make a poem. Or, someone else makes one better than yours.

So, you tear it apart.

Either way, it’s a win-win.

Actually, if anyone want to team up with me, create an alliance against the other magnet poets, shoot me an e-mail. It’ll be on like the break of dawn.

I checked into my Google analytics to discover that while I was super busy not posting anything at all, I have surfaced as the number one result for the search keywords “Erin Maher Gone Wild.” I was proud to even beincluded in rabbit/bunny mittens, but this is just beyond my wildest dreams.

And according to Google, they’re wild all right.

This also means I have a stripper name. Like Tiffany Purelove. Or Candy Redkiss. Or whatever strippers name themselves.

Fallen into a state of disrepair.

This blog is the broom in the swiffer commercial. Twitter is the swiffer

Baby, come back…

For awhile, I was writing for hours everyday. And I don’t mean, organising my e-mail inbox, twittering, getting distracted by my stumble button … I mean full-fledged pounding away at the keys, replacing my keyboard at the end of every day. All because somebody had the hare-brained idea of daring me, saying I couldn’t do my writing in mittens.

Not really. But I am known throughout google for my rabbit mittens, as told to me several times now by Google Analytics. So, that ones for you Rabbit Mitten people.

Anyways, I would write up a storm. And then, I would have a moment of self-relfection here and there. Sitting in a big comfy arm chair, scribbling in my notebook. On the skytrain, sunlight shooting through the window, broken into fragments, shrapnel, warming me up. I would write in my notebook “I never write anymore.” Yet, I was writing 3 hours a day, 4 hours, maybe even 6 hours once or twice. That’s nothing to shake a lobster at, right?

But I was writing how-to articles. Blog posts. Lists of beauty tips. Greening your office newsletters. Random,

I tried nanowrimo which basically just made throw up inside my word processor.

I’ve read a lot of writing advice books, full of tips on what other writer’s did to put their muse in a chokehold until they said uncle.

• Sit, and just write, force yourself to everyday.
• Brainstorm.
• Free write.
• Write what you know, pull from life.
• Sit and write “I don’t know what to write, I don’t know what to write …” over and over until you do know.

But, I saw The Shining. We know how that ended, and I don’t what you’re into writing buddy, but that sick and twisted business just isn’t for me.

So far, the only thing I’ve found that works to inspire me in fiction is getting out there. Not necessarily outside, but doing something different, changing up my day to day, even just a little. It injects an energy into everything I do, most especially my fiction. I quit punching my muse in the face, mean mugging my computer screen, and froze her out. The muse hates to be ignored – they have egos the size of Manitoba. They like to be stroked and coddled like the precious and cute little kittens that they sure as Hell aren’t. Then they still don’t put out, those wiley vixens. They even prefer the outright beatings to being ignored. So, as soon as I stopped hassling my muse, indulging in other business, she came running.

What tips or ideas do you have that help you write your favorite kind of writing? What inspires you?

So, I did end up going to the Vancouver Twestival. Over 4, 000 CDN was raised in Vancouver, and 250, 000 USD worldwide – so far. There are still 80 cities pending out of 202 cities.

I contributed with my ticket purchase, the purchase of raffle tickets, and sipping on a few tasty cocktails, seeing as Opus was contributing 6% of liquor sales to charity:water as well. I had a great time, won twice in the raffle, and enjoyed my cocktails plenty. How cool is it to couple an awesome night on the town with helping for a great cause?

It was a terrific event – kudos to Miss 604 for running it. I was super impressed with how smoothly everything went, how well put together it was, and had lots of fun.

Can’t wait for the next one!

I just want to talk about a little thing called Twestival, which is coming up this Thursday.

Now, I’ve rambled on about twitter enough. More than enough. And then some. With a healthy dose of a bit more.

Speaking of which – here’s me, on twitter, so give me a follow with an @ if you so please.

Now, Twestival, if you haven’t yet heard, is 175+ cities around the world mobilising through Twitter and hosting events on February 12th. All money raised from these events is going to provide clean drinking water to the 1 in 6 people who do not currently have access to it. I didn’t manage to buy tickets in the first round of sales, blast my procrastinating ways. But, luckily, all my moaning and pouting and disappointment paid off. When the next round went on sale, my man was able to snipe up a pair. He’s not quite the twitter assassin I am, but he’s a badass ninja, sneaking in and snapping up tickets I didn’t even realise were on sale. I am mighty pleased, to say the least.

Aside from my bragging, I just wanted to talk a little bit about this Twestival business. I just think it’s awesome that there’s been such a tremendous amount of support – I mean, 175+ cities worldwide, is phenomenal. Instead of using twitter to bitch about motrin, or talk about what we ate for lunch, people are mobilising, and doing something valid. The site is predominantly the water cooler of the online world. You know, you can flirt with Sue from accounting, console Chris in IT over his latest botched foray in the rhealm of romance, or dish with Glenda from HR about how much sluttier Karen’s skirts have been getting since McHandsome as Hell started in marketing. Except that Sue is a children’s book writer, Chris owns a badass winery in California, and who knows what Glenda does, she’s freaking hilarious and that’s all that matters.

The point is, I love the idea that communication can lead to change. Like there are all these altruistic tentacles reaching around the world, pulling in twitter users, and helping us to make a difference. Grassroots, only wires and modems and other names for technological things because I don’t know that many. Which also proves just how easy Wordpress truly is.

I love the idea that a person, or a group of people, can look at a tool and use it for something else, evolving it into a more dynamic thing.

Where else can we band together and each do something small, to spur on change? How many existing arenas aren’t being used to their full potential?

So, instead of posting, I would like to point readers to my freshly updated “Services” page.

There is no need for a blog post when greatness has already been achieved there. Only so much greatness can come of one individual per day, and unfortunately I had halfway achieved the quota just past midnight, when I was kicking ass and taking names in Rock Band. With most of the greatness already gone towards a wicked, bad ass guitar solo, I had just enough left to eek out the best “Services” page of all time.

Where did you spend your greatness today?

So, I was over at Carrie Harris’ blog, reading up about this 50 Books Challenge, which was thought up over at PJ Hoover’s blog.

I obviously love bandwagons – nanowrimo – so I’m hopping on this one, too. PJ Hoover says you can change the rules anyway you feel good about, so these are my rules.

50 Books Challenge : The Rules:

1. I must read 50 books.
2. They must be full on books with lots of words. Some pictures are allowed, but the picture to word ratio has to way heavily on the words side.
3. Cookbooks don’t count unless I make 25% of the recipes inside at least once. Which securely eliminates cookbooks completely.
4. Cannot count anything I have read before. Especially the ones I read just to look intellectual on the bus/skytrain and really was bored to tears the entire time.
5. My 50 Books Challenge must begin and end on Christmas. Because I got 3 books for Christmas and I already read all three.
6. Each book must have an accompanying blog post, or string of tweets, to document and celebrate and show off.

Now, on Carrie’s blog, people made suggestions for what she might like. I wouldn’t mind a suggestion or two as well, and my taste runs pretty wide. I never did finish The Lord of the Rings, but I read The Hobbit half a dozen times. I like weird, obscure literary tricks, especially if the author doesn’t quite pull it off until after they’ve been dead a few hundred years.

Or something.

Basically, suggestions are welcome. And let me know if you also decide to take on the 50 Books Challenge.

So, another interesting post about Google Analytics!

Since you can see what keywords were used to find your site, you can also see which countries those readers are from. This is the breakdown of visits to my site, in order of most action to least action.

1. Canada
2. United States
3. Sweden
4. United Kingdom
5. Spain
6. Italy
7. Switzerland
8. Australia
9. India
10. Malaysia

So, that’s kind of fun. Now I know my Aunt Cheryl, who I called on Christmas Eve and told to check out my blog, never did. Since she gave me a Le Senza gift card, which I will use to buy impossibly fluffy knee high slippers with, I will forgive her. I also like to imagine who the people from each country might actually be. There are a few I suspect are even quite smitten with me, or want to adopt me, even though they don’t even know English but were enthralled by the way each word I typed is dancing on their computer screen, a fusion of grace/beauty/undescribable brilliance.

Or whatnot.

Please do let me know what country you’re from in the comments section. Then I could put a comment to the place, and maybe a name or link to your website, or whatever you like, minus pornographic pictures. Otherwise, I will imagine all kinds of things.

One time I imagined my entire first marriage out. I would be travelling through Europe, and meet a beautiful man who doesn’t speak English. He’s something. Italian/Croatian/Greek/Cockney Britis. Something romantic. Anyways, we’re flung together in a whirlwind romance, and converse only in the language of love. After 4 days, he proposes, and we are married with only one witness present who becomes my lifelong friend, who ends up owning a winery in France where we go spend our honeymoon for free. He also happens to own a sailboat and is liberal with invitations, especially to me, so I am always able to sail. We are together for a mere two months before my new husband breaks the news that he’s gay. I forgive him, and we remain good friends. I end up being Godmaster to his pets, who are all adorable and love me. He moves on to become the world’s greatest shoe designer ever known, all within weeks of our break up. Jimmy Choo, Manolo, Christian Louboutin all pale in comparision to his creations. For the rest of my life, he bestows upon me the most fabulous shoe collection of all time, as a gift for my friendship and being the only woman he could ever come close to loving.

So, unless you want to be known in a story such as this, leave your details in the comments. I am curious to know.