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Mood can affect writing. There are no two-ways about it. Let me change that a little – my mood influences my writing, and while I’m thinking a bit more deeply, that’s not such a bad thing.

Nor is it a great thing sometimes.

Many writing gurus and fabulous wordsmiths recommend ‘stream of consciousness’ journalling. It’s a bit like ranting in a muddled way, but instead of verbally venting your spleen at a loved one, the dog, the motorist (in your latest version of car rage) you write it down.

Thus, the first page might contain a range of yelled comments like this:

Why are you using the brakes when you are travelling on a freeway?

Where did you get your license from ?  A download site?

I’m going to Twitter your friends about your driving skills!  You suck.

Seriously, I’ve never tried rambling in a journal (without a creative purpose in mind). I wonder if people have and whether they find it beneficial.  I think it might be an excellent tool of release when one is in a Cow of a Moooooood?

A couple of posts back, I mentioned falling madly in love with this empathetic, slim-lined, written by Australians number, ‘Get Your Book off the Ground’ (aka, the parachute/hovercraft book)   Initially, I thought I’d open the pages and it would give me a checklist of ‘how to’.  Rather, it is an attractive, well-spoken, best writing friend to listen to on a rainy Grand Final afternoon.

Suzanne Male writes that journalling can help the flow of creativity – how the head can be clogged with mindless matter (my words, not Suzanne’s) from ‘to do’ lists, to a fight with a spouse to what is on the menu for dinner that evening.  By sitting, freeing the hand over the blank pages of a journal, you simply write out the muck.  If you are a moody cow (present company only) then you can moo all over the pages and then turn your attention to your udder writing.

I adore Suzanne Male and Anthony Santoro’s approach to writing.  If I could make a Grand Final trophy and award it to them for these 130 pages of cheer, practical advice, positive, no nonsense, wank-less words - I would. They actually perform better than Geelong (that’s the team wot won the AFL Grand Final, for the beloved internationals).

They also include a chapter about ‘good luck’ and the writer.  I have a real issue with the writer (painter, business person, athlete, clothes designer, film maker) who looks at the success his/her counterpart has achieved and credits it to luck. Or worse, begrudges them their dues.

AnthAnne (I love to squish names together, so the authors of this book – Anthony and Suzanne – are to be known as this for the moment: no offense intended) make this important observation:

(I’d like to quote them specifically, but I don’t want to go to Blog Prison for copyright infringement.)  What would Blog Prison be like, by the way?  Hmm, that’s an entry for another time, but I bet most of the inmates sit around typing into their dashboards, hold up empty coffee cups to muscly guards to refill and get jealous of what Convict 45 has put in his/her blog from the depths of Cell 13!  Would they steal each others AdSense accounts, I wonder?  Hmm.

Back to what AnthAnne say about luck – (I’ll paraphrase).  Anthony claims that getting ‘spotted’ as the next best thing isn’t just about being in the right place at the right time.  The author (or business person, athlete, garment conjurer, butcher, baker, candlestick maker) has to have persistence to have written the book (make the dress, prepare the meat) in the first place!  They need to have done some work in order to get ‘there’.

Wherever ‘there’ is.  Things are not handed to the writer (et al) on a silver platter.

If that makes us into Moody Cows (because it aint easy) then so be it!  We need to milk the word-cow for all she’s worth, get herd, OR moooooove on.  And that’s my beef for the day.

No spoilers, just chat, recs and cyber wine (which tastes better because it’s sipped through the cables)

The Science Fiction genre is a bit like sewing – you either do it or you don’t, you love it or hate it, and sometimes what you are looking at can appear quite alien.  When it all comes down to it, science fiction can be weird and unnerving.  So can sewing.

I could probably take this analogy further, but I won’t  (a stitch in time saves nine!)  It brings me to the point of the post – an odd thing happened a couple of months ago.  Having converted much of the family and some of my friends to watching TV via box-sets (unless it’s something like Dexter, where waiting mightn’t be an option) my sister had finished ‘Friday Night Lights’ and was looking for something new.

Immediately I suggested the mini-series prequel and the three seasons of Battlestar Galactica we had at home, but warned her there was a fourth and final season we didn’t have.  She looked down her nose at me – which is oft the case when I let my eyebrows grow into a medium-strip bush, or the flecks of grey dapple through my hair – and said ‘God no.  I don’t do science fiction.’

It got me thinking:  When did I start doing science fiction? Did I even like sci-fi?  Nah!  Surely I wasn’t into it at all. The droids and cyber-whatnots and supernova-iPods-nano-fuselage_space_invader systems.

I didn’t do science fiction either!  Did I?

Then it came to me.  As quickly as a hyper-drive fizz through space on the back of Chewbacca’s mane, and as fast as jetpacking with Don West as he attempted to find Alpha Centauri before the Jupiter 2 imploded – my very, very favourite television show as a child was Lost in Space.  I spent time during the 70s watching episodes with this (I don’t do science fiction) sister after school.  She loved it.  I adored it.  We were Sci-Fi Whore Twins.

And we were in denial.

Perhaps it’s the fact that I cannot relate to Star Trek that I considered myself a poor sci-fi fangirl?  I dunno!  I’ve decided over the last while that not being a wonderful ‘Trekkie’ doesn’t mean I’m disinterested in all programmes of the sci-fi genre.  I’m certain that if I watched the first ‘Star Trek’ EVER MADE, and then viewed a couple more, I’d be hooked.  I’d need to see them all in order and watch all the specials and movies – but perhaps even then I would deny that I am a sci-fi type o’ girl.

Why?

There’s no rhyme or reason.  Absolutely none!  However, I have worked on a frame of reference that’s required for me to revel in the experience of viewing and loving a series of science fiction, and it goes like this:

• not all characters can be alien
• the human component must incorporate interesting characters, and there must be some ‘journey’ being made
• the humans need to be aesthetically pleasing – yep, this is really shallow, but if I’m going to look at some Sequins Head Alien (sewing metaphor, ftw!) I need to have an attractive guy and gal from my own planet to balance this.
• there needs to be some sort of reckoning.  Excitement, conflict, resolution.
• there needs to be a romantic interest – I have ‘sop’ issues, I know.

It brings me to the box-set rec for this entry.  Not only did my sister take ‘Battlestar Galactica’ under sufferance and found she loved it, she went out and purchased Season 4 and asked excitedly about the proposed Caprica release.  She even expressed sorrow when she’d finished watching the wonderful show, retreating into a cylon-type, skinjob mourning.

Currently, we have 6 episodes left of BSG.  Cannot recommend Battlestar highly enough.  It complies with the frame of reference above, pitches involving story arcs (except for Baltar’s final foray – I find that a wee bit slow and he continues to annoy) and has fabulous, strong characters (particularly Laura Roslin and Bill Adama).  *LOVES*

If you’re looking for another exciting, innovative blend of science, fiction, beautiful people and aliens, look no further than Torchwood. This show requires an entry of its own in Box-Set Blues, so I’ll save it for another time.  It’s come the hour when this Femme-roid GammaGirl downloads into her Botox-Belium-Bed, peels off her cybergenic stem cells, and goes to refresh -

because sleep is only for humans.

So, Laddo Nigh. (That’s Femme-roid for ‘later and goodnight’)

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