Sneaking back in, The Panda, and a terrible injury

Oh hey. Don't mind me, just sneaking back in after ALMOST A YEAR of not writing blog posts. How did you survive, I hear you ask? I missed you so much, I hear you wail! For the love of god, woman, have you finished your sexy novel? 

Yes, yes. Please try to calm down a little bit, and all of your (my) very caring (imaginary) questions will be answered (probably).

Why no write? Short answer: I am a fickle woman and I got bored. Long answer: how long have you got? But rest assured, when I finally got off that submarine, the president gave me a nice medal, the rescue dolphin was reunited with his wife, and I finally understood why breakfast is the most important meal of the day.

Yeah, you missed me. 

Anyway, I found this draft just now. From August or something. Enjoy!

The Panda is the next Abandoned Cross-stitch clutch at MiuAndUmi now. I had so much fun deconstructing this one, as it was large and professionally framed. I got a little medieval on it's ass.

And then it got a little medieval on mine. Luckily I am incredibly brave and managed to soldier on.

Few people understand the trauma of that day...

Verbs are doing words

Encouraging - myself to stick to it. I've mentioned before that I'm really good at starting things, but not quite as ace with the finishing part. Knowing this about myself, I've set a task of writing a 55,000 word novel. I've even given myself permission to be as bland and underwhelming as possible. This will make sense to you if you are a ideas-driven, head-in-the-clouds perfectionist with the attention span of a gnat. I realised that as soon as I gave myself  a little permission to fail, all the assumed pressure dropped away. I don't have to write the most perfect and amazing novel in the world, I just have to write something.

Craving - the sun.

Yup. There, I said it. I am 100% certain that this weather system can go suck an egg. Vamoose! Scram! Get the damn hell gone.

Sucking - up the information. Fascinate by Sally Hogshead is a slice of marketing nouse, aimed at people who want to understand what creates and controls that powerful quirk of human behaviour - fascination. This is psychology at its most fickle, really. Half the time what drives us to make our choices is so basic (and base) it's almost embarrassing. Think Salem witches, the first economic bubble caused by the prestige of tulips, and Marx being well off the mark about diamonds.

Fascination reminds me of The Psychopath Test, because of the way it's encouraged analysis of the people around me. I know some very fascinating people, and now I can dissect them to understand why. Yes, dissect them! Cut open their brains! MwahahaHA!

All those awesome children of the MTV era - this is for you. You know who you are. If you don't like this clip of The Cure, singing Fascination Street, I order you to get off my blog right now and never ever come back.