Couple of observations for today :

First, I’ve been listening to Stephen King’s “On writing” audio book (he reads the book himself, so it’s a very good rendition). The first part covers his childhood and some of his early life. It’s been very funny to listen to. Today, I’ve started to come to his views on writing.

He did start with two of his pet peeves as he calls them :

• passive voice
• adverbs

I’m not sure about passive voice. Maybe I use it, maybe not, I don’t know. I’ll have to check this, but it’s quite possible that I use it a lot. It’s supposed (according to him) to be a sign that the writer doesn’t believe that his writing is good.

For the adverbs, I’m quite sure I use them a lot! Especially for sentence attributions where I use adverbs to refine the general meaning of a phrase, especially when I want to convey a character’s mood or reaction to an event. King says that the road to hell is paved with adverbs… I’ll try to not use adverbs that often, but I’ve got a feeling that this is going to be tough for me to do.

I could always say : go on writing as you do and correct the language during the rewrite. Good point, but the thing is that if I don’t restrain myself now, it’s going to be difficult to do after.

Two counts already and it seems I fail each time. The question now is “am-I a terrible writer”. Alpha reader could perhaps shed some light here, if she’s ever going to give her damn opinion on the book.

Second, I heard yesterday someone talking behind me about social networking and how he would not trust someone that has no presence on the web and that those people are essentially has-been types.

Let me answer this here : first, I have a presence on the web (otherwise, I don’t know what I’m writing on right now), but that presence is mostly anonymous. I like it that way.

I don’t very much like the idea of social networking. I’m not a social person (writers are not known for their social skills) and I’m very private.

The idea that anyone could know everything about me by typing my name in google is very disturbing to me.

Old classmates sites don’t appeal to me either, because school was a bad time for me and I was glad that it was over. I have no fond memories of that period and I’d rather not see people I’ve known there. More, I’d like very much to hide from some (I can hear my brother laugh here). So, no classmates sites for me.

So, the idea that I should be on these sites (or at least on Facebook) to be worthy of attention by would-be employers who want to know things about me – things I don’t want known – this idea is infuriating to me.

Maybe there is something therapists would say about this sort of behaviour – that I’m asocial, ill fitting to this era, but I still think that people applying for jobs should be judged on their skills for the job and not for what they are in the private sector.

Diatribe over for today.