Bifurcated: now that’s a word I haven’t used recently :-0
So today I have two things I want to discuss:
I. New Year’s Goal Number 3
In one of my New Year blogs I said I wanted to strive to have faith. What I mean is that I want to be able to believe, really believe, that without exceptional forcing on my part, things will fall into place. I especially need to believe this about my career. That is not to say that I won’t be proactive to a point, that I’ll just sit at my desk and never get myself or my work out into the world. But the desperation, the continual striving and pushing has to ease up. In other words, I’m trying to let life takes its own course a bit (I can already hear my publisher laughing hysterically at this, but its true…). But several things happened at the end of last week, without too much pushing on my behalf, that show me that things can happen even when I don’t force them to.
* First, I’ve heard from the powers at bluechrome that there will be new and exciting doings over the next few months with Tangled Roots. Hate to be a tease, but as they say, watch this space.
* Second, I heard from the director who ran a week long workshop on my play last autumn (you can read about that here). He’s now ready to start moving forward on the project and we’ll be looking for a venue. By the way, the title has now changed, but more on that later as well.
* Third, a Swedish friend has said that he believes Tangled Roots would do very well among Swedish readers and he wants to do a translation of it and try to find a publisher. Now, I know this is a long shot, but how exciting, and how flattering.

I’ve been told that trust is built over time. Only when you can look back and say to yourself,”See? It works,” will you really be able to believe. Well, I guess I’m on my way.

II. Blogging Etiquette and Other Technical Problems
* I’ve had a lot of trouble downloading photos I’ve taken on my phone into my blog. I press all the right buttons, do what I’m told to do, but then the whirling wheel from hell appears and goes and goes and goes, never stopping, leaving me and my blog in cyber-limbo. But then, other times, I press all the same buttons, follow all the same directions and it works. Don’t ask. So here is the photo I wanted to publish with last Friday’s blog. It’s the notebook and accordian folder holding the manuscript of my new novel. Isn’t it lovely? And now that I’ve shown it to everyone, I know I’ll start working on it again. It will be just too embarrassing not to.

* Also, I realize that I’ve been rubbish in the past at responding to the wonderful comments people have left on my blog posts over the last months. As I approach my blog’s 1st anniversary, I promise to be better.

So those are my two areas of concentration today. But before I leave I must send you over to Patricia Debney‘s blog. If you don’t know her and her work, you should, and I urge you on to the pleasure of discovering her. But today she posted a video about the making of one of those new and terrific adverts that the British advertising industry does so well. It fills you with joy…yes, joy from an advert. Check it out here.