Conquilting

I tried to post about this in Facebook, mainly so that everyone could see what a gorgeous quilt is up for sale. It's a fundraiser for Continuum and contains the signatures of many of the good and great and the occasional odd sod like myself.

The result is gorgeous and so very collectible (despite my signature). Anyhow, Facebook wouldn't post it, so you may have to go to the site directly to find the quilt. I was being witty, so it's probably just as well FB didn't want to post my comment.

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It doesn't matter what I read today, my mind keeps coming back to the fact that the Big Message books and the writers who get written up as change agents mostly only change their immediate world, the world that's already convinced that they will change when they read this book or this author. Not always, Sometimes it's possible to pick up a big name book and have your world shatter and crystallise into a new form as a result.

Mostly it's the quieter stories, the ones that don't get the attention that provoke real change. This is partly because they *are* quieter - there isn't a big public reaction, readers don't know what to expect: this means that the reader can react to the book in their own way and carry more of it away with them.

Challenge doesn't provoke change nearly as easily as does taking something into one's heart. If it's soapbox vs a cup of tea and a scone, the cup of tea and a scone wins hands down ninety nine times out of a hundred. Soapbox gets told it wins, however, because, let's face it, it's easier to talk about a soapbox message. For one thing, it's not so personal.

Eventually, if you add my posts together over a long period of time, you might get one decent thought. Today's part-thought has to be added to several posts from the last three months. It's not quite one decent thought yet, but maybe, one day...

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I was wondering why work seemed so hard tonight and why television wasn't something I wanted to turn on. It appeared my eyes are having an off day. Everything I write has to be rechecked because it comes out oddly. This is only happening every few weeks, mostly when I'm overtired and there are weather shifts. I've really made a lot of progress since early last year, when it was 100% of the time. It means that I won't get much done today or tomorrow. I'll have to shift some of my deadlines. Most of my deadlines are re-arrangeable for the next couple of weeks in any case - the important thing at this stage is that I finish a set group of things, not that I do it in any given order or at any given time.

My big aims for the next few days are a close read of a big book (with much note-taking) and weaving strands of found stuff into my novel. neither of these are possible tonight, so I'm reading a Penelope Lively book. It has big print and it's purely for fun (if my eyes fill in words or phrases I won't pay for it later).

The problem with books by Lively is that I keep thinking I've read them before. Sometimes I have and the cover has deceived me. Sometimes it's the familiar characters or incidents. Still, I have to keep reading, just in case it's a new book. In the case of this volume, however, I have the sneaking suspicion I read it just two years ago, and then put it on the wrong pile...

I need to take time and re-alphabeticise my fiction. What I need, in fact, is a group of friends who love books and want to do it with me. I shall make lots of ice and get out my home-made liqueurs and declare open season on my library this summer. Books will be borrowable and coffee will be unlimited. There will be food at mealtimes and movies or board games in the evenings. There will be library floorspace for anyone who wants to sleep over and get the full L-Space experience. Until then, I'll put a book away here and a book away there and wonder where my shelf space went.