Secret forest: June 2010

The Sun Is Snowing, Poetry & Prose by C. JoyBell C.

>> Friday, 25 June 2010

I hope at this point all of you know that Charity published her book a few ago. The Sun Is Snowing is a collection of poems and some proses accompanied by photos and well published by AuthorHouse. If you enjoy Charity's blog, this book won't disappoint you at all. It stands out for the coherence of the whole, and a true self-expression. The proses have to do with moralities, the author's own universe of values and principles. The poems' main theme is romantic love.

The first one of my "artistic" pictures of C.'s book.

The poetic voice speaks of love in first person, directly to the loved one. The sun, its light, and an inner flame are some of the images you will find here. But there's a lot more in these poems, like the transcendent relationship with God. Sometimes, there's an identification of nature with the loved one ("You are the sun"), and the poetic voice can also mix with nature, as we can read in "The window, my soul, the sun, the sea". I recommend you to read this book and find for yourselves its subtleties. It's so well written and I'm sure it will last a long time.

For further details, you can visit the author's blog, Writings... by C. JoyBell C., or the book's own site.

Tom And His Guitar

>> Sunday, 20 June 2010

I already mentioned in another post the Eurovision Song Contest. Well this was the performance I enjoyed the most this year. He's Tom Dice, representing Belgium, singing in the grand finale.

For trivia lovers, Tom was the artist less out of tune in this year's contest compared to his song's studio version. They say he sang live almost to perfection — he was in front of 16.000 people in the venue and 120.000.000 TV viewers all over the world — managing to miss only eight notes. Don't ask me which notes are these! But this is not something important, not in this contest, at least. The German contestant, Lena, who was the fair and clear winner of the night after the 50/50 voting from both the juries and the viewers, was the third artist who missed most notes: she sang sixty-four off key notes in her three minutes song. It wasn't a nightmare though, she was charming: here's the link to her performance.

Tom Dice finally got sixth among twenty-four other contestants. He deserved more, but it's not a bad spot at all. Spain, for instance, was fifteenth XP.

Back On The Net

>> Saturday, 19 June 2010

Lately, I am writing each day on my book and this means that I am working in my spare time. That is why I did not post much the past few weeks, and I could not even procrastinate, which is something I am very good at. But there are old customs that remain unchanged, like visiting your blogs (I am silent, but I am there!), or trying to keep up to day several blog related projects. There are multiple new widgets that I would like to try, books written by some blogging friends that deserve a proper review, cheap hosting providers yet to be checked, and many blogging tips I should follow. This last category is a thorny one. I should optimize the images displayed here, for instance, and that means make proper use of the description and title, and also correctly use page descriptions, the so-called meta tags. That is already a lot of things to do! When I write, things tend to get a bit messy and I loose a little perspective on many everyday things. With respect to this blog, I just thought it would do me good to stop, relax and set certain goals for the future. Hope I can get something out of it.

José Saramago

>> Friday, 18 June 2010

It was in the news: Portuguese writer José Saramago died today at age 87.

As a child, José Saramago could not finish his studies and had to learn on his own. Later, his books weren't successful and for twenty years he didn't publish anything. Recognition came when Saramago was in his fifties. In 1998, when he was 73, he became the first writer in Portuguese language to be awarded with the Nobel Price. His Nobel lecture started like this: "The wisest man I ever knew in my whole life could not read or write" (his grandfather).

He was well known in my land because he lived in Lanzarote, Islas Canarias, since the nineties. I've read his novel Ensaio sobre a cegueira (Blindness). Its plot is thought-provoking and really difficult to forget (imagine a world where everyone becomes blind all of a sudden...), and it was adapted to the screen by Fernando Meireilles in 2008. I would rather recommend to you The History of the Siege of Lisbon (I want to read it this summer) and All the Names. But he wrote several novels, among which I am sure you could find a good read for you.

Bravo For Blogger

>> Saturday, 12 June 2010

For those who use Blogger: have you seen the new template designer? It is really funny and they did a great job. I made some tests (I mean a lot of tests) with my poor other blog, Collage Drawer. Along with the new preview tool, this makes Blogger really good. My only objection is that these new tools have not been available to everybody at the same time. I think, from what I've read lately on other blogs, that I have been of the last to enjoy these improvements...

But all in all is fine. I posted the image above so that you could see that Blogger can also speak in Catalan. I forgive them for that alone.

Black Ink

>> Wednesday, 9 June 2010

I've been writing so I put my blogs in stand by mode. Please, be patient!

That's a drawing by Franz Kafka in his diaries. I don't look like that black-ink man when I'm writing, I have to say. I don't wear those pretty shoes :D

Weekly Quotes: On Writing

>> Thursday, 3 June 2010

I'll note down the two best quotes I've found so far for a writer like me. It's likely these two authors knew that there would always be many novelists out there doing two monumental mistakes (like I do). It's just two advices, or two steps:

1st step, John STEINBECK:

"Write freely and as rapidly as possible and throw the whole thing on paper. Never correct or rewrite until the whole thing is down. Rewrite in process is usually found to be an excuse for not going on."

2nd step, Robert STONE:

"When rewriting, move quickly. It’s a little like cutting your own hair."

They are clear, direct, extremely useful, and, best of all, they help me to enjoy the process.

Image source: Sketchbook Characters. And remember that you can leave your link here if you have any post with a quote. Thanks!