Value Added

I've been plugging along, doing the things I think I ought to be doing (not to mention a few I know I shouldn't, because that's what MAKES a tart, after all) and have had a couple odd outcomes of late... Let me e'splain...

NAKED AUSTRALIANS

Okay... not necessarily, but last Wednesday I wrote Murderous Musings, about literary murder not from the perspective of the victim, crime solvers or families, but from the murderer. I claimed my favorite literary murder was committed by Ellie in the series Tomorrow When the War Began (and it's true).

Yesterday I was looking at where my blog readers had been referred from... first map, then site, because that is the geeky kind of thing I do... The map (starting Saturday night actually) had more hits that usual from Australia. Now I have Australian friends, several of them (I ADORE the Aussies— humor and good nature seem to be more prevalent there for whatever reason—not that I don't find funny, happy people elsewhere, I've just never run across a BAD seed from down under). But this was a lot... and it wasn't just the Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide contingent. Perth. Tasmania (hey—do you suppose the Tasmanian devil is reading my blog?!) Possibly Canberra... The nudist movement was spreading.

And then I spotted it. http://www.tomorrow-movies.com/2009/12/best-murder-in-literature-ellie/

I'd been quoted... Now I like to be quoted. It makes me seem important and intelligent. And I'm delighted to be quoted and find out by accident, because that means my nefarious plan at world domination is working. But this is the FAN SITE for author John Marsden and his works, which are apparently being turned into a MOVIE series... so this is a place with I would guess at least hundreds, if not thousands of readers.

Now the discussion following the presentation of MY BLOG was largely that there are more impressive (moving) murders in the series... true—these are kids in a war, and being guerilla warriors takes practice—they get better at it (and make some real screw ups of it) but that first participation in the war PSYCHOLOGICALLY SPEAKING was the biggie... at least that's how I read it.

Anyway, I had 80 people visit yesterday, about 80% of them new. That is my biggest day ever... I was tickled, thrilled and possibly goosed by the event.

Editing Lessons

And THEN on a completely separate note... My writer's group has OFTEN shared chapters. I've given my fair share of feedback. And I peer review at work—this is not a new experience. But recently I've gotten two full books in genres I don't write to give feedback. I'm finding that I like the puzzle of 'what's missing that could make this better' a lot, and that it is definitely easier to notice things in a work I haven't been slaving away on for months.

What I DIDN'T expect is that when I come back to CONFLUENCE, the work I am currently trying to polish, my objective eye seems to come with me. I feel like this exercise that I only thought of as good citizenship, is actually a good one for my own work. Other writers have different strengths and weaknesses that may be easier to spot than our own because... hey, if they were easy for us to spot, we wouldn't have written them, eh?

I just love it when there is an unanticipated perk...