Don’t you just love to play around with photoshop and see what happens? Well, today I decided to have a go at making a front cover for EverWayward. It is very basic, just a title, figure and text blurred, with a background. I think it looks cool though. Notice the pen name, lol.

I know that at the end of my final novel, I will pour a wagon-full of emotion onto my last line. Look at this one:

…you must go on, I can’t go on, I’ll go on - Samuel Beckett in The Unnamable — the final 11 words of a nine-page sentence.

I loved that, so powerful. I mean, it must be, for nine pages!

But then, there’s the other extreme:

Without moving from where he was sitting, the Fifth Earl urinated on the floor.

I mean… come on! Great or what? Mine might be more towards the first… unless Aedomir decides he missed the last outhouse, lol. Here are a few more:

6. “Yes,” I said. “Isn’t it pretty to think so?” –Ernest Hemingway, The Sun Also Rises (1926)

10. Yes, she thought, laying down her brush in extreme fatigue, I have had my vision. –Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse (1927)

14. Ah Bartleby! Ah humanity! –Herman Melville, Bartleby the Scrivener (1853)

27. Is it possible for anyone in Germany, nowadays, to raise his right hand, for whatever the reason, and not be flooded by the memory of a dream to end all dreams? –Walter Abish, How German Is It? (1980)

37. P.S. Sorry I forgot to give you the mayonnaise.–Richard Brautigan, Trout Fishing in America (1967)

41. I lingered round them, under that benign sky; watched the moths fluttering among the heath, and hare-bells; listened to the soft wind breathing through the grass; and wondered how any one could ever imagine unquiet slumbers for the sleepers in that quiet earth. –Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights (1847)

63. The key to the treasure is the treasure. –John Barth, “Dunyazadiad” from Chimera (1972)

71. So that, in the end, there was no end. –Patrick White, The Tree of Man (1955)

77. “Tomorrow, I’ll think of some way to get him back. After all, tomorrow is another day.” –Margaret Mitchell, Gone with the Wind (1936)

100. “GOOD GRIEF—IT’S DADDY!” –Terry Southern and Mason Hoffenberg, Candy (1958)

Encouraging cancer patients to write down their deepest fears about the disease may improve their quality of life, according to a US study. Nancy Morgan, a “writing clinician”, approached patients waiting in a clinic at a cancer centre in Washington DC. Half those who took part said the exercise changed the way they thought about the illness, according to the journal The Oncologist. Younger people, and those recently diagnosed, were most likely to benefit.

Thoughts and feelings, or the cognitive processing and emotions related to cancer, are key writing elements associated with health benefits Nancy Morgan, Lombardi Center

Ms Morgan developed her role as part of the Arts and Humanities Program at the Lombardi Center. Her “expressive writing” exercise, lasting just 20 minutes, posed questions to leukaemia or lymphoma patients about how the cancer had changed them and how they felt about those changes. When those taking part were contacted again a few weeks later, 49% said that the writing had changed their thoughts about their illness, while 38% said their feelings towards their situation had changed. While there was no evidence of direct impact of the session on their illness, where the patients had reported greater changes in their mindset during the writing, this could be linked to more positive reports of quality of life given to their doctors during follow-up appointments. Ms Morgan said: “Thoughts and feelings, or the cognitive processing and emotions related to cancer, are key writing elements associated with health benefits, according to previous studies. “Writing only about the facts has shown no benefit.” Dr Bruce Cheson, the head of haematology at Lombardi, said: “I’m pleased to see that so many of our patients were interested in this kind of therapy. “Our study supports the benefit of an expressive writing program and the ability to integrate such a program into a busy clinic.”

So, how do we all feel about this? I think this is great, and it just goes to show the good we are doing to our fellow people!

This is my first online blog - or at least, the first one I have put into my website. I have one on LiveJournal, the Young Writer’s Society, and others dotted here and there. I originally set out to create just a private blog for myself, to keep up with my novel, but now I have decided to provide information generally in the world of writing, with today as an exception.

So yes, today I made this place! I had a few troubles at first. I didn’t understand MySQL databases and all that, which were all important for this blog, but I am getting there!

In terms of my novel, well there isn’t much to tell today. I need to write up some notes I threw together last night and try and get to the 21000 word mark.

-Mark