I am extremely annoyed in these days of widespread identity theft

I am extremely annoyed with a company called BHSF (whatever that stands for), even though they appear to be a legit company who are ‘authorised and regulated by the Financial Services Authority’. Mind you, reading the business press since 2008 makes me wonder how much protection the ordinary punter can expect via regulation by the FSA.

This outfit is carrying out a survey because, I quote, ‘good businesses like BHSF listen to their customers’ views’. Well, here are mine:

1                     Don’t send me unsolicited letters containing questionnaires that are already partly filled in with confidential information about me.

Why?

Because I don’t like junk mail, but I understand it’s a part of life and some of it will get through no matter what, but for that mail which gets through the various nets, I want to be able to bin it with the least possible hassle. I seriously resent spending my time having to shred your letters because they contain confidential information. DON’T DO IT!

2                     If you want to conduct a survey about who buys your products and what they think of them, then label it as such.

Why?

Because it is dishonest to head both your letter and your questionnaire, ‘Higher Education survey 2012’, when it is nothing of the kind. It is a set of questions about your products.

3                     And what are my overall views on a company that sends me a dishonestly labelled questionnaire, partly filled in with confidential data, on which I have to spend time (shredding etc) that I can ill-afford?

My impression is that you’re dishonest and lack integrity.

I’m now going to catch up on the things I should have been doing such as packing for a business trip. Perhaps you would like to post the dates of my absence on your website for the benefit of any opportunist thieves who would like to try their luck.

So, BHSF, if you’ve listened to my views, please feel free to respond to this blog. I’m not holding my breath.

[Note to opportunist thieves who would like to try their luck: the house won’t be empty and when the dog has finished with you, it will not only be the BHSF questionnaire that looks shredded]

Great expectations for grapes

This was the first grape harvest in August 2011 

This was June 2012 

And now here we are in August. 

The launch of the Writers’ Toolkit

It turned into an amazing, busy event, exhausting and exhilarating all at the same time. We’d had 34 pieces in to critique and planned two mini tutorials. From there the event blossomed with discussions and comments threads springing up everywhere. I don’t know if there’s an official unit of measurement for Facebook events but our final timeline was ENORMOUS. This is a summary with links to most useful bits. Please browse. Please comment.

The links here are mostly to Facebook and require you to be logged in to a Facebook account.  

The mini-tutorials.

1. Creating a focused pitch: part 1, part 2 and part 3.
2. Writing believable dialogue: part 1, part 2 and part 3.

As luck would have it, writing coach Linda Acaster posted a review of the Writers’ Toolkit on Goodreads on the morning of day one, which was a great lead into the first tutorial because her review included the words, 'THE INSTRUCTIONS FOR PREPARING A TWO-SENTENCE PITCH ALONE WAS WORTH THE COST OF THE BOOK.' Thanks, Linda, that was perfect timing!

Some of the advice and tips that popped up during the two days

• The balance between intriguing and irritating a reader.
• Milking the action and emotion: never summarise the dramatic moments.
• A word about grammar.
• To plan or not to plan.

Some of the discussions

• The value of exchanging ideas.
• When is a manuscript ready to send out?
• The pros and cons of using different points of view.

Charity donation

Fantastic Books Publishing donated £1 to the World Cancer Research Fund for every book bought during the launch. Thanks, FBP. You Rock!

The critiques and the winning extracts

Each critique was posted in two parts with people commenting on the work, the critique and on writing in general. We worried beforehand about what we’d do if we had a completely dire extract – we certainly didn’t want to castigate a fellow writer on a public forum. However, we were determined to be both honest and constructive because otherwise what would be the point? And we dodged that particular bullet because everything we read had merit and potential. And some extracts were truly outstanding. We shortlisted six. You can see them on the results link below.

I’m afraid you’ll have to explore the timeline to get at all the critiques, but there are a few links below. And what an ‘interesting’ slant that FB timeline gave to the whole event! With people popping in and out from all over the world, early posts were being liked or commented hours after first posting. And as soon as someone commented, that post would shoot to the top of the timeline. It made finding things incredibly difficult. I resorted to ctrl+f and searching for key words, which is one of the reasons for this blog with its permalinks. I only learnt about FB permalinks through doing this event.

An open poll was held where people could vote for their favourite extract. In addition, Danuta Reah and I (as the Writers’ Toolkit authors) drew up a shortlist of extracts we thought the best and chose a winner from this list. The results were posted at the end of the launch.

• The winner of the poll was A Moment when the World was Silent by Kasie Whitener: extract and part 1 critique – part 2 critique.
• The piece chosen by us was BILLY by GK Parker: extract and part 1 critique – part 2 critique.

·     The Writers' Toolkit - available in paperback - ebook to come.

What's the best place for a novel to start?

What pulls a reader into one book over another?

What do you do if you can't get any tension into a scene that should be high-drama?

How do you lift a scene that seems to drag?

Are you fed up with staring at a blank page?

This is the book with the answers.

Another close encounter with a bird of prey

The last time I was this close to a bird of prey was in 2010 when it made two attempts at breaking and entering. This time we just chanced upon what was probably a kestrel (must get the bird book out) hunting down the lane. It posed on a telegraph post, inviting a photo, then flew to the next post and struck another pose. Very annoying that I ended up with two shots of an empty lane. Here's one of them:

Then I switched to video and tried again. More empty lane, but just a fraction of a second of flapping wings as it dives out of range. Maybe I should stick to writing. Photos are not my thing.

Who’s been monkeying about with the National Anthem at the London Olympics?

A record number of people are there all set to join in a rousing chorus (the ones who know the words, anyway), and someone decided to throw a spanner in the works.

That bit in the middle, the pause where the music usually goes da-da-da-da: it’s there for a reason. It’s for a large intake of breath so that the crowds teetering at the cliff edge of ‘Send her victorious!’ know just when to launch themselves off into it and can do so at maximum volume.

For some inexplicable reason (does it breach some sponsorship deal?) that da-da-da-da has disappeared for London 2012. It’s been replaced by a rather indeterminate dee-daa. All those patriotic crowds, arms whirling as they balance themselves for the leap, are overcome with indecision, casting panicked glances at their neighbours to see who knows when to jump. What would normally be a razor-sharp blast of sound degenerates into a series of mistimed mumbles, not managing to scramble back together much before ‘ICTORIOUS!’

There are some things that people just shouldn’t mess about with, they’re there for a reason: steering wheels on cars, tails on dogs and that da-da-da-da in the middle of the National Anthem.

Off with their heads!

AAGH! It’s spam!

Today I get crabby and fire off an email to several people, some of whom I don’t know, all of whom had forwarded the email that had enraged me.

Dear all

Please please don’t send on spam emails. But if you must, then to alleviate the problem of all sorts of people’s email addresses being traded back and forth to all sorts of people they have never met. USE BLIND COPY (bcc). Don’t leave the names of the recipients there for everyone to read. Look at the recipient list for this email. Do you see your name there? No. Neither can anyone else if it’s forwarded. Neat eh?

How do I know that it’s spam?

Emails with tales of teenagers with cancer who want everyone’s email system clogged up are SPAM. The clues that should alert you:

1. The forwarded email will be tracked so the “terminally ill young girl” (oh please!) can know how many people got them… Oh yeah? Suppose you wanted to send on an email and know how many people it was forwarded to along its life, which option would you use, which box would you tick, how would the info come back to you? You don’t know? You couldn’t do it? No. Neither can this lot. It’s a scam to make you keep sending the email out to clog up people’s systems.
2. It was sent by a “medical doctor”. A “medical” doctor? Wow! Brain cells please take immediate leave of absence. If it’s a ‘medical’ doctor, it must be completely above board and exactly what it says it is. How about let’s sack the “medical” doctor who has spent time sending out spam emails when s/he should be treating patients.
3. “Send to everyone you know” “Send to those you don’t know” “One guy sent it to 500 people”. Translation for anyone who needs it: “This is spam” “Clog up the emails of everyone you can think of” “Pity the poor sods in his address book!”
4. “The American Cancer Society will donate X cents per email sent”. Oh yeah? How’s that going to work given that a) there’s no way they can track them anyway and b) no legitimate organisation would ever raise money this way. Has anyone tried contacting them and asking. I haven’t, but I know what they’d say. They’d say essentially what I’ve said in 1 and 2 above.

IT’S A SCAM… IT’S SPAM…

THINK, PEOPLE, THINK!

Sorry to rant, but some of these things do damage. Most of us wouldn’t fall for this if it arrived by post or telephone. We must all have seen the TV programmes and newspaper stories exposing this stuff for what it is.

And if you still feel the need to send it on, USE BLIND COPY.

Oh and if you can’t do Blind Copy, DON’T SEND IT ON!

Rant over. If I’ve offended anyone, apologies, that wasn’t the intention. Please feel free to leave rude messages on my blog.

Penny

www.pennygrubb.com

The grapes, the grapes.

If all the baby grapes ripen into adult bunches, the roof will cave in, which would be a shame because we can only use this room in Summer. See a very bad video here.