Back from Djibouti, back from Soulby, finally time to settle a little. But so much to do! I am Nanoing again of course, and behind already. BH's picture arrived on Friday and I need to decorate the end of the hall so I can hang it, and I want to write a response to it and send it up to him. And I still want to give prints to other writers to respond to, if BH is amenable.

I have critiques to do and novels to read and I need to pick an essay title for my Christmas deadline essay, and get started on it. The examples we've been given are mind-blowing. Here's the frst one:

“The modern story-teller is necessarily ‘self-conscious’, to use Virginia Woolf’s phrase, not ‘natural’. The authoritative voice that speaks to the reader effortlessly is untenable and, if novelists need such a narrator, they must contrive it. Writer and reader fell from grace, or were stripped of their native innocence, long ago.” Discuss in relation to any two of the books read this term, and in relation to your own work in progress.

Actually I have some ideas about how I could answer that one.

I'm missing both our regular nights of RVR again this week; that'll be one night run out of eight possibles by the end of this week. Very depressing. Group is in some difficulty morale-wise, and me missing runs can't possibly be helping.

I've also promised HK I'll scan the pictures she took on the Week Away and turn them into a pictorial record, which we decided should also be expanded into an article for the website. And we need to get together to brainstorm how to transmit HC's workshops to the rest of the MNG, something I also volunteered to be a leader on. I want to take some of the pressure off HK; she really had a huge job to do organising the week away.

What is the etiquette on mentioning other people in a blog? I don't expect anyone to be reading this, but it is still theoretically public. Ho hum.