I love weekends

Today is really just writing for art's sake - and I mean, quite literally, art. My monkey:

This weekend, I did not do much writing, it is true, but I did go and see The Phantom of the Opera. This has long been my favourite musical. When the chandelier goes up over the crowd, my spine tingles. Though some have commented (so meanly!) that it's three and a half hours of my life that I'm never going to get back again, I would quite happily go and see it ten more times - if it didn't cost $25 a ticket!! Still, a cheap way to see Phantom. This illustration is the little masquerade playing monkey - otherwise known as lot 665. I was going to draw the chandelier, but I'm just not that good yet!

Imagine all the things I will be able to practice drawing as I practice speaking Italian in Italy!!! My turtle story is set in Florence - sort of. This time I will not only come back fluent, but a grand Italian master as well - and then I really will illustrate my children's picture book!!! Plan for this week: to write ten thousand words of my novel. Easier to re-write hastily written crap, than re-write thin air, me thinks. I will see if that theory works out for me! My first competition deadline is 30th Novemebr - 30,000 words! 30,000 words that have to be 1. written. 2 Thrown away and rewritten, and 3. Rewritten all over again. Already, my nymphomaniac antogonist has become not a nymphomaniac and merely misunderstood, and is now back to being a nympho. Maybe with a drug addiction. She is the antagonist, after all! Time to stop drawing monkeys and get cracking!