Meet My New Roomie!

New Roomie Alert!

It is my pleasure to introduce a fellow writer Jeremy Shipp from Haunted House Dressing.

He rants better than I do ... check him out!

Web Hosts and Rip Offs

Don't get ripped off when you are choosing a web hosting company ... I know I didn't have a clue what I was looking for when I first started!

If you want to read (or write) reviews about a hosting company try Lunarpages User Reviews. This hosting review site is intended to help you make an informed buying decision. Make sure you are not going to be ripped off. Read real user reviews, submit your review, and choose a good host!

The Goose and the Petticoat

Ok ok ok ! I get it ... you want more from Kilvert's diary! I succumb ok?

I have warned you before ... this guy wrote some kinky stuff so read on at your own moral risk ...

"June 9 1875 Foxham seems to be in a sad state ecclesiastically. Mrs Peglin told us that the Curate, Mr Rivett-Carnac, who walks about in a cassock, was attacked one day by their gander which tore a grievous rent in his 'pettitcoats'. He said he should tell his friends what a 'ferocious house gaurdian' Mrs Peglin kept. 'Perhaps, Sir,' suggested the old lady slyly, 'the gander was excited by some peculiarity in the dress'".

Now excuse me but I have more Kilvert to read ...

Do We REALLY Want YouTube?

I love the concept of You Tube. Most importantly it is great for those closet thespians amongst us isn't it?

Some of my favourite bloggers are using You Tube and doing a fine job I might add ... Mr Fab is but one of them!

You might like to check out the latest Master Impressionist to grace us with his presence on You Tube ... I'm not sure a cat fish impression is gonna get his guy any fame ... but there you go ... the good people at PayPerPost seem to think he's funny. Oh and you may never see your shower quite the same again!

The jury is out on this one for me ... what do you think?

New Diary to Check Out ...

Come on now! Admit it! You are enjoying reading other people's diaries aren't you?

There is a little bit of voyeur in us all. There is also a little bit of exhibitionist in us all as well - so do send in your journal, diary or notebook page. You can choose to be anonymous or not!

This week's entry is from a fellow blogger ... you can see if you can work out who it is. But I'm not telling. I'm not bad with a secret most of the time.

In the email accompanying these diary pages she told me, " I stopped writing a page a day in 1991 when my 3rd baby was born, it was just too much like hard work at the time. I would say that my main blog is definately my jounal now and I've already started to use it to check on details of events within the last 3 years."

I think that many bloggers who were also diary writers are doing a similar thing ... or not?

If you can't read it from the picture below - just click on it to make it larger ...

Is The Blogosphere Your Alternative Reality?

Think about it. Or don't think about it if you have any kind of mental illness please - this is a health warning.

Is virtual reality actually an alternative reality for you?

The philosophers out there will have fun with this one.

But what do you think?

Can we please celebrate Christmas?

I don't care how we do it, but can we please celebrate Christmas this year?



I am sick and tired of the PC police trying to keep down Christmas trees, ban Santa, stop carol singing and taking baby Jesus out of the nativity.

I think we should celebrate all kinds of cultural and religious holidays with each other ... and the revolution starts now with Christmas 2006!

One way to get started is to send ecards to your efriends. There are some wakky ecards here if you want to check them out. A few risque ones, some silly ones, a 'Snakes on the Plane' take out using Santa's sleigh - and even a baaaaaaaaaad Santa! Oh and that dog pic up there is one if theirs too! While we don't have snow in Australia - this applies to sandcastles at the beach at this time of year too!!!

If you check out their web site, do have a look at their Birthday card service. If you never want to miss a birthday or special occassion again you can have all those occasions listed and a personalised card sent to the people you want on whatever dates you choose. Easy huh! It might help some of you keep your New Year's Resolution to keep in touch with others!!! They have a 30 free trial, so trial it before Christmas to make the most of the freebies (after that its like $13.99 or something).

Now get on with the Christmas revolution!!!!!!!!!

Letters ...and muses

For many people, writing a letter to a friend (or an email) can serve as a journal entry.

Sometimes, receiving an email or letter from someone you write to can feel like a response from your journal too.

Let's never forget the power of writing to someone.


I love email - but I hope it never replaces picking up a pen and free writing to people we love ... or people who are our muses ...

We have much to loose if we do ...

If You Are Still Trying to Get Your Blog To Pay For Itself....

Hey there! Still trying to make some cash to pay for your blogging exploits?

Funny thing this blogging hobby. I know there are plenty of you who are trying to make a living through your blogs somehow. It's not easy is it? While I think some blogs have great merchandising appeal, I know mine isn't one of them. I have even stopped the whole adsesne thing. I didn't like not having control over the ads that were coming up and it was kinda getting tacky!

There is a new-ish kid on the block you might like to try out. Pay Per Post - is actually that! They like to advertise on blogs that actually have some kind of style about them. Blogs with good writing, regular posting and some content that might actually interest people. So you need to have a really cool blog to get on board.

Once you are on board though you do have the opportunity to actually choose what goes on to your page, by choosing which things you might write about. And yes, they do pay per post as the name suggests.

It's up to you ... but I think its one of the more 'sure things' around at the moment for those of you looking to get paid to blog. Check them out.

The Writer's Life

Oh my head hurts. I can't turn it off. I'm not functioning in the real world too well right now.

To be honest, while I am waiting for the last of the surveys to come in for New Century Notebook, I am working on something totally different. But my head has also recently gone back to my work of fiction. It is something I prefer to work on during the summer months - due to it being set in a beach house and all that kinda makes sense.

So there goes my head. Sometimes going crazy with the work I am writing at the moment. Sometimes wondering how I am going to picture New Century Notebook when I go through the surveys all in one hit. Sometimes just damn crazy sitting on the front verandah of a beachhouse that has been in my mind for years - but I have never seen.

Someone tell me that writers aren't crazy?

Yeah, I thought not.

Can't honestly tell me that can you?

Well that's it then. I am going back to the beachhouse for a nap ...

Only a Few Days Left ...

This is all a little scary. At the end of this month, I will no longer be accepting survey responses for New Century Notebook Project (see link on my sidebar if you wish to do one before it's too late!).

This is scary because much of the new focus on the book will be determined by what you have said in your surveys to me. It is scary becasue there is this huge unknown before me. It is scary because it means I am entering a new stage of the book writing.

Writing has its stages and each one has its ups and downs. Reading all the surveys as they have come in has been fun ... now having to analyse and categorise them all is going to feel like hard work.

Oh well ... no pain no gain!

Donate a Page Of Your Diary

Time to come out of the closet.

I am collecting journal and diary samples for The New Century Notebook Project.

I would love to have a collection of diary pages to include in the book and on this blog ... and YOURS would be fantastic.

There are two ways you can participate.

You can email me a scanned page from your journal to pamelaw@iinet.net.au or

You can post me a page to Pamela @ PO Box 135, Leederville, Western AUSTRALIA 6903.

Do let me know if you wish to remain anonymous or not. It is your choice what name you are (or aren't) known by. Oh and the small print is that when you send me your page it is a gift to me and if it ends up in the book then the Copyright is then with me (Sorry guys ... I have to cover this stuff!).


Click on picture to enlarge for reading.

Just to protect myself ....

Hey and before someone comments and swears at me for speaking ill of the dead ... here is proof Kilvert was a grumpy old man! This is ALL that was in his entry for the day ... and I mean ... how poorly could children have behaved in Victorian times? This man is a Reverend for goodness sakes ...

"Monday, 16 February 1874
Greatly troubled by the licentiousness of the school children, especially Harriet Ferris, Mary Grimshaw and Lucy Halliday."

Come on now ... I reckon that statement would make it fair to perhaps even suggest he was mysoginist (& I reckon he was ... I could tell you some stories from his diary I tell you!). If you are gonna put someone down like these poor lassies ... at least tell us what they did wrong!!!!!!!!

The man is rather too fond of Hannah H's parsnip wine!

Read from Kilvert's Diary ...

I am now on a serious roll. Reading old journals and diaries. Finding them in garage sales and second hand book shops. Asking everyone I meet to rip out a page of their diary for me to kee, scan , analyse and write about ...YES I WILL BE ASKING YOU FOR YOURS NEXT!!!!!!!!!!

I am not quite at the point where I meet new people and say "Hi I'm Pamela may I have a page from your journal?" ... well not quite yet ... I have thought about it!

Today I wanted to share a section from Francis Kilvert's diary ... he was a Reverend in Victorian times ... due to the age of the book I am assuming it is out of copyright so I may regularly quote from this man. His very simple descriptions paint quite disturbung pictures (and I suspect he was a rather grumpy old man!!!).

"Tuesday January 20 1874.

Visited John and Hannah Hatherell. Hannah was telling me about an execution. Two young men of Bremhill named Powney saw the mother of the murderer striding across the fields to be in time to see her son hung."

The lesson? NEVER think that even simple descriptions in your blog or journal are simple. How many emotions and pictures does that short entry conjure up? Wow.

Warning: This is an addictive and catching activity.

Journalling should come with its own health warning. Not only is it addictive, it is also catching.

I spent time with a good friend yesterday. She used to call herself a non journaller. This differentiation is important in my friendships. If you are a journaller I will talk about journalling with you for absolute hours. If you aren't a journaller, and you don't want to expire from boredom, it is best to tell me you don't journal.

"I don't really keep a journal", I remember her saying to me more than once in our friendship.

I accept that in a friend. They don't have to journal.

Then a year or so ago she wrote a great book, it included an exercise using a notebook to write certain things in. I smiled. That's journalling you see? Call it what you like. It's the same thing.

Still, she said to me: "I don't really journal". But when I visit her at her office, she has notebooks she calls different things. She covers them, she categorises them, she uses them to record things in. I smile.

I gave her a present at the beginning of the year. It was a blank book. The second one I have given her. She uses both for very particular purposes. But she still doesn't really journal, she tells me. I smile.

This morning she rang me, after some serious conceptualisng work we did yesterday. In the telephone conversation she said: "I might start journalling that".

I got excited. Another convert. She may have always written in a notebook, in a style that was or wasn't a journal to a purist. She now was using the language of a journaller.

I told you it's catching. However you look at it, it's catching.

So do you journal - but call it something else? What names do you have for the activity that might just be journalling?

Is this your Journal?

I am obsessed with the whole journal thing, I admit that ok? Now that I have admitted it ... you will insitinctively understand why I would buy an old diary or journal (if it's been written in) when I scour through second hand bookshops.

This diary page (opening page) is from such a find. It is a Children's Diary with dated pages and written by a young woman in1990.

It says: "This diary was meant for 1989 so the dates of ocassions may be different so I am using for 1990" [sic]

In the meantime let's see who this one belonged to once ... You had friends called Jodie, Sohpie and Lousie and you had a serious crush on Alex ...

Is it yours?

If not who's is it? This kind of thing totally facinates me.

I'm going to be asking for donations of journal pages soon ... so go through your journal and see if there is a page you are willing to rip out and send me or scan and send through. Some are for my research, but I will attempt to post one aweek on New Century Notebook too ...

Are you brave enough to have a page of your journal on display?

This IS your last chance! Be infamous!

Wow. This is a really scary moment people! I am closing the New Century Notebook Survey on journal and blog writing at the end of December ...

And I would really really really love to have your story ... I have over 800 survey responses (and yes I have read every one!). BUt you know what? For no particular reason other than I like round numbers, wouldn't it be great to have over a 1000?

If you haven't already done the survey then click here.

You KNOW you want to be part of the New Century Notebook Project don't you? :-)

If you prefer a shorter version of the survey you can click here. When you get there just click on JOURNAL WRITING SURVEY and there is a tiny version of the survey for those of you who are busy blogging!

Lsst chance to be in the book guys ... come on down!

When you DON'T write in your journal ...

Wow ... not sure what happened there for awhile but I had a break from doing too much blogging, and I also note that my journals are a bit thin on the ground too! You have to wonder if it is just that there was too much other life happening to have the time or desire to reflect on it ... but that isn't my usual style.

So when is it that you DON'T write your blog or journal??? I think there might actually be a key in that question ....