I apologise for the late post this week. I like to post at least every four days. Alas I’ve been busy painting my ceiling. It’s been a little bit of a learning curve. This is because I’ve only ever done relatively paint jobs. with this one I had to discover that when painting a new ceiling – you need to definitely have a primer/sealer before you put paint on it.
The trades (my day job) are an interesting beast – you can feel like both a slave and a master craftsman. The slavery part is when the toil and tiredness really hits you. The Master craftsman is when you look at the great job you’ve done on a difficult build. I think with AI destroying office jobs the trades will gain some belated respect.
here in NZ south island we have emerged from winter officially – although in NZ South island it ain’t so cut and dry. Even in summer the weather can reverse into a wintery blast. Yesterday was blue sky twenty five and today was a rain and wind ravaged ten degrees if that. NZ weather is so much more interesting that Australia (or South East Asia/Indonesia – the other places I’ve lived in before). Put simply the different seasons make you do different things.
Yes the cold or wet locales are well known to be good for creativity in general (particularly writers?). So NZ is a good place to produce creative things at least. Selling the creative output is of course a entirely different metric (which I won’t go into).
On the writing front I’ve just been posting the typical prose works, stream of consciousness type pieces. Of course they are probably low value compared to the hort stories, novellas et al – but you don’t get the latter without the former. I think it’s good to write every few days or everyday as well – as the ‘how to write’ guides all say.
Other than that I’ve been eating well, feeding my cranky cat Sir Squeeky and going for coffee runs by foot in my small town, and picking up some garden work here and there.
Things are ok……but for how long…. (touch wood).
See you later and happy readign and writing! I’m feeling a bit guilty I haven’t written a new short story. Hopefully I’ll have one soon. You can go cold on short stories. You need a good idea you see – unlike quickfire prose format. If you’re lucky a prose piece will provide it.
Better go it’s midnight.
Anton Martin Smith 16 Oct 11:57 PM 2026.
