Last week I started work on a set of icons to represent each of the challenges on this blog.  Since you last saw them I’ve taken note of your suggestions, played around with them a little bit more and even drawn some new ones.  Over the next few days I’m going to be posting each icon, my reasoning behind its design and a progress report for the challenge.

Turns out I have a lot to say about my first challenge so this one gets a post all to itself.

1. Write More

A simple concept but one that is difficult to represent using an icon.  My first thought was to interpret the circle as a full stop but out of context this was meaningless.  Then I considered turning it into a single quotation mark but this suggested conversation and would probably have ended up as a poor imitation of the Vodafone logo.  I thought of ink blots, the end of a pencil, the ball in a ballpoint pen, weirdly shaped nibs on fountain pens and discounted them all as antiquated or meaningless out of context.

A screwed up piece of paper was the best idea I could come up with and as you can see I played around with a number of variations.  I’m not sure any of them work, after staring at them for this long I wonder why I’ve created buckets of oversized popcorn.

The challenge itself, with its various subsections, has become overly complicated too.  Let’s recap.

1a. Began as “updating [this shiny new blog] at least once a week”.  I was so successful at this that I later wrote “I’m now going to aim to write 500 words a day and blog at least three times a week (one of these will always be on Monday).”  This obviously failed and I was later forced to admit that “the standard issue WordPress calendar is beginning to resemble an empty wasteland devoid of posts”.  Later still I attempted to resurrect the challenge and that too eventually failed.

let’s just knock this one on the head, I’ll blog as and when I feel like but no less than three times a week, unless life gets in the way, which undoubtedly it will.

1b. Hook the blog up to Facebook. Done.

Depending on my mood I turn this off and on  but it does bring a lot of traffic to my site.  Illogically, there are certain posts that I’m  happy for strangers to read but not comfortable with my friends on Facebook seeing.  I guess this is a combination of knowing that people who have taken the effort to read the blog genuinely do care and a realisation that my Facebook friend list is stuffed with people who I’ve forgotten I’ve added and the overly-sensitive.

1c. Install the Visual Bookshelf on Facebook. Done.

The reason behind this was to encourage me to read more and overall I think it’s worked.  So far I have read and reviewed Twilight, New Moon, Eclipse and Breaking Dawn by the incomparable Stephenie Meyer.

I also read The Intimate Adventures of a London Call Girl by Belle De Jour and micro-reviewed it here (“made me realise how much is has been watered down for television.  If you think you’d enjoy frank, funny and full on sex stories then buy this book, otherwise probably best to give it a miss.”)  I also quoted it when writing about jogging.

The Further Adventures of a London Call Girl is another book that I have completed.  In fact I read this one first, obviously discounted prices and pictures of a scantily clad Billie Piper in some way inhibit my ability to read the word sequel properly.  Like the first time but not as tight is both an accurate micro-review and a rather obvious innuendo.

Darkly Dreaming Dexter by Jeff Lindsay is a book with a great sense of style and dark sense of humour.  You’ll enjoy it either way but if you’ve watched the tv series it’ll add an extra dimension to the characters you already know and make you realise how faithful they were to the original text on screen.

Back in January I alluded to my reading of The Secret Dreamworld of a Shopaholic by Sophie Kinsella.  You should definitely give this a shot.  Ignore that it’s chick-lit, ignore the film (I’m told they’ve changed a lot of things for the big screen) and just read this book, haven’t read something that has made me laugh so much in a long time (watch Rebecca’s letters to her bank manager grow more and more ridiculous as the book progresses).

I am currently reading Beloved by Toni Morrison (yes, still).

Frost/ Nixon, as referenced here, is another book I have yet to finish.  Dylan on Dylan, mentioned here, also sits on my pile of books to read.

Since then I’ve also picked up The Vice Photo Book (mentioned here, quoted there).  I micro-reviewed it as “Between it’s hardback covers Vice Magazine spend 336 pages documenting the shit-stained, sex-obsessed nature of humanity in all its full-frontal full-colour glory”.

I’m also reading Love All the People by Bill Hicks.  Bill and Belle make strange bedfellows in my post about jogging.  My penultimate read is Rebel Code by Glyn Moody.  Yes, it’s a book about open source software, deal with it.

Finally, I am meant to be reading the Bible.  I’ve discussed this before and even contemplated buying a New International Version.  This Easter Baines bought me a pocket sized NIV (thank you) so now I have no excuse.  I have decided that instead of starting from the beginning (again) I’m going to soldier on from Samuel I and attempt to get an overview of the entire book.

1e. Freelance.  Ultimate fail.

I need to do something about this.

1f. NaNoWriMo

I have the official National Novel Writing Month book which means I know how to capitalise NaNoWriMo correctly.  It’s now just a case of waiting for November and then attempting to write a 50,000 word novel.  Somehow I think I’m setting myself up for failure here.

Summary: This challenge has been half completed.  If you have any more writing challenges they’re getting a new number because this is just getting confusing.