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Good news, everyone! While I've been away my government has created a new country. It is called Auckland, and the first skirmish has already broken out. The new Auckland is a collection of reanimated parts powered by the elemental forces created by not being the seat of government. This is going to be fun to watch...

More good news: writing by hand stimulates neural activity and gets ideas out faster. The bad: good handwriting makes you seem smarter. Mine's enough of a scrawl to draw glances from whoever's sitting next to me in a cafe. But they can fuck off.

When I worked at Comprint in Wiri one of the managers wrote in perfect copperplate script which the printers and workers on the floor admired very much. He wrote everything out in the same perfect hand: memos, phone messages. Craft, basically. Don't have it. Have to get those ideas down etc.

Also I suspect I talk to myself when I'm writing dialogue. Not out loud, more mumbling. And I tend to lean closer to the page now if I don't have my specs. I Wear Light Reading Glasses For Comfort™ but not when I actually write. And I haven't shaved for a couple of weeks now so the beard's on. So, yeah: hunched, unshaven, muttering - not the sort of person you'd want to be sitting next to, I guess.

Less crazily, for once: Marilyn Monroe's diary writings discussed online at vanityfair.com. Some notes about Arthur Miller, and Lee Strasberg, who fascinates me. I couldn't get on stage but I'm interested in how acting works.