A little something, everyday

My mum left London for home yesterday, which means my vacation/slacking-off time is officially over. I have seven weeks to hammer out a dissertation in order to complete my master's degree, so naturally, again, everyone's like, "You're a writer! 10,000-12,000 words --- pish posh!"* If you were a fly on the wall at my dissertation supervision meetings and heard me blather on in about five different directions, you'd be less quick to reassure me, I tell you.

But okay. Seven weeks. Not impossible or anything. If I focus. And stop reading Twitter. And stop trying to figure out what to do with Google+.**

Speaking of which, the following decision might make me a dinosaur in internet terms, but what the heck: besides the dissertation deadline, I think I'm going to set myself the additional challenge of blogging daily over the next seven weeks. I need to exercise the personal-unpaid-writing muscle and I need to be less lazy about it. It's like going to the gym! --- for writing. Some of my favourite writers-who-blog (such as John Scalzi and Mridu Khullar, for instance) blog everyday. No reason I can't too (except for the aforementioned laziness and my long-time susceptibility to procrastination, on which see A.L. Kennedy in the Guardian (via @davechua)).

Busy news day today: News of the World phone hacking scandal/closure unfolding apace, the people of Egypt figuring out their future, and those of Malaysia too, and South Sudan is the world's newest state (and the 193rd to be recognised by the United Nations). We live in exciting times.

* Okay, no one actually says "pish posh".
** As @davepell eloquently tweeted:

“@stormgrl: Ok, I have Google + - now how do I use it properly?"

That's how you use it. You tweet about it.