It used to be that ‘stumbling’ involved embarrassment in front of friends and a grazed knee. These days, it has come to mean the random discovery of webpages in your favourite topic areas – as you stumble across new internet gems. I love finding a new website of interest that I would never have come across in my usual online activities. StumbleUpon – an online social media site – has taken this feeling of discovery and turned it into an effective tool for webmasters as well as a joy for users.

Too much to write – not enough time.

I have such a full plate at the moment I can barely find time to do any of the writing for myself. That means fewer blog posts, fewer script writing sessions and fewer spec ideas get done. But hey, I shouldn’t complain. A year ago I wasn’t writing professionally at all.

It was Tuesday night. I’d only popped into the corner store to get some cottage cheese for my diet-conscious lunches, when it happened.

I glanced up and saw a man, rather dishevelled, looking slightly lost or confused. In his hands, he was clutching a family-sized bar of Rolo chocolate. Nothing particularly note-worthy, except I was immediately struck by the question of why, in a queue full of commuters picking up the final ingredients for dinner or the obligatory bread and milk, this odd chap was only interested in a bar of caramel-filled chocolate.

It is a moment now enshrined in the history of literature, but James Joyce once threw the partially completed manuscript for ‘Stephen Hero’ into the fire in a fit of rage. Nothing was salvaged and Joyce eventually sat down to write the novel again from page one. In the process, the novel transformed into the classic ‘Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man’. Who knows whether the final novel lacks some unique phrases or gems of literary brilliance, forever lost to the fire?