It might take me a while, but I do, eventually, get around to doing everything I promise to do. (Except perhaps mopping the kitchen floor. But even that will happen one day). Way back before Christmas, Kate over at Live Out of the Box tagged me for a meme with the topic of six random things you don’t know about me. That’s a curious challenge, because of course there are hundreds of things you people out there don’t know about me, but most of them are not too exciting. But perhaps a few little-known facts about me, along with how they affect my writing, will keep you entertained over your breakfast cereal:

Random Thing #1: Don’t Take Me to the Cinema

I regularly fall asleep in movies. In fact, I try to schedule all movie-watching to include regular breaks, or at the very least, an interval about an hour in. It rarely matters what the circumstances of my movie-watching are, the nap is a fairly consistent thing. At school, I sometimes show my students a movie in the afternoon, and I have to make sure I sit up the back of the classroom so that when I feel myself nodding off, I can stand up and walk around for a bit. In a cinema, I ration out snacks so that I’ll have some to keep myself busy when I’m getting sleepy.

And it should be said, this sleep problem seems unrelated to the quality of the movie. Obviously in a bad movie I’m more likely to nod off because I won’t even try to stay awake, but even in great movies I have serious problems. What does this mean for my writing? It means it’s a very good thing I’m a novel writer and not a screenplay writer. I don’t know much about what happens at the three-quarter point of a movie script. A novel? No problem. I could read for hours without getting sleepy.

Random Thing #2: LOLcats Have Me ROFLing

The blog I click on first in my reader is always, always, always the Lolcat’s I Can Has Cheezburger site. It’s got terrible weird slang English and sometimes corny jokes but I simply adore it. I’m a big cat lover and the Lolcat phenomenon totally impresses me. There isn’t enough praise I can give it. If you’ve been hiding under a rock and don’t know it, click on over, but beware: if you’re not a fan of cats and can’t be patient with the odd slang, you probably won’t get what I mean. And I can live with that.

I’ve been wondering what this means for my writing, and I’ve come up with a theory. Just before I read any blog posts about writing (because writing blogs are my second choice), I look at the Lolcat pictures, laugh at the captions, and get put into a great mood. So perhaps Lolcats are helping put me in the best frame of mind before I start reading about writing. Thanks cats!

Random Thing #3: Guten Morgen, I Mean, Good Morning

At home, I usually speak German. When I lived in Germany, I spoke English at home, but now that my German husband and I are living in Australia, German is definitely the dominate language. I’m keeping it that way so that our future children will be German speakers – I figure they’ll be growing up in Australia with English all around them but if home is a German zone (or mostly), then they won’t miss out. I hate the thought of them missing out on growing up bilingual.

Anyway, the problem with speaking German at home is I quite often find myself tongue-tied in English. Obviously, this is a bit of a problem for someone who works as an English teacher and a writer. My friends are now used to me spitting out odd German words now and again and searching around for the English equivalent, but my students still look at me strangely when I have a mental blank on an English word and just stare at them while I wait for it to come to me. However, you might be glad to know: this doesn’t seem to affect my writing. Perhaps because I rarely write in German, my brain is hardwired for English when my fingers hit the keyboard.

Random Thing #4: Getting Academic

I used to work as a university lecturer, and I haven’t lost that academic thirst for knowledge and, to be honest, qualifications. This year I’ll be studying the two more units I require to complete my Masters of Education and I’m pretty excited about it. Back when I used to work as an academic, I’d started my doctorate (the remnants of which are now turning into this MEd), and I still dream of doing a PhD – but now I dream of doing a PhD in creative writing. Don’t try to tell me that being a Dr will have little or no impact on my writing quality or my success as a writer, it’s just a personal achievement thing. I’d just like to do it. Okay?

Random Thing #5: Crushin’ on Daytime Psychobabble

I’m secretly keen on Dr Phil. This really grates against my intellectual pretensions, but on the days that I work from home I’ll often turn his show on – it’s screened here at midday, right when I usually sit down for lunch. And with the exception of the Oprah-like shows when he gives away gifts or money or some other razzle dazzle stuff, I often find I actually learn something. I mean, it seems like he actually has some psychologically useful things to say. Having said that, I just stayed with some friends who were reading his (unauthorised) biography and he didn’t sound quite like I’d imagined, but still, I actually find myself using some of his strategies to deal with my everyday life. But as I said, it’s a secret. Ssshhhh!

There is an impact of this on my writing. Most of my fiction and ideas for novels are fairly free from explosive action, and are more about getting into the heads of characters. So any psychology I pick up seems to get passed on to my characters. I hope that turns out to be a good thing.

Random Thing #6: Me and My Deformed Thumb

I have a strange lump on the inside joint of my right thumb. When I was growing up, I thought that this was a normal part of the human body, although I never questioned why my left thumb wasn’t the same. In fact, according to my mother, this lump is the result of a milk bottle accident when I was young – back in the days when milk came delivered to the doorstep in glass bottles, I was getting one out of the fridge, dropped it, and a shard of glass got wedged in this part of my thumb. A scar grew over it, I guess, and that’s what the lump is.

Now I can’t claim that this has a big impact on my writing, but it just seemed like a curious random thing to end with. And occasionally, just occasionally, when I type too fast, I hit this lump at just the right (or wrong) angle on the space bar key and it hurts and tingles for ages. Perhaps it’s telling me to slow down and actually think about what I write. Or perhaps, like so many things in life, it’s just random.  Now you know.

Rules of the 6 Random Things meme:

1. LINK TO THE PERSON WHO TAGGED YOU
2. POST THE RULES ON YOUR BLOG
3. WRITE SIX RANDOM THINGS ABOUT YOURSELF
4. TAG SIX PEOPLE AT THE END OF YOUR POST AND LINK TO THEM
5. LET EACH PERSON KNOW THEY ARE TAGGED AND LEAVE A COMMENT ON THEIR BLOG
6. LET THE TAGGER KNOW WHEN YOUR ENTRY IS UP

But I’m going to cheat a bit here and simply challenge all interested readers to do this. If you’re a writer, use it as a writing exercise. And other bloggers, use it on a slow blogging day to get some curious information about you out to your faithful readers. And let me know when you do – I’m the most curious of the lot.