Not much blogging done due to spring chores and little holiday in Mallorca, one of the Balearic islands.
While there we visited the house belonging to the poet Robert Graves .
He apparently (ab)used his writing for his philandering. He needed new muses all the time to be able to create his poetry. Would not be so much  appreciated by the #metoo brigade if he would have lived now.
His study looked like a proper writers’ study. Everything manually done. No Google for him!

He apparently edited his work with a brush and black ink. First two handwritten copies and then two typed copies. Copies probably done by his “muses”.
The house was lovely ,perched on a hill overlooking the Mediterranean and surrounded by lemon trees.
The azure skies with the bright sunshine gave the place something magical.
My own writing spot is not to be sniffed at as well.
Even though I have Wikipidea at my fingertips I still enjoy browsing my history books library built up over the last 40 years or so. Very distracting when you try to get on with the writing.

But let’s get on to more serious business.
The Netherlands have joined The US in selecting a mini Trump to lead politics in the Dutch Senate (Tweede Kamer). His party is called Forum for Democracy. With a name like that you know it will bring anything but the latter. The guy is called Thierry Baudet and he is against taken in refugees (Trump “the Wall”), he does not believe in climate change ( sound familiar?), does not want the Netherlands to be part of the European Union. He believes in City states. Let’s make the Netherlands great again living according the old values. He would not know a value if it bit him in the bottom. He is 36,  studied law and history, but apparently did not learn more than how to manipulate the general populace by playing on their fears.
The crazy thing is that his parents are not Dutch. They are of Belgian Indonesian stock. Had the Netherlands followed mister Baudet’s policy at the time he would never have been born in the Netherlands! Holland for the Dutch!!
May he go the same way as his previous right wing colleagues Pim Fortuyn and Gerard Wilders. Okay death might be a bit much, but I will settle for oblivion.
On top of everything he thinks women can not excel in many subjects ( subtext too stupid) and they want to stay at home and work part-time . That is why they will never reach the board room.
Let’s hope he is a one day wonder used by the Dutch to show their displeasure with the government.
Don’t know why they are unhappy anyway as the economy is booming. Might have to do wit h the factthat the jobs nowadays available are mainly in the digital world and you need brains to have one of those.
At one of those surveys the Dutch appear to live in one of the 4 happiest countries of the world. Well go on and select a racist, apparently uninformed populist to call the shots and soon you will be at the bottom of that list.

Have been wasting quite a bit of my time on Twitter following my favorite writers and other people who seem to have interesting ideas. It has come to my attention that the life of an author seems often stressful, depressing and prone to worrying where the next money is going to come from.
We, non professional writers, all seem to assume you are living the life of Reilly once one or more of your books are published. I would give a lot to have people even just read my work. But no the pressure and the competition kill a lot of the joy.
I don’t know if indie publishing has helped or not.
It has definitely brought far more competition as no one has to wait to see if a publishing house like their work to spread their books around.
But even the authors who have successfully had their books published by well known houses still are not exactly hitting the big time.
Same with having a movie made from your book.On the one hand it spreads your fame far and wide but will not do much for your book sales, as the younger generation often prefers the television series or movies to the books, no matter how good the books are.
The latter is especially true for the fantasy and sci-fi branch.
I have always preferred to read a book before it came out in other media. My sons however don’t want to read the books if they know it will be filmed “so as not to spoil it” . Unbelievable but they are not the only ones. Look at the hype around the Game of Thrones series by George.R.R.Martin. In the end the series is ahead of the books!
I always have been writing since I was taught how to do so. My diaries from age 13 to age 32 are proof of that. Now I have enough time I dabble with a dystopian story and find the whole process extremely enjoyable. But like when I was in school where I had to read books from a mandatory list the teacher made, which made me hate reading them, so I think that being forced to write to be able to eat must have the same effect.
Probably why I am not an artist but a hobbyist. At least I eat well.

Translation featured image: Islamization? No, read the latest report on climate change.