Category Archives: Thoughts

Becoming an Author

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I’ve always fancied being an author. A novelist in particular. I love the idea of my work being read by others, though I never get around to finishing anything I start. In fact, it barely ever gets off the ground. I come up with half-arsed ideas which don’t lead anywhere and I seem to lack the concentration it takes to get to grips with such a large undertaking. I need focus.

I often go out and buy new notebooks with the intention of filling them with ideas; passages I’ve written which could make it into a larger work; character profiles; ideas for locations. But they never get filled. I carry them around with me for a while, before they start to be used for other, less artistic works. Such as the shopping list.

I bought one the other day. It’s a Moleskin clone from Ryman’s. It feels just as nice to the touch, but less than half the price. But that’s by-the-by. I’m not here to talk about the price of paper. I’m here because I want to write. I need to learn to concentrate and not imagine there are a million-and-one other things I could do instead. When it comes to fictional writing, I am the world’s greatest procrastinator. There is always washing up to be done, or clothes to be dried, or cushions to be straightened, or cats to be stroked. It’s the little things which continually distract me from doing what I really want to do. And by the time I’m distracted, it’s already too late; my mind has wandered. There’ll be no writing on those days.

Eventually, a few days will go by and I’ll never return to the story I’d started. Perhaps I need to give myself more opportunities to write. But I doubt a publisher is going to give me an advance to enable me to quit work and write full-time, especially given that I don’t yet have anything to show them. I know I can do it if I put my mind to it. I just need to beat my mind into submission first.

Although I’m fully aware that this blog isn’t read by a huge number of people, if anyone out there has any hints and tips for writing, I’d be very glad to read them.

Be Prepared

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My trainers didn't last the entire journey to work.

I used to be a boy scout. Well, I went for a week. I guess that’s not enough time to learn how to Be Prepared.

Due to lack of funds and wanting to get as much use out of everything I own as possible these days, I’ve been wearing my clothes for much longer than I probably should have done. My t-shirts have become faded and the designs have all but flaked off. My jumpers are last year’s and bitty. My jeans all have holes in places they should have holes and I find myself having to think about when and where to bend, for fear of scaring some innocent child who happens to be walking passed.

All-in-all, I could really do with some new clothes. Fingers-crossed that as Christmas is just around the corner, some replacements will be on the way. Either that, or some vouchers for clothes stores would be greatly appreciated.

My alterative footwear wasn't really up to much either.

It’s not really been a huge issue up until today. I mean, I don’t look quite as smart as I used to, but I’m not at down-and-out stage just yet. However it all became an issue this morning when my one and only pair of footwear finally gave up on me and split on the bottom. It just happened to coincide with a downpour of sleet whilst on my way to work. Fortunately I did have an old pair of shoes in the office which I could change into, although these have also seen better days. I use them more as slippers for work, given that they too have huge holes in the bottom and are completely unsuitable for wearing outside.

A colleague was kind enough to lend me a pair of socks and offered to give me a in lift into town to buy some replacement shoes, but I guess it does highlight a change in my attitude which I’d not recognised until now. Whilst I’ve never be someone who has to rush out shopping to get the latest fashions, I at least used to make sure what I was wearing was suitable for the job. These days I’m wearing whatever comes to hand, whether or not it’s suitable. I really shouldn’t have been wearing my trainers in snowy conditions anyway, but I’d found myself completely unprepared. I had no other choice. I’d also been using them to walk five miles a day for a couple of months, which they certainly weren’t designed for.

In these austere times, I guess I need to have a rethink about where my money heads and to what I see as a priority. At least, I know I definitely have to start spending more than I currently do on clothes. That, or I’ll have to find a new job that pays more. A very tempting idea…

Reaction to Faking Frozen Planet

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I don’t normally use this blog to rant (in fact, I’ve barely used it for anything in months), but I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to get in my two pennies worth regarding the Frozen Planet furore.

Like most free-thinking, semi-intelligent people in this country, I can’t stand the direction in which television has being heading over the past decade or so. Gone are the vast majority of the thrilling, well-written drama programmes which used to entertain us. Gone are the days when Britain produced comedy shows which rivalled and surpassed anything our friends across the Atlantic could produce. Gone is anything remotely mind-enhancing from the main channels, reduced as they are to lurking in the depths of BBC 4. In their place we have the reality tripe which infests our lives and make stars from people who ordinarily would only ever find work in court-enforced positions, cleaning off the graffiti they themselves have daubed on shop walls.

That’s why shows like Frozen Planet are an absolute blessing. Stunningly filmed, beautifully narrated and wonderfully produced. Nature shows are the one thing our nation’s television still excels at, and none are finer than those produced by and for the BBC. It takes an extreme amount of effort, diligence, hard work and sheer guts to capture footage of such outstanding quality. Weeks and months of tireless drudging up and down mountains in icy conditions, lugging camera equipment around, putting yourself in danger of attack or frostbite or risking falling through cracks in the frozen seas. All so that the people of Britain have something entertaining and stimulating to watch as they tuck into their fish suppers.

But rather than being applauded for all of the work which was put in to producing such a show, we instead have to listen to complaints from the gutter press and the Daily Fail because one piece of footage was filmed in a zoo. A piece of footage which, under absolutely no circumstances, would have been possible to accomplish in the wild. As Attenborough himself has stated ,”If you had tried to put a camera in the wild in a polar bear den, she would either have killed the cub or she would have killed the cameraman”.

Surely that’s enough of an explanation, isn’t it? Isn’t it enough to have forced an 85 year-old man to go on television to explain why the BBC hadn’t wanted to risk the lives of a cameraman or an endangered species?

But, they ask, why did the final cut of the show have to imply that we were seeing the same creatures throughout each stage of their lives when, in reality, they were entirely different bears? And my answer to that is simple; who cares? This is a television show; it’s entertainment. It’s about engaging the audience in a way that keeps them interested, entertained and educated. Television and film have always been about the suspension of belief. In this instance, all we are being asked to imagine is that some polar bears doing what polar bears do entirely naturally are, in fact, some other polar bears who are doing the same thing, just without the camera in their faces. Surely in a world dominated by programmes such as The Only Way Is Essex – where half of a so-called reality show is made up – the public could let this one go? The tabloid press could ignore this one little white lie for the sake of entertainment.

The answer is clearly no. The rags need something to latch on to and to expose as fraudulent. To berate and to mock. So they pick a production for daring to film some bears in a different location to where some people thought they were. These people are, quite frankly, pathetic.

I Can’t Quite Recall…

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Ever forget to do something? I do all the time. I forget I need to collect some shopping, or I forget I need to do the washing-up. That is until I walk in the kitchen and spot Pot Mountain rising above me like some giant monolithic demigod, requiring slaying. The joy of working my way through a pile like that is indescribable, so I won’t bother trying to expand too much on that here.

The result of several day’s worth of laziness aside, there are often times I forget things I’ve really rather been looking forward to.

Take my Kindle for example. I love to read, but it does take me an age to get through a book. I’ll get engrossed for a short while and then not only completely forget about the book, but forget I own a Kindle altogether. Some time later – perhaps a month or two – I’ll discover the device sat on the bookshelf, battery drained and lifeless. Of course, this also means that I can’t start reading as soon as I find it, which adds yet more time in between sessions. So now, 12% through a book, I have absolutely no idea how it started.

Often I’ll forget to do anything at all. I’ll get home after work, make a cup of tea and consider everything I could do that evening. Will I watch a film, play a game, clean the kitchen, go to the gym, read that book I’d forgotten about? Of course, the answer is none of the above. Nothing at all. Before I know it, I’ve spent the evening staring into the glass box by the wall and made sure that every single thing I could have done is totally out of my mind. And the thing is, I absolutely hate watching TV. So what evil is it that’s holding my attention for all that time? I’m damned if I know.

I’ve had a plan to start writing for a while now. I even have ideas in mind about what I would like to jot down. I just never think about it when I have any spare time. Of course, it’s the only thing on my mind when I’m busy. Sometimes my mind works in ways I utterly despise. I seem to forget to do all types of writing too. Even things like blog posts. Even things like blog posts I’ve already written and to which I simply need to post. Two of my four articles on cycling to Paris were sat as drafts for months.

So I guess that’s where this random little post has come from. It’s a desire to stop procrastinating and to actually write something down. This is hopefully the start.

Writing without purpose

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Books that I had no hand in writing.

I’d love to write a novel. This desire is probably the only thing that’s remained with me throughout most of my life. I would love to walk into a bookshop and see my name, my novel, my ideas and imagination up there on the shelves for all to see. I’d love to think that there would forever be that little bit of me locked up inside the British Library, sitting patiently amongst all of those others who have put pen to paper. Whether it were read, unread, fondled, creased, cracked, bent, broken, rebound, reprinted, stained, smeared or had pages ripped out for no other reason than someone needed a bookmark for a more important publication, I would still feel a sense of such great accomplishment at getting my words to print.

The trouble is, I have no idea what I want to write. I’ve started several times through the belief that I had an idea worth jotting down, though after a sketchy half a chapter I realise that it’s not going quite the way I had envisaged and I always give up rather quickly. I find planning to be a huge issue and would rather rush through without thinking ahead about characters, story progression and pacing. I end up in such a rush that I burn myself out and don’t have the ability to carry on. I need to calm it down and take my time. I wonder if software developed for novel writing would help me plan more successfully than simply attempting to work on Apple’s Pages?

But first of all I need an idea. A new one. A different one. Something that no-one has ever thought to write about before. The longer time goes on, the fewer and fewer subjects there are left to discuss without wishing to seemingly rehash someone else’s work or encroach on someone else’s genre. It becomes much more difficult to have an original thought. Try writing about a boy wizard, for example, and see what the general consensus would be about your work. Which is why I would love to find something new, rather than trying a new take on an established idea. I’m not saying my work wouldn’t amount to much in an over-exposed genre, but writing about something entirely new would more likely bring the greatest exposure. So long as it was good, of course.

For the timebeing there’s nothing at all in my head which I would like to write. In fact, this article grew from the fact that I didn’t currently have anything to write about and simply wished to do so without purpose. It’s certainly killed some time and given me a few ideas…