So, I keep wanting to make out that I'm an old hand at this writing lark.
The truth is, it's something I've known I could do passably for a long time, but I've done nothing about it. A girl I used to write love letters to used to tell me I should be a writer. She was the kind of person who only made compliments when they were very specific, and true. I write in my job, for comprehension rather than beauty, but I write.
But it's nothing I've ever gotten much done with. I've always had a problem sticking with stuff. The shock of the new rarely has aftershocks with me.
This year the brand is having a major overhaul.
This year I'm getting married.
This year I'm getting my head down and getting out of debt.
This year I'm straight and sober.
This year I'm writing.
And now I've been published. So any attempts to make out like I've always been doing this are blown out of the water as I say, as a writer and somebody who chooses their words carefully, ensuring that what is communicated is exactly what was intended:
SQUEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Thanks and props to:
The Legendary
Monday, 27 April 2009
Tuesday, 21 April 2009
Stories Everywhere
'Where do you get your ideas from?'
That question is maybe the biggest cliche in writing, and most big-time authors have developed a funny, droll or caustic response, depending on their wont, to trot out at dinner parties (Neil Gaiman has some great answers here).
And the truth is kind of like he tells it (although it takes a class of seven year olds to drag it out of him) - you see, just like anyone else. Your senses take in information, just like anyone else. The difference is you remember it, you examine it, you engage with it. You ask questions (what if and so forth), and you combine and change elements. You take what is, and imagine it differently, or describe it perceptively. You make people see what they didn't see, or didn't imagine could be instead, or just categorised the first time around (we often mistake categorisation for seeing - we lose the detail by fitting what we see into an easy box with a rote response). So, just like with a painter, the key first step is to see, to keep your eyes and all your other senses open, all of the time.
So I look around, and I see. And the things that catch the attention are often the controversial things, the things that are tough to unpack. The furore around Jade Goody is one. Here's a very average person, scrutinised and carried up on a media wave, and exploited, and deeply flawed. It makes me think about the uncertainty principle. Does she change, does her morality change, through being observed? The Poppadum joke was not good. Surely its like is heard once a minute. Was she a devil, then? She got cancer. Millions do. She used her spotlight (which most of those millions don't have) for good, to raise awareness, and has undoubtedly saved lives, before she died. Is she a saint, now? She was human. Much as I want to find no interest at all in whatever The Sun proclaims I should be interested in, I find that, as an average human held up to the light in a way few have been, she is an interesting case that makes me think of plenty of ideas, about being human. Which is what stories are about, of course. Even if they're about being elves or dragons.
Susan Boyle is another case in point. It's a complex one again... she came to attention on Britain's Got Talent, set up for some ridicule from the crowd and the judges as a woman who's not what they've come to expect from indentikit twenty-year-old hopefuls. One amazing performance and thirty million youtube hits later, everybody has an opinion: 'It's all an edit, a set-up', 'The fact that it's gained attention is an insult to her', 'It didn't surprise me', 'She showed them', 'It's all cynical TV', 'The audience and judges were disgusting in the way they treated her', 'What's the big deal, she can sing - lots of unattractive people can'... Where's the truth? Again, she's human, the audience are human. But we can all strive to be the best humans we can be. For me, it says a lot about expectations, and reactions, and assumptions, and the lesson is to think carefully about the basis for your judgements. Don't assume; don't categorise. See.
Who knows, maybe you'll get an idea for a story.
That question is maybe the biggest cliche in writing, and most big-time authors have developed a funny, droll or caustic response, depending on their wont, to trot out at dinner parties (Neil Gaiman has some great answers here).
And the truth is kind of like he tells it (although it takes a class of seven year olds to drag it out of him) - you see, just like anyone else. Your senses take in information, just like anyone else. The difference is you remember it, you examine it, you engage with it. You ask questions (what if and so forth), and you combine and change elements. You take what is, and imagine it differently, or describe it perceptively. You make people see what they didn't see, or didn't imagine could be instead, or just categorised the first time around (we often mistake categorisation for seeing - we lose the detail by fitting what we see into an easy box with a rote response). So, just like with a painter, the key first step is to see, to keep your eyes and all your other senses open, all of the time.
So I look around, and I see. And the things that catch the attention are often the controversial things, the things that are tough to unpack. The furore around Jade Goody is one. Here's a very average person, scrutinised and carried up on a media wave, and exploited, and deeply flawed. It makes me think about the uncertainty principle. Does she change, does her morality change, through being observed? The Poppadum joke was not good. Surely its like is heard once a minute. Was she a devil, then? She got cancer. Millions do. She used her spotlight (which most of those millions don't have) for good, to raise awareness, and has undoubtedly saved lives, before she died. Is she a saint, now? She was human. Much as I want to find no interest at all in whatever The Sun proclaims I should be interested in, I find that, as an average human held up to the light in a way few have been, she is an interesting case that makes me think of plenty of ideas, about being human. Which is what stories are about, of course. Even if they're about being elves or dragons.
Susan Boyle is another case in point. It's a complex one again... she came to attention on Britain's Got Talent, set up for some ridicule from the crowd and the judges as a woman who's not what they've come to expect from indentikit twenty-year-old hopefuls. One amazing performance and thirty million youtube hits later, everybody has an opinion: 'It's all an edit, a set-up', 'The fact that it's gained attention is an insult to her', 'It didn't surprise me', 'She showed them', 'It's all cynical TV', 'The audience and judges were disgusting in the way they treated her', 'What's the big deal, she can sing - lots of unattractive people can'... Where's the truth? Again, she's human, the audience are human. But we can all strive to be the best humans we can be. For me, it says a lot about expectations, and reactions, and assumptions, and the lesson is to think carefully about the basis for your judgements. Don't assume; don't categorise. See.
Who knows, maybe you'll get an idea for a story.
Thursday, 9 April 2009
The Cat Sat on the Mat
That's where we start, with school, with words. The alphabet... i used to wander around school singing it in tunes: Star Wars... AB - CDEFG - HIJKL - MNOP... The Pink Panther... AB - CD - EFGHIJKLMN - OPQRST... Oh yeah, that's getting trotted out in the speech my best man's concocting, no doubt. So maybe I was the crazy kid who loved words and wandered around in his own little world, and maybe I still am. If so, I'm learning to make links with the real world, because some of the most interesting shit is when one of my little tangents makes somebody stop in their tracks a moment because it reminds them of the view from their world. I'm gonna set down some of them there tangents, flights, trains and musings, and it starts here.
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