It's typical really. I sign off my last post with Happy New Year etc., claiming I'm not likely to post anything today, then find myself pulling an all nighter and completing my new story "In The Long Hot Summer". It's up now, over at fifty-two-stories-lite.
Overall I'm fairly pleased with it. I've slipped back into bleak and unhappy mode, but this wasn't a happy event. Some of it is true, some of it isn't. All of the places are real, the people are real (with their physical descriptions kept minimal or changed from the reality where they are described.) and the true parts happened as I described them. The true parts are not necessarily the bits you would expect.
I think I'm off to bed now. All nighters aren't as easy as they were five years ago. Once more with feeling, Happy New Year and best wishes for 2009
Wednesday 31 December 2008
Holidayed Out...
It's been almost a week since my last post, and I have to admit I've missed waffling on about whatever happens to be on my mind at the time. The holidays are as good as over and I can get back to proper writing rather than showy-offy things like Drabbles. (Although I have admit to being proud of the one I did.)
The surprising thing is how quickly the writing muscles can atrophy. Ten days of rest, excepting for a few hours shaving and tweaking The Pathologist to exactly the right length have left me feeling curiously... un-writerly. Ideas have been at a premium after enjoying my Christmas pressies. The complete Firefly boxset, The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman, Nation by Terry Pratchett, Nu Of The Neocene by Edgar Rice Burroughs and some comfy, comfy slippers combined with the Doctor Who Christmas special, a new Wallace & Gromit adventure, the brilliant Crooked House on BBC Four and twice my own body weight in turkey and stuffing, sweets, buffets at various family get togethers and a lack of sleep have meant that I've been feeling justifiably woolly minded.
However, my nose is back to the grindstone and I've nearly finished the new story provisionally titled "In The Long Hot Summer", it will be interesting to see if there's a noticeable drop in quality when I'm not feeling at my sharpest mentally.
In case I don't get time to post anything tomorrow, Happy New Year to everyone and all the best for you and yours in 2009!
The surprising thing is how quickly the writing muscles can atrophy. Ten days of rest, excepting for a few hours shaving and tweaking The Pathologist to exactly the right length have left me feeling curiously... un-writerly. Ideas have been at a premium after enjoying my Christmas pressies. The complete Firefly boxset, The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman, Nation by Terry Pratchett, Nu Of The Neocene by Edgar Rice Burroughs and some comfy, comfy slippers combined with the Doctor Who Christmas special, a new Wallace & Gromit adventure, the brilliant Crooked House on BBC Four and twice my own body weight in turkey and stuffing, sweets, buffets at various family get togethers and a lack of sleep have meant that I've been feeling justifiably woolly minded.
However, my nose is back to the grindstone and I've nearly finished the new story provisionally titled "In The Long Hot Summer", it will be interesting to see if there's a noticeable drop in quality when I'm not feeling at my sharpest mentally.
In case I don't get time to post anything tomorrow, Happy New Year to everyone and all the best for you and yours in 2009!
Wednesday 24 December 2008
New Story: No. 4 of 52 - The Pathologist
This work is licenced under a Creative Commons Licence.
The Pathologist
By Daniel Brown
The pathologist looked at the corpse laid out on the table, neatly dissected with the internal organs properly positioned. He approved of the spotlessness of the lungs, the lack of inflammation or fatty tissue around the liver. It was obvious to his experienced eye that this young woman had enjoyed a clean, healthy existence. He had no doubt that stomach contents and toxicology would come back clear. He stripped off his apron, gloves and scrubs. His erection growing as he left his victims kitchen, he admired his work once more, certain the media were right to christen him the pathologist.
-END-
Tuesday 23 December 2008
The Dark Knight, Drabbling and Seasons Greetings
After finishing "Hanging Around", I decided to treat myself to a film night and a few hours of random web surfing. During this time I managed to learn quite a few things.
Being the first... Even cynical, film-savvy souls like myself can be reduced to quivering in the afterglow of a multiple nerd-gasm by the sheer, mind altering brilliance of the late Heath Ledger's performance as The Joker.
I rarely go to the cinema anymore, finding the expense, the travelling (the nearest convenient cinema to where I live is fifteen miles away. I don't drive. This makes it a Day Out rather than a spur of the moment thing.), the uncomfortable seating and the sheer irritation of a bunch of strangers coughing, belching, whispering and rustling sweet wrappers during the film to detract too much from my enjoyment of the particular film I've gone to see. I usually wait for the DVD. Since I have a good imagination, the big screen doesn't really add that much to the experience anyway.
This being the case, I waited until after The Dark Knight was released on DVD on the 8th of December. (I think I missed an email, since that appeared to be national geek day in the UK. TDK, Hellboy 2 and Star Wars: The Clone Wars all being released simultaneously) Anyway... I put in the DVD and sat back with my arms folded, figuratively speaking, expecting not to be blown away by the performance of Mr Ledger. I still remember clearly the artificial outpourings of faux grief for the death of Princess Diana, and honestly thought that a similar vein of Respect-For-The-Dead sycophancy was responsible for the endless stream of superlatives thrown at his portrayal of the The Joker. To say that I was wrong is to go far beyond understatement. If you haven't seen this film already I can't recommend it highly enough.
Secundus... During my random web surfing I learned of a thing called the Drabble. This is a form of writing that was particularly popular in the genre scene of the late eighties. The basic idea is to tell a complete and coherent story in exactly one hundred words. (The title is exempt from the word count, read the full wikipedia entry here) The Drabble seems, in my eyes at least, to get to the very essence of storytelling. All that is extraneous must stripped away, leaving nothing behind but the briefest of brief descriptions of what happened. With luck, the story that remains resembles poetry, the verbose, prosaic equivalent of a haiku. My own attempt at this will be posted as this week's entry on Wednesday. (It's the holidays, I'd like to spend at least some time with my loved ones.)
C. It turns out that I do have an ego about my writing. I googled the name of my blog and found myself disappointed that I wasn't even original in naming the thing, let alone the idea behind it. On the bright side, I seem to be the only one who is carrying it through (up until now) by posting a story once a week. Go me! (week one is here, two is here and three is here)
iiii. That I've run out of things to post, but like the gag of labeling each thing on the list from a different listing convention.
5... See, what I mean?
Merry Christmas!
Being the first... Even cynical, film-savvy souls like myself can be reduced to quivering in the afterglow of a multiple nerd-gasm by the sheer, mind altering brilliance of the late Heath Ledger's performance as The Joker.
I rarely go to the cinema anymore, finding the expense, the travelling (the nearest convenient cinema to where I live is fifteen miles away. I don't drive. This makes it a Day Out rather than a spur of the moment thing.), the uncomfortable seating and the sheer irritation of a bunch of strangers coughing, belching, whispering and rustling sweet wrappers during the film to detract too much from my enjoyment of the particular film I've gone to see. I usually wait for the DVD. Since I have a good imagination, the big screen doesn't really add that much to the experience anyway.
This being the case, I waited until after The Dark Knight was released on DVD on the 8th of December. (I think I missed an email, since that appeared to be national geek day in the UK. TDK, Hellboy 2 and Star Wars: The Clone Wars all being released simultaneously) Anyway... I put in the DVD and sat back with my arms folded, figuratively speaking, expecting not to be blown away by the performance of Mr Ledger. I still remember clearly the artificial outpourings of faux grief for the death of Princess Diana, and honestly thought that a similar vein of Respect-For-The-Dead sycophancy was responsible for the endless stream of superlatives thrown at his portrayal of the The Joker. To say that I was wrong is to go far beyond understatement. If you haven't seen this film already I can't recommend it highly enough.
Secundus... During my random web surfing I learned of a thing called the Drabble. This is a form of writing that was particularly popular in the genre scene of the late eighties. The basic idea is to tell a complete and coherent story in exactly one hundred words. (The title is exempt from the word count, read the full wikipedia entry here) The Drabble seems, in my eyes at least, to get to the very essence of storytelling. All that is extraneous must stripped away, leaving nothing behind but the briefest of brief descriptions of what happened. With luck, the story that remains resembles poetry, the verbose, prosaic equivalent of a haiku. My own attempt at this will be posted as this week's entry on Wednesday. (It's the holidays, I'd like to spend at least some time with my loved ones.)
C. It turns out that I do have an ego about my writing. I googled the name of my blog and found myself disappointed that I wasn't even original in naming the thing, let alone the idea behind it. On the bright side, I seem to be the only one who is carrying it through (up until now) by posting a story once a week. Go me! (week one is here, two is here and three is here)
iiii. That I've run out of things to post, but like the gag of labeling each thing on the list from a different listing convention.
5... See, what I mean?
Merry Christmas!
Saturday 20 December 2008
New Story: No. 3 of 52 - Hanging Around
Apologies for the delay, the story should have been posted hours ago. Unfortunately my internet connection was temporarily borked, something that's been happening a lot lately. Anyway, it's back on now and the new story titled "Hanging Around" is up as a post on the story only blog here.
I have to admit that it's been a lot of fun writing it, despite my uncertainty over where to stop telling the story of Grahams evening. As luck would have it I think I chose the right place, since delving any further into Graham's life at that particular point would have made me... uncomfortable shall we say. It's a problem I may have to get over one day, but hopefully not for a while as that's one area I can honestly say I'm not cheerful about tackling. It's not that I'm a prude, far from it, just that I'm not sure a writer as green as I am right now is able to convey a scene of that nature with any degree of subtlety or finesse.
As usual, the work is published under a Creative Commons license, so feel free to share it around if you like it. If you do like it, (or even if you don't) feel free to comment, since feedback is the only way I can find out if I'm doing things well or badly.
http://fifty-two-stories-lite.blogspot.com/2008/12/new-story-no-3-of-52-hanging-around.html
I have to admit that it's been a lot of fun writing it, despite my uncertainty over where to stop telling the story of Grahams evening. As luck would have it I think I chose the right place, since delving any further into Graham's life at that particular point would have made me... uncomfortable shall we say. It's a problem I may have to get over one day, but hopefully not for a while as that's one area I can honestly say I'm not cheerful about tackling. It's not that I'm a prude, far from it, just that I'm not sure a writer as green as I am right now is able to convey a scene of that nature with any degree of subtlety or finesse.
As usual, the work is published under a Creative Commons license, so feel free to share it around if you like it. If you do like it, (or even if you don't) feel free to comment, since feedback is the only way I can find out if I'm doing things well or badly.
http://fifty-two-stories-lite.blogspot.com/2008/12/new-story-no-3-of-52-hanging-around.html
Always Leave 'Em Wanting More... (them being me)
I'm over the finish line at last, I'm just busy putting the final spit and polish onto Hanging Around and it will be up in a couple of hours. Curiously, the one story I've written from life (in general, not in specifics) is the one I've found the most difficult to end satisfactorily. I suppose that's because the kind of stuff that happens in real life doesn't lend itself well to traditional narrative structure.
A concept piece is as much about the event as it is about the people, so anything that isn't moving the plot forward or informing the character's actions, be it immediate or at the denouement is extraneous. The character exists as something to hang that idea you're so in love with on, rather than as a thinking or feeling person in their own right who moves the story in unexpected directions.
For something rooted more firmly in everyday life, the idea of a beginning, middle and an end is a touch more problematic, particularly in the short form. Life doesn't work like that, so the story can't either. You have to jump in at the middle, wander along with the person for a while and then stop, and right there is the problem. Where do you stop telling what happened to this person? If there isn't an overarching plot you can find yourself droning on for much longer than is necessary, so you just have to find somewhere and say to yourself "Enough" and that point can feel pretty arbitrary. All you can do then is put it out there, hoping that any others who read it agree that you stopped at the right time. Give me a little time and you can judge for yourselves.
A concept piece is as much about the event as it is about the people, so anything that isn't moving the plot forward or informing the character's actions, be it immediate or at the denouement is extraneous. The character exists as something to hang that idea you're so in love with on, rather than as a thinking or feeling person in their own right who moves the story in unexpected directions.
For something rooted more firmly in everyday life, the idea of a beginning, middle and an end is a touch more problematic, particularly in the short form. Life doesn't work like that, so the story can't either. You have to jump in at the middle, wander along with the person for a while and then stop, and right there is the problem. Where do you stop telling what happened to this person? If there isn't an overarching plot you can find yourself droning on for much longer than is necessary, so you just have to find somewhere and say to yourself "Enough" and that point can feel pretty arbitrary. All you can do then is put it out there, hoping that any others who read it agree that you stopped at the right time. Give me a little time and you can judge for yourselves.
Wednesday 17 December 2008
Almost At The Finishing Line...
Almost Ready with Hanging Around, just a few kinks with the ending to iron out then it will be up over at fifty-two-stories-lite.
As a trite maxim "Write What You Know" has stood me in good stead with this story, although like all old wives tales it has only limited usefulness. After all the majority of people capable of thinking outside the terms of their own existence don't want to read what they know. If this weren't the case, there wouldn't be any room for Robert E. Howard, J.G. Ballard, Kurt Vonnegut, J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Margaret Atwood, Neil Gaiman or any of the countless other writers from the pulp-ish to the Pulitzer winners the bad to the Booker nominated (although those two aren't mutually exclusive!).
I know that my tastes as a reader tend towards the fantastic, be it the epic vistas of Middle Earth or the hyperactive lunacy of Carl Hiassen's Florida, the dreamlike orient of Journey To The West or the nightmare future of Orwell's 1984. If every writer only wrote what they know, the literary world would be a much drier and less exciting place. All that being said, it has been a pleasure to write from experience, rather than madly trying to get inside the heads of people so far removed from my own emotional make up. There's probably a lesson in there somewhere, but I need another couple of cups of tea before I can figure out what it is.
As a trite maxim "Write What You Know" has stood me in good stead with this story, although like all old wives tales it has only limited usefulness. After all the majority of people capable of thinking outside the terms of their own existence don't want to read what they know. If this weren't the case, there wouldn't be any room for Robert E. Howard, J.G. Ballard, Kurt Vonnegut, J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Margaret Atwood, Neil Gaiman or any of the countless other writers from the pulp-ish to the Pulitzer winners the bad to the Booker nominated (although those two aren't mutually exclusive!).
I know that my tastes as a reader tend towards the fantastic, be it the epic vistas of Middle Earth or the hyperactive lunacy of Carl Hiassen's Florida, the dreamlike orient of Journey To The West or the nightmare future of Orwell's 1984. If every writer only wrote what they know, the literary world would be a much drier and less exciting place. All that being said, it has been a pleasure to write from experience, rather than madly trying to get inside the heads of people so far removed from my own emotional make up. There's probably a lesson in there somewhere, but I need another couple of cups of tea before I can figure out what it is.
Monday 15 December 2008
On The Importance Of Keeping A Clean Desk Space...
Keeping a clean desk space is vital, otherwise you may find yourself constantly trying to correct punctuation that in fact turns out to be a speck of dirt on your monitor. Not that I've ever done this of course, erm... I just think it's a good piece of general advice, that's all. Honest. Off to clean my monit- Ahem! That is to say I'm off to write some more now, no monitor cleaning going on here...
Saturday 13 December 2008
Good Grief, I'm Ahead Of Schedule!
After the disaster that was my mad scramble to post Redcap on time, I decided that rather than posting each story seven days after the last one went up, I would instead make sure that each story goes out before the end of the calendar week that follows when the last one went up. This gives me time to make sure that my real life can also get the attention it deserves, as well as the oppurtunity to add polish and shine to anything I write.
The staggering result of this decision is that my new story is flowing so easily, I'm suffering serious doubts as to whether anything that comes with such ease can actually be any good. On the other hand, after writing two stories that have... let's call them bleak, endings I thought I would try my hand at something a bit more cheerful and slice of life-ish. Maybe I'm not meant for writing concept pieces, or perhaps I just lack the requisite skill to really make them really leap off the page as yet, who knows. Either way, I'm off to continue the new thing -called "Hanging Around" as a working title- It's strange to find the actual act of writng as much fun as this, I'm convinced it should feel more like work than it does at the moment.
The staggering result of this decision is that my new story is flowing so easily, I'm suffering serious doubts as to whether anything that comes with such ease can actually be any good. On the other hand, after writing two stories that have... let's call them bleak, endings I thought I would try my hand at something a bit more cheerful and slice of life-ish. Maybe I'm not meant for writing concept pieces, or perhaps I just lack the requisite skill to really make them really leap off the page as yet, who knows. Either way, I'm off to continue the new thing -called "Hanging Around" as a working title- It's strange to find the actual act of writng as much fun as this, I'm convinced it should feel more like work than it does at the moment.
Thursday 11 December 2008
New Blog launched And It's Chock Full O' Stories
In order to make sure people can actually read what I've written, I've launched a new blog called fifty-two-stories-lite where I'll be posting the stories from now on. Just follow the link and you'll find it. The only thing on there is the full text of the stories, with none of that silly download link business. One day in the distant future I might find a file hosting site who are actually reliable and do what they say they will but until that time I wont bother posting download links anymore, just links to the online text, which ought to make things easier for everybody.
Here are Cabinet Pussy-cat and Redcap, I hope you enjoy them.
Here are Cabinet Pussy-cat and Redcap, I hope you enjoy them.
Stupid File Hosts...
It Seems Like people are having trouble downloading the PDFs from Filefactory, that being the case I'm going to make my work available as blog posts on a seperate companion blog here. (Once the word "here" changes colour the blog is up and running)
Until then, just to amuse yourself try deciphering the specific phrase I used when I found out that the download links don't work...
"************, *******-******, ****-******'*!!"
Anyone who guesses correctly has a serious case of potty-mind and should consider a new career writing insults for Deadwood. (If it was still running, which it isn't. BOOOO!")
Until then, just to amuse yourself try deciphering the specific phrase I used when I found out that the download links don't work...
"************, *******-******, ****-******'*!!"
Anyone who guesses correctly has a serious case of potty-mind and should consider a new career writing insults for Deadwood. (If it was still running, which it isn't. BOOOO!")
New Story: No. 2 of 52 - Redcap
So hear it is at long last, "Redcap" the short story that wanted to be so very much longer.
This work is licenced under a Creative Commons Licence.
Redcap.pdf
Be warned, this is a very rough cut of the work as I scrambled to meet my own deadline, which I missed by a couple of hours, boo for me.
Analysis to follow tomorrow, off to bed now for a well earned rest!
This work is licenced under a Creative Commons Licence.
Redcap.pdf
Be warned, this is a very rough cut of the work as I scrambled to meet my own deadline, which I missed by a couple of hours, boo for me.
Analysis to follow tomorrow, off to bed now for a well earned rest!
Tuesday 9 December 2008
Apologies for the silence over the past few days. Sadly real life has impinged severely on the length of free time I've had available for both writing and blogging. The new story, titled "Redcap", should be up some time in the next few hours once I've had finished writing it and I promise to catch up with the blogs I'm following some time really soon.
It's my own fault really. First I had to complete the christmas shopping (finally just about ready) and then I contracted a dose of light food poisoning after not following the advice I freely dish out to others, namely... never buy fish on a monday. All better now though, so until the story goes up later feel free to look at this...
more animals
It's my own fault really. First I had to complete the christmas shopping (finally just about ready) and then I contracted a dose of light food poisoning after not following the advice I freely dish out to others, namely... never buy fish on a monday. All better now though, so until the story goes up later feel free to look at this...
more animals
Friday 5 December 2008
The Perils Of Procrastination.
It can very detrimental to a person's work rate when trying to do any work on a pc connected to the web. I finally had the idea for my new story last night, so got up this morning to start writing it, so far I have written (clicks tab for OpenOffice.org and checks word count) 473 words.
I have also checked both of the blogs I'm following here on blogger, the blogs I follow elsewhere (which I will get around to linking to, probably after I've finished this post!), added a countdown gadget to try and bully myself into working faster, set up an account at goodreads.com , re-sorted the order my Fast Dial windows are ranked in, added an extension to FireFox, drank several cups of tea (the kettle is boiling for another one right now.), created a few new play lists for windows media player, thoroughly researched every piece of data on my chosen story matter (that might count as work I suppose.) and given serious consideration to starting a companion blog to this one where the stories will be written in full as blog posts with a download link at the bottom, that way people can read the stories to see if they like them first before going to the trouble of downloading them.
See? Dangerous. An electronic repository of human knowledge at my fingertips is a very difficult proposition to resist. I'm off now to drink tea, procrastinate some more and maybe even consider doing some actual writing as well.
I have also checked both of the blogs I'm following here on blogger, the blogs I follow elsewhere (which I will get around to linking to, probably after I've finished this post!), added a countdown gadget to try and bully myself into working faster, set up an account at goodreads.com , re-sorted the order my Fast Dial windows are ranked in, added an extension to FireFox, drank several cups of tea (the kettle is boiling for another one right now.), created a few new play lists for windows media player, thoroughly researched every piece of data on my chosen story matter (that might count as work I suppose.) and given serious consideration to starting a companion blog to this one where the stories will be written in full as blog posts with a download link at the bottom, that way people can read the stories to see if they like them first before going to the trouble of downloading them.
See? Dangerous. An electronic repository of human knowledge at my fingertips is a very difficult proposition to resist. I'm off now to drink tea, procrastinate some more and maybe even consider doing some actual writing as well.
Thursday 4 December 2008
tick-Tick-TICK!
The first story is up and I now have a deadline to meet, Wednesday, 10th of December. As a purely amateur writer this is a novel (pun intended!) experience for me. My working life hasn't prepared me for this as my work experience has always been in a strictly manual labour capacity. Pretty much the same thing applies to my academic background, what there is of it, since I left school without qualifications and considered the place little more than a minor irritation, on those days that I bothered turning up. I have to admit that I feel surprisingly serene about the whole thing, but this could be nothing more than blind panic and my mind shutting down when it considers the fact that I have no safety net. The next story will be written completely from scratch, specifically for this little known corner of cyberspace.
Off to wash the dishes now, a surprisingly good place for thnking up ideas!
Off to wash the dishes now, a surprisingly good place for thnking up ideas!
Wednesday 3 December 2008
On The Importance Of Doing Research...
I've just posted the first of fifty two stories, the blog can be considered truly live now. This fills me with a sense of profound terror of course, but also freedom. Whatever happens now is completely out of my hands, I can read all the articles I like about publicizing my blog and manage to convince lots of people to visit, but I can't make them download or, more importantly, enjoy the stories I write. I know that I won't please everyone, with everything I do, I'm neither that naive or arrogant. The hope is more that I'll please someone, with something and at the end of it all be a better and more consistent story teller. Bearing that in mind perhaps it's time to summarize what I feel I've learned from "Cabinet pussy-cat" that I can apply to writing my second story.
I think the most important things I've learned are what I'll call the two R's... research and rewrites. When I completed the first draft of my story two years ago, I was really very pleased with it. On dredging out the file of old stuff that's never seen the light of day, I realized that my confidence was somewhat misplaced. There were huge gaps in the internal logic of the story, screwy time lines and an ending that, while satisfying to write was full of factual errors. It was the work of ten minutes to correct the factual errors with just a few searches for scholarly documents on google. This small act of research on my part saved my ending from being the exact opposite of what happens under those circumstances. It may seem like a minor save, but to anyone with any working knowledge or personal experience of the thing in question it would almost surely destroy any previous enjoyment built up before the denouement.
The second R, rewrites is a slightly more thorny issue for any aspiring writer, including myself. When you have an idea, it's a white hot presence burning away at both your conscious and subconscious mind and it dominates your every thought, whether sleeping or awake. This is a wonderful feeling, but like any white hot burny thing it runs out of energy quickly. It melts through your brain like thermite and if you don't catch it and direct that energy quickly it will burn down into whichever primordial recess of the mind stories come from and may never surface again. So you have just one option, switching metaphors for a moment, you load your weapons, make ready with your battle cry and launch yourself over the top into No Man's Land. To carry my second metaphor to it's conclusion, mad charges into No Man's Land don't generally end well. They're messy, gruesome and undignified. For the most part, so is what you've just written.
It's important to realize that this is o.k., that the act of capturing your idea while it's still white hot is all that matters in a first draft. When you re-read what you've just written it might well appear to be steaming pile of rancid dreck, whether this is a fair objective assessment or a simple lack of self confidence is irrelevant. What matters is that you can see the flaws, after all this is a piece of writing by an author who bears a startling resemblance to you in terms of choices of subject matter and style, but is slightly worse at writing than you are at this exact moment. If this were not the case, how else are you able to spot the flaws that the writer missed? It is your job, your duty in fact, to polish this misguided fool's attempts at translating a good idea into a good story until it shines as brightly as your skills can allow. If you truly believe your work is ready for public consumption the very second you finish it, you are either a genius or in desperate need of a reliable and honest first reader.
Having taken all of the above on board, I think the important things to bear in mind for next week are, always fact check and finish the story ahead of the deadline (next Wednesday) for good or ill. Hopefully the worst elements of bad writing and poor construction can be caught in the re-write.
I think the most important things I've learned are what I'll call the two R's... research and rewrites. When I completed the first draft of my story two years ago, I was really very pleased with it. On dredging out the file of old stuff that's never seen the light of day, I realized that my confidence was somewhat misplaced. There were huge gaps in the internal logic of the story, screwy time lines and an ending that, while satisfying to write was full of factual errors. It was the work of ten minutes to correct the factual errors with just a few searches for scholarly documents on google. This small act of research on my part saved my ending from being the exact opposite of what happens under those circumstances. It may seem like a minor save, but to anyone with any working knowledge or personal experience of the thing in question it would almost surely destroy any previous enjoyment built up before the denouement.
The second R, rewrites is a slightly more thorny issue for any aspiring writer, including myself. When you have an idea, it's a white hot presence burning away at both your conscious and subconscious mind and it dominates your every thought, whether sleeping or awake. This is a wonderful feeling, but like any white hot burny thing it runs out of energy quickly. It melts through your brain like thermite and if you don't catch it and direct that energy quickly it will burn down into whichever primordial recess of the mind stories come from and may never surface again. So you have just one option, switching metaphors for a moment, you load your weapons, make ready with your battle cry and launch yourself over the top into No Man's Land. To carry my second metaphor to it's conclusion, mad charges into No Man's Land don't generally end well. They're messy, gruesome and undignified. For the most part, so is what you've just written.
It's important to realize that this is o.k., that the act of capturing your idea while it's still white hot is all that matters in a first draft. When you re-read what you've just written it might well appear to be steaming pile of rancid dreck, whether this is a fair objective assessment or a simple lack of self confidence is irrelevant. What matters is that you can see the flaws, after all this is a piece of writing by an author who bears a startling resemblance to you in terms of choices of subject matter and style, but is slightly worse at writing than you are at this exact moment. If this were not the case, how else are you able to spot the flaws that the writer missed? It is your job, your duty in fact, to polish this misguided fool's attempts at translating a good idea into a good story until it shines as brightly as your skills can allow. If you truly believe your work is ready for public consumption the very second you finish it, you are either a genius or in desperate need of a reliable and honest first reader.
Having taken all of the above on board, I think the important things to bear in mind for next week are, always fact check and finish the story ahead of the deadline (next Wednesday) for good or ill. Hopefully the worst elements of bad writing and poor construction can be caught in the re-write.
New Story: No. 1 of 52 - Cabinet Pussy-cat
Good morning to anyone mad enough up at this ungodly hour (10:26 a.m. as I write this), this is the first story I'm putting out there for the public to download, read and distribute. I'll admit to cheating slightly, in that the first draft of this story was written two years ago, however it wasn't very good at all in it's original form so I spent last night doing extensive re-writes before making it available.
A little bit of legal stuff now, the story is being made available under a Creative Commons licence, namely this one:-
This work is licenced under a Creative Commons Licence.
It's about as restrictive as a Creative Commons licence gets, but as I've previously stated I have no problem with the idea of derivative works per se, in fact I would be deeply and sincerely flattered should anyone ever feel the urge to create something new based on anything I've created, I simply want to reserve the rights to the characters in case I ever feel the urge to go back and tell more of a particular story, or expand on the life of a particular character. Besides, does a song, or a poem, or a piece of music inspired by something or a translation to a new language not spoken by the original creator detract from the original work in any way? I've personally never believed that it does. Especially considering the forms mentioned above are for the most part alien to me. Not so much poetry, but my poetry would be alien to anyone who loves the english language.
Oh by the way, I originally stated that I would be publishing under a pseudonym, because I share my birth name with the best selling author of the Da Vinci Code (Is that book any good? I've never read it because having a novel lying around the house with my name on the by line, felt sort of... weird. Like basking in reflected glory, so to speak.), but have since decided that my full name is sufficiently different from his chosen version of our joint moniker. It's not like I'll be in W.H. Smith's anytime soon! Anyway enough with the wittering, here's the sharing URL...
Cabinet Pussy-cat.pdf
I hope anyone who reads it enjoys it! If there are any obvious mistakes or typos in the text then leave a comment and Ill try to fix it in future re-posts.
A little bit of legal stuff now, the story is being made available under a Creative Commons licence, namely this one:-
This work is licenced under a Creative Commons Licence.
It's about as restrictive as a Creative Commons licence gets, but as I've previously stated I have no problem with the idea of derivative works per se, in fact I would be deeply and sincerely flattered should anyone ever feel the urge to create something new based on anything I've created, I simply want to reserve the rights to the characters in case I ever feel the urge to go back and tell more of a particular story, or expand on the life of a particular character. Besides, does a song, or a poem, or a piece of music inspired by something or a translation to a new language not spoken by the original creator detract from the original work in any way? I've personally never believed that it does. Especially considering the forms mentioned above are for the most part alien to me. Not so much poetry, but my poetry would be alien to anyone who loves the english language.
Oh by the way, I originally stated that I would be publishing under a pseudonym, because I share my birth name with the best selling author of the Da Vinci Code (Is that book any good? I've never read it because having a novel lying around the house with my name on the by line, felt sort of... weird. Like basking in reflected glory, so to speak.), but have since decided that my full name is sufficiently different from his chosen version of our joint moniker. It's not like I'll be in W.H. Smith's anytime soon! Anyway enough with the wittering, here's the sharing URL...
Cabinet Pussy-cat.pdf
I hope anyone who reads it enjoys it! If there are any obvious mistakes or typos in the text then leave a comment and Ill try to fix it in future re-posts.
Tuesday 2 December 2008
Here It Is...
Handwavium PDF.pdf
The steps to download are as follows...
1:- Follow the link.
2:- Select option 2 (Use File Factory Basic)
3:- Enter the verification code
4:- Download and (hopefully) enjoy.
My verification code was suspiciously close to a swear word, but this could be a statistical anomaly based on random letter configurations. I hope so, I don't want to offend people before they've read my stuff. I'm hoping to save that for after they've read it!
The steps to download are as follows...
1:- Follow the link.
2:- Select option 2 (Use File Factory Basic)
3:- Enter the verification code
4:- Download and (hopefully) enjoy.
My verification code was suspiciously close to a swear word, but this could be a statistical anomaly based on random letter configurations. I hope so, I don't want to offend people before they've read my stuff. I'm hoping to save that for after they've read it!
A New Potential File Host
I seem to have found a file host that may be suitable to my needs, so I'll be posting the sharing URL in a few minutes. From what I can gather from the t&c's on the site itself downloaders will be subjected to a short advert before being re-directed to the download. The content of these adverts isn't specified, but Web Of Trust gives the site a good rating so hopefully there won't be anything inappropriate in the ads, however if it turns out that there is, just say so in the comments and I will immediately look for an alternative host.
By the way the article I'll be posting consists of me waffling about writing science fiction. This doesn't mean I'll be posting science fiction stories, although I reserve the right to do so, just that I've been thinking about potential problems if I ever write one. The article is also very short, more of potential blog post that I wrote to myself before I had actually considered starting a blog. If all goes well the first proper story will go up later tonight, or early tomorrow morning.
By the way the article I'll be posting consists of me waffling about writing science fiction. This doesn't mean I'll be posting science fiction stories, although I reserve the right to do so, just that I've been thinking about potential problems if I ever write one. The article is also very short, more of potential blog post that I wrote to myself before I had actually considered starting a blog. If all goes well the first proper story will go up later tonight, or early tomorrow morning.
A List Of Ten Things I've Learned From Watching Father Dowling Investigates
My wife Tracey has recently been watching the Alibi channel, number 132 on the Sky EPG, during the afternoon and I must admit to being more than a little bit baffled by Father Dowling and his permanent live-in nun, sister Stefanie. I've compiled a list of things I've learned about priesthood and nunhood (nunship?, nundom?) from the show.
1:- Priests come in pairs. One junior one, to do all of that boring mass and confession business and one senior one, who does God's true work; catching the dozens of murderers within the parish.
2:- Priests are allowed to lie. Like an Enron tax return in fact. This is o.k. though, since it is done in the pursuit of that most holy duty, catching stereotyped Italian-American murderers.
3:- Nuns=Sexaay! Apparently giving up vanity does not extend as far as giving up $100 haircuts, make -up, the taking of a saint's name or keeping dozens of revealing, pre-Holy orders outfits. The lying to people thing doesn't seem to matter so much here either.
4:- The police are just the worst people imaginable for catching murderers. It would seem that most detectives are unable to find their own arse with both hands and a set of directions. This explains why rotund priests and septuagenarian ladies (Murder, She Wrote) are the best sleuths around.
5:- Murderers, as a group, are a lot less violent than you might think. When cornered by a jovial, portly man wearing a dog collar, they are far more likely to spend ten minutes discussing in intimate detail how the crime was committed rather than say... shooting the interfering old fart out of hand. They may act like they're going to shoot him, but their hearts are never in it, which allows for...
6:- Despite their criminal inability to catch murders unaided, police officers have highly developed, almost super human hearing. This explains their ability to burst in at exactly the right moment to save Father Dowling, despite the fact that he never seems to wear a wire, confronts murderers in one of three different, yet highly constrained environments, none of which are conducive to eavesdropping; namely locked rooms, warehouses or large public places such as junkyards or train station depots.
7:- Not all Evil Twins have goatee beards, some wear pork pie hats or fedoras.
8:- Illegal back room poker games populated by Mafia crime lords, are surprisingly easy to gatecrash. The crime lords in question are remarkably rubbish at spotting an outsider, despite the portly newcomers total lack of poker expertise. Makes you wonder how they got be crime lords in the first place.
9:- Priestly attire is the equivalent of a magical robe of tell-me-everything-you-know. People are always forgetting to tell the police vital pieces of evidence. Thankfully, the rate of unsolved murders is kept to a minimum by fat men in robes encouraging people to remember previously unknown factoids and important conversations.
10:- The Police Department knows it's faults and is remarkably sanguine about letting civilians put themselves in harms way. If not for this heroically civic minded attitude, Amreica's towns and cities would be overrun with murdrers. Hurrah, for amateur sleuths!
Thank you for listening, next time I shall reveal how Jessica Fletcher is in fact a serial killer with mystical powers of hypnosis. How else can it be explained that everywhere she goes people are murdered and her friends are framed for it. By my reckoning, her body count numbers into the hundreds.
1:- Priests come in pairs. One junior one, to do all of that boring mass and confession business and one senior one, who does God's true work; catching the dozens of murderers within the parish.
2:- Priests are allowed to lie. Like an Enron tax return in fact. This is o.k. though, since it is done in the pursuit of that most holy duty, catching stereotyped Italian-American murderers.
3:- Nuns=Sexaay! Apparently giving up vanity does not extend as far as giving up $100 haircuts, make -up, the taking of a saint's name or keeping dozens of revealing, pre-Holy orders outfits. The lying to people thing doesn't seem to matter so much here either.
4:- The police are just the worst people imaginable for catching murderers. It would seem that most detectives are unable to find their own arse with both hands and a set of directions. This explains why rotund priests and septuagenarian ladies (Murder, She Wrote) are the best sleuths around.
5:- Murderers, as a group, are a lot less violent than you might think. When cornered by a jovial, portly man wearing a dog collar, they are far more likely to spend ten minutes discussing in intimate detail how the crime was committed rather than say... shooting the interfering old fart out of hand. They may act like they're going to shoot him, but their hearts are never in it, which allows for...
6:- Despite their criminal inability to catch murders unaided, police officers have highly developed, almost super human hearing. This explains their ability to burst in at exactly the right moment to save Father Dowling, despite the fact that he never seems to wear a wire, confronts murderers in one of three different, yet highly constrained environments, none of which are conducive to eavesdropping; namely locked rooms, warehouses or large public places such as junkyards or train station depots.
7:- Not all Evil Twins have goatee beards, some wear pork pie hats or fedoras.
8:- Illegal back room poker games populated by Mafia crime lords, are surprisingly easy to gatecrash. The crime lords in question are remarkably rubbish at spotting an outsider, despite the portly newcomers total lack of poker expertise. Makes you wonder how they got be crime lords in the first place.
9:- Priestly attire is the equivalent of a magical robe of tell-me-everything-you-know. People are always forgetting to tell the police vital pieces of evidence. Thankfully, the rate of unsolved murders is kept to a minimum by fat men in robes encouraging people to remember previously unknown factoids and important conversations.
10:- The Police Department knows it's faults and is remarkably sanguine about letting civilians put themselves in harms way. If not for this heroically civic minded attitude, Amreica's towns and cities would be overrun with murdrers. Hurrah, for amateur sleuths!
Thank you for listening, next time I shall reveal how Jessica Fletcher is in fact a serial killer with mystical powers of hypnosis. How else can it be explained that everywhere she goes people are murdered and her friends are framed for it. By my reckoning, her body count numbers into the hundreds.
The Death Of Links
That didn't go too well now did it? The links have now been broken, since google docs doesn't seem too appropiate to my particular needs right now. I'm going to have to find a different (free) file host. Preferably one that saves formatting.
Short Article-Update
One brief look was all I needed. Googledocs doesn't translate the formatting of .odt files turning the whole thing into one long, rambling stream of consciousness. That is what the article actually contains but I want it to look a little more sleek than that. I'll try exporting as a PDF and then upping that.
Short Article
As promised, the short article as a test for google docs ability to do what I want it to can be found here
Monday 1 December 2008
Complications, Solutions and Ponderations
Oh, my stars! This is going to be a bit more complicated than I thought. It seems that I can't upload PDF files directly to my Blogger page, instead I'm going to have to find a free hosting site and provide links to the documents for people (well persons, there won't be many to begin with) to download from there. Googledocs seems interesting and provides the opportunity to publish a document as a PDF or as a web page, which might come in handy for those who don't want to use up valuable ink on a short story by an author they've never even heard of before and may never want to read again. Before I go live with the whole mad dash for next year, Ill be putting up a short article of some description later today in order to test the functionality of Googledocs and whether or not it'sgoingto work for me.
After some consideration, Ive decided that I'm almost certainly going to be publishing anything I write for this project under a variation of the Creative Commons licence, with the understanding that I have no objection to others translating the work into other languages or creating new versions of the work itself such as editing suggestions or making music, poetry or youtube videos etc. so long as they don't create entirely new works of fiction based on the characters or situations, as I may wish to revisit them at a later date to expand on what has happened, write sequels or follow ups. All of this of course is based on the proviso that this is not done for commercial gain. There, all of the legal bit done for now.
After some consideration, Ive decided that I'm almost certainly going to be publishing anything I write for this project under a variation of the Creative Commons licence, with the understanding that I have no objection to others translating the work into other languages or creating new versions of the work itself such as editing suggestions or making music, poetry or youtube videos etc. so long as they don't create entirely new works of fiction based on the characters or situations, as I may wish to revisit them at a later date to expand on what has happened, write sequels or follow ups. All of this of course is based on the proviso that this is not done for commercial gain. There, all of the legal bit done for now.
Shouting Into The Void
Hello to anyone who has found this place by accident, I'm pleased to be talking to you. Hello also to the friends and family members who I've already told about my web based blatherations and where to find them. This is where I, under the pen name Ellison Thomas, will be publishing one story, once a week, as soon as I've figured out how to do it.
Where to start as to the reasons why? Well firstly, in the current finacial climate publishers are going to be reluctant to take risks on an unknown quantity. Secondly, I have no idea how good I actually am. I think I'm pretty good, better than some who get published, but then again I'm sure everyone who has ever put pen to paper to tell a story that they believe is fresh and different thinks that as well and I bet most of them are pretty darned awful. Mine might be too, since I've only previously shown them to close friends and family who might simply be sparing my feelings. Thirdly is going to take a paragraph all of its own.
The third and most important reason I'm doing this is pressure. I genuinely believe that I have a small modicum of talent. Enough that I one day may be able to do this for a living. The big problems that I have are motivation and application. I have always been able to tell myself amusing stories inside my own head, so the messy and time consuming business of committing them to paper has been my repeated downfall. This must end and end quickly, if I'm ever going to be able to tell the world that I am, in fact, a writer. Currently I am that most wretched of creatures the aspiring writer. Anyone with a serious interest in fiction knows one of these pathetic individuals and frankly, I'm tired of being one. At the top of every prolific and successful authors list of advice to aspiring writers is application and it's high time I put that into practice.
Once I've figured out how to post my stories as downloadable PDF's, the first one will go up and the blog can be considered truly live; checking back after seven days will reveal another story ready to go. I will make no promises as to the quality of all of my work as I'll be learning on the fly, hopefully putting the lessons learned from one story into the next so reading them in order of publication should (in theory) reveal a gradual increase in the overall quality of the stories. That's all for now, other information to follow once I've figured what the hell I've just gotten myself into!
Where to start as to the reasons why? Well firstly, in the current finacial climate publishers are going to be reluctant to take risks on an unknown quantity. Secondly, I have no idea how good I actually am. I think I'm pretty good, better than some who get published, but then again I'm sure everyone who has ever put pen to paper to tell a story that they believe is fresh and different thinks that as well and I bet most of them are pretty darned awful. Mine might be too, since I've only previously shown them to close friends and family who might simply be sparing my feelings. Thirdly is going to take a paragraph all of its own.
The third and most important reason I'm doing this is pressure. I genuinely believe that I have a small modicum of talent. Enough that I one day may be able to do this for a living. The big problems that I have are motivation and application. I have always been able to tell myself amusing stories inside my own head, so the messy and time consuming business of committing them to paper has been my repeated downfall. This must end and end quickly, if I'm ever going to be able to tell the world that I am, in fact, a writer. Currently I am that most wretched of creatures the aspiring writer. Anyone with a serious interest in fiction knows one of these pathetic individuals and frankly, I'm tired of being one. At the top of every prolific and successful authors list of advice to aspiring writers is application and it's high time I put that into practice.
Once I've figured out how to post my stories as downloadable PDF's, the first one will go up and the blog can be considered truly live; checking back after seven days will reveal another story ready to go. I will make no promises as to the quality of all of my work as I'll be learning on the fly, hopefully putting the lessons learned from one story into the next so reading them in order of publication should (in theory) reveal a gradual increase in the overall quality of the stories. That's all for now, other information to follow once I've figured what the hell I've just gotten myself into!
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