A Little Slice of Nothing

Let's all go to a little place called 1966

2011-05-21T22:14:00.000-04:00

With the conclusion of this episode, here we are with only two episodes to go before Doctor Who disappears from our televisions (and laptops) for the summer months. So far this series we’ve had an opening episode that for all its goodness was so dull I nearly stopped watching, a follow-up to that episode which was equally dull and an absolute shambles of writing, an episode that’s sort-of enjoyable at first but the more you think about it the more you realise the writing was an even bigger shambles than last week, and an episode so ludicrously hysteric it completely shattered any and all patience I had with NuWho. So much so I was very much inclined to give this episode a miss*.

Yet here we are, one week on, two weeks away from the end of DW for a little while, and I’ve watched it again. And do you know what? It was good. Properly good. Oh, it wasn’t the best episode of the New Series by any means. But this episode actually had a story. Or, rather, it actually knew how to tell a story. It was everything Doctor Who ought to be and some of the things it shouldn’t but that’s okay. It’s better than whatever was going on for the past four weeks.

If The Hungry Earth felt like it was left over from the days of David Tennant and last week’s episode was originally meant to have aired last year, you would be forgiven this is another episode they pulled out of the vault. Very, very deep in the vault.

I think, perhaps, that’s a big part of why I enjoyed this episode so much. Yes, it’s all very NuWho at first, but just that little inch past the shiny surface, there’s a real air of the days of Patrick Troughton here. With a bit of tweaking, it wouldn’t be hard to imagine the cosmic hobo moving about this acid monastery in monochrome.

It’s a classic base under siege. Capital C Classic. In Ye Olden Days, the base under siege stories were like this. Consider The Moonbase: the TARDIS lands on the moon to find a moonbase, which, it turns out, monitors and controls all the weather on earth. Hurricanes? No problem. They’ll be redirected away from shore until they fizzle out into just a nasty rainstorm. But lo! There are Cybermen on the moon, picking off the moonbase crew and trying to sabotage the base itself!

In fact this episode calls to mind all of Kit Pedler, who was the god of base under siege and Cybermen, having written The Tenth Planet, The Moonbase, and Tomb of the Cybermen, as well as having worked on The Wheel in Space. Substitute fleshy clones for some sort of tool of the Cybermen and he very well could have written this.

Go ahead. Play with the settings on your TV. When the titles are about to start, mute it and play the Derbyshire theme.

But it’s not just the fact that you could be forgiven for thinking the recon team drummed this out of the mothballs. It’s not just that The Rebel Flesh knows how to tell a story. The story it tells is actually good. Oh, sure, someone’s going to piss and moan about the fact that the whole cloning blues thing has been done a million times but who gives a sod?

The acting, most certainly, is a vital point here. One of the best moments is when Ganger!Jennifer (Gangifer?) is seated in the locker room, questioning her identity. A bit of well-played, understated acting from Arthur Darvill really helps drive home that understands her plight. Oh, sure, she’s all goopy-fleshy and he was all-plasticy, but it doesn’t change that Rory the Roman was once, essentially, a Ganger.

Oh, and it helps that Rory didn’t die. I mean really. He died at least three times last year – more, I’m sure, but three spring to mind – and in essentially every episode so far this series. Hopefully it won’t happen next week (or, preferably, ever again) but at least this week it made for a refreshing change. When Rory went running off on his own I half-expected Gangifer to drop from the ceiling onto him instead of Jennifer. And yet, here we are, credits rolled, Rory very much alive.

Another refreshing change, also relating to Rory, is that he actually does something this week. Usually it’s Amy running off being all “Look at me; I am the cool companion” while Rory just kind of stands around sputtering until someone stabs him. Here Rory actually does something. I mean actually. Meanwhile Amy does stuff, but nothing of any real consequence except run into Frances Barber yet again. It makes sense, in a way, why the roles would be the way they are normally, to the modern television writer. Rory is the nurse. The kind, gentle, caring one. Amy is the emotionally scarred daft one. The reversal here is a good one.

The performances across the board are great. Some are, of course, better than others, but hey ho such is life. Some actors are better than others. Some people are better at making cheese than their neighbours. It was also quite nice to see Matt Smith reunited with Raquel Cassidy. Party Animals had a lot of problems but it was still quite a good show, and the relationship between Jo and Danny is definitely one of the highlights, largely because of the two actors rather than the writing. My brain far too eternally associates Marshall Lancaster with Chris Skelton, unfortunately.

The episode is bang full of implications as well. Any story about a host of clones, of course, carries with it the natural implication of not being able to trust our senses. We may think that Miranda is Miranda but no. She turns out to be a Ganger. But that all adds to more-or-less straightforwardness present on the skin of the episode. There are hints here of something more. Something not quite right. We also have the hour during which our heroes were unconscious. Riding underneath everything, there’s a bit of McCoy era to it as well; as though the TARDIS hasn’t just somehow accidentally wound up on this monastery cum factory.

It’s also nice to see that, excepting Matt Smith and Arthur Darvill, there’s not a Southerner to be found. That’s mostly just me though.

The episode isn’t perfect, but in light of the past four episodes it’s much easier to overlook the flaws of this week’s. The tension isn’t all quite there, but in addition to any flaws in the writing that can be pinned on the director, cinematographer, and the fact that cloning stories have been done to death. The cliffhanger, too, could be seen coming from centuries out, but what can you do?

All in all The Rebel Flesh isn’t the best episode of Doctor Who, but it’s still very much fantastic. Far and away the best episode of series six thus far. Who would have ever seen that coming?

*Well, that and it was written by the man who wrote Fear Her. I don’t hate Fear Her anywhere near as much as most of the online community, but it’s still overall a pretty poor episode.

I don't even know what to say anymore

2011-05-14T20:32:00.001-04:00

Ah, The Doctor’s Wife. That one episode we’ve been promised for a very, very long time but never seemed quite to materialise. The one that quite a few people were starting to suggest would turn into the Stephen Fry episode*. The one that’s been hyped up to infinite ends because it was written by Neil Gaiman.

One of my many, many gripes about the New Series is the way in which the writing is done. A big part of what made Human Nature/Family of Blood so good** was the fact that it was just a question of Paul Cornell streamlining his novel for TV and obviously modifying the characterisations so Bernice was now Martha and the Seventh Doctor was now the Tenth Doctor. But, as has been admitted a fair few times on Confidential and the like, the writing on NuWho is often a case of the showrunner saying, “Right, episode ten: the one with pirates” and then someone goes and drafts a script. The worse episodes, I suspect, are the ones that are very shopping cart, like Victory of the Daleks.

This episode is a very welcome breather, in that it definitely was not a shopping list episode. Or if it was, Gaiman is talented enough to mask that fact completely. I suspect, though, that it truly was the former, and that Neil Gaiman merely wrote a script and worked with whomever the current script editor is, Moffat, and other people to keep things from spiralling out of budgetary control and within the context of the series’ overarching plot for the finale.

Ah, but for all its goodness, this episode still gets on my nerves. I don’t know. I think I’m at my wits end with NuWho. I watched the first three episodes dutifully, and while I was enjoying each of them on some level, it never really felt right. I thought perhaps I’d grown tired of Doctor Who after all these years, but no. I listened to The Massacre again the other night and watched The Edge of Destruction again earlier this evening, and I still quite like them. Actually, The Edge of Destruction is still one of my favourites, although I know a lot of fans won’t agree with me on that one.

Some of my gripes with this episode are a bit nitpicky. For example, Michael Sheen. Michael. Fucking. Sheen. One of the greatest actors alive today and this is how you use him? Oh yes, it’s a wonderful performance, as far as deep, boomy, technologically-modified voices go. But you may as well have said to Nick Briggs, “Oi mate, we’ve got another voice for you to do”. The odds of nabbing Sheen for Who again are slim, and this is how you use him?

And as is often my complaint with the new series, WHY IS THERE A FORTY FIVE MINUTE TIME LIMIT? The trouble with Doctor Who is it still insists on doing one-off stories. The reason Caprica worked so well during the first half of the season, the reason BSG worked so well, the reason DS9 was trailblazing, was because it said “Okay, forty-five minutes to an episode, but we’ll do series-wide arcs across episodes.” And yet here is Doctor Who, a show which BEGAN in serial format, suddenly saying “Once a week and we’ll toss in some vague clues in the most hamfisted manner possible that build up to the finale with varying degrees of success”. If they would make the show longer, like Moffat’s other project Sherlock, or go back to doing hour long serials like they experimented with in the 1980s, it would do Doctor Who a hell of a lot of good.

I think, really, this is my biggest complaint with The Doctor’s Wife. It’s well written, definitely. It’s nowhere near my favourite episode, and I doubt it would be even if it were given more time, but in the impossibly narrow space it has, it’s useless. I haven’t read much Gaiman, I admit, but what I’ve read is brilliant. And what we see here is trying to be brilliant. But it just isn’t. It isn’t anywhere near brilliant because the episode has no length to it, and because it has no length to it the episode has no time to establish anything – anything at all – that would lend it anything even vaguely resembling narrative weight. Ultimately, because the narrative isn’t allowed to be anything more than a series of cleverly written lines and some pretty shots, it becomes an exercise in abject futility.

I just really, seriously, am struggling to find anything good to say about this episode. Well, not anything. Like I said, there is good there. But it isn’t proper good. It isn’t something which makes me want to say, “You should go out and watch this” in the way a lot of First and Second Doctor serials do. Even episodes like The Hungry Earth/Cold Blood and the Vampires of Venice, undoubtedly the three worst of last year, there is something there which makes me want to say, “Yeah, this is a proper story. It might not be the best, but go and watch it”.

As it stands we are now four episodes into Series Six, more than halfway through the spring half of the series (three episodes left to go and then no Doctor Who until September) and there has yet to be an episode I would call properly good. An episode I will sit down and want to watch again. An episode I can take someone who’s only a casual fan, or has maybe never seen the programme before, and get them to watch it. There has yet to be an episode that even feels anything like Doctor Who.

Definitely, of the four so far, if you have to watch one, watch this one. It’s certainly got good moments. Clever writing – clever writing that tries to be brilliant – and excellent direction and some wonderful acting from Sheen (as much as his role lends), Smith, and Jones (even if she does, at times, remind a bit too much of Helena Bonham Carter as Bellatrix). I suspect that when both halves are said and done, this will be amongst the best, if not THE best. But honestly it means nothing in the end. It’s just another hectic mess of forty-five minutes, another episode so void of that which makes narrative meaningful. It’s like watching the Transformers films. It’s shiny and fun and there’s a plot, but that doesn’t make it good.

I don't know. I want to like this episode. Not just because it's Neil Gaiman, not just because it's Doctor Who, but because the goodness is there. The goodness just feels stale. Flat. Smothered to the point well past deadness.

I really think I am just done with NuWho. Call me when we learn how to clone William Hartnell.

Next week: The guy who wrote one of the worst episodes of Who in recent memory, yet somehow created the sheer epicness of Life on Mars, gets a two-parter.

*Specifically, Stephen Fry wrote a script for the second season of the New Season, but budget constraints meant it had to be moved to the third series. Because Rose is no longer the Doctor’s companion in series three, however, it would have to have been edited to suit the new companion. Fry couldn’t find the time to edit the script accordingly, and it was never produced. I still hope he’ll write another in the future, though.

**Although not as good as the original novel. This is in part because the Seventh Doctor is my absolute favourite Doctor. This is also in part because I have yet to see a Seventh Doctor story which is entirely awful (seriously, the Seventh Doctor’s nature as a walking Xanatos Speed Chess requires at least some degree of careful storytelling). But, mostly, this is because it is a novel, and as with any adaptation things are always left out because A. there are elements of a novel which do not work on film and B. even parts that work have to be cut for runtime, whereas a novel can be however long it pleases.

It's been months since I've actually watched QI

2011-05-11T22:42:00.000-04:00

and this is still my favourite moment in the entire programme to date.

It's a good bit of filler, ultimately

2011-05-09T17:27:00.000-04:00

I suspect that this episode is going to be The Lodger, or Victory of the Daleks (interestingly, the third episode of last series), or similar when the series is said and done. It’s a good episode, certainly. But it’s hardly to get particularly enthused about it. Ultimately the failings of the Curse of the Black Spot are by and large the fault of outside sources.

For one thing, I’m a history nerd. One of the areas of history which interests me most of all is piracy. I’ve done loads of reading and have spent four years now hunting down the most authentic copy of A General History of the Robberies and Murders of the Most Notorious Pyrates* possible. And this episode deals with the greatest pirate to ever have lived. The man who was referred to as King of the Pirates – for good reason. Henry Avery. Most of the historical discrepancies in the story I’m willing to forgive because hey, it’s entertainment. I still wish Avery had been given a straight-up old fashioned historical, but that’s a minor gripe. Where I do exceedingly take issue, however, is the prequel to thisepisode, which was posted on the Beeb’s site and has since been copied places.

The prequel sets the story in 1699, THREE YEARS after Henry Avery disappeared. Also, going by the prequel and the episode, they’re still aboard the Fancy, which had been abandoned in the Bahamas by that point, and it suggests no one of the 113-man crew is left to be caught by the English (okay, only 12 were ever found), which means the greatest feat ever pulled off by Henry Avery never happens in the Whoniverse. Specifically, when Avery reached Britain and departed from his crewmen, he told each and every one of them he was going to a different place, and never the place where he would actually be, so that if any of them were ever captured the English would never find him. To this day no one knows where Avery went.

Beyond my historical gripes with it though, I think the absolute largest problem facing this episode is that it’s essentially filler. It’s a known fact that it has been moved from the autumn half of the series to this slot, and the trouble with NuWho is it bigs up event episodes to the point that anything that isn’t or in some way doesn’t significantly tie into the event episode feels lost in the sea of events. And any episode which can be moved so freely is almost certainly not the most important thing in the scheme of things. With the Moff at the helm, you can never be sure, but it certainly feels that way. Indeed, the only trappings of the overall arc are another appearance of the woman who is currently credited as the Eyepatch Lady (I know more, but shan’t spoil), Future!Eleven’s death, and Amy’s Schrödinger’s womb, as the good people of twitter have nicknamed it.

It’s also known that airing in this slot originally was going to be Neil Gaiman’s episode. An episode which has been pumped up both for the content it contains, and because it’s Neil Gaiman writing it. Any episode wedged between Moffat’s two-part opener and any episode written by Neil Gaiman is bound to feel a bit lost. Had this been airing in the autumn, when it was originally meant to, or even just this upcoming Saturday, when The Doctor’s Wife is now airing, it would probably feel less stale.

All in all, though, The Curse of the Black Spot is a good episode of Doctor Who. Matt Smith is, as usual, excellent as the Doctor. Karen Gillan continues to do well as Amy, even if she isn’t strictly the best actress out there. Arthur Darvill still carries on making Rory my favourite NuWho companion, even if, as others have pointed out, his penchant for death and near-death is beginning to get a wee bit tiresome. The incidental guest cast, as well, does their job well, though perhaps not quite as much so. Special mention must go to Hugh Bonneville, who easily turned in the best performance of the cast, though. (Incidentally,this is Bonneville’s second appearance in Doctor Who)

Unfortunately, though, this reminds me of another problem with the Curse of the Black Spot, and one that is the fault of its own writing. For all its nice touches and little hints, ultimately there isn’t much depth to Whoniverse’s Henry Avery beyond that which Bonneville’s acting suggests. For a Navyman turned pirate with a wife and son, trapped in a calm sea and crew stalked by a siren, there’s not quite much to him.

Ultimately, as I keep repeating, this is a good episode. Like the majority of filler episodes it does its job well but probably won’t stand long in the memory. If you just sit down and enjoy it for all its trappings, there’s definitely fun to be had here. And there are certainly worse filler episodes (Boom Town, Fear Her). Unfortunately, by being filler, it leaves us waiting. Last episode ends with the Doctor deciding not to investigate the little girl, which is a frequent and somewhat annoying thing NuWho does. Annoying because, well, it makes no sense, but also annoying because, as fans, we want to find out about the girl RIGHT NOW. The Curse of the Black Spot never really offers anything towards the greater arc, nothing apparent at least (we’ll see come the end of the series), but it does still offer a nice adventure.

Next week: Neil Gaiman, Michael Sheen, Time Lords(?), oh my!

(Also, for those who paid attention to the series trailer, this episode is almost certainly going to contain the epic exchange of: "Fear me, I've killed hundreds of Time Lords." "Fear me, I've killed them all.")

*Pick it up if you have the chance. It’s where a lot of our pirate knowledge comes from. We’ve since learned a lot of things in it have been made up, but it’s still the primary source. It’s also where the term Jolly Roger comes from (protip: the Jolly Roger isn’t the flag; it’s the symbol on the flag. The flag is called a blackjack). It’s where the myth of pirates burying treasure comes from. So on and so forth.

Big Sami's retiring at the end of the season

2011-05-02T20:21:00.000-04:00

This movie is amazing

2011-04-26T09:26:00.002-04:00

Go watch it. Like, right now.

Here we go again

2011-04-23T22:15:00.000-04:00

The gap between seasons of television programmes can be a bit tortuous at times. There's football, girlfriends, and all manner of other entertainment in the meanwhile so that, eventually, one stops noticing. The run up to the new seasons of Doctor Who can be especially unbearable, considering it has gone from "That highly entertaining, slightly campy thing the BBC airs ever now and again" to being the BBC's flagship. The buildup starts bang out of the gate after the first episode ends. Dripping, dripping, dripping with increasing frequency and then BAM! Short trailer, long trailer, magazines, interviews, and everything else in the time between the Christmas special and the new season.

Anyway, the point is the long wait is over. It's been more than a year since The Eleventh Hour hit televisions, and something like 43 weeks since the last series ended. Spoilers, as usual, will be found.

It's a nice change of pace, having the status quo intact. It's something we haven't really seen since the Classic Series, which always seems to meld seamlessly. This notion is of course aided by the fact that it is now being watched online and on DVD, but no doubt it was the case back in the sixties, when Doctor Who was on effectively year round. Series One was responsible for introducing a new generation to the Whoniverse, Series Two brought a new Doctor, Series Three and Four brought new companions, and Series Five brought a new everything. So it's nice, here, to begin with the same old Doctor, same old Amy and Rory, same old River.

There is, of course, that glimmer of fear. Early in the episode, when the Doctor is shot and begins to regenerate, there is that moment where your heart stops. After all, there are never a plethora of clips in the trailers -- often because they haven't finished editing the end of the season yet -- and we don't know how anything fits into anything. People assumed the scribbled-on faces were a part of Gaiman's episode, but they've been revealed to be the next episode. And being that the Moff is the man in charge, misdirection is the name of the game. Aided by the Doctor's romp through time, doing all the things he'd want to do, it does reinforce in the back of the mind the notion that when Matt Smith goes all glowy, Michael Sheen or Nicholas Hoult or someone will suddenly be standing there, new face reflecting in the astronaut's visor.

In the Moff, though, we are in safe hands. The Doctor is not dead in the literal sense -- well, he is. Wibbly-wobbly -- but he is dead in the way Moffat warned us. Over the course of the RTD era, in addition to a lot of other problems, the viewpoint shifted to that of the Doctor. It's very tempting to focus on the clever alien with the magic blue box, and while the series has never totally ignored him, at its best it knew when to keep a distance (see: the first two Doctors, the Seventh Doctor). Killing the Doctor allows us to see the rest of the narrative through his companions' eyes, and by and large it works.

But the clever opening creates a problem. Like Amy, we spend our time trying to come to grips with the incident. Naturally we actively take in everything else that occurs, but there is always that niggling thought at the back of our minds. No doubt this is what Moffat wanted, but I can't help but feel that it's somewhat detrimental to open, well, like that.

Another problem I have with this episode, and I suspect will be carried over to the next episode, is that for all the bigging up of America, this story could just have easily taken place on the banks of the Clyde and no one would even really notice the difference. This is ultimately a good thing. You can't help but feel that if they had gone to America while RTD was writing it would have been sixty minutes of everyone preening and being all starry-eyed and...well, thank god it didn't happen. Still, for all their bigging up of this, it feels like a letdown. It seemed like we were finally going to get our Two Doctors; a story which was originally going to be set in New Orleans and have a bit of a light jab at the differences between English and American society. Instead we get just another story.

On a semi-related note, the man playing Nixon. I don't expect dead ringers, but every time I got a shot of the man my brain thought LBJ. There's a bit too much gravel to the voice as well, but hey ho. It's a minor niggle, like I said.

It's always hard to judge a two parter written by Steven Moffat. The man's Doctor Who episodes always tend to be a bit ADHD; or, to modify an example from elsewhere, like giving a teenage boy Karen Gillan's Shortlist photos whilst he's sitting in a course on quantum physics. (On a very much related note: Yes, please.) But also because of the way the Moffat tells stories, the little tricks he likes to use. This episode was everything you'd expect from Moffat, but it wasn't textbook. Sitting down and looking at it, the boxes have been ticked, but by and large the boxes are not noticeable. Well, at least until you get up to use the restroom and find yourself fearing another of the Moff's classical psychological horror aliens will assault you. Oh Moffat. You do so love to give me heart attacks.

Anyway, back on track. Like I said, this episode, like a lot of Moffat episodes, is very ADHD. No sooner has the Doctor died we're meeting the past Doctor, and no sooner that than we're in the Oval Office than Amy's in the restroom and so on and so forth. This episodes whizzes past, moreso than any other I can think of really. Things like the Eleventh Hour and The Lodger have a bit of fun breeziness to them, but this is outright whooshing.

Not that this should be seen as a criticism. It's fast, sometimes perhaps a bit too fast, but it's a good fast. By and large the writing is good, the kind of good you would expect from Moffat. Little touches like Canton telling Nixon that he was his second choice for President, or the careful steering of the two characters who wouldn't recognize the Timeship (okay, Amy technically wouldn't) to it. Or that all signs to point to River being in the astronaut suit when the Doctor dies, but knowing Moffat as we do it's bound to be something much, much more delicious. But there are some moments as well that give pause. The end of the episode, for example. The revelation that Amy's sickness is caused by pregnancy and not the Silence is a good one, but it feels clunky and wrong when it happens. And the cliffhanger? I'm just not feeling it tonight.

Ultimately I'm not sure how I feel about this episode. There's the initial giddiness of Doctor Who's return, and it's definitely very good on its own merits, but somehow it feels lukewarm. Perhaps it's because of the very status quo which is welcome. Every new season opened with something new, something to galvanize and explore and captivate. And here we have just another well-done episode. You could smack this in the middle of last series and not really miss a hell of a lot.

Is that good? Probably.

The Impossible Astronaut definitely is. It just feels like it could have been something more. Considering this is a Moffat two-parter though, it's difficult to judge without the second half, so we'll see in another week.

Meanwhile, welcome back Doctor Who. God how I've missed you.

These are surprisingly fascinating

2011-04-16T10:37:00.000-04:00

So yeah

2011-03-26T05:39:00.002-04:00

So this is only just amazing

2011-03-24T07:15:00.002-04:00

Dear English, why are you so lame?

2011-03-22T11:44:00.000-04:00

Sometimes I wish I spoke a different language. As if somehow that would make my writing better. As I sat grinding out more writing this morning, or trying to at least, for whatever reason I found myself remembering things I'd learned long ago. Words and phrases which exist in other languages, but never quite seem to be able to be encapsulated by English.

It started with nakama. Nowadays just used to mean a companion or friend, traditionally nakama was a word for a bond so close no other language could ever hope to adequately describe it. And there was a Portuguese word I learned once. I know how to pronounce it but not spell it, and considering the very odd rules of Portuguese it is definitely spelled differently from how it is pronounced. But it was a word they use to refer to a feeling of something lost; that sense of what we had then can never be again.

Even Latin, a rather basic and simplistic language, has phrases and words like these. But English doesn't. And attempts to reconcile them into English always fall flat at best or spend forever never coming anywhere near the target at worst. I think maybe that's why I like learning other languages, despite the fact that I have always been bad at learning languages. Maybe it's because English is essentially a gradual assimilation of all other languages, but something about it is just so dull. Not even just in terms of things like Italian or Portuguese sounding nicer. Russian and German certainly aren't easy on the ear, but compared to English there's something so incredible about them.

Maybe I'm just weird.

(Definitely rambling here. Oh self.)

This needs bringing back

2011-03-21T21:21:00.002-04:00

Have a song

2011-03-18T08:29:00.006-04:00

So right now my brain is absolutely blanking on a post for today, Character Month or otherwise. Ordinarily I would just wait to see if I have any ideas tomorrow and grind something out late in the evening if I still have nothing.

But I'm leaving very early tomorrow to go visit bestie, and so much of tomorrow will be spent driving and then while I shall in theory have internet access, in practice I will probably not be online at all. So unless something comes to me before I go to sleep, enjoy this placeholder post and I will do my last two CM posts in the last week and a half-ish of March.

(I am far too addicted to Bruno Mars for some reason)

Characters should be like your sweetheart

2011-03-11T19:33:00.011-05:00

Sort-of continuing on from my last, rather slapdash post...

As has been noted by plenty of writers, you always wind up knowing more about your characters than makes the page. And as I have noted here and there in the past, I always end up knowing a lot. So much so that the characters may as well be people I live with. Full names, dates of birth, maybe not their entire life story but a very good chunk of it up to the here and now, even an idea of what their mobile phone and cars look like.

I stated in a recent post that the Addie (protagonist of recent WIP) is a closeted lesbian. Whether or not this actually comes up remains to be seen, but as of this moment I'm thinking it won't actually actively be raised in the story. At best, hinted at. So if it's not coming up in the story itself, why is it important? Because that's who she is. Take everything else the same and make her heterosexual and she's not Adeline Carrow. Each and every piece of information helps me to write her more accurately.

(There's also the added fact that her being straight rather diminishes the point of another character, but that's another ramble for another time)

The same is true of the fact that Jack Walker smokes a very particular brand of cigarette (Gitanes Brunes) and carries a modified Makarov PM. Or of the fact that Ashley is allergic to peanuts. Or that Addie's car is silver.

To know their clothes and their tastes and their personality is to write them. These characters are not mine. They are people, just the same as you and I and the Eastern European guy who lives across that street and I swear is a mafioso or a spy. The only way you can ever hope to do them justice is to know them just as well as you know yourself, or your partner, or a dear friend.

To know a character is the only way to write them. To know their story is the only way to write it.

That's why I like knowing everything about a character, or as near to everything as you could ever hope to know about someone. Otherwise, I wouldn't be doing them justice. And if I can't do them justice, who am I to try and tell their story?

Mostly just an excuse to post some pictures

2011-03-07T21:06:00.001-05:00

I was just going to post pictures from my latest trip to Scotland because I was bored, but then I was reading a thread on an SC Braga forum ahead of our Europa League tie there, and immediately had three responses. One: Braga fans seem like top blokes. Two: Go look up Braga because I’ve never been to Portugal and boy howdy does it seem like a nice place. Three: I love the way people can get about places. And this made me think of writerly things, so enjoy Braga and Scotland-inspired thoughts punctuated by pictures of my holiday.

There’s no doubt that a good setting is one which feels real. Indeed, it’s the way any setting should be. Otherwise it’s just a place, and who cares how many bookstores or houses there are or how perfectly you can draw a map if it’s just a place? True, setting shouldn’t overshadow everything. But it is integral. A story set in Marseille will be inherently different than one in Lyonnais, even if the bulk of the narrative itself suffers little to no change.

And I think the real trick is to take into account the way someone feels about a place. Even if they dislike it, even if they hate it, I have never known anyone to be “GRRRAWRSUCKZEVULZRAWR” about every last little thing. People are complex, just like the places they inhabit. To just say “I hate this place” or “I love it here” isn’t strictly accurate.

But what is it about a place that makes someone feel the way they do? Certainly someone proud of Braga says “If you’ve never been in Braga, you have never been in the real Portugal”. But that pride doesn’t come from nowhere. And indeed, my own love for Scotland doesn’t come from nowhere either, but it’s such that in my original post I had closed with “Seriously, Scotland is an amazing place full of brilliant people and if you’ve never been what are you doing with your life?”

Ultimately I don’t know. I wish I knew, but I don’t. But I think understanding that, understanding both the way someone can love or hate a place, and why they do, is the only way to write it. Rankin’s Edinburgh is both the real Edinburgh and Edinburgh filtered through the eyes of Rebus. Just as if I were to write about my hometown, it would be my hometown and my hometown filtered through the eyes of myself. Or if I were to write about Scotland, it would be irrevocably linked to my Scotland.

Indeed, even these pictures are not Scotland as it is, but Scotland as I love.

But seriously, Scotland is an amazing place full of brilliant people and if you’ve never been, what are you doing with your life?

(These are mostly pictures of nothing because while I really have little issue with posting images of my friends (i.e. semi-liveblog from August) I feel like it kind of goes against the point. They are by and large full of snow because I was there for most of January, and, well, Scotland's climate)

The most important day of the year

2011-03-06T00:00:00.017-05:00

That's what this is. Playing Manchester United at Anfield. Time to show those filthy Mancs who's boss.

Gut's been right for the past two. Felt like a draw, drew against Wigan. Bad feeling all week, got a 3-1 drumming at West Ham. But this? Fuck it. Ever since I woke up Monday morning I've just been feeling so, so good about this one. Really think we can tear those bastards apart.

In advance of the day's events, time to once again remember one of our better recent performances against the Mancs:

And of course, the last time we faced them at home:

In which I change my mind

2011-03-04T01:52:00.048-05:00

Early last month I gave a bad, rough overview of death of the author while staying up to all hours. In that post I said I don't really have an opinion on death of the author, and while that still holds true from a standpoint of analysis and criticism, the more I think about it the more I realise that, actually, I'm a bit more in favour of word of god when it comes to characters. When I say a bit more I mean absolutely.

Not to say that there isn't room for some degree of alternate interpretations, but I think that the author's view of the character isn't just a view, it is the character.

We always know more about the characters than the page conveys. We have to. To know a character is to be able to write that character. Knowing how someone behaves now without understanding why they are the way they are gets you nowhere. The character falls flat. But just because you know the reasons behind their behaviour it doesn't mean you have to include them in the narrative either.

A story is just that. A story. You only have so much time, so many pages to tell a story. Even if you had a million million pages, it's important to keep the story to the story. Sure, you probably will end up with some degree of information that could be left out.

I don't have to mention early in my current manuscript that Ashley usually just slaps together jeans, hoodie, sloppy bun: good to go. But I do, because it isn't an entirely unnecessary divergence, and it tells you more about her (and also spares me having to describe things every so often, and I don't describe characters much because I like to leave the physical bits up to the reader).

The story is the story. But you have to know your characters to write your characters. So, invariably, a lot more detail will make the cut than actually makes the page, either through implication or direct statement. Yet the lack of this information being apparent on the page doesn't make it any less true.

An author doesn't necessarily know everything, but we know more than we let on. For me at least, when it comes to characters, word of god is precisely that. No comprise, no discussion. A character is who they are, and who they are is on the page and in the author's mind.

Literature is a bad influence

2011-03-03T09:10:00.000-05:00

Things I ought to be doing
1. Keeping the animals out of trouble
2. Cleaning
3. Coursework
4. Cooking and ingesting foodages
5. Running/weight lifting/something to that effect
6. Telephoning people
7. Getting ready for classes
8. Cleaning
9. Feeding the animals
10. Did I mention the cleaning?

Things I have been doing
1. TEEEEAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
2. Writing. Not really a lot.
3. Repeat above ad infinitum.

No comment

2011-03-02T12:23:00.002-05:00

The Return of Character Month

2011-02-28T00:00:00.027-05:00

Last year I decided to make March Character Month simply because fellow writerlies were beginning to follow the blog and it seemed like an easy way to shift the paradigm away from eccentric ramblings to writing (yeah, because that lasted).

The original Character Month fell off the rails quickly and although I tried to get back to it towards the end of the month it never quite recovered. Still, Character Month is a concept I like, so we're going to try again this year.

Character Month is essentially exactly what it says on the tin. The primary focus of posts for the month of March is to be characters. Interviews, overviews, analysis of archetypes, whether it involves your character's or a mate's or, again, is just a discussion of a type of character, it's fair game. If it involves characters, you're good to go.

For my own part we're going to take a lesson from last year and rather than try to make every single post character-centric, we're going to strive for a minimum one Character Month post per week. So that's at least five Character Month posts. Anything extra will be rewarded with tea and cookies. As with last year, you're more than welcome, nay, I encourage you to join in on the Character Month fun on your own blog.

Hopefully this year we can keep things running a bit more smoothly.

Writerly Types

2011-02-25T04:39:00.004-05:00

Dwayne McDuffie died recently. Very recently. In an interview he gave not too long ago, he was quoted as saying, "Usually, when we adapt things, there's a really good hook, but there's not really a clear storyline. Or there's a really good story, but then no hook. We have to change it to make it work."

And this reminded me of something I was thinking about the other day.

It seems to me there are two kinds of writers: Those with insane imaginations, and those with an absurd gift for words. There are advantages and disadvantages to being each but I don't think one is necessarily better than the other. And sure, there's probably a bit of overlap sometimes.

But I've been thinking lately about books I've read, and fellow writers I know, and myself as I thought about imaginer v wordsmith. And, perhaps more importantly, how to cope. Because ultimately it doesn't matter how amazing your idea is if your writing falls flat, but equally you could be the next Shakespeare/Tolstoy/Joyce (okay, maybe not that last one) but if you can't come up with a good hook no one's going to want your book.

Of course, revisions can help take care of that, but it's not as simple as fixing a few sentences. It takes careful, thoughtful revision.

But beyond that, my mind has little to nothing, so let's turn this over to you. Which do you think you're better at: The idea or the execution? How do you compensate for it, if at all?

Sex is so last century

2011-02-18T01:56:00.000-05:00

Not like that. Honestly, you people.

I don't want to say there's an obsession, because that would be untrue, but I think there is still a decent degree of focus placed on the sex* of a protagonist. A lot of focus placed on what's more popular, what sells more, why there's so much of male heroes in Story Type A and females in Type B and so on and so forth. And then I also see people stressing about writing protagonists of their opposite sex.

It's something I myself was guilty of. Over the summer, when I first started working on one of my two current WIPs, I would stress about whether or not I was writing females accurately. My concern was more about the protagonist's friend than the protagonist herself, and I thought by observing my female friends (who far, far outnumber my male friends (make of that what you will)) that I could get a better idea of things.

And I don't want to say this didn't help, because it did. In fact two of my friends formed the entire base from which I worked to construct Ashley's best friend. But as I tried to work on the first chapter stressing about this, I realised something.

It's pointless to worry about the sex of your hero.

A character is a character. Media is full of tropes and assumptions about both sexes and genders, and yes it would be lying to say there are no differences at all, but at the end of the day what do those differences amount to? Nothing of any significant capacity. One wears a bra and one doesn't. I know men who act radically different from some women I know, and I know women who behave radically differently from other women I know.

There are no hard and fast rules for how a man or a woman should act or think. For every five examples of a rule you can find, I can probably find five people who subvert it.

Lately my protagonists have been female. My most recent one is also a (closeted) lesbian. Had I tried this most recent one back in June, or had I just been trying to write two stories with heroines back in June, I would be wigging out of my skull right now. But anymore, I just don't care what they are. At the end of the day, all the matters is that you have an amazing character.

*Yes, I mean sex and not gender. Sex is physical, gender is psychological/identity. Although how much fiction is there with a transgender hero?

Wordage

2011-02-17T09:45:00.001-05:00

I find that lately my third person narrative is lengthier than my first person narrative. Not that it's necessarily more verbose (although I concede in some places it might be), but that I wind up using words I wouldn't use in first person narrative. On the one hand this is understandable because first person narrative is, well, first person. If the character whose viewpoint it's meant to be is unfamiliar with a word or wouldn't regularly use a word, it probably will not turn up in their writing. And yet something about third person makes me decide to use those words.

I also find that my third person writing tends to have more description while still being not very descriptive at all. Again, this could be down to differences of style between the two, but all of this strikes me as odd.

Like, why is there a greater disparity between my first and third person narratives than seems normal?

It's weird. But then, I'm a weird dude.

On a semi-related note: The opening sentence of this idea is driving me up a wall with my inability to decide how to phrase it.

On a completely unrelated note: What is it about marred place names that stick in the mind? I was reading an article which, correctly, says "...from Ukraine" but my mind wants to call it the Ukraine.

We happy few

2011-02-11T01:48:00.004-05:00

I’ve been thinking lately about a lot of things pertaining to writing – things which could stay in my head or find their way here – but there was a thought I had the other night which was today reinforced.

It snowed quite heavily recently and although the snow is mostly melted there is still a lot, and it looks as though it will snow again soon. Even before the big snow there was a lot of ice. As a result of the weather, I haven’t ridden my horse in quite some time. Even longer when one considers I was on holiday in Scotland, and before that it was Christmas. So today I decided to make the trip up to the barn and see what things were like, and at the very least pay some attention to the old boy if I couldn’t ride him.

It can be difficult to explain to someone who’s never ridden a horse long enough to forge a genuine relationship, so I’m not even going to try. However, the day’s activities did make me remember what I was thinking about the other night, and I think really they help me to express my thoughts a bit better.

In addition to being rather overjoyed to see me again, he was more than eager to go after having been cooped up for a while (he had gotten out before the snow, and I’m told they turned them out briefly since the snow started melting away but the pasture was still too icy), so much so that he didn’t even protest the thought of having to go out with someone his back, which he usually does for the first few feet – understandable, really, if you think about it for more than half a second. Unfortunately, he wanted to go which was something conditions didn’t really allow for. But I felt sorry for him, having been confined to the stable for so long and then not being able to move at pace.

I knew the other end of a nearby river (officially it is a creek, but it is very wide and in places the water is up to my chest so you cannot tell me that is not a river), tended to be hit less hard whenever we got big snowstorms, so I decided to try heading over there. For many horses this can be a non-issue, but my horse takes to water like a kitten, so even being near it was not a particularly pleasing event for him. We couldn’t go around because that means going a long way out, and although I tried to find a place that wasn’t too deep with the snow and ice melting recently it was going to be fairly deep anywhere. And much as he may have disliked it, we forded it.

Unfortunately there was too much snow and ice on the other side as well, so we were confined to a walk, but it was while we were crossing back a few hours later that I specifically remembered my thoughts the other night. Never once on our walk did I have to tell him to slow down or hold steady. I could tell he wanted to move, in fact he probably wanted to move a lot faster than I would have liked to, but he never tried to quicken his walk or burst into a trot or canter. He stayed at a good pace the entire time. Even though he hates water, he crossed the river twice with no real complaints. He did these things not because he was told to, but because I told him to. If a friend had hopped up and tried to cross the river, my friend would be lying on a rock in agony and my horse would be back away from the embankment.

And I think it’s important for us to find people like that. A friend upon whom we may rely thoroughly. Someone who, no matter how much we may dislike what they are saying, we know we can trust their judgment. Someone who will not let us just blindly do whatever we want, but do their best to make sure it is safe. Someone who we know will always be there to offer support when we need it and criticism even when we may not wish to hear it.

This person doesn’t need to be your beta. They don’t need to be a fellow writerly. They just need to be that person, and you in turn must be that for them.

Oi...

2011-02-10T10:21:00.045-05:00

We interrupt your regularly scheduled my-incoherent-sort-of-writing-related-ramblings for some new, off the cuff thoughts.

So as I've stated numerous times I have plenty of friends from Scotland. I say from because a few of them are now living in England or, in the case of one friend, Belgium*. Anyway I have a plethora of friends in Scotland and this morning I have been speaking to some of them. Well, actually, I woke up to an email from a friend teasing me because the weather here is less-than-pleasant and it's 8 (46F) and sunny there today which lead to me calling her and us talking for a while.

Then just a very short while ago I received a call from one of my friends who attends the University of Glasgow. And that call is why I am writing this post while my brain is still processing things.

Okay, so a little background.

Last spring you will recall I was following the British news a lot more closely than I do on a normal basis (which is very closely) because there was an upcoming general election, which occurred in May. No party won a sufficient number of seats to command a majority of Parliament (a hung Parliament) but because the Conservatives held the most seats they were given first run at forming government, which has produced the current Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition.

I won't go into reasons why because this can turn into some very muddy waters, but suffice it to say that as you would expect from the Conservatives there have been cuts. One of the many places to see budget cuts is higher education. Understandably, programmes must be cut and some courses will face closure because they simply cannot maintain costs with a lesser budget. This is fine.

However, one has to wonder just what the logic is behind the cuts here. According to the friend who called me** nursing, adult education, social work, and anthropology are getting scrapped. The first one seems a bit excessive but may be understandable IF there isn't big enough market. It still seems stupid to drop nursing altogether, but if you only have like two dozen nursing students I could understand it. History, classics, and archaeology will merge. Okay.

What angers me more, and actually what prompted this, is their slashing of modern languages and cultures. German, Russian, Polish, Czech, Italian, comparative literature, Slavonic studies, and basically all other similar courses (the friend who called said that they're basically getting rid of everything but French). And it's...why? What purpose does this possibly serve?

Yes, the budget has been cut and they need to compensate. Yes, the degree of cuts all schools are facing is beyond crazy. I get that.

But why the language/culture studies? Glasgow has actually seen a rise in the number of students taking those courses. Surely this would be the first department or among the first you try to save? There's not much more important than foreign language and culture studies.

Oh well. Nothing to be done but keep in the loop and hope things turn out for the best.

*Also is it me or is Belgium borderline an inherently funny word?
**I intend to call another friend who attends the same school shortly, to see if I can't find out more.

Like a chemistry major only less cool

2011-02-08T03:11:00.010-05:00

I'm not one for keeping schedules. Schedules and I are like Remus and Romulus, Cain and Abel. Oh sure, I get things done. They usually even get done in a timely manner, but adhering to an actual schedule is not something I can do.

Still, I feel like this place needs some sense of rhythm. So I'm going to launch a little experiment.

Since I'm going to post every Friday next month as part of something I have planned, I'm going to start trying to post every Friday for the rest of this month as well. I'll still probably end up posting at other times, but I'm aiming for at the very least one post every Friday.

Pending the results of this experiment, things may be lengthened into, say, M/W/F or T/Th/F or just M/F or it may just stay Friday, or I may do away with a schedule altogether.

But, please, do remember to wear your safety glasses.

Thoughts ahead of class

2011-02-07T13:54:00.002-05:00

As you can probably tell from just a quick glance at the past year of my blog I probably spend more time thinking about why my writing sucks and coming up with excuses not to write than I do actually writing, and even though recently I went on a roll I've since stumbled into some sort of middle ground between my usual and being on a roll – that is, I don’t write often but when I do write I churn out a lot more than I normally do. I find this amusingly ironic given the advice in my newly minted FAQ section; advice which I have been spouting for at least two months yet I am myself unable to adhere to for any considerable length of time.

I think more than anything it’s simply that I allow myself to get distracted, to stay a coward.

We all have a magical monster called Life that likes to intervene from time to time, with varying amounts of frequency from person to person, but really that’s no excuse to not write. “I have to go to class in two hours” or “I wonder what Alice/Phil/Lucy is up to?” are not excuses to keep from writing, not really, but I make them excuses.

They’re weak excuses at that too. “I can’t write now. I’m in math” is valid enough, except ninety percent of the time I’m not paying attention to my math class. I’m thinking about stuff or on twitter or reading, so clearly I could be writing.

And I think the reason I find things to intervene is because I’m afraid to keep on writing, afraid to move on to everything that comes after. It’s no secret I think of my writing as awful. In fact, my writing is awful. But by not writing, I never have to move on to anything that comes after, and by never having to move on to finding a beta or querying, I never have someone to absolutely confirm that which I already know.

But it’s a fear I’m going to have to get over.

Late last month I promised myself I would write at least 2 pages per day, not really expecting to reach that limit but under the thinking that if I say I will set out to do two pages per day, even if I can only achieve half the goal that is still excellent progress. It’s a goal I haven’t been living up to because I’ve been finding things to intervene.

I’ve done about three quarters of a page today. Probably a bit more actually. Math is not my strong suit. Unfortunately I really, legitimately do have to leave for class very shortly, but instead of just pretending to pay attention while thinking about other things, I’m going to work towards the rest of those 2 pages. And even though I hate writing in the evening, I’m going to work towards those two pages.

Sure, life tries to throw caltrops every now and again, but there’s no reason to go throwing caltrops for yourself. If there’s time, there’s time to write. No excuses.

Things I have been doing instead of writing

2011-02-03T00:36:00.000-05:00

1. Watching PBS/Harry Potter/Skins

2. Finding things to keep both myself and friend busy while the rather unpleasant weather keeps us shut up in the house

3. Reading comics

4. Plugging in my lava lamp and being far too fascinated by the movements

5. Talking to certain people way too much

6. Digging up the N64 (see #2)

7. Reading books

8. Using the weather as an excuse to put off mailing things

9. Screaming at my inability to think up ideas for an upcoming blog thing

10. Not writing.

Le sigh. You know like halfway through January I said to myself, "Self, we need to get back on that roll we were on before Christmas. So from now on you're not allowed to go to sleep until you've done at least two new pages every day." And then we go ahead and don't write for nine days, then barely write for two, and are back to not writing. Way to go self. Way. To. Go.

**Actual posts to come in the near future I swear**

Are you willing to die for your art?

2011-02-01T01:32:00.001-05:00

There's a concept in literary criticism called death of the author. Nowadays it's often used to reject a statement from the author (word of god) that a reader disagrees with, but in the essay in which it originally appeared, Roland Barthes argued that the author's life should not be taken into account when interpreting a story. In either sense, the author's intent is equally ignored. In a nutshell, death of the author is carte blanche for the reader. Your interpretations are the only things which count.

Of course, death of the author may not seem applicable to what a lot of us write. I would say most people aren't setting out to write a satire of the military-industrial complex. And yeah, excessive analysis of a story can get really, really obnoxious (and is often a fatal flaw of secondary school English courses). This doesn't mean, though, there aren't things which can't be read into a story. Shippers wouldn't exist if there wasn't something, somewhere they saw as giving basis to their preferred couple. Maybe you mean for your hero to have Motivation X, but to Reader A it seems like Motivation L and Reader B sees Motivation Q.

I've been thinking about death of the author recently for three reasons.

1. It's almost 1.30 in the morning and I'm staying up to see if a sick friend is feeling better when they wake up and so I need to find ways to amuse myself lest I start to get sleepy

2. I saw John Green recently state, paraphrasing due to shoddy memory here, "once a book is published it belongs to the readers and not the author". He is like the living embodiment of this concept apparently.

3. I am a bit of a control freak when it comes to my writing. Not that I would be some belligerent god whose word is law, but I am extremely self-conscious with regards to everything, and so for me it is vitally important that a story be 100% flawless before I share it with someone. If it isn't, the moment they find something wrong all hell will break loose. So I feel like my mind might see any interpretations people have which run contra to my intent as a flaw with my writing.

Of course, different authors over the years have had different opinions with regards to the concept. Tolkien himself, while never outright stating it, said things which suggest he was a supporter of the notion. Margaret Atwood, on the other hand, very much wasn't.

Ultimately, I find myself largely apathetic to the concept, at least right now. This may be because I do view myself as writing nothing more than modern pulps, it may be genuine apathy, or it may be because I have no rabid fangirls to present their insane theories to me.

Of course, this is just a simplistic overview. More info may be found on wiki and via googling the term, if you feel you want more.

What about you? Would you embrace the concept, reject it, or just generally not care?

LLLLUUUUIIIIISSSSSS

2011-01-31T23:10:00.000-05:00

So so so so so SO made up we have signed this guy. Also overpaid a bit for this titan.

More writerly things to come soon probably. Sekrit planz are in motion for the spring at least. (Okay maybe not that sekrit. But they are definitely planz)

Actually reviewing a book instead of Doctor Who

2011-01-26T11:34:00.000-05:00

I was asked by Mia to review this when I told her I bought Paper Towns, and because it’s a book she has yet to read but is seriously looking forward to I was also asked to keep it relatively spoiler free so I’ve done my best in that respect.

Still, I feel it’s important to give a brief overview of the story, so limiting to basically what the back cover tells you, here’s the nutshell: Quentin (protag) and his next door neighbour, Margo Roth Spiegelman, are pretty good friends as little ones but jump cut to high school and they don’t really hang out anymore and also he is totally crushing on her. She shows up at his window one night, hijinks and hilarity ensue, and then suddenly she disappears and leaves behind a string of clues for Q to follow.

Ordinarily I hate drawing comparisons between authors, but one thought which popped into my head early on was that John Green is like Terrance Dicks. The more I think about it the more I realise that comparison doesn’t really work particularly well, but it refuses to leave my mind. About the only point I can’t find examples that shatter the comparison would be the fact that both authors have a really, seriously addictive voice, or writing style, or whatever you want to call it. Even if nothing in particular is going on, I found myself wholly engaged and not wanting to put the book down. Even in the very early stages of the book I was hooked, which outside of Terrance Dicks happens very rarely for me. So I think that’s probably where my mind is drawing that comparison from.

I think the weakest point of the book is the prologue. It’s not dull per se, but it somehow lacks the same captivating quality as the rest of the book. I paused once during the prologue and set the book down briefly after reading it to do other things, mostly because transatlantic flights are long and I didn’t want to breeze through it so quickly. When I got to the first chapter proper, I was hooked from the first sentence and no longer cared if I finished the book before my flight was over (I didn’t finish it). I’m not sure why this is. Reading it back again it still strikes as being just...less than the rest of the narrative if that makes sense, but it’s still well written and while not exactly pivotal, is important to the rest of the narrative, so no skipsies.

The mystery is a bit grand and at times one has to wonder just how much time was spent preparing certain steps of it (from an in-universe perspective, I mean), but it still comes across as something which could conceivably be done. It’s easy to see why this book won an Edgar. It’s not a mystery in the sense that as with Agatha Christie or some of Conan Doyle one is veritably invited to attempt to solve the mystery first, but the mystery here is well constructed and if a lot of thought didn’t go into planning it, then someone please make sure John Green never turns to a life of crime, because I am afraid of his mystery-on-the-fly abilities. I doubt this is the case though.

Also to his credit, as noted above, it comes across very naturally; like a high school senior really could pull this off. I read a lot of crime fiction and while I’ve read some mighty good mysteries, often times even the best ones require a lot more suspension of disbelief than this does.

There is a moment which I’m tempted to say is early on but looking at it it’s actually a decent way into the book, but anyway, there is a moment where the narrative briefly switches to present tense. I found it mildly jarring for the first sentence or two, and had it happened earlier in the book I would probably label it as a bit random, but by this point there’s enough book behind us to know that this is done very, incredibly deliberately and certainly very effectively. Not to say that the section cannot be pulled off in past tense, but present gives it just a little extra oomph.

The characters, too, are handled very well. They all feel real and the majority of them are three dimensional. Those that aren’t are properly more flat, because why should the somewhat nerdy kid have an accurate picture of the people who like to make his life hell? Not all of the characters are inherently likable either, which is a wise touch. I don’t read a lot of YA but of what I had read there’s a bit of a trend to make the hero and his/her friends tres likable, and honestly if these characters were real I can think of one of the protag’s friends I would probably want to punch in the face, which is how it can get with friends sometimes.

I have to say I wasn’t expecting John Green to be this good. I didn’t expect him to be bad by any means, and while I’m not in love with his writing to the point that I feel compelled to run out and buy everything he’s ever written threefold I did enjoy it immensely. Would I feel the same had Looking for Alaska or An Abundance of Katherines been the one closest to me as I walked through the YA section to get to the cash register and pay for the two books I had actually intended to buy? Hard to say. Certainly I think I would still be really engrossed in the books because his writing is seriously that addictive, but I think maybe the fact that this one was a mystery also added a bit of fuel to my gunning through it like a steam engine that’s been injected with cocaine, if that bizarre simile were somehow actually possible.

Definitely worth picking it up if you haven’t already.

Writing Places

2011-01-25T15:37:00.000-05:00

I know a lot of people have specific places they either deliberately set aside to do their writing or just tend to end up doing a lot of their writing in, but today I've been thinking about my own writing places and why these seem to be linked to my stories.

Over winter break I churned out a lot of work on my current WIP (largely thanks to some incredibly simple advice from a wonderful friend), and one thing I'd never really noticed was that when I was doing all of this churning I was writing in my room, sitting on the floor. When I wrote downstairs or in my living room, I could still write but I found myself writing significantly less and liking little to none of it. Thus far today I've only done some 283 words, but 219 of those came fast and very naturally. Those 219 words were written while I was sitting on the floor of my bedroom. I've done the remaining words since moving to the living room, and they feel forced and in need of swift deletion.

And this, specifically, is what set me thinking about my past writings. I started writing the Ian Goodenough stories here on this sofa, but I didn't hit the form I liked until I was in the library of my high school, last autumn. Every Goodenough story I've written since I graduated feels wrong. Not awful and in need of deletion, just not quite right either.

I started out writing the Jack Walker story at my typewriter, but found no matter how I approached it I hated it. I moved to the other end of the living room and suddenly, though, I managed to write 183 pages of story in the span of three months.

I have no idea why these relationships exist. I have no idea why my mind seems to think I can only write a certain story in a certain place. But now I'm wondering if I'm just crazy, or if other people get like this as well. Not that they set aside a separate room for writing, but that they absolutely cannot write outside of that room, no matter how hard they may try.

Am I nuts?

A Link

2011-01-12T17:15:00.000-05:00

Originally, I was planning on writing a post about platitudes that tend to come up a lot when discussing writing and why they annoy me. My brain today is like FZZZZT, though, and incapable of expressing why they annoy me beyond "they just do" so this idea will go on hold.

Then Mia pointed me in the direction of something interesting and I considered doing a post with my thoughts about this, but I feel like in my current FZZT state of mind and with some people already having their panties in a bunch, it would not end well. So perhaps another time, when my brain is more rested.

Then, I'm not sure how, I stumbled upon this. It may not be anything particularly new or revolutionary, but I like it nonetheless.

So enjoy, readers, while my brain recharges.

Left Field is the Best Field

2011-01-11T15:22:00.000-05:00

It's one of those rare days in Scotland where the weather is not totally unpleasant. As I've been in transit to places today, when not busy talking to friends or geeking out over the fact that Ian Rankin has a twitter, I've been giving thought to conflicts in stories, partially because of real life and partially because I feel like I have basically just been piling things randomly onto my protagonist in my current story.

In fact, that's something which has been driving me crazy for a while. I know what the main conflict is, I've been sowing the seeds, but you can't just hop right to it in the first few pages. So to compensate, I've been throwing up different troubles. None of them really random, per se, and all of them are still connected to the nature of the universe. Most are even tied to the main conflict (there is one subplot in there), but I still can't escape the feeling that they're random because, well, they are. I'll be sitting typing and just decide "Let's have X suddenly happen".

Today, however, has given me a new perspective on this issue, and although I can't say I still approve of my "let's have X suddenly happen" strategy, I am much more accepting of it.

I'll avoid specifics because you neither need nor deserve to hear me whinge about my life, but this trip has had one big undercurrent of conflict, and all of it has come out of left field. Today's came especially out of left field. And if you think about it, that's the way it always seems to work. Not to say that some issues in life don't grow naturally, but it's not hard to imagine someone at a typewriter saying "let's have X suddenly happen" and lo it does.

So thanks, world, for helping me feel better about my writing strategies. Now if you'll excuse me, I've got a train to catch.

In which an idea with regards to titles made a U-turn

2011-01-10T21:18:00.000-05:00

Samuel Clemens once said "The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightning and a lightning bug."

This is just as true of titles as it is of the narrative, and in some cases the right title may be even be more important.

The trouble is, coming up with the right words for a title can be hard. Really hard. Rarely is it like the prose, where the perfect words seem to just tumble out of the aether and onto the page.

I think part of the problem is that there are no hard and fast rules when it comes to titles beyond "it has to fit the narrative". You wouldn't call a book about a zombie uprising Buttercups & Kumquats unless that sheer randomness somehow worked with the narrative.

I realize, of course, the title you have now may not be the one it ends up with by the time you've gone through everything, but that doesn't make it any less important right now.

So what makes for a good title?

As noted above, a good title generally shares a theme with the story. The last Hercule Poirot novel was titled Curtain and the last Rebus novel was titled Exit Music, both fitting the "end of a series" thing rather nicely.

But sometimes the fit isn't quite so blatant. Think about the Twilight series for a moment. Now think about each of those titles in relation to their content. Each title still fits the narrative seamlessly, even if you wouldn't be able to guess it just by looking at the titles (okay, Breaking Dawn may or may not be an odd duckling).

Sometimes, though, a title doesn't match the narrative like that. Not really. Pick and choose a Harry Potter title. It's telling us what the story, or at least a key element of it, is rather blatantly. Plenty of books are named simply for characters, e.g. Eragon or Will Grayson, Will Grayson.

When I first brought this idea up in December, I was planning on doing a series of posts about titles. The more I think about it, though, the more I realise a series would just be unnecessary padding.

I can go on all day about any titles you want and find threads that link them all in some sort of pattern.

The truth is there are no hard and fast rules when it comes to titles.

Except one.

A title is your narrative. Snappy, long-winded, thematic, eponymous, they all fit their contents just as perfectly as any of the words inside fits the story perfectly. Finding the right word can be difficult. It can be difficult in the narrative and it can be super extra difficult for the title.

Now, your prose isn't perfect. If it were, we wouldn't need editors. But trust in whatever part of your mind gave you that prose, and you'll have the perfect title. The title is just can extension of your prose. An extra word or eleven at the beginning of your story.

Choosing the right word is the difference between the lightning and a lightning bug.

Sometimes you've just got to throw caution to the wind

2011-01-06T11:18:00.000-05:00

We all get stuck every once in a while. It’s bound to happen in any walk of life, but especially in endeavours that require a bit more thought. Usually a little bit of downtime and a nice cup of tea sorts things out, but sometimes we just can’t dislodge ourselves so easily.

You can do what I usually do. You can sit down and have a think and let your stuck-ness depress you until kick a kitten* or two** and you feel better.

Or you can fold your arms behind your back and jump over the precipice.

Writing can be tricky business at the best of times, and we all have our own different styles. Some people like to outline every last little thing and then expand their bullets into prose. Some people are such über pantsers you can’t help but wonder just how they do anything. And some of us try to find some sort of middle ground between the two.

Sometimes, though, when you’re stuck, sticking to your usual routines will just exacerbate the situation. Sometimes you’ve just got to throw caution into the wind and hope you come through mostly unharmed.

This can mean piling into the back of an Austin Maestro with a group of your friends and going on a road trip until there just isn’t any more road to follow.

It could mean forgetting about your outline for a minute and just typing the first words that pop into your mind, no matter how bad or disjointed they may seem compared to the rest of the narrative.

Or it could mean setting aside your current project for a little while and trying something new.

Sometimes, your mind does not know what is best for you. Sometimes you’ve got to learn to ignore that little voice and trust your stomach, or the Fates, or whatever else.

It’s important to not turn off the voice, however. There’s a reason it exists, and sometimes when it tells you not to turn up at your friend’s at two in the morning to let them know you love them, it has a very good point. You just have to learn to distinguish between when the voice needs ignoring, and when it may be worth heeding.

Ultimately, a story is not yours. It is its own being. Trust it and it will deliver you to the appropriate end, no matter what your best judgments may say.

*Don’t actually kick a kitten. That’s mean.
**Don’t kick two kittens either. That’s just doubly mean.

I can't believe I got talked into this

2011-01-02T13:16:00.000-05:00

But I did. So, here's my entry for the No Kiss Blogfest thingamajig.

------

Richard hated moments like these. Those times when you nearly walked into someone, apologized, and moved to the right, only for them to do the same. Only this time was worse. This time he wasn’t trying to walk around someone, he was trying to hug them, and instead of pulling in the same direction, they both ducked off to total opposite sides so that if they had brought their arms up, they only would have been met with air. Trying to walk around someone was awkward enough, but this was just embarrassing. Hugging was a simple thing, and yet here they were on trial number four, and still had not found one another. Technically Catherine was just as much at fault for the current predicament as he was, in a way, but that wasn’t registering right now. Right now ninety percent of his brain was contemplating how stupid he was, and the other ten percent was busy mulling over just how he could be so stupid.

She started for attempt number five and he hesitated, planning to watch which way she moved so this time it would come off, only for a fellow student to breeze right through the middle of them. Trying to hug in the middle of a hallway, not the best of plans. Trying to hug smack bang in front of the only doorway in and out of the classroom, that was so far beyond worthy of a dunce cap Richard didn’t have words to describe it. He let out a sort of awkward half-laugh, half-gibberish sound as he stepped just slightly forward, closer to her and freeing up enough space for people to get in and out of the room without interrupting their little two man awkward festival. She flashed a faint smile as she moved forward once again, and this time Richard forgot about waiting or, really, taking the smarter option and just hold still until she hugged him. Instead, he moved forward to hug her at precisely the same instant.

And before he fully realised it, his face was right there, not even millimetres away from hers. Forget about clichés like stopping time or time suddenly moving more slowly. It was still ticking away. The trouble was, his usually shoddy internal clock had been mended; perhaps a little too well, for he was now aware of every single second that ticked by, although he never bothered to count them. His mind was too busy focusing on what was in front of him. There, not even a moment away from his own, were her lips. He had noticed them a million times before, had noticed some of the more basic features, but his mind had never contemplated them like this before. They were thick, yes, but the right kind of thick. Not really plump, but certainly full-bodied. A rich sort of pinkish hue that almost could have been mistaken for lipstick, although she was in fact wearing none. They were lips whose sole purpose seemed to be that of kissing.

Suddenly Richard was no longer aware of his heart. It was as though a black hole had opened up behind him, sucking half his vital organs straight out and leaving his chest to cave in on itself slowly. A part of his mind winced at having just made such a probably overdone analogy, but at least at the moment, he couldn’t think of anything better. But, hang on, was he really going to? He brought eyes back up to lock with her own. It was impossible to read whatever was going on behind them, and from so close any picture painted by the face was invisible. He had liked her for a while now, almost as soon as they had met in fact, but was this really the best way to introduce those feelings? “Oh, hello Catherine, you were just trying to hug me and I totally just planted one on you because I think you’re amazing.” Real smooth there kiddo. There it was though, just right there. He could’ve had his mouth on hers before anyone even noticed him move. But would he really? It had to be getting close to time for class to begin, and what happened if the teacher came out and saw him trying to kiss her? He was already late to his own class just by walking her here. The added fun of trying to explain an attempted kiss was not needed.

He was about to pull away and just hug her when his mind froze. It certainly hadn’t been eons or even minutes since they had found themselves in this position, but it hadn’t been a split second either. Okay, okay, there was the initial freezing because holy crap this is awkward, but there was time past that. Enough time for her to back away and try to break the tension. Was her mind running through the same problems? He wanted to punch himself. What the hell was wrong with him? First he delayed and delayed and delayed and delayed on telling Catherine how he felt about her, and now here he was with the perfect opportunity to let her know in the most perfect (albeit maybe also a bit creepy) way possible, and he was just standing here. Well, no matter. He would remedy that problem in a moment. Richard tilted his neck ever-so-slightly more to the right and drew in a deep breath through his nose.

‘Frau Sellers, are you planning on joining us today?’

God. Frakking. Dammit. Catherine wrapped her arms around him quickly and then peeled away, picking up her backpack as she darted into the classroom. The old lady raised her eyebrows almost wryly as she pulled the door shut behind her, no doubt entirely aware of what she had just interrupted.

Update

2010-12-29T03:58:00.004-05:00

Oh hello internet, how are you today? Really? Oh well, that’s a shame. It’s okay though. I suggest a bit of tea and maybe a bit of a light snack, like cookies. Everything’s better with cookies. Except maybe drowning. Or burning to death. If you’re doing either of those things, stop looking for cookies. You’re only going to make things worse.

I know a little while ago I said I was going to start a series of posts on titles, and my original plan was to just release one every couple of days until I was done – probably only five or six posts total, really. Unfortunately for you but fortunately for me, thanks to a bit of simple* advice from a friend, I got back into the swing of things with writing and marathoned up several thousand words in the days leading up to Christmas. And then, of course, it was Christmas. Would you like me to tell you why the title posts still aren’t happening? You would? That’s fantastic.

Okay, so, on Tuesday night I got on a flight to Glasgow. In fact I’m sitting on the plane writing this right now. And now I’m not. The plane had access but I was busy doing other things to keep myself not bored. I can never sleep on planes. So right now I’m sitting in the guest bedroom of a friend’s place in Dunoon drinking Irn-Bru. It dawns on me most of you don’t know what Irn-Bru is. Irn-Bru is amazing, internet, and you’re really missing out. Also I really love the adverts.

Sorry internet. I know you were looking forward to those posts** and I’m going to see if I can’t crank out one or two while I’m here overseas. They will definitely be coming at some point, just not in the way I originally intended.

On that note, I’m off to go catch some Zs. And maybe eat some Pringles. What is it about Pringles that makes them so addictive? I have yet to meet someone who can stop themselves from eating the whole thing. Can you internet? Pfft, what am I saying? Of course you can’t. Pringles and Irn-Bru. Yep.

See you around, internet.

*And yet incredibly effective and true
**Okay, you probably weren’t, but I haven’t slept in nearly twenty-four hours and it’s rainy, so humour me here internet.

Happy Christmas everyone

2010-12-25T00:00:00.009-05:00

That there is something I stumbled upon while looking for the Jeremy Brett version of the Blue Carbuncle (although Vasili Livanov remains my favorite Holmes and the 1968 Peter Cushing version is my favorite adaptation). The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle is, without a doubt, my favorite Sherlock Holmes story and I make a habit of both watching/listening to an adaptation and reading it every Christmas day.

If you have any interest in reading it for yourself, it can be read here, complete with original Sidney Paget illustrations. If you want to see my favorite adaptation, part one is here.

What's in a name?

2010-12-13T07:13:00.007-05:00

On Thursday, Naughty Dog/Sony unveiled the first teaser for Uncharted 3. On Saturday, they rolled the first full trailer for Uncharted 3 at the VGA Awards. Sony had a big event on Sunday, which as far as just about the whole damn internet can gather is it’s more stuff on the new Uncharted (being that I’m writing this on Friday, I don’t know how that’s shaped out yet).

Now, the presence of a new Uncharted by itself is enough to really get people talking. They’re great games, and Uncharted 2 received massive acclaim, none of it undue. But there’s one thing about the game that set people speculating from the first teaser – the full title of the game.

Uncharted 3: Drake’s Deception.

And this, somehow or other, got my mind thinking about titles.

I suck at coming up with titles. In fact, I’d wager most people do. Or at least, they suck on their first couple go-rounds.

So, I’ve decided to run a series of posts about, yep, titles. From the overly long to the spoilerific to the old-fashioned to the sexy and the mysterious. What makes a title a good title vs. a bad one (and I realise this tends be very subjective)?

Titles, after all, are the second most important aspect of a book. Join me as we make like fools and rush in where angels fear to tread.

What's your malfunction?

2010-11-24T14:36:00.002-05:00

We all do things that we really probably shouldn't with our writing. Sometimes, this is forgivable. Follow the rules to a T and you will end up with some dull, dull dross. Ludicrously well written dross! But dross nonetheless. Other times, you end up with not-so-good situations.

For example, if I have a character who smokes, he smokes way too much. He will down enough cigarettes in a page to massacre a herd of bull elephants.

(As an interesting note, it's only ever cigarette smokers who smoke too much. If I give a character cigars, he'll still smoke pretty frequently, but about as often as someone with a smoking habit would ordinarily. If I give a character a pipe, it's basically just when they're at home, which is not often in fiction-land.)

This is largely because I do not know what to do with my characters. Most of it, however, stems from the fact that I am incredibly anal retentive in my writing. On the whole I'm fine with paragraphs, but there are certain shapes of paragraph that for some reason drive me so totally insane.

And so I pad.

PAD LIKE THE WIND!

I also pad because, as I noted moments ago, I really don't know what to do with my characters, and it feels weird just saying Character Q did action Y and leaving it at that for a little while. It feels like they need to be doing something all the time.

Apparently I have Character Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder.

Scottish tea, tai chi, and mac n' cheese

2010-11-22T18:08:00.000-05:00

Today hasn't much been a day of writing because, being that I only have two days of class this week, I have a very limited amount of time to get things done so I can finish playing catch up and registering for next semester.

I have, however, had a lot of time for observing, thinking, and doing quick random things.

For example, it's weird being around certain people who I not only used to be around a lot but also not really having anything to say to them. My mind decides to revert to how I used to be when I first met them. It's kind of unnerving.

This lead to a realization. I feel like my first meeting with a person pretty much defines the spine of our relationship. If I meet someone in an awkward way or feel intimidated from the off, that kind of becomes the basic relationship I have with that person. Sure, like any relationship, it grows and changes with time, but the core of it never really moves from that initial meeting.

I think this applies to fictional creations as well as real people.

I'm not saying Ian Goodenough is undeserving of any love, but I feel like a part of why I love Goodenough so much and why it's the one concept I refuse to abandon is because I created Goodenough while I was on a roll. I'd just finished writing a 102,359 word manuscript and did a fair bit on a sequel/follow-up that I was enjoying when I had the initial idea for Goodenough. Over time, Goodenough changed from a borderline-alien gentleman thief to an eccentric private detective, but the core of our relationship has remained one of joy and love.

By contrast, the WIP I began in February I never liked very much, and I've really begun hating it. I had started it when I was in a dry rut and the initial idea wasn't really much of anything, but I felt so much like I needed to write something again that I just went tippa-tapping away.

And I think that's why I'm sticking by my very slow moving (at least right now) story. I really liked the initial idea, and although I think the better part of the first chapter is so far beyond crap words fail, I keep sticking by because of that same sort of joy and optimism I feel for Goodenough.

"We should have done it in Bb". Lawl.

Working hard and stuff!

2010-11-20T23:20:00.001-05:00

Okay, so perhaps it calls for a lot of leniency in your definition for working hard, but things are beginning to get underway again. I'm confident things will pick up in time, firstly because, as I've noted in the past, I despise beginnings with a fiery passion, and secondly because, let's face it, I haven't really written anything properly since July 2009, and haven't written much since May-ish.

Like I said, it depends a lot on how lenient you want to be. In shoddy timeline form:

Idea - 23 October [0 words]
Day 1 - 25 October [148 words]
Day 2 - 27 October [262 words]
Day 3 - 7 November [733 words]
Day 4 - 16 November [2057 words]
Day 5 - 20 November [462 words]

How much of this is surviving? Probably none. Admittedly I tend to hate my work anyway, but this is bad even by my craptacular standards. Still, it's a start. Like a noted above, it's a shaky start. Usually when I write, I do at least 1000 per day, sometimes as high as 1500. It's pretty rare I break 1500, and pretty rare I do a lot less than 1000 (i.e. anything more than a handful of words, 978 isn't a lot off, 789 is). Still, there's some marked progress there. Today is down from the past two days of working on it, though Day 4, as you can see, was very much the odd duckling, given that I had to power through a research paper the next day (it was due on Thursday at 12.45 pm), so that was kind of like making up for lost time, and is also where a lot of red pen is going to be going when we reach the editing stage.

Still, 462 is a step up from the first two, and considering I didn't even WANT to write (seriously, the only reason I did was because, quote: "Ugh, it's been a while, I should write something at least.") today and had continual distractions throughout, 462 doesn't seem that bad.

How long until we get to the end of chapter one? No idea.
How long until we get to the point where it hopefully stops sucking so hard? No idea, but my gut says there's another chapter or two to power through before we hit my usual level of suck instead of this.

See you Space Cowboy...

Whaddaya mean it was the help?

2010-11-09T09:37:00.001-05:00

So lately I've been trying to figure out what to post about, and over the course of a couple days things happened (including a friend linking me to this rather awesome thing) which lead up to the formation of this post, and another, but unfortunately some phantom agony meant I couldn't write them up yesterday. Actual post after the song.

Being a fan (and sometimes writer) of crime fiction, there is one trope constantly associated with the genre. In fact it's probably the one thing most people are familiar with without even a glancing knowledge of the genre and its subtypes. Say it with me now:

The butler did it!

...Only, he didn't. Or did he?

The butler did it is an interesting stereotype of detective fiction in that the notion of the hired help always being the killer seems to come from nowhere. It occasionally appears in more recent stories - such as 2004's Sherlock Holmes and the Case of the Silk Stocking (although technically he wasn't a butler). Looking back, however, the notion of a butler murderer never really seems to come up. Even if you go all the way back to Edgar Allen Poe, the man effectively responsible for creating detective fiction. In fact, the pioneers of the genre were typically far more inventive than we give them credit for (mostly because nowadays their ideas are run into the ground - case in point: The Murder of Roger Ackroyd)

Still, the idea has to have come from somewhere.

The phrase "the butler did it" is usually attributed to Mary Roberts Rinehart. Trouble is, she never actually used the phrase*. Now, in the story "The Door" the butler is, indeed, the killer, but the phrase "the butler did it" does not appear.

Is that it then? The phrase caught on from people talking to one another about a book in 1930?

Possibly. However, it seems unlikely that this would account for the longevity the phrase has enjoyed. And, more importantly, Mary Roberts Rinehart was not the first person to suggest that the butler be the killer.

S.S. Van Dine published Twenty Rules for Writing Detective Stories in 1928. It was originally run in a magazine, and later included in an omnibus of his Philo Vance stories. These were, as Van Dine saw them, effectively commandments of the genre. (It's fun to note that in rule number seven he quite plainly states "No lesser crime than murder will suffice".)

Van Dine, however, actually wrote off the notion that a servant be a killer. Rule ten states, "The culprit must turn out to be a person who has played a more or less prominent part in the story" and rule eleven outright says, "A servant must not be chosen by the author as the culprit. This is begging a noble question. It is a too easy solution. The culprit must be a decidedly worth-while person — one that wouldn't ordinarily come under suspicion".

The phraseology there is, in fact, incredibly important. "One that wouldn't ordinarily come under suspicion". Why should the butler be coming under suspicion in the first place? In 1928, crime fiction was still relatively new. Indeed, Poe wrote the Dupin stories beginning in 1841, but it wasn't until Arthur Conan Doyle (A Study in Scarlet was first published in 1887) that the genre really caught on. Indeed, the Sherlock Holmes stories have become the template for the majority of crime fiction since, and C. Auguste Dupin is forgotten by all but superfans of the genre.

Yet Arthur Conan Doyle never called culpability down on the butler. Not exactly, anyway. In The Adventure of the Musgrave Ritual the butler Brunton is found to be stealing from Musgrave, and soon both he and the maid disappear. Eventually, Brunton is found dead beside a chest. So, in a sense, the butler did it inasmuch as he is guilty of theft, but it's not really the theft so much as the disappearance of Brunton and Rachel that brings the story about in the first place.

Typically when one says "the butler did it", one thinks of murder. Of course, this may have more to do with the fact that most detective fiction concerns murder, and even in those stories where it is not a murder, murder comes to be suspected.

Probably the earliest example of a butler being the murderer comes from The Brothers Karamazov, although how popular a serialized piece of Russian literature was to American and British audiences in 1880 is not something I have much knowledge of.

Ultimately, the notion of "the butler did it" is something that does come up in detective fiction, but nowhere near as often as people might think. I can think of four stories where this notion is played pretty straight. Five if you count Murder on the Orient Express. If we think of it in terms of servants/servers, then it can be expanded a bit more, but ultimately even if we're pretty liberal in our definition of "the butler did it" I can think of only ten pieces of literature. Of course, this doesn't mean there aren't more. However, I seriously doubt the "more" places it into the sort of numbers people expect.

"The butler did it" probably became a grievance for the very reason it would first be employed. The butler is the ultimate killer. No one really thinks of the butler - they're just there, going about their business, a bit like a cabbie. They can wander freely from room to room free of suspicion, and no one really expects the butler to have a knife up his sleeve or pull a gun from under his lapel. Innovative at first, but perhaps seen as bit of a cop-out, as in most stories the butler is a side character of little to no importance (hence the rules above**).

The moral of the story?

"The butler did it" is like lupus. It's never the butler.

Except when it is.

*Just like "Beam me up, Scotty" or "Elementary, my dear Watson", the phrase was never actually spoken.
**It is interesting to note that if one actually followed S.S. Van Dine's rules, you'd eventually have to rule out Poe, Conan Doyle, and Christie, the three real pioneers and codifiers of the genre.

Reasons we think our neighbor is a mafioso (an ever expanding list)

2010-11-06T13:37:00.002-04:00

1. Over the summer, State Patrol cars would pull up every half hour from mid-morning until sunset, parking in a spot where you can still see their house but cannot be seen from the house, and would sit there for quite some time, as though observing something.

2. A couple days ago, a car pulled up in said spot and immediately turned the blinkers on. A man got out, paced up the street a few feet, then got back into his car. Another car came along and slowed down to all but a stop as it passed the van, and then took off. About a minute later, the van turned off its four ways and sped off.

3. Just a few minutes ago, a man in a tracksuit and a guy in a leather jacket were out in the same spot. I was washing dishes so I missed any leadup, but when I came over to open up some windows, they half-jogged up to each other, and then immediately stopped and started to walk away when a car came by. Leather pulled out his phone, but immediately put it away when the car went past, and they walked back up to each other and spent some time looking around like they were looking for something, or looking out for something.

5. A while back, a van parked in said spot, a guy got out, went around behind the row of hedges, and came back to his van a few minutes later carrying something, and immediately went speeding away.

Neglected

2010-10-24T20:15:00.000-04:00

is what this place so totally has been for a while now, but really especially now that I've not even lurked on my own blog for like a month and a half. Nothing particularly new to report today, but I'll try to have some stuff worked out soon.

A while back, like mid-September I think, I had an idea for a series of blog posts called Worldbuilding Wednesday but I struggled to think of things beyond the topic for the initial one and I got sidetracked with that so it's sitting more or less in dead space right now. Worldbuilding Wednesday will surface eventually, though it's probably not going to occur with any regularity, or it'll be distant regularity, like once every month or few months or something. I dunno, it's being cooked in the back of my mind right now and the brain chef has totally run out of vegetable oil*.

Secondly I do have something pretty radical planned but I'm still working on sorting out the details. Hopefully the sorting can be done ASAP and I can get around to working on it at some point this week -- most likely Friday, really, but we'll see. If all goes according to plan it should be up here anywhere from a day after the work is completed to a few days later. Basically middle of next week at the latest, but most likely well before the end of the weekend. If all goes according to plan.

Beyond that, I've got nothing. I hope you guys are enjoying my absence, because I will probably vanish into the aether again. I'm going to try to stay more on top of things, but the last few times this was attempted, it didn't come off. Now if you'll excuse me I'm in the mood of a milkshake.

*This is in no way autobiographical with regards to breakfast this morning. Not. At. All.

This may or may not be a legit offer

2010-09-06T00:00:00.000-04:00

On debate, drummer rabbits, and success

2010-09-05T16:10:00.001-04:00

Fair warning, in my head, all three of these things are clearly connected, but I have a very strong feeling this will not prove to be the case on screen. Bear with me here.

Yesterday, for a variety of reasons, was the best day I've had in a while. I say a variety, actually it's four. I woke up to discover a Pokemon marathon on, the weather was finally not GRR I SHALL TURN THE EARTH INTO BACON*, I discovered Xabi Alonso has a twitter, and, most importantly, yesterday was Jamie Carragher's testimonial. I've watched testimonial matches in the past, and while they're generally entertaining, it's basically just another match, so going into this, I wasn't really expecting much. Maybe it's just because I've been a Liverpool supporter since I was a little lad, maybe it's because Carra is a legend up with the likes of Rushie and King Kenny and even Shanks, but this match was a real joy to watch. It just sort of exuded happiness; hell, even watching the highlights now, I can't help but smile.

However, for one brief moment after the match finished last night, a certain thought entered my head. "Now if we could just replicate that," I thought. "That" being the 4-1 scoreline in the end. This thought quickly dissipated, and generally I disagree with it now, but at the same time, I had it, and I can think of quite a few people who would still stand by that spot.

You see, Liverpool at the moment are in a bit of an odd position. We are riddled with debt and, as a result, our owners tend to take money from sales and use it to pay off some of the debt rather than reinvest in new players**. On paper, however, the squad doesn't look too bad, and in theory our current lineup has the capacity to perform just as well as two seasons ago, which was a ridiculous, ridiculous thing. However, we're coming off the heels of what was a bit of a bad run. People, meanwhile, have different standards of what it means for Liverpool to be successful. For some people, winning the league title is all that matters. For others, it's collecting silverware. For some, it's Champions League football. For me, success is that we're still playing football.

I'll shut up about the football now and explain how this ties into writing.

One thought which on occasion slips into this little head of mine is the question of whether or not I actually want to be published.

At some point yesterday (I believe it was before the match), Nathan linked to this post on Hannah Moskowitz's blog. I spent varying amounts of time leafing through the comments, because I'm a creeper like that, and someone, somewhere down the line, mentioned something which I've heard people ask a few times in the past. To nutshell the question (because I don't feel like hunting down the exact comment): "If you're just writing for yourself, why would you want to be published?"

As I mentioned just moments ago, this is a thought which actually slips into my head with surprising regularity. My answer always is thus: "Because I need a job, and the only three things I'm good at are piracy, farming, and writing. Piracy is kind of not viable, farming is not the best career path in this nation anymore (which is another rant for another time), and so that leaves writing or doing something I suck balls at and hate". This is very true. Yet it doesn't stop me doubting whether or not I actually do want to be published, and often times, including right now, I don't. I just don't. I would rather write and save it and just enjoy it whenever I decide to read it back to myself. Of course, though, I do want to be published. On the one hand, I want to be published because of aforementioned employment complications. On the other hand, there are times when my mood is just in stark contrast to right now and I'm like, "Fuck yeah! Publication!"

Somehow related to this in my head is that Liverpool style of wildly different ideas of what it means to be a success. Equating to my hopes for Liverpool would be "Just to get published". Champions League, "I don't need to be the best, but I want to do well". Silverware, "I just want to enjoy a bit of success". Premiership, "I want to be the next JK Rowling/Stephenie Meyer".

Part of the problem interfering with Liverpool reaching the heights some people want us to is the fact that Torres has a tendency to pick up nasty injuries (especially on international duty). Complicating my own run towards any level of success would be my own injury problems, so to speak.

Writing is an exhaustive affair. I'm not really sure why, but it is. For some people, however, that doesn't seem to be much of an issue. They write, they take some time off, and they're right back at one hundred per cent with relative quickness. I always seem to take a long time to recover. I give some tremendous efforts, and then I just sort of peter out. In the eighth grade, I wrote my first novel (novella maybe?) in the span of about a week, while we were on break. Afterwards, I struggled to write anything and effectively had writer's block for about two years. Eventually, I came back, warmed myself back up to it, and churned out another novel in about three months. It would have been done a lot faster, but school complicated matters. Ever since, I've been struggling to write, although fortunately without the same level of severity as the last time***. At times, I consider voluntarily just hanging up the cape, so to speak, and waiting for my batteries to recharge on their own, but waiting drives me just as bonkers as not having the capacity of an energizer bunny.

The point of all this, really, is to vent frustrations/angst. Yet let's consider it to be some food for thought. Think about your own doubts, frustrations, et cetera. Think about what writing really means to you; what your goals really are.

*AKA, "WHY IS IT SO FUCKING HOT OUT!!!???!!!?"
**There are also those who clamor for a new stadium, which is just something I am wholly opposed to.
***Although, June 18th 2010 was the one year point, so while I may be writing with more frequency, it sure as hell hasn't improved that much.

Questionable Decisions

2010-08-24T00:00:00.058-04:00

So today's the day bestie moves down to South Carolina for college. Very long day ahead for all involved. Walking down to my cousin's to borrow his truck, then it's off to friend's house to load up junk into his truck and her parents' van. Bestie and I in cousin's truck, other friends in the van if all goes according to plan. Google Maps estimates the drive from the furthest it can go on her street (for some reason it stops two houses short) to the university, by the fastest route, is an 11 hour 46 minute drive. Hoping to start loading at 6.30, hoping to be ready to roll before 7, probably won't be down there until the midddle of the night. Anyway I'll be liveblogging this whenever I have internet access over the course of the day; this is just the scheduled heads up.

Quick note: It is entirely possible that, on occasion, things will not be "live" per se. I may be able to pick up internet briefly while moving, but unless we're stopped somewhere there's no guarantee I'll be able to post it. So I'm going to make a copy of everything I type and save it in Notepad, so that way if the internet goes boom, I won't lose those thoughts forever. In such a case, a cluster of thoughts may appear at once.

------------------------

6.50 - Hatfield
All has not gone according to plan. Two friends who were supposed to be in the other truck did not arrive, and we lacked the necessary manpower to move some heavy items, thus forcing us to be inventive with getting it downstairs and then basically we sprinted to the trucks. Still, it's before 7 so the plan isn't totally ruined. About to hit the road.

6.58 - Kulpsville
Stoppin at Wawa to buy some much needed coffee and soda and to pick up foodstuffs for the journey ahead. Trying to minimize pitstops, so we probably won't get lunch until a little late, and we're only hitting the can if someone's about to explode. I think we're clearing out the whole store to stock up for the road.

9.47 - Greencastle
Managed to make good time to the border - didn't expect to be here for another half hour or so. Stopped because the other truck is out of gas, because we forgot to check the fuel gauges before leaving (I can probably last until we hit southern VA/northern NC, but filling up anyway). So we're just sitting here, waiting for the gas to finish pumping, stealing wifi from somewhere nearby. Took way longer than I thought to find some stable internet once we got on the road. In other news: Awesome song came on the radio not too long ago. Never heard of this band before but I am checking out The Candle Thieves as soon as I am not sat in a truck in a parking lot.

12.20 - Verona
We have elected to take a piss break. Then grabbing lunch for the road, since we're already at Burger King, even though we have SO MUCH FOOD. At this pace we aren't going to get anywhere. Also, quick PSA: If you have wifi, protect it. I love you for not doing so because it helps me right now, but you really should make it a private system. If you leave it public, bad things can happen.

P.S. I have found the song!

3.40 - Charlotte
We have elected to ignore Google Maps' advice and drive through Charlotte. Mistake. Should have seen coming, given that it's a fairly major city. Having issues holding into connection, having to find a new network all the time because I get one, type a few words, and then we move again and I need to find one. We sped monstrously to get down here so fast, but after deciding we needed to make up for lost time from all our stops and respectful driving, we decided the best option was to never do less than eighty unless there was something that forced us to. And then we saw signs pointing in the direction of Charlotte and we said "Fuck Google" because Google's route was lamesville and did not take us through the city, so here we are. Actually I'm probably going to be nipping in even less soon. As soon as we find a place to do so, I'm taking over the driver's seat until we reach our destination.

4.23 - Charlotte
Stopped off in a little local cafe for some dinner and another bathroom break. It's a welcome relief from the road. Everyone very tired, very bored. Probably set out as soon as we're done eating again. Google believes it should only take us until like seven to get down there, so at least we're on the home stretch.

4.36 - Charlotte
After many failed minutes of trying to take a picture of bestie, I am success. Peoples of the blogosphere, I present to you one bored and hungry bestie:

6.06 - Charlotte
Unfortunately, we got wrapped up by the comfort of the cafe and have just sort of been vegetating here in the corner. Waiting for this Real Madrid game to end, and then we're back on the road. And this time I gots the wheel. It is very, very probable our two-car caravan will be speeding again. Perhaps not. Google seems to think it's only two and a half hours to go. Of course, we have no idea how long it will take to get out of the city. Such is life.

8.03 - Somewhere
We have no idea where we are. Somehow we have gotten ourselves lost, and we are quite certain we have strayed from the intended route. Friend in van has gone ahead to a gas station to ask for directions back to the turnpike. We are waiting a little ways back so if the guy in the gas station turns out to be a crazed murderer, we can escape.

8.08 - Somewhere
So it turns out we actually weren't that far at all. It's just a short drive west-ish and then we shoot down the turnpike and get off at the intended exit. Presumably we can follow back roads to get there, and said back roads may even be faster, but we've gotten ourselves lost in small-ish town South Carolina once. We are not getting lost again.

P.S. We have learned that Somewhere is just outside of Williamston. Just kind of a little fringe outskirt of the town proper. It still gives us the heebie jeebies.

8.37 - Anderson
We have finally reached our destination. Find it utterly uproarious this is classified as a city. Looks even smaller and sleepier than some of the middle of nowheres we went through on the way here. If that's even possible. Ultimately we should not have deviated into Charlotte; that was definitely what killed us. Hoping to find our way to the university quickly, and hoping they haven't closed up shop for the day. If they have, we will be sleeping in the trucks tonight and moving into the dorm first thing tomorrow morning. But hopefully this is not the case, because it is really hard to sleep in a pickup that is stuffed full of things.

8.49 - Anderson
Not sure but I think we may have overshot the target. Somewhere on North Main right now. No longer appears tiny and sleepy, but still not a city as I would have thought. Was expecting more like Charlotte, Philly, Richmond, DC. Instead, this is more like Allentown.

8.57 - Anderson
The good news: We have managed to get ourselves un-lost. The bad news: We can't check-in because the key people are done for the day. Which means we're sleeping in the cars, probably. There was what looked like a motel down by Railroad Street, but it looks like something out of a horror movie, so even if it is a motel I'm avoiding it. Don't know what the other guys are up to. Planning to head back into the heart of town, because there's got to be some sort of hotel there.

9.03 - Anderson
We have found a Hilton and through the magick of bestie's cell phone and her mom's credit card, we've all got rooms for the night. Getting up early-ish tomorrow to grab some grub and then hurry back on up to the school to move in. Then it's who knows what. I am probably coming back home in time for the Trabzonspor game, but I could also just lock myself in the hotel room for an hour and a half. We'll see what bestie and I feel like doing.

10.26 - Anderson
So I've ordered Google Maps to connect with the stops we've made, and while this obviously is not the exact route we travelled, our journey went a little something like this:

8.42 - Anderson
Turns out we've woken up a bit later than expected. Haven't actually contacted the others but going by what I could hear from their doors, they're asleep. Or just kind of sitting very, very quietly, which is possible. They definitely haven't all gone ahead without me, because the trucks are still in the rear lot. Also we learned two valuable lessons today:

1. Hotels in small cities in South Carolina are more populated than you might think
2. Fellow guests do not appreciate you looming outside doors listening with an empty glass, as evidenced by their stares

10.21 - Anderson
Whole gang woke up not longer after checking on them. Went out to breakfast at a Waffle House we passed on the way into town. Apparently there are like four here, which makes me mondo jealous, as the nearest Waffle House to home is an hour away. Once breakfast was done with, we got a move on.

So we made it up to the school, got buzzed in, and got the key. Well, actually, the lady behind the desk raised her eyebrow at us when all three of us walked up, and then tried to bar everyone but bestie entry. A rather aggrevated explanation later and we're inside, following a group of people to where the give out the keys, all the while earning a combination of bemused and horrified looks, because "OMG are those men? Men who are not parents? In a girls' dorm!?" For the record we did not make that up. We actually heard a girl sort-of whisper that as we walked past. She even spelled out OMG instead of saying "ohmigod".

Anyway, we get down there, we get the key, we find our way to the dorm room, and we unlock it to find it's a single, which is a bonus. Brought the heaviest bits up -- someone needs to tell bestie they do not need to bring the armchair and loveseat from their room -- and are now taking a break before going for the normal luggages. Also, we want to know who designed these dorm buildings. They are narrow soulless lines of cinder and the doors are so narrow we swear we are in a converted prison. Much joking about that ensued, given that our high school was designed by a man who designs prisons. (The inside of the room is nice, though. Not prison-y at all).

10.33 - Anderson
Baggage and random furnishings (lamps etc) have been hauled in. Have sorted the furniture, mostly, but will leave bestie to their clothes and any finishing touches. The end of the room we're in now looks something like:

Bestie is still not amused with our constant trying to picturize them.

7.55 - Anderson
First day of bumming it around town with bestie has been fun. Mostly a case of getting our bearings and just doing stupid things like racing on the train tracks. Other friend has long since begun the long haul back home, and according to a text we got not so long ago, they're pulling into Richmond to put up with some friends who are going to school down there. And in honor of their departure from this awesomeness, I present to you Other Friend, aka Olive:

(Actually if we're being honest, that picture is old. I just haven't dumped my computer in forever.)

8.30 - Anderson
Day three of super mega awesome SC business begins. Wound up going to bed kind of early last night, as we were both quite exhausted and around nine I started to feel a little unwell. Feeling better this morning, fortunately. It occurs to me I should start posting this is 24-hour so as to differentiate things.

7.22 - Anderson
This day mostly turned into the same things we did yesterday, with the late afternoon and evening just chilling in bestie's dorm. Have terminated the hotel service and will now be bunking on the floor or loveseat in here. At the very least, staying through the day tomorrow. Quite possibly staying until the 31st. Not really sure what I'm going to if I remain longer, as bestie's classes begin Monday. We'll see what happens. Point is Day Three has been uneventful.

11.00 - Anderson
It's been settled. I'm staying through the weekend, leaving either Monday or Tuesday morning; presumably the latter. It is not fun to leave, but it must be done before September first. Anyway, this will probably be my last update, as really there's nothing to comment on unless you want to hear me chime in every five minutes with a crappy explanation of whatever we're doing at the moment. For providence of the latter: Bestie is currently brushing her teeth and I am sat here re-reading Part One of Don Quixote, because we love it and Part One really is my early teenage years, basically.

N.B. The plan is to remain here. It is entirely possible I will be kicked out. Classes are technically in session and this is not a co-ed dorm. So far the plan is to hide under the bed should anyone come calling.

Weatherfest

2010-08-14T13:26:00.000-04:00

Okay, so first off, I just want to apologize for taking so long to make this list. I was going to do it yesterday evening, but then things kind of got away from me and I didn't get home until midnight and went to bed not long after, and then I have been watching football all day because it's the first day of the season and I always watch the opening match and I like to see how the newly promoted teams perform first game. But this is being done now, so bear with me.

Anyway, due to technical difficulties with the linking device, here is a list of all participants (or at least, I believe it's all of them):

February Grace
Ted Cross
Olivia Herrell
Francine Howarth
Mia Hayson
Amalia Dillin
Christi Goddard
Jules
Nicole Murray
Misty Waters
Rebecca Thompson
Mesmerix
Christine H
Raquel Byrnes
Dawn Embers
Tessa Conte
L'Aussie Denise
Amanda Sablan
Christopher Ledbetter
Donna Hole
J.W. Parente
Anne Riley
JC Martin
Skippy
Alison Stevens

The original list is also here.

And just in case I missed anyone, there is this thing which will hopefully not break like the last one:

I may or may not be joining, depending upon how things pan out. Going to be busy the next couple days between football and helping my cousin move, but hopefully I'll get round to it Monday or Tuesday. We'll see what happens.

So, yeah, happy Weatherfest.

Flash update

2010-08-07T06:06:00.023-04:00

Hey peeps, remember that blogfest I was forced coerced dangled over hot lava totally willingly created? Yes? No? Well who cares if you remember because Weatherfest is happening. In a week. All the rules are there but just a reminder: It's fine if you're a little late. To be honest I will probably be late.

In other news, I'm hunting down new skins for the blog because I don't feel like going back to coding (takes way too long and I no longer have the attention span), but right now all the skins I can find are the most womanly things I have seen in my life, so it may be a while.

Have fun.

New update: So apparently that link thing isn't working for people anymore, and the stupid twats who designed it put in zero method of recovery, so without access to my username or password, or the ability to make a new account linking to the same site, I'm going to hunt down an alternative and post it here.

New new update: Screw it, more trouble than it's worth. I'll compile a list here. Just post in the comments if you're not on the old listamajig so I don't miss you.

Our Day in 23 Easy Steps

2010-07-22T22:57:00.004-04:00

1. Wake up at almost 11 because we didn't get to bed until 2.30 because there were noisy drunks in the basement
2. Spend three hours lying half-asleep on the sofa watching House. Also, eat an omelet at some point in there.
3. Find out you lost out on yet another job, and this time a really awesome one.
4. Stalk best friend on Facebook
5. Engage in poke war with best friend on Facebook
6. Sort-of tan for half an hour
7. Contemplate going to Waffle House or IHOP; eat ramen and M&Ms instead
8. Resume stalking & poking duties
9. Contact different friend about their schedule for uni this fall. Despair at all their classes being in the morning, whilst all ours be in the early afternoon.
10. Resume stalking & poking duties. Again.
11. Go annoy people on twitter by being way too present.
12. Use Wikipedia to track down every university in the UK
13. Look at every university's standards for internationals
14. Save links to every single one there's even an inch of a chance of getting into
15. Wish it were later in the year so you could blanket apply and hopefully get accepted and get a green card
16. Resume stalking & poking duties. Again again.
17. Be way too present on twitter again
18. Move things back to where they belong
19. Take out the trash
20. Resume stalking & poking duties. Again again again.
21. Go to Waffle House with best friend.
22. Watch Burn Notice & Futurama
23. Contemplate sleep

Another short update-y thing

2010-07-21T16:44:00.000-04:00

On the writing front, we're making progress. NNN is still at 661 and no progress. NN is now at 1589. Haven't made any progress since Saturday, mostly because sister and her boyfriend are here and it's hard to focus with them around. I think that's part of the problem actually. If I don't write every day or darn near every day I seem to lose interest. Like, I have had no interest in writing since Sunday, until five minutes ago, and that interest just now lasted not even a second. Unfortunately I'm going to have to wait even longer to write again, as an even bigger annoyance is coming up and I won't be free again until next Thursday. Really I'm less concerned about losing interest than I am about losing the protagonist's voice. But enough griping from me. This is an update, not a rant.

Actually that's about it. I was going to say something here but then I got distracted by music, and I feel like it wasn't very important, so if I think of it again I'll probably share. So, yeah.

Headway is being made on writing.

And I may actually seriously play around with the blog skin this time. We'll see.

The first step is always the hardest

2010-07-15T11:48:00.000-04:00

Truer words have never been spoken.

New document opened: 8.10 am EST
Current word count: 0

Latest WIP opened: 8.11 am EST
Current word count: 661
Words added today: 0

Excuse me while I go bash my skull against something sharp and preferably metallic.

A (lame) present for you all

2010-07-12T16:33:00.001-04:00

I have no idea what's up with the random white noise. I've recorded tons of stuff outside and inside in the past and it's never done that, and it was fine on the camera itself, so I think something went wrong in the conversion process. Whatever it was, you'll have to deal with it. I spent an hour and a half just to get to a point where I wasn't speaking in a Scouse or Edinburgh accent, and there were many, many takes after that due to a variety of factors (mostly giant wasps of doom).

Anyway, I created that channel because I am planning to some day eventually do vlogging stuff for you peoples. When I actually have something I feel like vlogging about, which will really be about as infrequently as things I feel like posting about, if even that often. I'll try to fix the phantom white noise by then.

And while we're on the subject of youtube, for those of you who missed the World Cup final last night...first of all, WHAT IN THE NAME OF FLABBERGHASTERY WERE YOU DOING THAT WAS SO IMPORTANT YOU HAD TO MISS IT!? Secondly, see this link. I would embed but ESPN don't like that apparently.

And finally:

Much as I love Xabi and I was having a heart attack when that happened, oh man is that video great.

Cheese and Beans on Toast

2010-07-11T13:37:00.001-04:00

As I write this, I’m playing blackjack against myself. I’ve got some cheese and beans on toast on a plate and in another minute or so I’ll have a nice mug of tea, but the bulk of my focus is on the game at hand. Lately I’ve been feeling a lot like playing five card stud. It’s absolutely my game of choice, but unfortunately not many people know how to play. If you bring up the subject of poker, they assume you want to play Texas Hold Em, which has got to be the most womanly form of poker I have ever laid my eyes on. But really that’s the smaller issue going against five card stud – a many-sided whammy of heat wave of death, people on vacation, lack of automotive transport, and the fact that no one seems to know how to or really want to play five card stud means there’s no hope of poker. So instead, I’m sitting here playing blackjack against myself. Losing, too, if you want to count DealerMe as separate from PlayerMe.

I’ve tried to be productive today. Not long after I woke up I opened the document with my latest WIP. I even have been productive, in a way. Usually I do the dishes at the end of night before bed, but this weekend I felt like being lazy and let them all pile up until after breakfast this morning. So I finally washed the dishes and cleaned up the millions of soda cans I left lying around. Yes, I’ve been a pig. One of those weeks I guess. But I haven’t actually done any work on the story. It’s okay, I tell myself. It’s only one in the afternoon, and with no obligations whatsoever you could stay up all night if you really wanted to. Who knows? Maybe I will. Maybe I’ll start writing at ten or eleven and carry on into the small hours.

More likely, however, is that I won’t make a lot of progress on anything. I still have the document with my latest WIP open – sitting minimized, technically. However, I also have Twitter open, am playing blackjack against myself, have just pulled up the youtube of a band I like to listen to some of their music, and I have a DVD of one of my favorite movies sitting on top of the TV because I feel like watching it later. The only reason I’m not watching it now is because the World Cup final is going to start in fourteen minutes. My money’s on Spain, but the Netherlands certainly have a real chance. It’s going to be a good game. Or at least, it ought to be. Oh, and I’m still working on reading through The Bodysnatchers, which is still sitting in the reading/cats’ room.

The short of it is there are a lot of distractions and few motivators. It’s not that I don’t want to write – I very much do. I even have in my head all of the events and more or less the words from right where I’ll be picking up writing to, I don’t know, two chapters down the line maybe? I kind of want to hold off on introducing one of the important characters until somewhere in the chapter three to six range; preferably on the latter end if I can help it. It’s just that the prospect of sitting on the piano stool eating cheese and beans on toast while drinking scalding hot tea is much more appealing than writing. That’s probably a bad thing.

In the process of cracking my neck I just noticed the graduation balloon is still sitting in the dining room. Firstly, how I’ve failed to notice its continued existence is beyond me. Secondly, I am amazed we even still have that thing. I’m amazed it’s even still inflated. Anyway, tangent over…

Ultimately I should be thankful I don’t have a deadline for this book. Theoretically I could take the next eighty years to write it. I really hope I don’t, and I seriously doubt I will, but I could if I felt like it.

Still, I feel like I probably should assign myself some sort of deadline. Unemployed life is a bad educator. I woke up at six o’clock this morning, went for a run, then sat around doing nothing on my laptop for three hours, then spent an hour cleaning, and am now back to sitting around doing nothing on my laptop. And playing blackjack against myself. And eating cheese and beans on toast.

One of those weeks, I guess.

Some Advice From A Guest

2010-07-06T12:30:00.005-04:00

Umm hi everyone? im Amy. i know its been a while since i asked Nick to add me, so you all must be like holy cucumbers she exists!?! hopping along the towpath, i know Nick has a tendency to complain about his writing and be a Grumpy MacAngerman about it and personally i dont write but i do paint and dabble in photography and sometimes i get like that too, so i thought if we both get all kinds of negative about our stuff other people must too, so heres some ways i like to keep positive whether im working or just being me.

smile seems obvious right? but it really does help. you might want to avoid this in public or else people could get really creeped out but i try to smile as much as i can when im home alone. a little grin tho, a big toothy smile would be weird.

hang out with positive people obvs you shouldnt ignore negative people or theyd probably kill themselves or something, but if youre around upbeat people youll probably be more upbeat too.

find a happy place find a place you love thats just totally awesome. personally i love OBX. i go there all the time and in fact ive been down here since june 18. (tbh i prob wouldnt come as often if we didnt have a house down here) but it doesnt have to be the beach for you. maybe its your bedroom or the mall or something, just find somewhere you can fall in love with. for me at least my happy place is also a source of inspiration.

help someone out taking the focus off yourself can help you stop thinking about whatevers got you down for a little bit at least.

leave positive quotes lying around i like to collect my favorite quotes on sticky notes and put them all over my room.

just embrace yourself last night i decided to dance around on the beach behind our house singing pocketful of sunshine because i felt like it. whenever i complete something instead of just outright saying it sucks or looking for where i made mistakes, i try to focus on the parts where i didnt screw up first and then look at the parts where i did and just accept the fact that thats my own style of painting. if people think it sucks great, because i know im awesome ;)

Nickterjection: Please, pardon her clusterfeck typing. I'm too lazy to turn it into proper grammar.

Thursday Thoughts

2010-07-01T16:09:00.000-04:00

The one thing I've consistently disliked most of all about the publishing process since I first started learning about how it works is the fact that from square one publishing is all about marketing. We have to sell ourselves to agents, who in turn sell us to publishers, who then sell our books to public, and it's probably a good idea to do a little marketing of the book yourself once it hits the shelves. It's all about making sales from the moment your feet hit the ground.

It should be easy enough to understand why this can be aggravating. We write. If we wanted to play the marketing game we'd get a degree in it and go work for some corporation. But getting upset about it won't get you anywhere. Refuse to play the game and you're done. So as long as you're stuck trying to market yourself any way you can, you better take the game seriously.

Regardless of where you are in the process, a good rule of thumb to follow for anything that involves a higher ratio of failure to success is to assume everything will fail.

Just plugged your new book over on twitter? Good. No one's listening. Go make a fan page on Facebook.

As soon as you've finished doing something, that step has failed. Don't wait and see if it has or it hasn't; it has.

The real trick is to keep yourself going. It's easy to say "If I'm going to fail at everything, I might as well not bother in the first place". With this, I can't help you. It's your mind, your willpower. Whatever you can do to keep yourself trucking, make sure you do it.

When all's said and done and your book has gone to print, a good thing to bear in mind is to not be afraid of spamming. Of course, this won't be the most popular approach, but if you can find ways of doing it within reason it usually pays off. For example, a good way to increase your count of subscribers is to attach some of your videos as video response to the most popular videos of the week and of all time. Running into the comments every few hours and telling people to check out your channel can work, but less people will be willing to see what's going on.

This can be harder to pull off with marketing books, but there are still ways it can be done. Find a way of slipping some form of ads for it into your local bookstore. Somewhere people will notice when they're actively looking at the area, or maybe even just skimming it, but the staff probably won't notice as not being theirs. Of course, slipping it through like some sort of drug may not be necessary. Try speaking to the manager or someone first, and if that falls through, go ahead and plant it. Just try not to get caught or they may not be so friendly the next time you're in.

Finally, one thing you should definitely do at any step on the road is to set yourself unrealistic goals. As with assuming everything will fail this can be dangerous if you have the wrong mentality, but go into it the right way and the payoff should pull in your favor. If you say "I want to be published" you can get there, but it's going to be a rough ride. For one thing, if you fall short of achieving your goal, you probably don't have a milestone you can look at and still stay positive about. For another, you will have loads of other people all trying to get their book published as well, and may end up bowing to the pressure of competition. But if you say "I want my book to be #1 on the NY Times bestseller list by the end of the year" the only people who will have the same ambition will be idiots.

Odds are very good you won't achieve that number one spot on the list, but if you assume everything will fail and do everything you possibly can to market yourself, you'll have a benchmark you can stop to look at and be proud of. The same goes for finding an agent. If you say "I want an agent" that's great. If you say "I want to be signed by the President of XYZ agenting group" you very well could come up short, but you'll come up short somewhere where you should still be able to be happy with your success.

Anyway, that's all I've got for you today. Hopefully tomorrow the other thing I've got rattling around in my skull will go up.

Something Old

2010-06-29T12:53:00.002-04:00

First things first, hello to all the new followers who have been popping up over the past few weeks. I know, I’ve pretty much been ignoring you. I tend to do that.

Second things second, there are ads on the blog now. Well, an ad. I’ve put them in the sidebar to keep them out of the way, but they are there. I could write a big long spiel explaining why it is I’ve decided to monetize, but just know that it’s happened. If you want to unfollow me or hate me or whatever, that’s fine. The income is going to be bordering on nil, but it’s much-needed income.

Third newsbit: Seeing as I swear a lot, I’m trying to cut back on my swearing in July. Originally I’d thought no swearing at all (bar instances of severe pain, etc) but no way could I ever achieve that. So, you know, if you see me doing my usual swearing up a storm, tell me off or something. It’s a bad habit I never should’ve picked up in the first place.

And with that out of the way, let’s get on with the reason we’re here.

A long while back I had asked here and on Facebook and a few other places for people to ask me just about any questions they fancied. I’d meant to post the replies around a week after telling people they could ask me shazbot, but I never really got round to it. So now, a good two or three months after the fact, I’ve gone digging back through everything and plucked out those questions that I didn’t lose track of, if I lost track of any at all. Anyhow, I’ve spent enough time dillying and more than enough time dallying. On with the answers.

Do you walk around speaking with a British accent in real life?

I tend to, yeah, although it’s usually not region-specific. I mean it tends to be Northern, but it’s kind of a hodge-podge of Northerners. Some words come out Scouse, some Manc, it tends to just be different accents put on different words, and I admit every now and again I slip up and end up sounding like I’m from Norfolk for a word or two, but y’know, no one here even really notices the differences.

Can you recommend a good restaurant on the beach?

Oh God, it’s been forever since I’ve been to the beach. I hate beaches. I don’t even know what restaurants are in what beach towns any more. Last time I was in New Jersey was…five years ago? Six, maybe? Last time I went to a beach was last summer, but I remained firmly in the Freelander while my friends went to the beach. I went bumming it around in Bournemouth.

What annoys you?

A lot of things. More than probably should annoy me.

Do you remember what your first kiss was like?

Oh, haha, let’s pretend this question never existed…

If you couldn’t write, what would you do?

Well when I had that really long case of writer’s block, I turned my attention to voice acting (which actually prolonged it, because I lost interest in writing in favor of voice acting). So I guess I would try for that first, and if that fell through, I don’t know. I’m not really very good at a whole lot. Maybe I would buy a boat and claim Redonda for myself.

How many watches do you own? I swear I see you with a different one every time I see you.

I own a lot. Only the Nautica works anymore, but I have that, a gold one, a Hamilton, five pocket watches, a Timex, some cheap one I bought in an airport, and a black Seiko. So I have eleven but one works. I need to get my other watches fixed. New batteries.

Do you have any autographs? Have you given any?

I have a couple of actors’ autographs, but not a lot. I wish I had more, but I’m a shy person really. And no I haven’t given any. What kind of question is that? I’m not famous.

What kind of car do you drive?

I am the proud owner of two pasty feet in brown adidas. My own car broke down and my sister’s car is both dying and in a sorry state, because she has no idea how to take care of a car. If I absolutely need to go somewhere I will take that one, but I try to avoid driving it. I’m always afraid it’s going to explode or something. Right now I’m looking into getting my M Class, so maybe soon I’ll have a motorcycle.

Ninjas or Pirates?

Pirate. Always pirate. Ninja don’t stand a chance. (And, fyi, the plural of ninja is ninja, not ninjas, and actually the proper term is shinobi) Don’t get me wrong, shinobi are coolsville, but any pirate worth his salt would wreck them.

Have you ever been to Spain?

Once, to Barcelona. I want to go to Madrid at some point, but that’s more to watch Real Madrid in person than it is about vacation. Spain is a nice place though. I would certainly go again.

Facebook or Twitter?

Twitter all the way. It’s so much better. Really I’m waiting on Diaspora (comes out in September I think) and Google’s social networking thing and anything else to get a judge of what they’re like and also I’m going to see where people are going. Right now Diaspora is the winner amongst new networkers though. It’s open source, which is good, and it’s decentralized so you don’t have Facebook’s pathetic brand of privacy. The only reason I haven’t left Facebook is that, especially now that we’ve graduated, it’s the only means I have of keeping in touch with a lot of friends. Still, Twitter wins out over all of them.

When do you like to write?

The morning, usually. It’s my favorite time of day for a lot of reasons, mostly just because of the way it feels, but it’s when I tend to be best at writing. I usually have my ideas in the afternoon or evening, but typically I only have the words to express them between six and eleven fifty-nine.

What newspaper do you read?

Right now, none. The school year’s over so I finally have the time to buy them in the morning again, but the World Cup is on and I don’t want to miss a minute of coverage, whether that be discussion or game. Here in America, I read the New York Times. When I’m in Britain, I read the Telegraph. I prefer the Telegraph, but there’s really no getting it over on this side of the Atlantic.

What’s the last TV series you’ve become addicted to?

The West Wing. I’m much more addicted to Doctor Who, but the West Wing is the latest addiction.

Where do you want to see yourself in five years?

Hopefully in the United Kingdom and having transferred from a post-study work visa to a skilled worker visa so I can start my five years of living in the UK so I can obtain citizenship. Immigration is a scary long process yo.

Churro?

Dude totally!

Does this mean I should fear cats now?

2010-06-26T06:00:00.004-04:00

Day 06 - Whatever tickles your fancy

Day Five

2010-06-25T01:00:00.001-04:00

"…even in the Army if I had a job to do – even if it was scrubbing the floor – I wanted my floor to be cleaner than yours. If everyone thinks along these lines and does all the small jobs to the best of their ability, that’s honesty. So what we want is hard work." - Bill Shankly (2 September 1913 – 29 September 1981)

Shanks really is just an utter treasure trove of great quotes. Look the man up sometime.

Day 05 - Your Favorite Quote

Asking a bibliophile this is just ridiculous

2010-06-24T06:00:00.006-04:00

Day 04 - Your Favourite Book

I really don't have a favourite book. At all. I just either like a book or dislike a book. Same for authors. Can't really pick a favorite book or author. So instead, here's the first three books I pulled off my shelf:

From left to right:
The Eight Doctors by Terrance Dicks
Vampire Science by Johnathan Blum & Kate Orman
Thrilling Citites by Ian Fleming

Where do you think you're going?

2010-06-23T06:00:00.001-04:00

Day 03 - Your Favorite Television Program

Madness

2010-06-22T06:00:00.002-04:00

Day 02 - Your Favorite Movie

No rhyme or any reason

2010-06-21T06:00:00.003-04:00

Day 01 - Your Favourite Song

So, I don't really have a favourite song, per se. I mean I do, but it tends to change based upon a variety of factors. Often times it's just whatever song I happen to be listening to at the moment I am asked. But for the past couple of weeks, it has very much been an old-ish Starsailor song that has long been one of my favorites when considering their output.

Or if you would rather just the music video, click here. And for the very close second (and sometimes tied) song, see here.

A Month of Me!

2010-06-20T16:38:00.003-04:00

So whilst I was digging about for stuff, I found this thing:

Day 01 — Your favorite song
Day 02 — Your favorite movie
Day 03 — Your favorite television program
Day 04 — Your favorite book
Day 05 — Your favorite quote
Day 06 — Whatever tickles your fancy
Day 07 — A photo that makes you happy
Day 08 — A photo that makes you angry/sad
Day 09 — A photo you took
Day 10 — A photo of you taken over ten years ago
Day 11 — A photo of you taken recently
Day 12 — Whatever tickles your fancy
Day 13 — A fictional book
Day 14 — A non-fictional book
Day 15 — A fanfic
Day 16 — A song that makes you cry (or nearly)
Day 17 — An art piece (painting, drawing, sculpture, etc.)
Day 18 — Whatever tickles your fancy
Day 19 — A talent of yours
Day 20 — A hobby of yours
Day 21 — A recipe
Day 22 — A website
Day 23 — A YouTube video
Day 24 — Whatever tickles your fancy
Day 25 — Your day, in great detail
Day 26 — Your week, in great detail
Day 27 — This month, in great detail
Day 28 — This year, in great detail
Day 29 — Hopes, dreams and plans for the next 365 days
Day 30 — Whatever tickles your fancy

And I figured, "Hey, why not?" So, starting tomorrow, this shall be my posting schedule for the next thirty days. Feel free to join in on your own blog if you fancy, or just have fun watching the wave, or totally ignore the wave too. Whatever tickles your fancy.

P.S. What do they mean by fictional book? See, that taxonomy, to my mind, means a book that does not exist. But I think they mean a work of fiction. So I'm rocking with the latter.

Late Night Narm

2010-06-19T00:22:00.000-04:00

I’d forgotten what an amazing place outside can be. Well, it’s not so much forgotten, I guess. I can cast my mind back to the various summers I’ve spent in Scotland, or that last week I spent in Nice with my now ex-girlfriend, or any of the other places I’ve been and just utterly loved. I had, however, forgotten how amazing a place my own hometown can be.

Tonight, everyone has been leaving for the Jersey Shore for Senior Week. I’ve opted to stay behind because a. I hate the Jersey Shore, b. Senior week shall consist of getting plastered and high; the former I do not enjoy and the latter I have no intention of trying, c. I hate the Jersey Shore. If friends were going to Bermuda, or OBX, or somewhere, I would consider coming along and just putting up with their festivities. But it’s Jersey Shore or bust, and the Jersey Shore sucks (plus I’m not the biggest fan of beaches).

To alleviate my boredom, at around 10.30 I decided to crawl out my window into my front yard and just sort of walk around town until I got bored or tired. And like I said, I’d forgotten just how amazing my hometown can be. Hundreds, maybe millions, of fireflies everywhere. The largest clusters were gathered right up against the trees that line our property and our neighbor’s property. More fireflies than I can recall ever having seen in my life. It was sort of like a forest of Christmas trees, with clusters of Empty Child-style nanites floating around briefly. I really wish I had pictures, or video, or something to share with you, but none of the cameras I own could capture it – they were always pitch black.

And yet even as I revel in the memory of it, my mind can’t resist adding just that touch of jade to my glasses. This was – is – the sort of thing that used to set my mind racing. I remember three, maybe four years ago, I was mucking stalls at the barn in the middle of November, and there was a dying tree right beside the entrance to the barn, and just the look of it, the shape of it, set my imagination off. I came home and I wrote six chapters of a novel I would never finish; but I still wrote them.

Still, I’m glad I went outside. The simple beauty of that moment is one of the highlights of my year so far, if not the highlight. It gets even better when I think about what everyone else is doing. Right now, most of my friends have just gotten on the turnpike, or are about to pass right by my home to hop on the turnpike, and make the trek out to the home they’ve rented for the next seven to ten days. Those who aren’t on the road now are asleep and will be waking up in about two or three hours to get on the road. All to maximize the time they can spend in Jersey smoking up and chugging and…other things.

Me? I got to watch a million million fireflies turn my neighborhood into an outstanding sight.

Yeah, England played like crap and are in danger of not advancing. Yeah, the United States was disallowed a perfectly valid goal that would have won them their game. Yeah, I’m one of the few not going to the beach.

But I got to see the fucking fireflies.

Utterly, totally, made my day.

Made my week.

TOTES another GUEST post for SUNDAY: Worth the Wait

2010-06-13T08:26:00.001-04:00

I burnt my tongue today.

As I sat in the kitchen waiting for my lunch to be ready already, bouncing my legs and watching the cars scoot by the window little did I know today would be the day I obliterate my taste buds once more in the name of hunger. Well, more impatience.

To really hone the point with this, we're going to have to scoot back a week ago or so when I was stood in the grocery shop mulling over my options in terms of food and what not. I always have difficulty with food, I'm so fickle.

So as I stood there, not quite sure what I really felt like a jar caught my eye. A shiny beautiful jar of OMG yummy pasta sauce, something I rarely treat myself to. So very rarely. Stroking my chin I list off all the reasons absolutely not to buy the sauce, to go without because I never normally go with. Eventually my sudden longing wins out and I pick up the object and sprint off to the tills before I change my mind again. I'm proud of my decision. I will save this for later.

(from b's profile at www.flickr.com)

Now we can rush back to me, sitting on the blue couch, watching cars narrowly avoid collisions as I wait for the pasta to boil. I'm hungry, but it's more than that. Today I get to use the sauce, today finally after all the waiting I get to treat myself. It's weird but I'm actually excited at the thought.

Sighing, OBVs, because I've got that action down to a fine art now, I hop off the couch and skip over to the pan. It's been about five minutes or so, that's a generous estimation. I don't care. Boldly selecting my utensil of choice (a fork) I stab an unsuspecting pasta shell, blow on it and then pop it in my mouth.

Um, I find out that it's still pretty hot, like BURNING HAVE TO SPIT INTO THE SINK OUCH AHHHHH hot. That hot.

I know, stupid. Unthinking. What did I think would happen? So after I yelp and cry a little and then decide I'm too hungry to wait until it actually cooks properly anyway and now I'm in severe pain, I stir in the sauce and resolve to enjoy it anyway. I have been holding out for this.

So, uh, it turns out that the ZOMG THIS IS SO DELICIOUS sauce doesn't taste so nice when you've just completely burnt your tongue. At all.

Of course, initially, I took this as a sign that the day was just going to go badly and moved on. I shook a fist at the sky and shrugged it off. But now I'm not so sure. As I sit here, glancing in the mirror and sticking my tongue out occasionally, because it feels like I've torn off the skin too, I realise the true reason for my pain now. I spoilt something great with my impatience again.

(from k's profile at www.flickr.com)

I just want to say one thing as I sit here sucking on an ice cube and cursing the fact this does nothing for my klutzified reputation and I probably have just earned myself at least minus a gazillion Coolville's points, never do that.

Don't ever let your longing for something so great, something so pure, as (for example) being published get in the way of actually enjoying the ride, of calmly surfing the wave instead of exhausting yourself paddling ahead (and, quite possibly, burning your tongue). Take it from somebody who now knows, impatience will be the ruin of you.

It's difficult, of course it's difficult, who said it'd be easy? But I guess we must all learn (myself included) that sometimes in order for things to be worth the wait you first have to hold out for a really long time. You've got to learn to enjoy the wait, they journey.

Patience is one of the best virtues out there. Take it from somebody who now will have to explain to her parents, brothers, grandmother and extended family this weekend that she can't actually eat that right now and ZOMG can she please have some ice because she only wants ice as she burnt herself yet again, take it from somebody with a pretty cheerful temperament, that impatience, the incessant counting until tomorrow, It'll kill you if you let it.

(from n's profile at www.flickr.com)

So don't ever let it.

p.s. By the time you read this several days will have passed since SAID incident, hopefully everything will be A ok

p.p.s It's not, I still had to explain my constant need of ice and cold food

p.p.p.s PLEASE don't start thinking I clearly need help, I do not. Yea I am clumsy but I AM NOT DEAD YET.

p.p.p.p.s Don't go all EDWARD OMG YOU WILL DIE on me after this either, it's fine. I survive.

Temper, Temper

2010-06-09T15:08:00.000-04:00

As I mentioned in the blogfest post, lately Sarah and I have been doing nothing but shouting at one another. I was growing frustrated because I hadn’t written a word of fiction since mid-April, and whenever I came to Sarah, I got a rather biting rejection or, on the two good days, glimpses of a new heroine and her city and the sorts of things she does for fun, but still no real information.

And as I said in that last post, I pinned the blame on Sarah. That I did not know the heroine’s name was her fault. It was her job to give me that helping hand so I could run with the story. My lack of inspiration was her fault.

And I lashed out in response to the lack of information.

I knew nothing, friends. I still know nothing. I don’t know her name or the name of her city, or her occupation, or even what kind of story I am writing.

How was I supposed to work with that?

I assumed Sarah wasn’t talking because she’s a cold-hearted ice queen. As a result, I flew into a rage, and the shouting matches followed suit.

Then, in the midst of an all-nighter, I came to a realization. Our Muses do not know everything.

If your Muse is silent, it isn’t because they don’t want you to work, it’s because they don’t know anything. Sarah wasn’t telling me new heroine’s name because she did not know; still doesn’t know, even, as she now has given me two much unrelated names. Yelling and screaming wouldn’t solve anything. Of course it wouldn’t. I am very, very bad at maths. If you put a trigonometric equation in front of me odds are good I will screw it up big time, but getting angry with me won’t make me be right next time. Rather, I’ll just get upset and be unable to focus, and therefore do worse on the next problem.

So if your Muse is quiet, let it be quiet. Obviously you should talk to it, but don’t try to pressure them into offering up anything, because it just won’t come, or if it does come, it will be very scant and only drive you further up the wall. But if you sit back and build a genuine relationship with your Muse, they will give you what you need once they know it.

Earlier a friend found my ramblings scribbled by hand and he said he failed to understand why we had to be nice to our Muse instead of make it work for us. At first I laughed because he hasn’t written in a thing in about a year, but then I went on to explain my all-nighter-induced viewpoint.

Of course we are the ones who ultimately write the story. It is up to us to take what we are given and craft it into a story, but how many of you can make a good story from nothing? We all need that spark of inspiration, somewhere, somehow.

In my case, I think I set myself up the wrong way when I came to write crime fiction. In the past, I would plan ahead a little bit, but for the most part everything was just whatever came to mind, right from the get-go. Then of course with crime fiction, some extra planning is necessary. You have to know the criminal and crime from the get-go. From this, I started planning characters way more in depth and such, and it kind of became a hindrance.

I needed to know more about this city. I needed to know more about this woman.

Knowledge is power. Lack of knowledge meant lack of ability to write.

However, Sarah and I have made peace, at least for the time being. Yeah, I don’t know anything at all about this story. I don’t even know the genre or the basic plotline, let alone names of people and places, and you know what? I love it.

It’s been years since I’ve written anything like this. These little experiments I’m writing now are very, very bad, but they’re a great way to introduce myself to the young lady. Rather than deciding where she’s from and what her (at least origin) personality will be, I’m actually letting myself get familiar with her and her city, even if it is at a much slower pace than both of us would wish.

It’s exciting. I look forward to the end of my day so I can just plunk down in my thinking chair, close my eyes, and let myself be carried to that place across the sea. In the case of Llanwerth, I knew whole the textbook history of the place, from the Great Depression to 2011, the year in which the book was set. Yes, I could close my eyes and watch that city grow in real time, but it was just a setting. Window dressing. The city was of no consequence to that story; it was fictional only to give myself more control.

New City, on the other hand, I know very little about. I’ve seen some of the major places and glanced down a couple of side streets. I can tell you basically where in the world it is (like new heroine’s name, it’s a toss-up between two places, although this time they’re kind of close), but that’s about it. I don’t know when it was founded, or what happened even just a few weeks ago. All I know is what I’ve seen.

I like that. Not knowing is the best thing to have ever happened to my writing.

So the next time your Muse only gives you only a sentence or the name of a character, don’t complain about having writer’s block. Don’t scream and demand it give you more information.

Instead, go to your favorite place to write, kick up your feet, and run with that spark your Muse has given you. It’s your job to turn that spark into a roaring fire, not theirs. And who knows? Maybe that little spark will be the best thing ever to have happened to your writing, too.

P.S. My shirt today is really yellow. It looked regular yellow in the store, but when I put it on this morning it was like WHOA yellow. Just thought you all should know.

Hey, look! It's one of them things...

2010-06-06T19:55:00.002-04:00

I've seen a lot of Blogfests floating about the interwebs amongst fellow writerlies in the past few months (mostly because Mia is addicted to them and joins every single one) and even considered joining a few, but never did. In some cases this was because life got ZOMGWTFAUXBBQSAUCEWENTTOHELLINAHANDBASKETLIKEAZOMBIEINATUTUSINGINGSKIPTOMYLUONTHEFOURTHOFJULYWHILETHECRIMEANWARISFOUGHTINASEWER busy. In most cases, though, it was simply because I do not respond well to prompts. At all. I was once given the assignment to write a story that involved a turtle, and I was so anti-turtle I wrote a 30 page short story that had a very fleeting mention of turtle stew buried in it. So buried, no one even noticed until I pointed it out.

Lately, however, Sarah has been totally non-cooperative and I haven't written a word of fiction since mid-April. It has steadily been driving me up the wall to the point where I just kind of want to hurtle my typewriter, laptop, notepads, and pens into a supernova. Or at the very least an incredibly active volcano. The solution my brain cooked up to this problem was to force Sarah to talk, and I figured a Blogfest ought to do the trick since it's all about writing...except I couldn't think of anything.

The point of this probably long ramble-full intro is that you all have Mia to thank for this one, since she cooked up the idea but didn't want to host it and (sort of) prodded me into hosting duties. So, to shut myself up now, let's get on with the actual details of the blogfest.

Weather Blogfest

This baby is tentatively being set for Saturday, August 14th. May move it to the next day, but probably won't. Anyway the date doesn't matter much. Entries a day or two late are no big deal, just, like, don't add yourself a week or two after the date, y'know?

Some Rules
1. Obviously given the theme/nature of this thing your piece must feature the weather in some way. And I mean feature. It doesn't have to be exclusively about the weather, but no doing to the weather what I did with turtle stew. If you do I will hunt you down with red shells.
2. Like I said, date of entry doesn't matter too much as long as you don't go whoa overboard, but it would be nice if you could sign up by the date.
3. Equally, I don't really care about the length of the entry. I trust you all to have the good sense to not write a piece that's a sentence long or the length of a novel, but really so long as you can strike some sort of middle ground, your word count doesn't matter to me. It's the writing itself I care about.
4. Link back to here because I'm an attention who...I mean, so people can use the handy dandy list to hop around to other entries. Yep, let's roll with that one.
5. Enjoy yourselves (or I will sick Will Munny on you)

At the moment, there are no prizes, folks. I am a poor unemployed teenager. Unless you can find something that will not exceed $2, I have no money with which to finance anything. At present. This may change in the future, so will make effort to notify you peeps. So until then, you guys win the prize of my admiration.

That's all folks. Go out there and have fun.

And just in case anyone hasn't figured it out already, Sarah is my soon-to-be ex Muse. Lately we've been doing nothing but shouting at one another, and it's to the point where I'm going to write Management demanding a new, more cooperative Muse.

This episode wins forever

2010-06-06T08:45:00.001-04:00

To begin with, I just want to point something out. Fairly early in the episode, when Vincent is (apparently) strung out on coffee, he mentions being able to hear the colors. This leapt out at me immediately. Maybe it was added after the fact, or maybe Richard Curtis genuinely believes van Gogh may have had synesthesia. Just in case you haven’t clicked the link, synesthesia is a rather interesting condition where the mind confuses which senses go where. (In fact, I only heard of it because of an episode of House that was on the other day; really recommend it, actually, and I don’t even like House)

Now, from the get-go I was ecstatic about this episode. Way back last year when stuff was leaking about this season, the mention of a Richard Curtis episode had me giddy. Sure, I was a little wary, but I generally enjoy Curtis’ work and it was entirely possible it would be one of the lighter episodes they throw in there that has little to no mention of the series arc. Then we heard in an interview with Curtis that his episode featured van Gogh stabbing a yellow monster, and my excitement only mounted. A great writer writing about my favorite painter for my favorite show? What could possibly go wrong?

And I’m quite happy to say that did not tempt fate.

Vincent and the Doctor is by far the best standalone episode of this season. I haven’t watched the Time of Angels/Flesh and Stone in a while, so I don’t feel comfortable saying it’s better or worse than that, so for now we’ll say the two stories occupy the same space at the top of the list.

Since coming back, the New Series has been much more about grand adventures and monsters of the week than about character pieces. Even the more character driven pieces, like Paul Cornell’s two-part adaptation of his own novel, Human Nature, were much on the side of grand adventure and monsters of the week than the great character piece of the book (which, by the way, is free to read on the BBC website; another highly recommended). Vincent and the Doctor, however, really is more about Vincent van Gogh than monsters or adventure. That isn’t to say the monsters don’t exist, but the monster of this piece plays little into the story, yet at the same time plays a pivotal role.

Initially I had said I thought they only included the Krafayis because it was a requirement of the New Series, but on second viewing something occurred to me, something I’m surprised I missed the first time out. The Krafayis operates as a double metaphor. On the one hand, the Krafayis is a depiction of his madness. A beast only he can see, and only he reacts to. But then on the other hand, it’s a mirror for Vincent himself. Perhaps because it was blind, the Krafayis was abandoned on Earth by its pack whilst they ran off into the stars to go find new grounds to hunt. Vincent himself was an outcast throughout his life, in part because of his madness. (And of course, in the episode, we get the lovely line, “He’s drunk, he’s mad, and he never pays his bills”.) The one that really should have set off my senses to the Krafayis-as-Vincent bit is a little line after they return to Vincent’s home where the artist tells the Doctor that he fears he may not be able to defeat his own monsters without the Doctor’s assistance.

In one of the previews for this episode – I believe it may have been SFX’s or Digital Spy’s – this episode was called a love letter to van Gogh. I can think of no words better to describe this episode, and as a love letter, it works beautifully.

It’s also quite easy to see just why van Gogh would be chosen for a love letter of an episode. Indeed, van Gogh has gone on to become one of the most popular painters, if not the most popular (I dare you to show me someone who hasn’t at least seen some of his works), but van Gogh really was a pioneer of the art world. Prior to Vincent van Gogh, art was beautiful, but at the same time dull. For centuries, art was religious, or depicted life, or a blend of the two. Some movements, such as Romanticism (my personal favorite), are undoubtedly beautiful to look at, but they still adhere to fairly realistically portrayed things in realistic color schemes, and when there is a metaphor in the work, it’s often made fairly obvious. At around the same time van Gogh was alive, artists in Paris began to play around with how they portrayed things and thus came Impressionism (the most famous impressionist being Claude Monet). Vincent van Gogh, however, was one of history’s earliest post-impressionists. Post-impressionism, simply, is Impressionism which rejects the limitations of the form (compare a Monet to a van Gogh and you will plainly see what I mean). Couple that with what was summed up beautifully in Nighy’s speech at the end of the episode, and it’s hard to think why van Gogh wouldn’t have been chosen as the artist of choice (so many other artists, after all, have had mental issues).

Sure, this episode is not without its cheese. The end, from when the Doctor takes van Gogh to 2010 to the painting which reads “For Amy”, is one big cheese-fest. It’s a good kind of cheese though. It’s the kind of cheese that makes you smile and feel all fuzzy inside. (One thing does continue to perplex me, though. Both Irises and the third repetition of Vase with Twelve Sunflowers are in the Musee d’Orsay, while the former is in the Getty Museum and the latter is in the Philadelphia Museum of Art, unless it was supposed to be a special exhibition.)

One of the nice narrative touches to this episode comes at the end, with the revelation that the Doctor can’t always save everyone. In the past, this was touched upon from time to time – such as in Warriors of the Deep, where the humans, Silurians, and Sea Devils eradicate one another – but really, in the New Series, especially over the course of Tennant’s tenure, we came to focus more and more on how the Doctor could inspire people to become something better. Even in last week’s episode we got that. And yes, the notion that the Doctor cannot always save everyone was touched upon in Amy’s Choice, but only touched upon. Here, it plays a central role, as in that earlier Peter Davison serial. That moment when Amy hurries back to the Musee d’Orsay expecting to hear van Gogh lead a long and fruitful life, expecting to see hundreds of new paintings, and then finding things exactly as they were, only not quite exactly, works beautifully.

The whole episode is peppered with nice touches. The palette of the episode looks as if it was ripped from van Gogh himself, and Confidential reveals that Campbell and his staff deliberately did everything in van Gogh colors, right down to the costumes of everyone but the Doctor and Amy. One touch I really loved, however, was van Gogh’s introduction to the TARDIS. Everything about that. For one, the Doctor finds the TARDIS covered in posters and what does he do? Create enough of a rip to open the door and carries on as is, allowing the posters to burn off in the time vortex. That’s grand. But you know what I loved even more? van Gogh’s reaction to the TARDIS. Think about it. We sort of got the “bigger on the inside” deal with Meera Syal’s character, but it never had the chance to really soak in, because it was into the TARDIS and down we go. Here, van Gogh does the usual routine, and it just made me beam. Don’t get me wrong, I like it when characters aren’t surprised by it (my favorite is still when Grace enters the Eighth Doctor’s TARDIS and immediately recognizes it as dimensionally transcendental), but like the Doctor, I do enjoy the occasional “it’s bigger on the inside”.

Of course, I would very much have loved it if they had pulled an Aztecs or a Marco Polo and made it a straight historical piece, with the Doctor and Amy just going back in time and encountering van Gogh in the final months of his life. Oh, that would just be brilliant, wouldn’t it? Of course they could never go into too much detail about certain subjects, pre- or post-watershed, given the nature of the programme, but it still would have been marvelous. That said, what we received here was equally marvelous, and much as I would have loved a straight historical piece, I wouldn’t trade this episode for the world.

I can carry on, and on, and on with the praise, friends, but I think you get the point. Vincent and the Doctor is a beautiful, brilliant episode of Doctor Who. Without a doubt, one of the must-watches for the New Series, and maybe even for the show overall.

In which we ramble

2010-06-05T19:20:00.008-04:00

I come bearing a gift for all of you! Download it from Megaupload, Rapidshare, or File Dropper.

After nearly four hours of editing things, I have come to hate my voice even more. So yeah, sorry if it makes your ears bleed any. Also, Mia, your voice is fine. Seriously. In terms of editing, I mostly only cut the long periods of us just making background noises. A couple of questions hit the floor, but most of them were jokes that would never have made it in. A very slim few questions asked seriously did go kaput, because I decided I didn't like them after all (also there may have been some that got lost in the seas of silence). Also I'm considering compiling all of the more amusing bits that were spliced into one thing, so keep an out for that. And finally, you have no idea how evil it was to make this thing. Skype died like twenty times. And a fire alarm went off. Pure. Chaos.

I think everything is fine. If I accidentally put a question between two halves of answer, I apologize, but again, I'm pretty sure it's clean. So, there you go lads. Enjoy it. Oh, and look out for the special treat at the end.

And yes, the interview is bad. I tried my best to make it sound not bad, but it is bad. Even ignoring the various wrecks we encountered along the way, it's bad. You have been warned.

So far as I can tell the mp3 file now works, so I've uploaded it and provided some mirrors, in case one of the sites, for whatever reason, does not work for you.

If anyone's curious, here there be samples of the painter's works, and here be his website.

Writer

2010-06-01T12:54:00.005-04:00

It seems like one of the hardest things for people to do is to call themselves a writer. (There's even a whole discussion about it on the Bransforums)

This is understandable. Saying you're a writer when you're unpublished is bound to get puzzled looks and the odd sneer. Saying you're a writer when you've only had a couple of small things published is bound to be met in the same way. To a lot of the world, you're not a writer if you aren't at the Stephenie Meyer sales level.

I like to look at it in a different way.

I look at writing like being a trannie.

A transgender is someone who identifies with the opposite gender. Gender, you see, is a state of mind; your personality. If it is dominated by predominantly masculine traits, you are said to be a boy, for example. By contrast, a transexual is someone who has had their sex — the physical bits that identify them as male v female — altered.

Sex is what you are. Gender is what you identify with.

The next time someone asks you what you do: Pause and think.

You could tell them you're a professor. But are you really a professor?

Are you a writer?

Guest Post : Mia the crazy one

2010-05-30T14:56:00.000-04:00

*Zombie hands drag Nick away*

THIS BLOG HAS BEEN TAKEN OVER

OH NOOOO!

*Mia coughs*

Guess I'll have to step in. I'm not that bad am I?

(I DID NOT tell the Zombies to do that, they just did… *shakes head* bad bad Zombies)

So *ahem* kind of weird writing for a blog I gave an award to but I'll give it my best shot because I'd like to think this could become say maybe a fortnightly thing or something. If we do well that is.*whispers* Please help me do well.

This is an honour because Nick is like one of the first bloggers I started stalking so I'm not certain how to do him justice. I mean, I gave him awards and everything.

So, he reluctantly admitted I could write about AGE after I bamboozled him with words and begging and promises and then offered cookies. So

Why Age is just a number baby

(from h's profile at www.flickr.com)

Age, it's a thing we put great emphasis on in our culture. Whether it be for age restricted purchases or breaking world records, for some reason those numbers beside our name are given great significance. Especially on i.d.'s. Which I find irritating because quite frankly I can't remember my exact age. I told somebody I was eighteen the other week.

ON ACCIDENT I SWEAR.

And they believed me, which sort of hurts because I'm twenty this year.

Anywaddles, age is something we pay attention to because we sort of have to. In societies where counting the passing of time is important, you're kind of lost without an age. Or, maybe I should say, you feel lost without an age. You've got to have somewhere to start counting from.

But I guess I'm here today to tell you that those numbers they don't mean squat. At least, not as much as you think they do.

Those little number ticking away beside your name, next time they wave menacingly at you say it. Say what you should have been saying all along. You know, twirl round and say something like

"OMG stop waving, would you?!"

and then

"DO YOU EVEN HAVE ARMS?!"

but really

"You can't hold me back."

and

"Also I sort of dislike you. Sorry about that."

(from m's profile at www.flickr.com)

Um, so I respect age. Let's get that straight. I love to talk to people with stories, with tales you wouldn't believe but that you can see they treasure as much as you do. The possessing of wisdom is something to be respected but it strikes me sometimes that some people don't understand the general concept of life. We don't accumulate it at the same rate as other people. Some people live a whole lifetime in a year and some don't do that in 50. It's different for different people.

I recently read a comment on a post referring to the fact the author was perhaps too young and inexperienced to write a novel. Now, outraged young and naive little me actually understood the argument.

Life gives us experience and experience provides the ability to write.

So I could see that maybe some people think that means the higher the number from the day you were born the more insight you have into the world around us. If only. If only it were truly that simple.

(from h's profile at www.flickr.com)

I'm going to go ahead and speak from the heart here. I know I'm new at this game, I'm a noob and I respect that. I look around and I see old hands toiling away and helping me through things I don't quite get yet. I can only express my undying gratitude towards those people. I'm so lucky to know them, to know you. No really.

But I gotsta be honest here and say young writers aren't all bad.

I see some really amazing ones out there today and I don't sit and think "Gah, they haven't lived" because I realise that that number beside their name is pretty irrelevant. In truth I usually think "Gosh, think how much THEY HAVE SEEN to be able to write this. THAT'S SOME CRAZY LIFE"

Also I hope I'm not thought of as inexperienced. We all go through things, we all live. I'm nineteen but sometimes it feels like I've lived an age.

Equally, you don't have to be young to start a career in writing. Why do you have to be young? Who says you can't have had a long and fruitful life before you pick up the pen? My dear, wonderful, and would you believe it, more adventurous than me OMG we get on like a HOUSE on FIRE though, Gran writes the most haunting and sometimes shocking short stories. She's 72.

So next time you start to panic,next time those numbers get rowdy, just remember that Mary Shelley was 19 when she wrote Frankenstein and Agatha Christie 85 when she wrote her last book. Both of them are considered classics, both of them are great. Neither of them gave a toss about those silly numbers.

(I researched, yes actually researched for this post and found extra reading material. Here's an article that suggests "50" is a good novel writing age, and here's one about Oyeyemi who was 18 when she wrote a haunting tale considered very powerful.Comments, ideas and thoughts are most welcome. These are only my nonsensical ramblings...ALSO, if you comment then maybe I'll be allowed to come back. SAVE MY GUEST BLOGGING FUTURE! *coughs* Or, you know, just be honest)

It's a threesome!

2010-05-30T00:00:00.001-04:00

No, not that sort. Get your mind out of the gutter. Instead, what we've got, is a three-way review of this week's episode of Doctor Who. If I remember correctly, the States is two weeks behind the UK on transmission this year, so that means Amy's Choice has aired at some point tonight, or will air, or something. I don't know the schedule. Point is, if you're watching the US broadcast and are not up-to-date with the UK and us netwatchers, my thoughts may be found here.

Doctor Who: Cold Blood
Review by Nick

So, the Silurians continue to look more like green Jem’Hadar than Silurians. They ought to have painted those masks green and not made them masks. Face like that really works better, though they would still be quite too human.

It’s nice to see Cretaceans who aren’t the rabid bloodthirsty beasts we got last episode, but I’m still not wild about them. In Doctor Who and the Silurians the Silurians were existing in relative peace in the caves, and even getting along relatively fine with the humans. In fact, it’s really not until the Brigadier and the Doctor arrive and begin probing that things begin to go awry. And Warriors of the Deep, interesting invention of the Myrka aside, involved Silurians and Sea Devils uniting to defend their corner of the sea from two opposing superpowers locked in a cold war. Whether or not either of these stories is “good” is ultimately up to you, though personally I quite enjoy the former and while the latter is by no means my favorite, it has its moments.

The Silurians here are painted as being a bit like those in Doctor Who and the Silurians, with one faction wanting to eradicate all humans, and the other faction wanting to attempt coexistence. The difference is, while the Silurians were never exactly the most developed characters in the world, both factions had some degree of depth in the original. Here, they mostly come across as fairly one-dimensional in their goals, like last week.

That said, Cold Blood is a big improvement over last week.

It still feels like a holdover from the Russel T Davies era, and the Eleventh Doctor still doesn’t feel like the Eleventh Doctor we’ve come to know, but it’s better. In its weakest moments, this feels like it belongs in David Tennant’s one good season – his first. The rest of the time, it feels like Christopher Eccleston should be inhabiting this. Thinking on it, the Silurians seem like the perfect enemy for Eccleston’s Doctor as well. I know they say this was penned because Moffat was like “Hey, how about we bring back those Silurians?” but I can’t shake the feeling that this was at least outlined during the RTD days and brought up again, in one way or another, when the Moff came on board.

The Hungry Earth is definitely the lowest of the season so far (no pun intended) and Cold Blood doesn’t bring us back a lot, but it does offer some degree of redemption, in terms of story. Not at all wild about the narration, though. Really, seriously could have done without that. Bad flashbacks to Timothy Dalton (who, bless him, does the best he can with the material; fortunately he knew exactly what sort of story he was in).

So, back to the niggles for a mo:

Meera Syal is still the weak link in the cast. While none of the guest performances are genius, and teary-Ambrose is bordering on narm, Syal comes across as a lightweight in both parts. Screams of stunt casting if you ask me. The music is for the most part good, but not Gold’s best. Often too noticeable, which may be in part the fault of the story for being totally engaging, but some blame must go to the music. Plus there was that awkward lack-of-transition in cues when the Doctor leaves Meera and Tony.

Also, kind of wasted opportunity by making Ambrose be the one to kill Alaya. Obvious choice. Tony would’ve been a safe bet, too, given his condition. I was really hoping one or both of them would come in with intent to kill and Rory would come in to stop them and end up accidentally killing her in the process of disarming the would-be murderer. Still, it works.

And that’s really all I have to say in either direction about this episode. Big improvement over last week, but not big enough. I do have one more complaint in mind, but it’s not specific to this episode, and I kind of want to hold out until the season finale before I voice this piece which has been digging at my brain, because there may yet be a very good reason behind it (and I hope so).

Very much looking forward to next week’s episode. Have been since it was first announced actually. Favorite painter? Check. Great writer? Check. Fantastic looking trailer? Oh, you bet your sweet can. Title may not be the greatest in the history of history but, please, bring! It! On!

Review by Amy
Like Nick, I’ve only been a fan of Dr Who since 2005, but i went back and watched the classic series on DVD and online after i started getting into it. Ever since i started watching the classics, the Third Doctor has been my favorite. For me, the classic Silurian story is one of the best episodes of Pertwee’s very solid era (tho i have noticed Malcolm Hulke seemed to love dinosaurs). So my feelings about this week’s episode, and last week’s, are less than grand. I won’t say much about last week, just that i didn’t like it. This week is deffers a leg up, but not a big leg up. Eldane is pretty much a carbon copy of the original Silurian leader. Restac is one dimensional ape hate, which not even the original kill-all-humans Silurian was. There’s the scientist who wants to coexist because humans have evolved from being stupid monkeys. And Matt Smith again turns in a great performance, but he feels kind of weak in the scenes where he’s behaving as the mediator between the sides because…really because he lacks the sense of gravitas Pertwee managed to bring to similar scenes. Pertwee made it feel like there was real seriousness to the discussions. Smith makes it feel like a game. Unfortunately, this is what happens when you ape a forty-year old classic. I’m sure the kids will all love it, but i just can’t get into it when it was done so much better in 71. At the very least they could’ve done a better job of hiding it. Last complaint…i did not care at all for squeaky bum time. Fergie quotes belong with Nine and Ten not Eleven. Much as i rag on it, it was fun tho. A good way to kill an hour but no chance of being viewed as a particularly good episode by me.

Review by Mia
I am, in no way, very well versed in Doctor Who facts. I'm a fan, yes, but am incredibly bad at retaining facts. Please keep that in mind as you read my initial thoughts on the subject of this week's episode.
So it was better than last week, that was my first thought as I watched Matt Smith gallivant around in front of me. Much better. But then again maybe I have forgotten what last week was like.

I stayed interested in the plot throughout and even cared during the tense moments. Perhaps not as much as I should, I mean when the Humans yet again failed the Doctor I sort of felt a little bored. They're always doing that you know. I wouldn't mind but that was clearly a trap.

Even the script was mildly better with moments like "FAB" during the peace talk obvs making me giggle a little because Matt's version of the Doctor ticks all the buttons for me. I don't know, maybe he was being himself this week. None of that silly David Tenant scripting?

The ending was the best part, and by that I mean the Oooh crack appeared and Oooh a piece of the Tardis NOT the let's send them to sleep for 1000 years because clearly by then the ALIENS YOU'RE SENDING TO SLEEP (well, into suspended animation but whatevs) will have stopped being aggressive by then. Sure.

No, it was the reoccurring theme I was interested in. And, shamefully, the "next time" sequence appealed to me more than the whole episode did. Don't get me wrong, t'was a good'en it's just that next week looks to be better.
Robbie dying? Not so much. Don't want to sound like the harshest most cynical person to ever have existed ever but, um, it was like they needed him out of the way to continue the Doctor-Amy relationship. She chose him, so he had to go otherwise the Doctor did. And they're never going to kill off the doctor. Well, at least not yet anyway.

What?

Just pointing out the obvious.

So, um... that's all. Better get back to my supposed Guest post :S

Inquiry

2010-05-28T03:00:00.002-04:00

Sorry about the title. Habit I picked up from Data.

Anyway, I have an idea -- sort of an expansion of an idea, actually -- and was wondering if anyone was up for it.

Remember how a little bit back I suggested Writerly Skype Chats out of a combo of boredom/revisiting Skype for the first time in a while? Don't worry if you don't. Not overly important.

This, however, has spawned New Idea.

Last summer, a friend and I were going to run a weekly podcast of reviews, discussions, whatever. Just kinda the two of us talkin about stuff. Got all the necessary websites and everything set up, and we even contacted (and got the okay from) the person we wanted as our first guest. The plans never finalized for a variety of reasons I shan't go into here.

But, my dear writerly friends, this is where New Idea comes in.

Audio interviews with you writerlies.

I could set up another account on the site where we were gonna host stuff last time (completely lost all my old info, alas) and get the old recording software and everything, and all you would have to do is like, Insider the Actor's Studio it via Skype, (so I guess Inside the Writer's Studio?) and then I could embed it here, or if the site won't let me embed, provide streaming and/or download links. Maybe a combination of whatever it lets me do.

If New Idea sounds worth pursuing, scheduling matters and stuff can be worked out later. If not, that's totes awesome too.

Now pardon me while I strive for six-ish hours of sleep.

Worlds to get lost in

2010-05-27T17:00:00.000-04:00

Every day when I walk home from school, I cut through a field behind a little local radio station. There are narrow patches which are neatly mowed, running from the back door to a radio tower and from there to the next tower and so on. Everything else they just let grow. What has resulted is wonderful to walk through. (and no, that's not it. I wish it were. That was borrowed from flickr, but I now cannot remember the account. whoops)

One has to wear long pants to walk through there because of the underbrush. Razor grass and poison ivy make up pretty much the whole of it, with a few branches of thorns sticking out here and there. There's a lot of wheat that grows in brief expanses, and so far as I can conclude it along with the thrust of the field probably were crapped out by birds. The most prevalent plant in this field, however, is a combination of maize and millet. There's about knee-high budding maize plants all the way through, and then sticking up in the gaps between the maize plants are breast-high plants of millet. I don't know what kind of millet it is exactly, just that it's not common millet.

See, I know where this one came from.

It really is a beautiful little place. It's just a shame it's so little. It takes eight minutes to walk through there, and that's only because the plants are growing so thick together, and I refuse to trample down a path. Some people might even call it an inspiring place.

But I do not.

I do not even think when I walk through that field. I just turn off my brain, hold out my arms, and let my fingertips brush over the millet and the wheat as I force my way through this field.

And what about you, writerlies? Any such places for you?

This is the greatest nerd project in the history of nerd projects

2010-05-26T13:45:00.004-04:00

And here's a trailer some chaps edited using the above material:

The BBC needs to commission this guy. Immediately.

And yes I said this guy. Dunno about the original voice work (some audio has plainly been ripped from episodes), but all of the animation is just one man.

Once More Unto the Breach, Dear Friends

2010-05-23T02:06:00.010-04:00

Doctor Who: The Hungry Earth

Okay, first things first. The new Silurians are rubbish. The new Daleks are slightly awkward in proportion at first, but you get used to them. Making them giant was awesome and the being the Classic Who lover I am, the deliberate nod to the Peter Cushing films (aka Amazing Technicolor Daleks) make me quite happy. The Cybus Industries Cybermen are a nice update while maintaining a Mondasian look. And the new Sontarans actually look like Sontarans instead of funny men in rubber suits. The point, ladies and gentlemen, is that up to this point, Doctor Who has had a pretty good track record of updating the looks of its monsters. The Silurians, however, look nothing like Silurians.

What happened there? The Silurians are supposed to look fish-y not like something out of Star Trek: Voyager. Standard “humanoid lizard” is lazy. And just not Silurian. Not. At. All. I would say Jon Pertwee would be ashamed but he was against reviving the series after it was put on indefinite hiatus in 1989. Also he’s busy being dead.

Yes, yes, I get that these Silurians are meant to be a different branch of the same species and all but really that’s just a hand wave. Point is the new Silurians look bad.

Anyway, new Silurian-dislike aside, it’s official. We have our first piece of crap of the Matt Smith era. Like I said last week, The Beast Below and Victory of the Daleks may have been undercooked and The Vampires of Venice definitely wasted an opportunity to see the return of the Great Vampires, but they were still damn entertaining outings.

Not so here. In fact, my video stopped working at 29:32, and I was indifferent. I was indifferent. Never in the history of Doctor Who have I been indifferent. Even during the godawful moments of the Russel T Davies era, even when it was so godawful I would rather suffer all the torments of Hell than sit through his shite, if my video stopped I would have been shouting all manner of obscenities and desperately scrambling to make it work again. I tried twice, and when it didn’t work, I closed the window and went on to something else. (I did come back about ten minutes later, and then had to wait forever for it to buffer enough to get to where I was, and by the time I hit play again I was considering going to bed and just starting over in the morning)

That is a big problem.

And speaking of the Russel T Davies era, this whole episode feels like a holdover from those days. For one thing, the Eleventh Doctor is behaving wildly out of character. Sure, we’re still new to the man, but at this point, he’s settled into his body and his basic behaviors are pretty much set in stone. The only way those should change is if there’s a very radical situation that demands it. Instead, what we get is the Tenth Doctor. I see nothing whatsoever in the writing of Eleven. Many times it deliberately takes from Ten, and other times the dialogue feels like Chibnall wrote Ten and then simply toned down the manic. Everything about this episode, though, feels like it belongs with David Tennant. I wouldn’t be at all surprised to learn on Confidential that Chibnall originally wrote this for those days and it was one of many scripts RTD disposed of. If not…

The worst part, really, is that I didn’t have particularly high expectations going into this. I have seen one thing – only the one – written by Chris Chibnall before this. You know what that was? 42. Yeah, that episode. On paper it sounds brilliant. Spaceship about to hurtle into the sun with 42 minutes to get things up and running and stop the solar monster thing that is quite literally vaporising people. How can that possibly go wrong? But it did. Initially I just chalked it up to the Third Series. I thought DT was good – not great, but good – in Series Two but in Series Three his acting defaulted to Large Ham and the already shaky writing went down the tube, and so began a period of ever increasing desire to see Tennant’s era end. In all seriousness, by the time Tennant announced his departure, I was practically praying for the show to go back on indefinite hiatus instead of carry on as it was.

And then of course we find out from RTD himself that he rewrote everything. And I mean rewrote everything. Not just a bit of touching up to keep things in line with his vision. Oh no. According to RTD, at least 60% of an episode was rewritten, and in often cases he completely rewrote episodes and left little to nothing of the author’s original work. So after that revelation I was willing to chalk up 42 and the other non-RTD stinkers to being mediocre-at-best at first and then having been utterly raped by Davies.

This episode puts that to death. I know nothing of Chibnall’s work elsewhere, but for the love of god keep him away from Doctor Who. In terms of writing, I can find nothing about this story to praise. Not even vaguely.

Of course, some of the problem comes from the marketing itself. We’ve all known for ages the Silurians/Eocenes were coming back. Unfortunately, this whole episode is pretty much contingent on us not knowing. I mean, once we know, what the hell is there for us to enjoy? The view, and that’s about it. Thank god for micro-shorts and the Welsh countryside.

I’ve seen some people say it’s a very Classic Who story, but it isn’t, friends. It just isn’t. This is RTD Who hamfisting as many Jon Pertwee references as it can into an hour. Add to that characters behaving out of character, utter pointlessness (why have future Amy/Rory standing on a distant hill? Guarantee you that will not come up again, at all), lack of suspense, or really anything else, and what we have, friends, is forty-three minutes of hot air.

Thank god for the performances. Matt Smith, as always, is utterly brilliant, although he comes off a bit worse than usual here – probably because of the Tennant-ness of the script in an episode where he isn’t meant to be acting like David Tennant (although how brilliantly did he do that, eh?). Arthur Darvill and Karen Gillan do equally well with what they’re given, but it’s not much and what’s there isn’t particularly good.

I will say this about the story: It is a two parter, and often with these kinds of shows, the second part is the stronger of the two. Judging by the setup here and the Next Time, though, it’s not going to be one for the history books. Anyone else getting the whole Star Wars vibe from some of the shots in the trailer?

Going back to the redesign thing for a sec, you know what my biggest issue with the new Silurian look is? It’s not even the fact that it’s just so extremely very not good. These Silurians are too damn human. The whole point of their species if that they are what came before. They should be as far removed from humanity as possible. And now we have humanoid lizards. Massive misstep indeed. I mean, how can you take a she-Silurian hissing about killing damn dirty apes seriously when she looks like one of the apes she wants to kill?

It boggles the mind, friends, how the ball could have been dropped so hard. Even with The End of Time – the ridiculous big ball of everything that made the Russel T Davies era bad – I found things beyond performances to praise. Even in the so-incredibly-bad-why-did-you-make-this-a-standalone-opener End of Time Part One had things beyond performances to praise (although not many). Not since the Series Four finale have I been so put off by an episode of Doctor Who.

And I’m just repeating myself. Over and over and over. Because unfortunately that’s all I have to say and I feel like this should have some degree of length.

Verdict: The script is clunky at best and a holdover of one of the weaker RTD episodes at worst, the new Silurian design is just bad, and another episode that had the potential to be a great Classic-style story has been wasted (let’s face it, Cold Blood won’t be picking up those pieces). If you haven’t already watched it, avoid at all costs.

Oh, and one last minute addendum: While this episode definitely would still have been quite very bad, they made a mistake by scheduling it after the brilliance of last week's episode. Putting the Silurians after Venice and then having the Dream Lord probably would have worked out better in the long run.

Elections & Cowboys

2010-05-20T10:35:00.026-04:00

I realize even though I said I would be quiet I'm posting fairly regularly here still, but really I am being quiet. You're just (un)fortunate enough to be in the place where I'm making the most noise.

Anyway here's what's up lately:

I realize just about all of you are apolitical *angryfist* and it's really nothing super fantabulously special but on Tuesday I did vote in the primaries. I had to delay my voting because of the rain, which upset me a bit. See, originally, we had off on Primary Day, and the plan was wake at 7, shower at 11-ish, walk up to polling station, vote, walk up to Gamestop, come home and play Red Dead Redemption for rest of day. Then they said we had school and the plan became go to school, walk across street to Gamestop, walk down to polling station, come home and play Red Dead Redemption for rest of day.

But it was raining, Writerlies. Like, hurricane force raining. I seriously thought I might die whilst I walked home. Also I got covered in like ninety feet of water. Sure, they can't turn people away but I felt like if I turned up that drenched it would just look bizarre. And crazy. Mostly the crazy. So I went home and had to wait like four hours and I didn't have Red Dead Redemption and the anxiety, Writerlies, is fatal.

But then I finally did I go to vote at like six-ish and I felt like such an idiot. I'd gone with my mom into the polling station when I was a little kid, but I was like five and I just followed her and got to push the buttons and then our neighbor, who works the polls, gave me a cookie.

This time I'm going in on my own having no idea of what I do prior to going into the booth. There's an old guy out front with green papers, and people standing in the doorway on opposite flanks (who turned out to be representatives of each party and you could talk to the people from your party if you wanted, and I did though mostly because I had no idea of where to go or who to talk to) and then there's like six tables in different ends of the room and none of them are labeled so I had to spend time finding just where I was supposed to sign in. And then when I did all that they gave me a little pink slip that said DEMOCRATIC PARTY VOTER and the lady told me to go room 118, which I totally walked past like four times in the process of looking for it. So by the time I actually got into the booth I felt like an idiot, and then I felt really awkward just walking out of the building. All in all it was just kind of awkward. Also in the midst of shaking rain off my hat I accidentally sent it flying across the room and nearly hit one of the polling people in the face, which didn't really help matters.

Afterwards though I did run across the street and buy Red Dead Redemption, which is AN ASTOUNDING GAME AND YOU ALL NEED TO BUY IT RIGHT NOW. I've been playing it as much as I can, but it hasn't been a whole lot because right now I have a history project that was due last Friday that isn't quite complete, I have a history essay that was due yesterday that's nowhere near complete, I have a math project due tomorrow which is nearly complete, I have an English project that was due like two weeks ago that I still haven't finished, and I have a graduation project which is not really even vaguely finished but I gotta roll with what I have because today is the absolute last day I can do the presentation. Good news is it's pretty much impossible to fail.

So right now life is a swirl of chaotic schoolwork and election awkwardness punctuated by the kickassery of cleaning up 1911 Arizona (okay, so the game doesn't name a state, but I like to think it's Arizona).

And no, I'm not telling you who I voted for, you nosey bastards. All I'll say is no one I voted for got the ticket, which is kind of agitating in a weird way. But on the plus side, I know who I'm voting for governor come November.

Silence

2010-05-19T03:00:00.005-04:00

Music is beginning to agitate me.

I've always preferred classical music because it is just so much better. My problem with lyrical music has always been that there's only so much you can actually say, and to add insult to injury, musicians only ever seem to focus on five or six of the possible avenues. When you do find someone who takes a wild path, sometimes you get something ridiculously awesome like Banana Phone but most of the time it's just as bad -- if not worse -- than the stuff that keeps to three roads. Classical music, meanwhile, affords one the ability to say anything, even things which are impossible to encapsulate with words, and forces one to think of much more clever ways of expressing them.

But even classical music is beginning to drive me up a wall.

Chopin has always been, and very much still is, my favorite composer. Yet I find I can hardly stand to listen to Chopin most of the time anymore.

Or Brahms. Or Cui. Even composers I wasn't usually much fond of, like Mussorgsky.

I just cannot stand music. Of course, irony likes to play a hand in everything, so I can't stand silence either. Never could, which is why I almost always had some sort of music playing in the background.

I suppose really it's just a temporary thing. Right now, though, music irks me.

Towels

2010-05-17T06:46:00.002-04:00

My towels are fucking evil.

Wait, what? How can towels be evil? That's just ridiculous.

But they are evil. Even moreso on days like today when they've come fresh from the dryer and are all nice and toasty and warm. And that friends is why they're evil. Think for a sec: when do we use towels? When we've come out of the shower.

Now, you might think I don't need toasty towels at this time of year, what with highs in the eighties, but you're wrong there. I wake up at a bit before quarter six on school days. Ten minutes under scalding water, five minutes under freezing water (a habit I picked up from James Bond and I've no intention of going back to my old system). So by the time I've finished showering, there is no light in the sky and I am naked and covered in very cold water.

And so I grab towels. I grab like six of them and turn them into a Tibetan mountaineer's coat. But see here's the problem. It's very very cold in the morning and although I will be not-as-cold once I've dressed, it's really fucking cold while I'm in the process of dressing. So I don't want to leave my towels. Especially when they're fresh from the dryer.

Take today for example.

I clamber into the shower with a pounding skull (thanks to having only gotten about four hours of sleep due to my own stupidity) and am done by about six, maybe a few minutes over. I am sitting here now at 6:43 in the morning still naked, still buried under my pile of toasty towels. Okay, so they're not exactly toasty any more. And what have I done? Play around on twitter. And now stall by writing this.

Fuck you towels. I fucking hate you.

It's because of the blasted towels I'm late whenever it's cold. I think from now on I'm going to keep all of the towels elsewhere and just put one in the bathroom before I get in the shower, so I can't be all wrapped and toasty. That or I'll just sprint in the buff to my room and that'll definitely force me to dress in a hurry.

We'll see what happens.

Meanwhile, fuck you, you damn towels!

Mwahaha

2010-05-16T09:59:00.002-04:00

Although I wiped most of the old stuff, there's still a couple of reviews on here, and I keep meaning to come back and do some more reviews every now and again. And I don't. And I've really been meaning to do one for Doctor Who, and pretty much every episode since The Time of Angels I've been working one out in my head and then never writing. But, Writerly Friends, this week's episode was just too good to pass up. So I have finally done it, Writerlies. I have gone and reviewed something for the first time in a while. And for anyone who cares, there are some spoilers here. This may or may not become a regular feature; the reviewing of Doctor Who. Reviews in general will pretty much come up whenever I feel like it.

----------------

First off, I have to admit. I had mixed feelings coming into this episode. So far this season, the first of the non-Moffat penned episodes was under baked (and really could have done with a two-parter, or the good old fashioned serial format), and while the second non-Moffat episode was entertaining, we’ve seen it so many times before (and, I think but don’t quote me on it, most of them coming 2005+) it just could never be totally enthralling. Also, it was slightly undercooked in places as well. Guido had the potential to be a great supporting character, and instead we got grumbly black man with an itchy-looking beard who eventually goes boom (in fact Guido was such a non-character I didn’t even know his name until I read reviews of TVOV). So there was that to worry about. In addition, from the moment the first trailers and info starting hitting the web, I saw the ending coming. Not the specifics, but I figured from the get-go that either both worlds were reality and the Dream Lord had some kind of crazy powers that let him do that, or both worlds were dreams and the Dream Lord was having fun tormenting the crew.

But even in spite of that last point, this episode proved to be brilliant. This is another episode I would almost certainly use in a case of “Doctor Who really needs to go back to the serial format”. Because it does, ladies and gentlemen, and it doesn’t need to go back to 25 minute episodes; they did 45 minute serials back in the 80s for a short while. Serials allow more time to tell a more complete story, so in the case of the weak episodes, it provides them a chance to be less weak, and in the case of episodes like these, it allows them to be even more brilliant.

But all things-need-to-be-serial-again aside, this episode was brilliant. Coming from Simon Nye you would expect something more in line with what The Lodger is very likely to be. But no, friends, what we get is a good-old fashioned adventure. And I mean old-fashioned. This episode harks back to some of the best stories of the 1960s (the decade in which Doctor Who saw most of its best stories) – The Edge of Destruction, The Mind Robber, and The Celestial Toymaker (as well as something of a nod to the piece of mid-80s gold, The Trial of a Time Lord) – while remaining firmly its own tale.

The cold open is done beautifully. The initial meeting of the Doctor and friends five years after their travels is great. Were this the RTD era, we’d get a lot of pouty lips about being left behind. Instead, we get three old friends. And the whole Upper Leadworth scenario is utterly believable given what little we know of Amy’s home life (another bonus over the RTD era; by now we would have paid many a visit to Aunt Sharon) and Rory. Same goes for Eleven’s reaction to Amy’s pregnancy. The whole scene – hell, the whole episode – is massively helped along by genuine chemistry between the actors, which is almost certainly in part due to the fact that this was the last episode to be filmed.

The best case for a serial format comes during all that “tweet tweet, time to sleep” business. It is played brilliantly here, and especially as things carry on, the quick flashes work wonders. But the beginning is almost crying for an episode in itself of the Doctor and company snooping around Upper Leadworth because something’s amiss, and then right before cutting to credits show a brief shot of the TARDIS crew waking up around the console. But what we get works geniusly, too, and the serial thing is a brief niggle. And while we’re on the subject of brief niggles, I realize the title probably came after the fact, but in both instances of a character saying “Amy’s Choice” it sounds really hamfisted, especially Rory’s. It’s like that “star trek” line in First Contact. You just want to groan and hit your head.

The direction on this episode is no less genius than the writing. This episode could have been shot a million ways. Further the nod back to The Edge of Destruction with fairly stationary camera work but some clever lighting inside the TARDIS so it feels more like a death trap than our heroes’ home. Turn into Adam Smith (who is a genius and I hope Steven Moffat brings him back at least once every season) and bring out bizarre camera angles and clever turns mid-shot and all of those sorts of genius tics. But instead, instead my friends, director Catherine Morsehead does something quite even more genius. Aside from the odd shot that seems like it belongs in a zombie movie, such as the four pensioners half-staggering across a field towards our heroes, the direction is about as conventional as it gets. I realize to some people that sounds like it should be a criticism, and coming from some people it is – I’ve seen one review where they thought the direction never achieved the right balance between absurdism and nightmare.

Me, though, I think the way direction in this episode is done works brilliantly. You could go for the absurd zombie movie style when we get the rabid pensioners. You could go freaky and nightmare-y inside the TARDIS. But that’s just too easy. Instead, play it plain. Contrast the absurdity of the situation with the simpleness of the camera. It may not have been the director’s intent (though I hope it was), but it works fantastically.

Oh, and one more brief niggle, the music. For the most part, the music is fine. There’s nothing particularly standout about it, but it’s not exactly terrible either. Except in one place. There is one sappy cheesetastic cue which feels more like it belongs in a Nicholas Sparks film than in Doctor Who. I can’t, at the moment, remember where it was. I want to say Rory turning into dust but I’m not entirely sure that’s right. But like I said, brief niggle. In fact, really all I’ve had so far this season are brief niggles. Yes, Victory of the Daleks could have stood by more time, and I would have preferred if Vampires of Venice hadn’t been a rehash, or at least had been a little better fleshed out, but I am more than willing to take what we’ve received, and what we’ve received works fine.

Everything about this episode just gels wonderfully. The marriage of a classic-style story with new series insanity. The simple direction. Everything. It’s not something you would expect from a man whose previous writing credits consist pretty solely of comedy, but it works so wonderfully. Simon Nye did an interview about a week ago with Digital Spy where he said he thought he wouldn’t be asked back. I really, sincerely hope this proves to be false, because Nye’s episode was great. Would I want him back next season? Probably not. In fact, I’d like it if Moffat only wrote two stories (two-part finale and one other episode) next season, and every other episode was written by writers we have yet to see under Moffat’s care, or writers who we have yet to see on Doctor Who (like Neil Gaiman, who has confirmed he’ll be writing something for the first half of the season). But I do still hope Simon Nye returns some day. Comedy may be his career, but that man knows drama.

Coming up in a week: Silurians! Excuse me while I go break out the Jon Pertwee.

A Quick Lesson in Safety

2010-05-15T20:53:00.004-04:00

Always stretch. Always. As I mentioned earlier this week, I managed to injure myself while working out. The large part of this injury comes from something you should never ever do: Use a weighted jump rope barefoot on hard concrete flooring. But! It's also because I didn't stretch. In fact even if I had been smart and used shoes it's possible (though not horribly so) that this would have happened anyway because I didn't stretch anything. So make sure you wear well padded shoes and you stretch before you exercise, folks. Because now I have shin splints. And they hurt like a bitch. Granted, shin splints are nothing overly serious. They're a fairly common injury, especially among sportsfolk. But they hurt. A lot. And they make life difficult because you need to pretty much just rest them and can't run or jump or anything. And then your goddamned cat gets out and you have sprint up and down the poorly-paved very long driveway barefoot trying to catch him, aggravating the injury, which means it'll take longer to heal, at best, and at worst, you may have stress fractures now, which could again be worsened into a fully fractured tibia. Be smart, Writerly Friends, when you exercise. Because just doing is painful. Very, very painful.

But on the plus side, you'll finally have a reason to walk around with a cane that isn't "Because I can, damn it."

Plans, Ideas & Such

2010-05-15T19:06:00.013-04:00

Okay, first of all, here's a bit of fun: Click around. The order of the Amelias changes constantly. Sometimes they flip. Sometimes they're in a row. It's weird. And kind of cool. And yet why is it I never turn up on top?

Right, now, on with the plans and stuff.

Firstly, remember how a while back I said I might do an about me tab and things like that? Yeah, planning to get on that one. Question now is...nope, no need to trouble you with that. All you need to know is it's coming. Soonly-ish. I promise this time. If it's not up by the end of September feel three to throw a brick at me.

Okay, secondly, and this is the biggiekindasortaokaynotreallybutstill an idea occurred to me earlier today while tittering about on my computer. Mentioned it on twitter but not here and I will very probably bring it up over at the Bransforums. Logged into a thing which I have not logged into for a very very long time pretty much just because I good and ding! lightbulb of idea-dom. That lightbulb, writerly friends, is #writerlyfriendskypechat. Yes I did just copypasta my hash tag. To split it up into words: Writerly Friend Skype Chat. Bad idea? Good idea? Thoughts? Cares? Cupcakes? I like cupcakes. If you have any, please find a way of sending them through the computer that doesn't involve a transdimensional vortex. Last time we tried that...well, let's just say the neighbors won't be too happy.

Thirdly, remember my post from yesterday? Of course you do! It's right there below this one. Screw what I said before. I haven't written anything in a long time and my brain is all ker-splat for ideas so we are gonna do it, people. And by we I mean me. Unless you want to be weird with me in which case jump on the gravy boat! Just make sure you bring a biscuit, because if you fall in I am not saving you. So next dream I can even vaguely recall is getting done up into something because I feel like I need to write something ASAP or that part of my brain will asplode forever. And I swear even if it's the crappiest thing ever put to words I will post it here, because I am ~~just that nice.~~ ~~totally masochistic like that.~~ ~~your best friend ever?~~ GOD. Yeah, let's go with that one.

Soze...yeah, that's about it folks. Enjoy your weekend or ~~I shall turn you into a pillar of salt!~~ ~~rabid old folks will turn you into dust.~~ I will hunt you down and love you to death. There we go, that works.

Peace.

Dreams as a springboard?

2010-05-14T18:17:00.000-04:00

I don't think so. Mad props to you if you can do it, but here's three recent dreams I can recall.

1. Friend and I went gallivanting about the universe in a Type 40 TARDIS identical to the Seventh Doctor's with elements of Five's deeper interior. I'll spare the finer details for one could write an entire era of Doctor Who with our adventures.

2. Driving about the north of England while there's a blizzard going on in a hippie minibus. Wound up in some city I can't recall the name of that looked a lot like LOM-style Manchester and Paris had a baby. Part I remember most clearly is I was just sort of walking along, and a couple of tourists were following me because I knew my way around, and I made polite conversation only because they started it. Come to a river/canal thing that somehow overlooked another part of the city without turning into a waterfall (stopped in mid-air, didn't just come to a dead end before the cliff) that I think was meant to be covered in snow. Anyway I decided to screw the bridge and leapt over it easily, and hear a splash, and see the tourists in the water, only it looks more like frothy beer now. Then there are some gaps in memory and I find myself at a small train station, where my now ex-girlfriend from Langholm turned up out of thin air. And I mean, literally out of thin air. Blink-and-you'll-be-teleported-to-the-past kind of thing. Admittedly this would probably be the most readily adaptable into a story.

3. Back when teachers were on strike, dreamt strike had ended, and for some reason we were all getting out of school crazy late at night. It was raining hurricane-level and I missed the bus and was effectively stranded, so my friend Zach and I went back inside. Not to use the telephone, though. Oh no. We went to the library, which for some reason had a slide in it, which lead to a non-extant lower level gift shop, and while I tried to work out since when the school library had a gift shop and why, my friend was complaining that they used to have these toy shark things. Dream then randomly cuts to David Cameron making a campaign-style speech about why the sharks had to be removed, something about them being dangerous, encouraging violence, etc. And mid-speech out of nowhere come like two dozen kids who just bum rush him and start beating him up.

I got some trippy dreams, man. Anyway finally getting round to adding people to the blogging team, and it amuses me so. I'm going to find some way of making a joke about it before the end of the month, mark you me.

And now that the obligatory bad post is out of the way, time for the obligatory Doctor Who:

Makes me want fish custard. Again.

And now the news, at six o'clock...

2010-05-13T06:00:00.031-04:00

Okay, first of all: Wow! What an election that turned out to be, eh? First hung Parliament since Heath, first coalition since World War II, days of intense negotiations, and in the end, David Cameron ended up Prime Minister as he should have. A Conservative majority would have been nice, but I can live with this coalition, and the first full day has given me confidence. Anyone else catch the conference Clegg and Cameron held in the gardens? Whether this coalition holds for five years or five months, you just know it's going to be something special.

Anyway here's what's been going diz-own, and what's on the roll for days to come.

Firsties, the incredibly bonkers Amy asked me to make her part of the blogging team so she can guest from time to time. I still haven't got round to adding her to the list yet, and since she hasn't said a thing I'm assuming she's forgotten. But if/when it does happen, she will be posting here, so if you see a post that's weird in a not-my-weird kind of way, it's either her, me while incredibly sick/intoxicated/none of the above, or we've been hacked. I'm probably going to ask her to post in a different color, just to help differentiate. Again this is all a big if. Now that I've remembered I'm willing, but if she's up and forgotten or has lost interest or whatever, I'm not going to add her. So watch this space.

That said, if at any point any of you want to guest anything at all -- and I mean anything at all. For all I care you can rant about how much you hate soggy cereal (I'll let you work it out) -- feel free to get in contact with me and we'll work something out. Not sure I'm going to be adding anyone to the list of blog team persons blogger lets me form, but as the past week has shown, anything can happen.

In other news, I'm a moron. Just in case anyone speaks Welsh out there, no, I did not just call myself a carrot. To get back into shape I follow a very rigorous routine, which for the most part stays the same, just some additions, subtractions, or modifications at different times of year. For example, it's hard to run outside when there's a foot of snow on the ground. So I hit the treadmill for specific time periods depending upon if I have school or not that day. Also there's possibly going to be the addition of skinny dipping this winter, as TR went skinny dipping in winter and if TR did it, everyone should do it, for TR was the epitome of Man. But yeah, one of the things I do is bare knuckle boxing. Used to do it all the time. Got out of the habit (just like all my other exercises, hence why I'm out of shape) and hands aren't quite as tough as they used to be. So I went back to it, and five straight nights of practice, my hands finally can't take the abuse. Been getting cuts and bruises all along, that's to be expected, but I managed to wreck my right leg with the weighted rope last night (for the record, the handles are 10 lbs each and the "rope" is 5 lbs of cowhide, so I'm sure you can imagine how that feels when you misstep) and so as I go to give a right hook, my leg flares up, I flinch, and completely tear open the back of my hand on the punching bag. Much swearing and blood loss ensued.

But my hand's all better now (aka not bleeding and is now wrapped in bandages) so hopefully I can get back to it soon. More concerned about my leg, as I can't lift weights, because we don't have a bench press so I has to rest the weights on me person. Can't run because of obvious problems; same for tennis and cycling. Can't swim. Or jump rope. Or much of anything. Why is it all exercises are so contingent upon the mobility of my legs? So, yeah, going to try to find a way around that little snag while I wait for leg and hand to get better, but exercise quotient is definitely going down in the coming days, which is a shame because weekend means I finally have the time to do stuff.

And now to maintain the crappy news motif, let's see what the weather's like for this weekend. Hereabouts, things are still going to be feeling like March tomorrow, but things will warm back up to May temperatures starting Friday. Unfortunately, a lot of thunderstorms Friday, but after that, warm and sunny until Wednesday, when it will be warm with thunder storms well into next weekend. Down south we're going to be seeing a lot of rain as well, though temperatures will be consistently maintaining in the eighties well through next week, so dress comfortably and just don't go outside very often. Overseas, it's going to be a bit nippy and very rainy, but nothing unusual there, as I'm quite certain the only place with a higher annual rainfall is the Amazon. Sunday and Monday will be fairly sunny, however, and should be the only times over the next ten days there is no rain. Temperatures will maintain themselves in around the lower-tens of Celsius, so make sure you've got a hoodie (or an epic tweed coat).

Looking into the future, I'm afraid nothing's really on the agenda. In the closing days of this week I'm quite tied up with very important projects that need to be done if I'm to graduate, so after scheduling this post I'm going to rescind into silence. After that, who knows? I will be disappearing again after May 18th, because that's when Red Dead Redemption comes out and that game will be like heroin for me. But I will try to keep around, somewhat. Really the biggest factor going against my presence is being busy, though it has been largely coupled with nothing really to talk about. So until I think of something and/or have the time to post, I'm going to open things up to you. What do you want me to do? Let me just say right now: Contests and anything else involving prizes are off the table. I would love to but I am more broke than my old refrigerator, and we rode that thing down the driveway like a toboggan. In the middle of July.

Oh! Not that any of you care, but absolutely made my day: Went out to dinner tonight just kind of for the sake of it, and ran into old friend I haven't seen in five years, who is now working as a waitress at one of my favorite local digs, so I shall definitely be going there more often. Sometimes I wonder why my friends and I ever drifted apart. Just really, absolutely made my night.

So, sorry there hasn't been much of anything to discuss. Slow news day. More than anything I'm just writing this to let you all know I haven't suffered a massive coronary. Blog should resume session at some point before the end of the month.

P.S. I have been checking out all of your blogs when I get the chance, I just haven't been saying anything either because of aforementioned being busy or just not being able to think of anything. This, too, should be remedied in the near future.

And now for something completely different.

They grow up so fast

2010-05-01T06:00:00.022-04:00

Two weeks from today, fellow Doctor Who nerds will be settling in to watch Amy's Choice. I bring this up for three reasons. Number one, Doctor Who is fantastic and if you're not watching it you should be. Number two, Amy's Choice sounds like it's going to be one of the best episodes this season. Number three, there are rumours afoot!

DWM takes a long time to get over here so it's not really worth subscribing unless you want to collect them, especially as people upload scans. I have yet to see scans for the latest issue, so I can't verify, but supposedly Simon Nye was interviewed in the section about Amy's Choice. In it, the villain of the piece apparently began as a virtually mute evil genius; spoke rarely, succinct, terrifying, threatening lines, and just kind of a creeper bugger. With each draft, the villain wound up having more and more to say. Still not sure he has a lot to say, as it seems like the villain won't be directly in the episode for the bulk of the narrative, but he has a lot more to say than he used to. Also the villain looks like Capote, which amuses me.

Within my own WIP, the protagonist has undergone quite a lot of changes. I haven't edited anything yet, so right now it's woefully inconsistent, but that will all be sorted in the end. Originally, Daniel was an unhappy guy with incredible acting talent which he didn't fully embrace because of his contempt for his family, but he still used it to great effect within his police life to manipulate people and events precisely as he saw it. Then Daniel was just an unhappy guy. Then Daniel was the fresh-faced new kid on the block with no idea of what he's doing. Now he's an unsure fresh-faced new kid who decides to act on impulse and backs up his decisions tooth and nail, in spite of always doubting himself while carrying out a decision, and doesn't take shit from Beckett or anyone else when they call his methods into question, and he often refuses to follow through with the methods of fellow officers blindly; seniority means nothing to him. I like current Daniel, actually. I think he's the best, most padded out, and really most realistic of all his iterations so far.

The point is, don't try to pigeonhole your characters. If you start out writing your villain or a side character in one manner, and halfway through you decide you want them to be different, don't force them to keep behaving the way they did originally. Humans grow. Me of November is radically different from me of now, and even more radically different from me of last spring. Now of course, unless your book spans a long time frame, there shouldn't be major inconsistencies of character, particularly if your character isn't a child or teenager, but during the drafting stages, who cares? If you switch halfway through the first draft, write the second to be consistent. If you change during the second, generate consistency during the third.

Yeah, during the early phases your character is probably going to look ridiculous. Wearing eighty different hats at once kind of does that. But when you find the one hat that not only fits perfectly, but looks perfect too, your character will thank you for it, and your mind will almost certainly thank you for allowing your words to flow naturally again instead of trying to force the story to carry on. And if neither of them do, you might want to look into getting a new one.

When Life Impedes Writing

2010-04-30T09:29:00.005-04:00

I don't mean this in the sense of, "Oh, I'm far too busy. I could never write a book." No, I mean this in the sense of, well, I'll just get on with it.

As I have mentioned before, it's quite possible I have very mild/high functioning Asperger Syndrome. If I don't, it means I have somehow entirely analogously developed traits identical to Asperger Syndrome. This can make writing very, very hard for me, as I don't really know how normal people behave. My image of "normal" people is probably horribly skewed, not only because of my own biases I inject, but also because the aforementioned issues make it hard. I mean, if you were to observe me...Think Seventh Doctor meets Second Doctor meets Fourth Doctor meets Sherlock Holmes. So in some ways I guess it's a good thing I do write fiction though, because I am very good at characters. People who are real enough, but no matter what they could never pass for being real; there's always just that thin sheet of ice there.

But! This creates much, much bigger issues. As I have mentioned before I have created a character who is intended to be a romantic interest, insofar as the hero is interested in her romantically. Still debating whether that relationship will develop. As I was writing the scenes with her, and even moreso now re-reading them, I have been banging my head in agony. Surprise surprise, I cannot write romance. Again, this is partially because I am kind of Sherlock Holmes and three Doctors snowballed into one entity, but more than that.

I cannot flirt.

At. All.

I am even worse at picking up on women flirting with me.

In January when I went to go get my iTouch, I brought along a friend because he wanted to get a new iPod as well. I went about my business thinking the girl behind the counter was just being personable. On the way out my friend pointed out she was flirting with me, and being that I was single at the time, asked why hadn't done anything about it. Outwardly, I just sort of shrugged. Inwardly, I was running through the whole thing trying to work out when she started flirting with me and how, exactly. It boggled me well through the weekend, and on Monday I had to basically run through the whole scenario with female friends to get their opinion. All four women agreed she had been flirting with me. And that's just the most recent example of it. Worse yet, I still can't see how what she was doing was flirting.

And oh dear lord do not get me started on my pathetic attempts at flirting. That's just...no...let's just put one of those "Accident Black Zone" signs up over it, shall we?

Now, this is important because, Rocelyn is supposed to be flirting with Daniel. Instead, what she is doing is smiling a lot more than is natural. She has essentially turned into some kind of Toothy Tooth Monster from Toothville, Toothica, Toothworld. She gives a polite "hello" sort of smile when she walks in. Fine. But then she smiles at Daniel every other time they encounter each other. Whenever she spies him catching a fleeting glance at her, smile. Going into the elevator to go home? Smile. Walking past his desk? Smile. And the dialogue. Oh, dear heavens, the dialogue. The flirtatious dialogue makes my miserable attempts sound like Giacomo Girolamo Casanove de Seingalt.

So what we've got now are characters who are obviously characters, and the worst attempts at flirting in human history. Worse than those cheese-tastic chat-up lines like "You're so hot, your ass is on fire" or the just plain awful, horrendous, who ever thought this would work, "Come here often?"

Yes. I am so much worse than that. And my characters are so much worse than me. I feel like I should forcibly lock them all in chastity belts to ensure they can never, ever produce offspring with such bad skills, but then I remember they're so horrible they won't need chastity belts to keep from having sex.

Alright, well, to be fair, I'm not always worse than that. Usually I am sometimes so much worse than that. But sometimes I such a big ball of cheese I make the 80s look like Pluto. For example, in a pathetic attempt to "woo" my third girlfriend, and dear Lord I to this day have no idea how this worked, well...

Yeah. Sang every bit of Sinatra's parts of that song. And that's me at my best. God forbid me at my regular or my worst ever see the light of day again.

I think I might just completely wipe Rocelyn from existence. Save everyone the pain of this...stuff, if you can even call it that. So, so painful.

Why a massive graduating class sucks

2010-04-29T13:22:00.004-04:00

There are a little over 1500 people in my graduating class, the largest to date for my high school, and a record that won't be surpassed for a while as graduating class sizes are progressively going down. Today, they shuffled us all into the gym for the panoramic whole senior class picture thing. Fine. Had I had more time, I was going to wear what I normally wear in Scotland and deliberately position myself near the front, so there would be a man dressed like Henry Jones Sr. in the front. But I didn't have time to do that.

So, being that today there's a Liverpool game, I wore my kit. On the way to the gym for the portrait, I ran into people who I've seen around the halls before, but before now did not know they were fellow seniors. I have no idea what their names are, but I was so proud of what I did, and damn giddy. Having never met either of them before, I convinced them to go along with something. I was wearing my Liverpool kit. One of them was wearing an Everton kit. The other was wearing a Man United kit. We were going to sit next to each other and deliberately position ourselves near the front so the kits would be prominent.

We get to the gym, and the massive surge of 1500+ students all shuffling to get into position separates us. I have no idea what happened to Everton Man and United Boy. But it totally ruined my day, man.

....until 5th period. For the record, watching heads gets chopped off makes any day brighter.

Unrelated note: Hello two new followers. Welcome aboard the good ship Insanity.

Things I Think I Thunk Today

2010-04-23T22:00:00.000-04:00

Warning: The following contains very eccentric ramblings of the often nonsensical nature.

1. I was awesome as a kid. Like, crazy awesome. Not only did I used to dress like Basil Rathbone, but in cleaning my room the other night I discovered a plethora of notebooks and folders from when I wanted to be a paleontologist. There's plenty of other awesome stuff I discovered but I'll spare you the long details.

2. I read something the other day that says those volcanic ash clouds may become a semi-regular occurrence for the next forty to sixty years. I kind of hope not. But I kind of do. Britain: You overreacted. Seriously. Other European countries opened up their airways after a while, but nope, you gotta keep em shut. And then you decide you need to haul people out of the continent all Dunkirk-style. Really? I mean that's cool and all, but really? Also, I hope the next volcanic ash cloud settles lower. Over the summer there were awesome sandstorms in Australia and a friend who lives in Canberra took pictures, and it looked like they were living on Mars, which is cool. So I guess if the ash cloud settles it will look like people are living on Pyrovillia?

3. I don't know why but I have felt compelled to dance to get everywhere I go today. Fortunately I have been staying indoors, because I can't dance solo. I can waltz and tango, but doing either with the air just ends badly, and dancing without a partner makes me dance like a teenage girl from the early 1960s with the occasional appearance of disco. Okay, so this one actually stopped around noon, but still.

4. Why, oh why, did Caprica have to take a mid-season finale? Now I've got nothing to do on Friday nights. Actually come to think of it the only actual thing I have to do during the week any more is Doctor Who. Which is a good thing I guess. Television was my schedule in elementary and middle school. So thanks, TV, for going down the shitter when I came into high school. Now I can actually have a life. Kind of.

5. I always hate shopping for new jeans. With cargo pants, I know what size to buy of which brand and the specific cut makes no real difference. With trousers, the numbers are pretty uniform across the board regardless of company. But jeans -- oi. Relaxed fit Levi's I can buy down from straight cut, and Arizona I need to buy up. Also, the length makes very little difference on the fit of trousers or cargo pants, as long as they're in the general ballpark. Not so with jeans. For the love of god someone please find a way of making jeans fairly uniform like every other style of pant. And don't get me started on other clothes shopping woes...

6. My hair confounds me. I have brown hair, but ginger facial hair, and my facial hair looks black until it's all in. Why does brown hair on top give black hair around the face which somehow turns into ginger hair? Not that I mind. I enjoy my ginger beard. But right now it is itching the fuck out of my neck because it isn't 100% grown yet. Will be by Monday though. Three weeks of no shaving is usually when it decides to come all the way in. Probably won't shave it for a while this time.

7. I have been listening to the same song pretty much all day. (No it's not either one above) At this point I'm not sure I can stop. Ever. I think it may even infiltrate my sleep. Except it will stop. Because, erm...

It took me a very, very long to get over the Weeping Angels last time. And now they've got a two-parter and can muck about with recordings and such? I foresee another year of not leaving via the front door for fear that the angel statue in the garden will kill me. I don't care if they do kill kindly, the Weeping Angels are creepy fuckers and the Moff should be banished from Earth the stroke of genius that invented them.

8. Also, going back to jeans: Who decided jeans with holes in them was a good idea? Who buys those things? Last time I checked holes in pants were non-desirous.

9. If I were to use a pseudonym I would totally go with Geoffrey Markham. The whole name is a nerd reference.

10. It dawned on me that every Doctor has had some form of overcoat as an at least semi-regular piece of his wardrobe. I think Twelve should buck the trend.

11. Three days later, and fish custard is still delicious. Go buy yourself some fish fingers and custard. I promise it won't disappoint.

12. Is it weird that I think Karen Gillan looks better in her costume from Time of Angels than that police costume from the Eleventh Hour? Probably.

13. I don't care how stupid this is or how many times I've watched it, I still love this video:

Now I want waffles. Well, I know what I'm having for breakfast tomorrow.

14. The West Wing continues to be grand. 4 episodes into the second season, it still leaves a lot of room for improvement, but it's a lot better than it was.

15. SIMON FUCKING DUTTON. I do not care how many times I read that he's going to be in Time of Angels/Flesh and Stone, SIMON DUTTON is going to be on Doctor Who. THE SAINT IS GOING TO BE ON DOCTOR WHO. Okay, sure, I prefer Ian Ogilvy, but Dutton is to the Saint what Dalton is to James Bond -- closest to his literary origins. Well, of the latter TV Saints (there was an actor, whose name I now forget, who appeared in two Saint films in the 40s who was by far closest). Besides, Simon Dutton hasn't really done anything since he was on The Saint. AND NOW HE'S GOING TO BE ON DOCTOR WHO. This calls for the various Saint themes.

Can you believe there is NOTHING of the Saint in Manhattan on youtube? I mean, c'mon guys. I know Andrew Clarke was miscast and he has the whole Tom Selleck tache going on, but that is still a solid incarnation of the Saint otherwise. Anyway I realize this has been a very youtube heavy post, even for me, so to close:

Late Night Rambles

2010-04-23T05:00:00.020-04:00

So, over on twitter we got into discussing my love of Scotland, sort of. And from that I brought up the old stereotype of Eastern Seaboarders, which is totally true. Of course like all stereotypes, not everyone proves the rule, but as someone who has lived here for all but the odd trip the UK, and what with all of the family I keep in contact with living either in this area or in New England, I have noticed a lot of truth in the old stereotypes about us Northeasterners. And unfortunately this leads to the occasional clash with my own personality, though I must admit I am guilty of a lot of them as well. So, from one Northie looking at his fellows, how do these old bones hold up?

1. The West Coast is the Enemy. Capital Enemy. As in, Second War in Heaven Enemy (Doctor Who reference, see here). This is very much truth. Oh yeah, you'll find a lot of Easterners who disagree, but yeah, it's very much truth. Sure, I've West Coast friends, but even the tightest of them isn't that tight. It's funny in a way because you usually expect us Northerners to be at odds with Kentucky or something, but really, especially California...whoo doggy. Let's just avoid the comparisons between the two and leave it at, the West Coast is the Enemy. Now that that's out of the way...

2. Northeasterners will keep you at a distance, but if you get past that wall, you will become tighter than family. So, so true. I'm more open online than real life, but even online I tend to be very reserved. Real life...well, let's just say so far only six people know about my relationship: Me, my girlfriend, her mom, her dad, her sister, and my friend Phil. This observation really has and I think always will stand the test of time. A lot of people complain about it, saying they would prefer Southern hospitality, but I would rather have this. A bunch of strangers being nice and helping each other out is grand, but show me people who make as tight connections as we Northerners do and I will show you a golden stairwell to the moon.

3. The East Coast tends to be more formal. Kind of an extension of the above. We aren't really, we're just much more reserved around those who aren't closer than blood, and generally, bar teenagers, the fashion tends to be less...out there than that of the Enemy.

4. Everything is GO! GO! GO! Sadly, yes. I mean this isn't always a bad thing, but I am very much the tortoise. Here be hares.

5. Metropolitan Easterners tend to be loud, pushy assholes. And damn proud of it. It's a fine balance, the asshole-friend. Also we may appear more assholish because of point 2, but yeah, the whole asshole thing tends to be true, but you just rock with it man. That's the way things are. Like I said, it's a finely polished art people perfect from youth.

6. The East Coast is much more class-conscious. Not as true as it used to be, but you can bet the old New Money v Old Money feud and similar things are still carrying on. It's not like out and out war, but generally we middle class keep to ourselves, the upper middle to the upper middle, poor to the poor, etc. Lord knows what the Enemy does.

7. Northeasterners are straight with you. You know, I think we have yet to hit a lie? I mean we've hit exaggerations and conditionals, but no lies. And this isn't a lie either. Like all of them, there are exceptions, but for the most part we don't fuck around. I mean like anyone most people dick around a bit, but only in scenarios where it would end badly to be one hundred percent honest.

8. Neuroticism is fun. The only way to truly appreciate the early Woody Allen is to have lived here for quite some time.

9. Ambitious, yet cynical. We doubt, we stumble, we weep behind closed doors, but we do not give up. And yet simultaneously all those scrapes and burns make us turn on our own ambitions, and anyone else's ambition. It's an odd contradiction, but it's a great way to be. Nothing makes you work harder than hating on yourself. And nothing makes you hate yourself more than working harder. It's a vicious circle of inevitable victory.

10. We like swearing. Ties in with the assholish thing, but we do everywhere, not just in the cities. Most East Coasters can appreciate a good "fuck you" so long as it's deserved. Shit happens. You can be disgusted or you can get over the fact that someone just swore at you and get on with your life. Really there's only one swear word that fazes me any more, and even that not so much as all the non-Northies I know...

11. Religion is important. Not insofar as everyone has to be religious, in fact most of us are non-religious (myself included; take the time to google philosophical theism if you're curious). But we like to know who is what. It doesn't affect who we hang out with, really. We just make it our business to know who's Catholic, Anglican, Jewish, Hindu...again, no idea why, we just do it.

12. Who the fuck lives in Jersey? Speaks for itself really. Unless you're from Jersey, you've at some point spoken a variation on this. And I imagine even people from New Jersey have said some sort of variation at some point as well. Actually one thing I've noticed over the years is Jersey is a lot like Wales. It could drop into the sea and no one would notice for a year, and when we finally do figure it out the only thing we'll care about is that we're suddenly beachfront property.

13. Sei ein mann. Always. For one, never look lost and never be lost. If you are in a foreign city, act local. If you get lost, don't you dare admit it. I mean sure, people from other parts of the country do things like this to, but no matter where I go, it seems us Northies are always the most, well, fight-y. Being a Northie teaches you to be independent, and incredibly shrewd.

Now, don't get me wrong, I'm not saying these are universal. Like all stereotypes, there's a grain of truth in them, and there are the people who are the embodiment of them, but they tend to be unfounded. Tend to be. Like all of my posts, this has kind of devolved, but really, in my experiences living here, those of us in the Northeast match our stereotypes (and does aren't even all of them, they're just the ones friends and I could think of off the top of our heads) pretty damn tightly. And of course, most of these stereotypes are true of the metropolitan hubs, slightly less true but still very much so of us out in the burbs, and not so much of the rurites. Especially here in PA. Hell, even the Harrisburg and Pittsburgh areas are more mid-west-y than here. I blame the fact that there were mountains in the way, so the Britons and Germans stayed in Philly and Jersey and Manhattan, whilst the people from New York state and Ohio and Canada came to take over the rest of the state.

Also, I like to think an English saying applies here in the States as well. "You can take the man out of the North, but you can't take the North out of the man." Okay so variations on that get used a lot in a lot of places. But I like to think it holds true because it would oh-so-totally suck to lose my Northie-ness if/when I move.

Here's some fun food for thought:

The stereotypes/attitudes of our various regions are the fault of their settlers. For sake of brevity, I'll only go into here and the Enemy, so sorry other parts of America, you'll have to chime in with your own thoughts.

The East Coast: Initially settled by people seeking some freedom, but not dire changes from the old ways. Throughout its history, settled by ambitious people, straightforward people who placed more emphasis on work ethic, which is of course reinforced by the weather. The springs are nice and the summers hot, but autumn cools fast and the winters are rough, so if you spend your warm months dicking about, you're suddenly dying come Christmas. The Northeast is a blend of that old Puritan uniform work ethic (seriously, do some looking into the Puritan way of life, it's kind of cool to read about) with the dreamful work ethic of the influx of immigrants. It's a region of rolling up your sleeves to struggle up that ladder, from janitor to Emperor.

The Enemy, by contrast, was largely unsettled even after we got our hands on it. California wasn't really settled until the gold rush, Oregon was temporarily settled before they botched all the land, and fuck if I know anything about Washington other than why I hate it (which I shan't go into here). Both the Oregon land rush and the California gold rush were attempts by people from the east to break away from that old rolling up your sleeves to climb slowly to the top sort of life. Instead, it was the first get-rich-quick scenario. It was people who wanted to make their own rules instead of stick to the ones which had been in place for centuries. And this continues. If the East had its Puritans reinforced by the later generations of immigrants, the whole of the Enemy was reinforced in the 1960s by the flood of hippies and in the 1990s by the interweb folks. And again, the weather is a factor. Washington is an exception to the rule, but the bulk of the Enemy has nicer weather than us here on the East, especially the Southern Californians. So why work hard all year when you can play nine days out of ten?

At the end of the day, really, I think wherever one has spent the bulk of one's life is really where one will think of being the best place on Earth. Lord knows I love the UK, especially Scotland, and oh hell yes I do intend to move there and will be happy, but you can bet your ass I will always think the Seaboard > Scotland. Favorite, after all, doesn't mean best.

And like I said above, like all posts this tends to devolve. I may re-do this post with lack of hastily assembled list, and just write about general contemplations regarding the specific here and get one of the Enemy to write about the specific there and mesh them into a post. In the future I may stop writing posts at the crack of sleep and actually stopping for a while when I get distracted instead of trying to trudge on when the Brain Train gets derailed.

Also, I have been addicted to this:

So, yeah, there's my contemplative post for today. Stay cool everyone.

P.S. on that Woody Allen note: Annie Hall is a great analysis of the differences between us and the Enemy. Sorry other parts of the country, no film for you.

Just a quick thing

2010-04-17T20:43:00.001-04:00

Out of boredom, I signed up for Goodreads. See here. I'm getting tired of adding books so I'm pausing for now, but any book on my shelves at home will eventually find its way onto there. Just marking everything as read. Link's there if anyone's curious as to my reading habits.

On the Origin and Evolution of Ideas

2010-04-16T00:03:00.002-04:00

With this being the time of year when I was working on my spy novel, I've been reminiscing a lot about that particular story and the other things I was working on last spring and summer. And just a few minutes ago, I was listening to the above song, and it sparked a whole new memory. Sparked, because it was one of the few cases where I listened to music while I wrote (it was only a few short days after I found out about SFG and I was still in the ZOMGNEWBANDISAMAZING phase). The memory itself gave rise to this post.

So in honor of all my nostalgic conflicted feelings, I thought I'd do a post tracing the evolution of a character I mention every now and again. Remember Ian Goodenough? Goodenough came about like so:

I am a very huge fan of the Saint. Have been ever since I caught some re-runs of the old Roger Moore series on either Gold or ITV (I believe it was Gold, but not certain) about three years back. (For the record, I now hold Ian Ogilvy as my favorite Saint but that's for another post) I had finished my first spy novel, tentatively named for a song I had been listening to shortly before writing a pivotal scene early in the book during which the song title slipped itself into the dialogue...that song, for anyone curious, was To Live is to Die. Which is admittedly a pretty sick song. But anyway, I had wrapped up TLITD and written about two chapters of a follow-up story/sequel/what-have-you. And then I hit a rut, because all I had planned for Book 2 was it to open with the black-ops group the hero worked for having moved to Key West...pretty much just because it was summer and I felt like setting scenes in Key West, dammit (granted, I had planted valid story reasons in book 1 just for this reason). But that was it. No plotline planned beyond he's on Key West, he gets an assignment. For some reason I think it may have been dealing with Cubans (bear in mind book 1 was set from March to July 1959, and book 2 beginning in late August or early September the same year). But yeah, I was in a plot-less rut.

And so I took to re-reading some of my Saint books out of partial boredom and partial I re-read them a lot because do you know hard it is to get your hands on Leslie Charteris these days? And it lead to me thinking, literature used to have great characters like the Saint (who is so much more than a gentleman thief but it is a big piece of his character at times) and Arsene Lupin (the epitome of gentlemen thieves, see a theme here?) and suddenly there's no one like them. And so I decided I wanted to write a story about a Saint-like character. Not directly Saint-like, but in the same basic spirit of Simon Templar, for the modern day. From this was born a character who I knew I wanted to be named Ian, and, well, the surname didn't come for a while.

In the original draft, Ian was awesome but eccentric beyond words. He had been an expert gentleman thief and sort-of Robin Hood, re-selling some of the stolen artworks to collectors who would treat it well or even to other museums, and then giving that money to various charities selected seemingly on a whim. Then he stole some stuff from the Louvre and left a note at the scene of the crime announcing his retirement. Flash forward to the modern day. Ian is living on a massive estate in Northern Wales, dresses in early Edwardian garb, and likes to speak in riddles when dealing with the police. Oh, and he keeps an assortment of animals on his estate. He has roving flocks of sheep out on the grounds. He has an alligator pit in the foyer, just because he can. Hell, when he first appears at the beginning of chapter four, he shows up riding a giraffe.

Ian aside for the moment, in the original draft, a group of crazed domestic terrorists who built their organization around a deck of cards break into the British Museum (it's a real place, seriously. lazy names ftw) and steal several objects from a special touring exhibit and proceed to blow up cars out front to cover their escape. MI5 is looking into things of course, but being that this is a book about Ian, they're mostly a bunch of gibbering tits who can barely put their pants on. And the Met, of course, realize they can't solve this case, so the Commissioner turns to Ian, who has at this point pretty much been given amnesty so long as he promises to help the police whenever they come to him and not bone them over by stealing stuff from anyone other than the bad guys in the process. What ensues is Ian & Police Officer Flunky (who I think may also have been named Paul; I seem to like that name for policemen) chasing this organization about while trying to learn what is they're up to, ultimately tracking them down to a totally made up town in Devonshire where it turns out...they're stealing the recipe for Greek Fire. A solid course of history or a quick look at Wikipedia will tell you why this is a bad thing.

Then comes the about-annual pilgrimage to the UK and whilst bumming about London we stumble upon Goodenough College and from thence comes Ian's surname.

New draft. Ian is still an ex-gentlemen thief, but now he's a private investigator, living in a rather opulently furnished loft in Swansea. Police Flunky Paul is now DCI of the Met. DCI Paul is unhappy at home because his wife is unhappy with their marriage and sleeps around without bothering to try to hide it, and his daughter has gone off to university and even though she's just on the other end of London she never really comes home to visit. Paul gets woken up by his kickass Regan-esque DI at three in the morning to come to some flats not far from where he lives to find a friend of the family, a young up-and-coming Scottish Labour MP whose BG is a very thinly veiled slightly modified Gordon Brown, is found dead. Due to potential conflict of interests, Paul can't work the case. Paul's cousin who lives in Sheffield ends up implicated somehow (I don't even remember at this point), and by now Paul's already over-stressed mind can't take any more so he goes back through the records at work, finds the data on a private investigator they (secretly) brought in to help nick a serial killer a few years back, and treks off to Swansea to hire him. What follows is some epic detective work and amazing gentlemanliness. I am amazed that that is actually a word. In the end, it turns out it wasn't DCI Paul's cousin, but that the young MP had had files presented to him revealing some bad shit, top secret bad shit, and he panicked and decided to take them to London to show his bosses and ask what should be done...only to be killed by one of the evil dudes' flunkies right as he was about to wake his boss and give them the briefcase. In the end, evil dudes go uncaught, because they are way too powerful to be fucked with, but their flunky involved in the killing does go to prison, so the victory isn't totally pointless I guess.

New draft. Goodenough is back to being slightly eccentric, but nowhere near what he used to be. Still an ex-gentleman thief, and still a PI based out of Swansea. DCI Paul's home troubles remain, and his Sheffield cousin is again implicated in a murder, but this time there's no politics to the plot. It's pretty much just straightforward murder with it (this time) 100% coincidentally looking like Paul's cousin did it. Proper villains are caught and the day is saved.

New draft. Goodenough is very eccentric. Not as eccentric as first draft, but I instilled a lot of my own quirks to help make the eccentricities more out there while staying believable. Goodenough now lives on the Isle of Dogs, was never a gentleman thief, and is just a rather eccentric detective. Paul is a fresh DC having just come back from four years with the VSO in Africa, though he knew Goodenough prior to leaving by back-storying up the salient details of the previous draft. This is where the Holmes/Poirot style of Goodenough started to take hold. A young Scottish teen comes seeking Goodenough's help. He lives in an isolated little hamlet not far from Dunoon; close enough to nip in for stuff but far enough to keep hidden, and that's how everyone there likes it. Super-super-super recluse man turns up dead in his bedroom, and of course the whole hamlet panics because it could be any one of their beloved neighbors. Goodenough pretends to be busy with another case and sends Paul up to start the investigation. Paul uncovers that he was pretty much a messed up JD Salinger and wrote the best book ever and then fled the US to live on his own to escape the press and his screwed up family. Eventually it turns out Mr Recluse Author had been a closet homosexual and after meeting a fellow gay American expat (who rather conveniently was his neighbor in this hamlet) they started shagging, but then they have relationship drama and he hooks up with one of the younger of the Irish brother characters for about a week, ultimately leaving him for the fellow gay American expat, and this angers the young twenty-something Irishman so he murders the old author dude (but for some reason not the old fellow expat).

New draft. Fuck novels! Novels are a bad format for Ian Goodenough, I decide. Instead, I write a short story. Once again Scotland plays an integral role here. Goodenough is showing further signs of Holmes/Poirot-style detectiving here. In this particular story, a portly chum from Inverness named Hamish Wilson comes seeking Goodenough's help, because someone has used magazine clippings to send a note stating they intend to steal all of the money from his private bank, which only deals with very wealthy clients, and they have used clippings of RB to sign the note. Off to Inverness they go and oh no! All of the customers who come in that day have the initials RB. Goodenough arranges a stakeout and...spoilers, I'm afraid. Yeah, bit of a cheap move there, I guess, but there's a reason for this.

New draft. Exactly the same as above, except for one chief thing. Goodenough is no longer a throwback style in the modern day. Goodenough works better in the old fashioned, so I tweak the story to set it in the early 1900s/early 1910s (exact date not mentioned, but I waffle between 1912 and 1903). And the ending is still spoilers. Why? Because I still have this draft saved. I like this draft. I intend to send it off to The Strand and other magazines after some polishing. Also I may post this or other Goodenough stories to the blog.

So there you have it, folks. A rather slapdash history of Ian Goodenough, from June 2009 to April 2010. Enjoy the SFG. I require sleep.

What's Better?

2010-04-12T06:00:00.010-04:00

I was reading something the other day which said something about one's work, and how if it's instantly popular, it's probably just a fad, something down to good marketing, but if it remains popular, then you have art on your hands. I don't think any of us would only want to be popular now, or only be popular later. We'd want what the latter option is, of being popular now, and maintaining that popularity in the future. I mean, wouldn't we all love to be the next Agatha Christie and be surpassed in sales only by the Bible and William Shakespeare? Sure, some of those sales are people just curious as to why she's so insanely popular, but the sheer volume of sales clearly means she was doing something right (and boy howdy was she ever).

But suppose you had to choose. Suppose, for a minute, you could be like Stephenie Meyer and her Twilight books -- insanely popular now, and likely to experience the occasional moderate resurgence, but no doubt it'll all fade into relative obscurity in a couple of decades. Or you could be like Vincent van Gogh. Indeed, van Gogh wasn't totally unknown throughout his career, but his popularity didn't begin to spread until the last year of his life, and after his death, his works took off. Which would you rather be, rich now or rich later? Famous now or posthumous fame?

Of course, we don't all want to be rich or famous. Rich, I'd be lying if I said I didn't want to be. Would I be perfectly happy with less? Certainly. But to have that kind of financial security would be nice. Famous I could do without. But these are just example terms, reiterating a point I've already made. So allow me to repeat myself one more time:

Would you rather reap the rewards now and fade into obscurity in your dying days, or would you rather struggle now and see success in the generations after? No middle ground option. Obese artist or starving artist, those are the only cards on the table.

As for myself, I don't know which one I'd choose. I would like to be the van Gogh, to enjoy some degree of appreciation in my lifetime, but to know people love my work so much they'd keep buying it well after I'm gone. At the same time, like I said just a short while ago, the creature comforts are indeed nice. I guess at the end of the day all we really can do is put ourselves out there and hope for whatever degree of success we can.

A rather more literal take on the blog title

2010-04-09T21:18:00.000-04:00

Good evening, ladies and gentlemen, this is the skipper speaking. I'm afraid we've reached a bit of turbulence and...hang on, wrong speech.

~ahem~

Anyway, I hope you all are having a lovely weekend so far. Mine has rather not been. But! There's the el Clásico tomorrow; kickoff 22:00 Spanish time, 4pm EST. Kind of late for a game really but I do not question the Spaniards. I just watch them play some dern good football. For the record, el Clásico is the term for the match played between Real Madrid and Barcelona, two of the greatest clubs out there at the moment (and, let's face it, Real Madrid have always been one of the best clubs and probably always will be). Personally I support the Real side, so we'll see what happens tomorrow afternoon. If for whatever reason the prospects of this game interest anyone, I would be more than happy to provide linkage. Also there's the fact that The Beast Below airs tomorrow, which means around the time the game ends it'll be online in good quality, which means I shall probably do with it what I did with The Eleventh Hour and watch it six times in three days.

And, yeah, that's about it really. As with last night, I thought of something quite awesome to post, and then proceeded to forget it not five minutes later because I was watching rather awesome TV shows (note to self: in future, avoid the West Wing and Return of the Saint when plotting posts), so I've kind of got nothing to talk about. Think I'll go watch some Magnum P.I. and/or Remington Steele.

Happy weekend everybody. Enjoy (or don't) the music:

À la recherche du temps perdu

2010-04-06T20:01:00.000-04:00

This morning, as I was getting ready for school, I paused to consider bringing along some reading material. The first place my eyes wandered was (no surprise) my collection of Doctor Who books, specifically the two Eighth Doctor Adventures novels which I have yet to begin (still only read the first two books). From there, my eyes hopped square to my James Bond collection, which sits on the adjoining shelf. I almost plucked down The Man With the Golden Gun and read it for the who knows what number time.

And the other day, as I was working on beginning to clean my closet, I came upon a big bin full of papers. Most of them were just tossed in carelessly; some had clearly been in some semblance of order once. I knew what it was before I even opened it. All of my stories, notes, everything I'd written back in the day, was in there. I took the time to fish out the 160-odd pages of the first draft my first ever novel and set it on my desk. Of course I know everything that happens. Of course I've read all the 32 drafts (many incomplete, but I count each fresh tackle at revision as a draft) numerous times. Of course I know it was very largely shite -- derivative bordering on plagiarism in a few places. But I still sat down and read Part I.

Yesterday, when it was very very warm and I was out relaxing under a peach tree in the front which never bears fruit, I was thinking about the book I wrote last summer. My verdict: Not as bad as I thought it was back then. Yeah, it was still bad, and the writing in places was weak, but in all honesty it was sounding pretty good. Agent on a train running from the Ukraine to Croatia sent on a capture-or-kill of a would-be defector, captures him and arranges for a detail of three of his fellow agents to help him smuggle him aboard a cargo ship from Croatia to Venice, and about halfway there the ship sinks suddenly. From there, it leads into the agent being hunted around Europe as he tries to work out who sunk that ship and why, once it becomes apparent the obvious suspects (the USSR) are out of the question. Oh yeah, everything post-sinking was executed pretty poorly, but the first eight or so chapters I'm now thinking were quite grand.

And then there's the crown jewel. I went digging through my old computer where I wrote my audio dramas, and I stumbled upon something I wrote as blatant, sheer, campy, hamtastic, moronic fun. Never meant for the project to go anywhere, just wrote it. A team of wildly incompetent Gestapo with very basic psychic talents are sent to Sark to recover a British scientist who has been feeding the Nazis advanced technology before the Nazis launch an invasion attempt on the Channel Islands. What ensues is six insane Gestapo vs one badass SAS man, fresh home from the African campaigns. Add to the mix that the scientist's latest invention was a time machine (obviously disguised as a fob watch) and you have a recipe for OTT success.

Why discuss all this stuff? One thing which has been bugging me a lot lately is the thought that I am T E R R I B L E and utterly unpublishable. Bugging me so much it's halted my writing yet again. And so it services as a slight reminder of the fact that I used to be worse (except in the case of that Gestapo script; I don't care what you say, that is definitely the greatest thing I have ever written or ever shall write), and it therefore follows I can only get better with time. It's also just kind of interesting to see exactly what progress I've made.

Ultimately what I've been trying to do is to bear in mind something I've always known, but it kind of has taken an outsider reiterating it for it to really start sinking in. We're all terrible when we begin. You can't expect to write War & Peace on your first effort; that just doesn't happen (whether or not such a book is your first published effort is a different matter entirely). The only place one can go is up.