BUPA London 10,000 - The Race is Run!

The weather was appalling. Torrential rain. A strong head wind.

But once I was running, none of it mattered.

I was aiming for under one hour. I thought if I did exceptionally well, I could do it in 55 minutes.

I kept pace with many runners from amateur running clubs. I overtook many runners from amateur running clubs.

The race looped back on itself, and I kept pace with the main pack enough that, apart from the elite runners, I saw no other runners coming from the other direction ahead of the pack.

Between 7km and 8km, it seemed like the race would never end. Finally, rounding Admiralty Arch, the finish line was in sight.

Head up, legs pumping, I crossed the line, feeling elated.

The official time was better than the 55 minutes I had hoped for, clocking in at 53:46.

Next stop is the half-marathon in October.

Oh, and I achieved my fund-raising target too! But if you would still like to contribute, I won't turn you away. With the disasters in Burma and China, the British Red Cross are grateful for all donations.

It's raining, it's pouring...

Lousy weather for a race today, but nevermind...

Thank you to everybody who has sponsored me so far, and if you haven't yet, but would like to, you can still do so! The donations page remains open until mid-August.

A little over two hours until the race now, getting ready to leave.

I'll let you know how I did - race highlights will be shown at 11.30pm on BBC2 tonight, so there's an outside chance you might see a very quick glimpse of me (but I doubt it...)

Fiction Friday - 23 May 2008

This Week's Theme" Conspinkey. Don't look that word up, because it doesn't exist. But you're going to use it in your entry.

---

It was back when I was first mate on the legendary frigate La Gongoozler, that must be some fifty year or more ago now. We'd just set sail from Jamestown, headed East at a fair rate o' knots, when the whole ship was becalmed.

Eerie it was, the ship lurched to a sudden halt, but the wind was still full in her sails. You could hear the masts creaking, straining as the winds tried to lift us, but we were stuck, sitting ducks in pirate water.

Trembling, we knocked on the Captain's door to inform him of this bad turn.

"Entre" the Captain shouted, as we crowded the door. The oak door swung inwards, and we bustled in. Nobody wanted to speak, but I was pushed to the front, with the crew hissing "Go on Lucky Pete, go on".

The Captain had his back to us, stood over his map table and plotting a course to places no map existed for. "Sí mis amigos?"

"C-captain. The ship. The sh-ship is s-s-stuck."

He straightened up, and turned his head, only slightly, that shock of long black hair tumbling over his shoulders. "Stuck? And yet there is a trade wind..." He sniffed, then spun round, that wild look in his eyes. He laughed, his hands on his hips and said one word. Conspinkey.

"Quickly mis amigos! Powder - a whole keg. And fuse. And a torch. The finest sherry for the man who brings me the powder fastest!" The crew fell over themselves to run to the stores, as the Captain sprung out onto deck. I held back and followed the Captain, who ran to the bow and peered over the edge.

"Captain? What's a conspinkey?"

He smiled and pointed at the water. "There, there! You see it? The conspinkey is a foul creature, oh we've tussled before have we not my aquatic nemesis? Come for another round with Captain Juan, eh? Not learned your lesson?"

As he spoke, the ship began to rock back and forth, and thick, slimy tentacles, the width of a missen-mast and more, snaked over the sides of the boat.

"Roused you have I? To hell with you then! Powder, where is my powder?" The lads ran up with the powder and fuse, and the Captain strapped the fuse to the powder barrel. He grabbed a torch and lit the fuse, sparks flying as it began to burn down. "Here Pete my boy, catch". He tossed a set of keys at me, which I caught. The keys to the Captain's chest. "Get the lads a few bottles of my fine sherry. I'll see you all in a moment!" He climbed up onto the side of the boat, and peered into the waters.

"And I'll see you in hell conspinkey!" he roared, as he dove into the water.

For a few seconds, nobody said a word, then the boat lurched heavily, as water exploded all round us, and we began to move forward, the winds pushing us on.

All around us, water rained down, darkened by the blood of the beast. Then with a slapping sound, parts of the tentacles fell from the sky, bursting and oozing all over the deck and almost knocking young Pedro out. With an almighty clatter, the Captain himself fell from the sky, clutching the great heart of the beast.

"By god, that powder is strong stuff! Too much for the old conspinkey. Damn shame, but he'd have had La Gongoozler if we'd let him."

The Captain brushed the remains of the creature from his coat and smiled. "Now, where's that sherry Pete?"

Tags: fiction Fiction Friday Captain Juan

Saviour

This story has been removed from the blog pending publication in an anthology.

For further information, please contact the author.

How do you write? From The Write Stuff - 06 Jan 08

This is adapted from an article that appeared on the Write Stuff website on January 6, 2008. The original text can be found here.

How do you write?

One of my New Year resolutions was to write more. I intended to write at least two hours each day, and more at the weekends. I still haven't managed that this year, but I’ve been really busy. That’s my excuse anyway…

To facilitate this goal, I want to get into a good writing habit, surrounded by the right materials, and in the right environment. I started off writing my NaNo project on the kitchen table, but before long found myself sat on the couch in front of the TV, writing away, or on public transport, or in the office during work. Heck, at the moment I’m slumped on the couch in front of a pretty good episode of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit. The fact that I know it is a good episode gives you an idea of what a problem this is - I’m paying more attention to the TV show than I am to the writing.

If I want to write for a minimum of 2 hours, then that needs to be 2 hours of writing - not 2 hours sat in front of the TV, writing for about 10 minutes across the full period.

So I’ve set myself up a little hidey-hole in the bedroom. I have a small writing desk set up in the bedroom that I can take myself off to, shut the door, and block out the TV and other distractions.

I don’t work well in silence though. All during university, and even now when at work, I need to have some music on the background. If I’m on my own, then I’ll play some music out loud, but otherwise, to spare others my lousy tastes (and the noise) I’ll plug into my iPod. I can’t just listen to anything though. I’ve found that music with lyrics is a bad idea for me, as I wind up listening to the lyrics or singing along, and I get very little done. So when I’m writing it has to be purely music, no words. I find a mixture of classical and film scores works best for me.

Most of my writing takes place on screen now. I never thought I would get used to writing on a computer. During high school, and for the first few years at college, I had to at least do the first draft longhand. That was back in the days when an essay was never more than 1500 words. As soon as five, ten and twenty thousand word essays rolled around, I began to see the utility in just writing straight on screen. With a good piece of writing software, you can do a lot of the things you can do longhand - highlight, annotate, make marginal notes etc.

I’ve used Apple computers all my life, and my current writing buddy is a G4 Powerbook (getting a little long in the tooth - the first writing advance gets blown on a MacBook…). I used to write in Apple’s own word processing software, Pages, but found that it really becomes slow after about fifteen to twenty pages, and scrolling through becomes a nightmare as it freezes, skips, then freezes again. I then tried writing in Microsoft’s Word. Word is great for long documents, and for my academic writing it was (and still is) the only word processing tool I’d ever use. But at times I find it a little awkward for creative writing. I have no real need for track changes, the notes option bothers me, and it has too many additional features that simply wouldn’t get used. So I went looking for alternatives. A simple word processor that let me get on with simply writing.

I now use a piece of software called Jer’s Novel Writer. It is a very simple software editor, with a few neat little tools designed for writers. You can split your text into various sections (books, chapters, text or your own custom settings). You can enter a distraction free full screen mode showing you nothing but your text. There is an adjustable margin you can put sticky notes into. The beauty of these notes is that you can anchor them to pieces of text, so that if they move, the notes move with them. You can set up different print settings, so that you can export your project into various other formats, or simply print it off, and have paragraph and page settings, including custom headers, footers and title pages appropriate to the project. There is also a side drawer containing the Outline (how you have divided the text), project wide Notes (for jotting down ideas you aren’t ready to use yet) and my favourite, the Database. Here you can create character profiles, locations, organisations, notes on items, anything that you need to keep track of in your story. For my NaNo story there is a profile for each character, with tags assigning them to groups, locations, alliances etc - it helps me keep track of who does what, and keeps me on top of my continuity. And everything, from the main text to the notes to the database entries, are fully searchable.

Finally - and most importantly - I have my coffee! I simply can’t write without caffeine. I’m not overly fussy about what sort of coffee I drink (although I do have the odd favourite blend) just as long as there is lots of it, and it comes in my writing mug. I have an oversized mug with the caption “Be careful of what you say and do, I’m writing a novel and it might include YOU!” It’s like a lucky charm, and I’m just not ready to write without it.

These are my essentials for writing. How do you go about your writing?

Tags: Write Stuff Sunday Writer Paul Anderson

Fiction Friday - 16 May 2008

This Week's Theme: Pick a favorite fairy tale or legend. Now briefly describe how you could update it to the modern day.

---

"Agent Aurum, report."

"I'm outside. I can see the entry point. Wish me luck."

Aurum cut the power to the transmitter. She was on her own now. Time to get to work. A grappling hook whistled through the dark before embedding itself into the eaves of the building. From her vantage point in the tree, Aurum took one last look through the infra=red scanner and confirmed no heat signatures. She pulled the tensile wire tight, and crawled along it, hanging upside down, invisible against the night sky thanks to the camouflaged Kevlar armour.

Noiselessly, she dropped down by the main door. So much for the tripwires. She pulled out a pack of plastic explosives, a fast burn, low noise compound, and smeared it over the lock. She slammed hte activation agent on to it, then deftly rolled out of the way. The lock began to smoke, then with a sudden pop fell off. The heavy door creaked open, and she was in.

Time to finish this. From a hip pocket she pulled out a small, sealed container. Removing the lid, she carefully withdrew the vials, all the ingredients she needed to make Polonium Rhodiumite Iodine Germaniate - Po₃Rh₂I₂Ge₄. Mixed, the compound was deadly and undetectable, but only if you could control the thermic reaction. Too hot, or too cold, and it simply didn't work. But Aurum was an expert at this, and she got it just right.

Dumping the compound into the water supply, she moved on to stage two. It wasn't enough to kill the occupants. They needed information about the replacements. From her belt she pulled out some small electrical devices. The Compact Holistic Auditory Receptor and Encoder was a work of genius, but required expert tuning. The pulse waves given out had to have a precise amplitude. Too big, or too small, and the CHAREs were ineffective. Once again, Aurm got it just right.

Everything was set. Time to leave. But Aurum hadn't counted on a high differential time delayed atmospheric pressure sensor. She had stayed too long, and it was silently activating a sensor relay.

The BayBee 3000 security system sent out an encrypted e-mail, and 2 miles away, Aurum's intended targets were warned of the danger"

To: Papa, Mama
From: Baybee
Subject: Someone is sleeping in your bed, and they're still there.

Vladimir Ursus, head of the Bear Clan crime syndicate scowled. He replied to the e-mail, activating the contingency plan.

To: Baybee
From: Papa
Subject: Initiate self-destruct. Authorisation code - Goldilocks

Tags: fiction Fiction Friday

Bloggers Unite for Human Rights - Freedom of Speech and Freedom of the Press

Today bloggers are asked to help raise awareness of human rights issues through the Bloggers Unite. 2008 is the 60th Anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, a landmark, yet often ignored, document. From it came the International Covenant of Civil and Political Rights, the European Convention on Human Rights and many other human rights conventions, human rights courts around the world, and awareness of abuses, and campaigns to fight these abuses.

Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights states:

Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.

This is the Article that protects writers, journalists, and in the 21st Century, bloggers. Indeed, blogging perfectly captures the spirit of this Article. Blogging is the free exchange of opinion and imparting of ideas, across frontiers and without interference. Mostly.

I'm not going to go into the issues of access to blogs and the internet being blocked by some regimes, or the attempts to suppress the voices of bloggers. I support the Irrepressible Info campaign, which does a far better job of explaining this issue than I could.

Instead, I want to look at a very specific right of bloggers and writers, that flows from Article 19. Our right to hold opinions without interference implies ownership of our own ideas, of our words. It involves copyright. And it implies that others cannot take our words and use them without our permission.

Yet some feel they can. Shamefully, they are a group of people who benefit from the very protections of Article 19 that they flout. The mainstream media.

Please read this post by Zoe Margolis about reproduction of blog posts without permission or recompense by a national newspaper.

Blogger JonnyB discovered that the Mail on Sunday had lifted an entire blog post, word for word, and reprinted it without his permission.

The Mail on Sunday's patronising response?

We generally take the view that blogs published on the internet have already been placed in the public domain by their authors and, in case of amateur writers, most people are happy to have their work recognised and displayed to a wider audience.

By this rationale, a large circulation newspaper is "in the public domain" as soon as it hits the stands. A book in a library is "in the public domain". Where are the journalists and authors who will stand up and say "I would be happy with you reproducing my work without permission, as publishing is the same as putting something into the public domain".

Where are they? They don't exist. And as for the amateur writers jibe, firstly many bloggers are professional writers, but secondly is the Mail on Sunday claiming that amateurs are exempt from copyright law, and therefore fair game?

I think not. The basic human right of freedom of expression means you are free to control how your expression is used by others. Because if you lose that control (having your work reproduced, redistributed out of context, edited) then you may decide not to express yourself again, and in that way a control has been placed on your freedom. Your right to express yourself and hold your opinions has been interfered with.

I do not charge people for reading this blog. I am, for now, an amateur writer. But I do not tolerate plagiarism. Note the footer of my blog - I use Copyscape to protect my work. I also have a Creative Commons Licence to cover all of my output. Had this happened to me, would the Mail on Sunday have been in breach of it?

My Licence is a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License. You are free to share, copy and distribute my work, without seeking my advance permission. But only under certain conditions:

• Attribution - you must state that I was the author. In this case I presume the Mail on Sunday did so. This ensures you do not pass off the work as your own.
  
• No Derivative Works - you put it in its entirety, or not at all. This is to prevent people editing as they please, re-interpreting the work etc. Much of the work on this site is creative fiction, so re-interpretation undermines my own work. I won't let you do that. Again, as the lift was word-for-word in JonnyB's case, the Mail on Sunday would pass this stage.
  
• Noncommercial - I'm not making any money offering my expression to you, you can't make any money from it either. The Mail on Sunday is a commercial newspaper. It's use of other people's work therefore cannot be anything other than commercial. As such, the Mail on Sunday would not have been allowed, under the terms of my Creative Commons Licence, to use my work.

Just because we choose to exercise our rights freely, does not mean that you are free to abuse those efforts. If a right is undermined for the little people, then soon that right erodes for the big people too. The press would do well to tread carefully around a right that is fundamental to their existence too.

Tags: Bloggers Unite human rights freedom of expression plagiarism blog posts

New Zealand, I'm disappointed in you...

Ursula is in Wellington at the moment, and sent me a birthday card - as a frequent commenter on the recent posts I've made about books you buy but don't read, books you have to read, books of the century etc, she thought I would be interested in two lists of best books compiled in New Zealand (nicely answering Christopher's question on Catalogue of Organisms as to whether a list compiled in New Zealand would look different).

The lists are from Whitcoulls ("The List") and from Dymocks Booksellers ("Booklovers' Top 101").

Eschewing any pretension towards merit and greatness, these simply ask what do you like reading - what is your favourite book? As a snapshot of popularity across a nation, free from the worry of choosing for pseudo-intellectual reasons, it is refreshing and throws up some interesting results, as well as some problems.

There are large areas of overlap - most books on one list are on the other. Often there is a very great difference between their location. For instance, New Zealand's own Keri Hulme features at number 26 on The List for The Bone People, whereas it is number 90 on Booklovers' Top 101.

Top 101 ranks the entire Lord of the Rings series as the number one spot, and the entire Harry Potter series at number three. Yet, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is ranked on its own, as is The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe. I'm not convinced that an entire series should be allowed a single listing. Cumulatively the strength of the series is more than a single book. Furthermore, why do some series get counted as a whole, whilst others don't - why does Narnia not feature as a series, whilst Middle Earth and Hogwarts do?

Over on The List, books from a series remain as individual books in their own right. The List seems more popular and populist, whilst Top 101 appears to focus more on the "classics". Interestingly, The Bible features on both lists, which is a refreshing inclusion (and oddly absent from the Anglo-American lists). Whatever you think of religion, you can't really deny that it is one of the cornerstone books of Western civilisation.

If you get a chance, take a peek at the lists, and have a look at what the Kiwis are reading and enjoying.

Now, about the title of this post... I like Kiwis. I have a lot of respect for Kiwis.

But the top ten on The List. Two Dan Brown books. TWO OF THEM??? If you've read this blog, then you know I'm not particularly interested in the Harry Potter books, but I can get why they have appeal, hence their inclusion in the lists (the whole series at number three for Top 101, four entries on The List). But Dan Brown? Twice in the top ten? And even worse - The Da Vinci Code at NUMBER ONE?????

I mean seriously people, come on! I have read one page, one single page of Dan Brown. That is one page more than I ever wanted, or needed to read - he has great ideas, but in the space of one turgid page five different conspiracy theories were introduced in a very clumsy way. Their popularity escapes me, as they just seem unreadable.

I'm not angry or upset with you New Zealand. Just very, very disappointed. Now go to your room and think about what you read...

Tags: Dymocks Booklovers' Top 101 Whitcoulls The List New Zealand books

Portrait of the Artist as a 29 Year Old Man...

So happy birthday to me, 29 years old yesterday. The anniversary of your own birth seems a more natural time to take stock of things than the arbitrary date when we have to buy new calendars. And as I begin my thirtieth year (yeah, thirtieth year!) I find for the first time that I'm not that contemplative about things, which makes a pleasant change. Perhaps it is the fact that I am past the "oh shit what am I going to do" panic about my life that was the hallmark of previous years.

Last year, May was a lousy month. The weather was awful, I was feeling depressed about a lot of things, there was upheaval and insecurity at my job, I doubted I had much, if anything to offer in my life, creatively, professionally. I was clinging to the remnants of one life, too scared to take a step towards another. Yes, my 28th birthday (and May in general) was pretty damn lousy to be honest.

This year? The sun is shining. It is gloriously sunny and warm. There are upheavals at work, yes, but in many ways it could prove beneficial to me. I'm more confident in my abilities as a writer. I have several projects on the go, hopefully this summer the script project will take off, two of my longest running ideas are approaching an end, and I have a very major iron in the fire which I am extremely happy about. In fact I'm happy in general, about a lot of things. And as if I haven't bitten off more than I could possibly chew already, I've signed up with a new blog from the creator of the Write Stuff website. It is called Dear Reader, it is a book review site, and I'm one of the reviewers, so time to increase my reading! Plus I'm healthier than I've been in a long time (not only fitter, but not carrying any injuries - how novel!)

This year (by which I mean this year of my life, not the calendar year) is not necessarily a make or break year for me. But I have a feeling it will be hugely important, professionally and personally.

To celebrate, I completely renounced my previous position on the subject, and got a tattoo. Yes, that is a real one in the photo, not photoshop or henna or a transfer. I then broke another little rule of mine, and bought some books, despite the pile of unread books you've heard so much about these past few weeks. The two books both featured on the list of 106 Most Unread Books. The first is Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman. The second is one that I've almost bought numerous times before, and on personal recommendation have finally done so - The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger.

Writing, reading, tattooing. Far cry from the respectable associate on the partnership track or respectable post-doc looking for tenure at a university - the way life was supposed to be back in the day when I honestly believed that plans worked.

A cup o' kindness From The Write Stuff - 30 Dec 07

This is adapted from an article that appeared on the Write Stuff website on December 30, 2007. The original text can be found here. If you've been paying attention, you'll have noticed that I skipped an entry - the Write Stuff article I wrote closest to Christmas has not been reproduced, because it is May and I can't bring myself to do something Christmasy here! I'll save it for this Christmas... This was written for the new year, and I can just about bring myself to repost new year articles over five months on!

A cup o' kindness
Should auld acquaintance be forgot,
and never brought to mind?
Should auld acquaintance be forgot,
and auld lang syne?

This time last year, I was struggling to come up with a dissertation proposal for a research project of little interest to anyone but myself (the effects of indoctrination and narcotics on the mens rea requirement of war crimes in the modern laws of armed conflict, if you’re interested…).

One year on, I’m putting the finishing touches to my final writing column of the year. I’m half way through my first novel. In the coming year I’ve got a script project I’m working on with a US author. I’m hoping, maybe, to try to find an agent by the end of the year. And of course, I’ve made a lot of new friends, people I didn’t even know existed this time last year.

Karen, Janie, Dale, Tammi and Andrea, the weekly writers on the Write Stuff. The [Fiction] Friday participants, like Square1, Jodi, paisley and pjd to name just a very few. The crazy and dedicated authors who kept me going through NaNoWriMo (including many of those already named above, but others including Renate and wanderlust8). My good friend Ian, a poet of remarkable talent, but who rarely shows his work. Jay and Grace who convinced me to concentrate on The Long Watch first, as it had the most potential.

At this time of year, we sing Auld Lang Syne, and recall our past friendships. These are the friendships that I made this year, people who have given me confidence in my voice, in my words, in my own imagination. I look forward to these new acquaintances becoming auld acquaintances in the future, ones who will never be forgot.

Happy new year everyone. I wish you all a prosperous, happy and successful 2008 in all your endeavours, domestic, business or creative.

Tags: Write Stuff Sunday Writer Paul Anderson

Fiction Friday - 9 May 2008

This Week's Theme: Using first person narration, logically describe something that is crazy.

---

I'll tell you what madness is, true madness mind, not this pre-packaged, Big Pharma concoction that can be solved with a little yellow pill. No! Madness is doing the same thing over and over and over and over and over again and always always always getting the same results, the same results every time and never once even considering changing what you do. That's crazy, that's madness.

Sounds familiar doesn't it? We're all of us hamsters, constantly "squeak squeak squeak", trying so hard but getting nowhere. All of us trundling along on the spot when we could just open our eyes.

I'm the only one who sees how it is. It's like, like... I read this book, and there are these guys, and they live in a cave, an actual cave, and they were all tied up or something, and they could only see shadows, but one guy got out and he could see the sun, and so he came back and told everyone and they didn't get it, they just couldn't comprehend what the sun was. You see? Their limited perspective and tiny minds kept them shackled in that cave, but they treated him like he was the one with the problem!

No one gets it. No one else can see it clearly like I can. They tried... it's the pills, they try to shut you down, stop you thinking, seeing things as they are, they want to tie you up in that cave, but once you've seen the sun you can't go back to the cave, so they try to make you forget but you can't forget, how can you forget when you've seen it, you've seen all of it.

So now I'm mad, that's their considered verdict. Guess what? That's fine by me, I embrace their scorn. Sometimes madness is simply knowing that you're the only sane person in the asylum.

You've got to shake it up, cause a stir and get them to see! You see it, don't you? You understand, I can make you see, I can make you, you will understand, right? Right?

Tags: fiction Fiction Friday

Kingston Readers' Festival 2008

At Christmas I received a copy of The Writers' and Artists' Yearbook 2008, and a couple of months ago I was browsing the online site's list of literary festivals, trying to find one reasonably close enough to me that I could actually attend. I had missed the Sunday Times-Oxford Literary Festival but really wanted to go to one. Preferably local, since I can't spare the holiday this year!

So I found the Kingston Readers' Festival 2008. Perhaps next year I'll even attend the Hay Festival.

Last Monday I attended a talk by writer and publisher Alison Baverstock called How to Manage Your Time as a Writer. More on that in a second...

If anyone is attending the festival, or is in Kingston and would like to come and say hello, then I'll be attending the following talks:

Tuesday 6 May @ 19:30, Borders Bookstore, Kingston - Writing From Home

Monday 12 May @ 19:30, Hillcroft College, Kingston - What Took You So Long?

Tuesday 20 May @ 19:30, Borders Bookstore, Kingston - How To Market Yourself as a Writer

Now, back to Alison's talk. This was quite a valuable discussion, not so much about time management, but more about creating and defending both space and time as a writer. Creating the space and time are something I knew about, but I had never considered the need to defend both, and a few handy tips were given. In terms of time, Alison made an excellent point that if we want to find the time to write, then firstly you have to find when is your best writing time. Then you need to actually schedule in that time for writing. If you have a calendar, a diary, block out that space as your writing time. Don't fool yourself into believing that you'll write around your commitments. If you leave writing for "the spaces", then you'll find that those spaces get filled up with other commitments. You have to be ruthless, or else why are you bothering?

In discussing time management, she moved on to displacement activities, things that you do instead of writing, thinking that you need to just deal with them first. Quickly checking your e-mail is a good example of a displacement activity, or as we used to call it, procrastination (thanks to Jodi for pointing this out in her blog entry today on this theme).

Alison held up blogging as a displacement activity. I can agree with her to a point. If you blog to the extent that you have no time left for writing, then you are using it as displacement. However, the writer needs to read, and the writer needs to write. Reading and writing blogs must, by definition, fall within this mantra.

How many times when reading tips on beating writer's block have you come across the advice to "write anything"? View blogging as your notepad, and see where your ideas take you, especially in this day and age of technology and new media. The literary blogosphere is the new frontier of publishing. This is where new writers are being discovered, this is how people promote their work.

I have found inspiration for my Write Anything articles through reading blogs. I have been engaged this past week in an engaging discussion on the distinction between literary and popular merit through blog post, which inspired another article. This blog often features excerpts of my writing. This blog keeps me writing even when I don't feel like it.

Rather than a displacement activity, I view blogging as another tool in the writer's toolkit, a creative outlet, a means of inspiration, a place to doodle if you will. Alison herself mentioned a friend of hers who, when confronted with a difficulty in a story, blogs about it. She finds that by the end of the entry, she has worked through the problem and knows where the story will go.

And to give an example of a writer with a high blog output, consider Neil Gaiman, and the popularity of his blog with his fans.

As with all things in life, balance is the key. Yes, if you sit down during your scheduled writing time, and elect to "just get a quick blog entry done", then that is displacement. But it is also lack of discipline. Blogging is writing. In moderation, and in its time, it is a valuable tool, and I think more writers would benefit from doing it.

Tags: Kingston Readers' Festival Alison Baverstock displacement activity blogging writing

1001 books you must read before you die...

Thanks again to Jodi for pointing me in the direction of this.

Now, I'm not going to relist all 1001 books.

Instead, I'm only going to mention those books that I have actually read, as well as the number they are on the list. Unlike the previous lists, I won't list books that I own with the intention of reading. Time to be ruthless. The books are ordered by century, most recent first.

200. Foucault’s Pendulum – Umberto Eco
241. Contact – Carl Sagan
275. Schindler’s Ark – Thomas Keneally
293. The Name of the Rose – Umberto Eco
301. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – Douglas Adams
450. The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie – Muriel Spark
456. To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee
537. Gormenghast – Mervyn Peake
561. Titus Groan – Mervyn Peake
564. Animal Farm – George Orwell
574. The Little Prince – Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
610. The Hobbit – J.R.R. Tolkien
623. At the Mountains of Madness – H.P. Lovecraft
688. Amerika – Franz Kafka
691. The Castle – Franz Kafka
701. The Trial – Franz Kafka
743. The Thirty-Nine Steps – John Buchan
781. The Hound of the Baskervilles – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
804. The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
808. Tess of the D’Urbervilles – Thomas Hardy
837. The Brothers Karamazov – Fyodor Dostoevsky
873. Les Misérables – Victor Hugo
883. A Tale of Two Cities – Charles Dickens
909. The Purloined Letter – Edgar Allan Poe
911. The Pit and the Pendulum – Edgar Allan Poe
913. A Christmas Carol – Charles Dickens
916. The Fall of the House of Usher – Edgar Allan Poe
918. Oliver Twist – Charles Dickens
922. The Hunchback of Notre Dame – Victor Hugo
925. Last of the Mohicans – James Fenimore Cooper
931. Frankenstein – Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
936. Emma – Jane Austen
937. Mansfield Park – Jane Austen
938. Pride and Prejudice – Jane Austen
970. Candide – Voltaire
983. Gulliver’s Travels – Jonathan Swift
992. Don Quixote – Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

37 out of 1001. Is that good, bad? There are many more on the list that I own (if I had bothered to read my Dostoevsky, Dumas, and Orwell, I could claim about 45 I think!) and yet more that I would be interested in.

But again, there are books that are notable by their absence. I have read only one of the handful of pre-1700 books (Don Quixote) but there is no mention of The Odyssey, The Iliad, The Aeniad. Where is Dante? Milton? Where the hell is Winnie the Pooh???

As to the list, I want to be a little nitpicky. At the risk of removing several items from the list, the stories by Poe are not books. They are short stories. I'm not even sure they were ever available as separate stories. The same with At the Mountains of Madness by Lovecraft.

I'm really pleased to see Mervyn Peake's Titus Groan and Gormenghast on the list. Both are well worth reading (I would avoid the third in the trilogy, Titus Alone). Some of the books are testament to literary vanity on my part. Voltaire and Kafka novels all originally picked up to see what the fuss was about/be able to say I had read them. However, Candide is a wonderful story, rich in humour. As for Kafka... The Trial appealed to me as a lawyer, although it suffers from the fact that nobody knows the correct order it should be arranged in. The Castle is also very good, but I almost gave up on Amerika - the story lost direction very quickly. If you want to read Kafka, break yourself in to his writing style with his short stories, they are infinitely more rewarding.

Most surprising on the list? I don't think people would expect that I had read The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie.

And possibly my favourite? Well, that would be telling. You know I love Poe, Lovecraft, Eco, and the Sherlock Holmes stories. And I will always have a soft spot for The Little Prince. So, you guess...

Thief of mind From The Write Stuff - 16 Dec 07

This is adapted from an article that appeared on the Write Stuff website on December 16, 2007. The original text can be found here. Terry Pratchett is one of my favourite authors, and the news that he was suffering from the early stages of Alzheimer's disease was very sad news. In a profession where so much depends on imagination, and the vibrancy of the mind, I cannot think of any worse fate.

Thief of mind

When I was 11 my grandmother died. I was too young at the time to understand exactly what the symptoms meant, or what was causing it. I only knew the effect it was having on my family. She no longer recognised us, so we couldn’t visit, at least not for long. The only person she recognised was my father, her son. But she believed him to be her brother.

I had never heard of Alzheimer’s before then, but I saw its effect. It slowly erodes the mind, destroying the personality, eroding memories. The only blessing of sorts is that in the late stages the person with the disease remains largely unaware of what is happening to them.

Alzheimer’s is a tragedy when it strikes - for the person suffering from it, if they are aware of the diagnosis, they have the frustration and fear of realising that their mind is slowly being corroded, and all that makes them who they are is slowly unravelling. For the family, they have to witness the slow death of a loved one, as first the person they love is taken, before the person who is left behind passes away.

This week author Terry Pratchett announced that he was suffering from an early form of Alzheimer’s disease. Pratchett is one of my favourite authors, and with the exception of Poe is probably the one I have read for the longest - for over half my life I have enjoyed reading his books, watching as characters introduced in one book grow and mature in others, changing with time, becoming richer. I have delighted in being transported to the Discworld, a world familiar to our own yet subtly different, a world in which our own is satirised and critiqued through the lenses of fantasy and absurdity.

Alzheimer’s is a tragedy whenever it strikes, but I imagine the pain must be even more keenly felt when the person it strikes is defined in many ways by a vibrant and imaginative mind. Like a painter who loses their sight, or a musician who loses their hearing, I can imagine the anguished frustration that must occur as the mind grapples to explore a world that ought to be familiar, characters who ought to be like old friends, and words that ought to flow freely. But Alzheimer’s offers no means of compensating for what it robs. There are no Monet’s or Beethoven’s - the loss of a sense can be overcome, so long as the creative force, the mind, has the will. Alzheimer’s is a thief, a cruel thief that steals that will and steals that mind.

Pratchett hopes to continue working on a few more books. I do not know whether he feels he will only be able to produce a few more, or whether he feels that he should retire while still at his peak, and that after a few more books he does not want to risk the quality of his work. At either rate, those who appreciate his work must now come to terms with the prospect that there will be no more.

To Terry Pratchett - my very best wishes for the future, whatever it may bring.

Tags: Write Stuff Sunday Writer Paul Anderson

Fiction Friday - 2 May 2008

This Week's Theme: Write about a Tree

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I remember as a boy, a few years younger than you mind, when my father used to take me to see the tree in full bloom. We'd walk a good five miles or so, out past the parish church. A grand sight, all the townsfolk used to come to see. Do you know, they used to hold a fair on the Common, the night before? There were stalls with fine meats, and sweet cakes, and the smell of the fires... Aah, they don't hold them anymore lad...

Come the morning it were all sombre mind. After the fair came the serious business. The priest, come down from St Colman's, would get hi'self up to say the blessing over the tree, and we'd all bow our heads. Then it would unfurl, each branch would have one, fluttering away like there were a gale blowing. We'd all watch, until the tree was still, and the men would come to pick up the fruits. We'd all be reminded of what we had, and we'd leave knowing we were blessed.

We haven't seen the tree blossom for many years now, not since... not since Old Crookneck passed. It's a sign they say. Times is better now. The tree don't need to blossom. I think it's a curse - we've fallen away from the law, from what we know is right, and the tree don't get a chance to blossom.

But it will tomorrow lad. I'll take you there myself. It won't be like the old days. Just a single bloom, for you.

Don't be scared lad, it's a blessing. Making things right again, with god, with the world. It's quick, you'll be at rest, and god'll have mercy on your soul...

Tags: fiction Fiction Friday