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. And Ange, who first made me realise that I could actually do this.

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.

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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 Stuff 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...