Slight Foxing

Alien languages

2011-01-25T10:04:00.000Z

It'd be easy to fall into the habit of reposting every xkcd comic I see - they're just that good - but this one is on a theme I ponder quite often, and really made me smile:

North and South - Elizabeth Gaskell

2011-01-09T16:31:00.000Z

My reading goes in trends. I’m back on the classics at the moment. I finished George Eliot’s Adam Bede over Christmas whilst I was up at my parents’. I was hankering for something similar, and luckily they have shelves stuffed with the classics: they both love them, but I think my Dad’s the old romantic like me. He loves Austen. So do I.

But I’ve read all the Austens, many, many times. I wanted something new and so I thought I’d try Elizabeth Gaskell’s North and South: a friend of mine has been raving about the TV adaptation for a while now.

I wasn’t disappointed. It’s a damn good book - completely engaging. It’s been a while since I’ve shouted at the page (come on, Mr Thornton!). But as well as a powerful romance, it’s also a social novel. Set in the mid-1800s in a Lancashire mill town (modelled on Manchester), the story is told through the eyes of new-comer to the town: Miss Margaret Hale, a parson’s daughter from the New Forest. At first horrified by the dirty, industrial town, she comes to see the human face of it by getting to know some of the mill workers – and helps to show this human face to one of the town’s mill owners, Mr Thornton.

The novel was published as a serial in a magazine edited by Dickens, shortly after publication of his own novel, Hard Times, which explores similar themes: the shifting dynamic of labour following the industrial revolution; the rights and responsibilities of employer and employee; and the hard face of capitalism, when remote from knowledge of those it exploits.

It might have been written over 150 years ago, but we’re still struggling with those problems. And they seem even more pressing now, when our commercial reach is global and we are further removed than ever from those who labour to produce what we consume.

Adam Bede - George Eliot

2011-01-06T10:36:00.000Z

The Wikipedia page on George Eliot states that she is known for her “realism and psychological insight” and that is exactly what struck me while reading Adam Bede.

I know I’ve read Middlemarch, but about fifteen years ago, when I was a child, and so I can’t remember any of it. Other than that, for some unaccountable reason, I haven't read any of her work. But I’m glad to be coming to George Eliot now, almost fresh, a bit more grown up and able to appreciate her. It’s good finding a new author to love. Especially when they've got a back-catalogue of half a dozen classics written and waiting.

The story of Adam Bede is not much more than the story of a carpenter who falls in love. But of course, as a book by a brilliant novelist, it’s much more than that. The characterisation is sublime. Half-way through the first chapter I’d taken the citizens of Hayslope to my heart. I know them better than I know my own neighbours. And the genius of Eliot is that she somehow does all the technical bits – e.g making characters representative “types”; using them as devices to reveal some part of what she wishes to say, or to move the plot along – without them ever seeming anything other than perfectly, naturally human.

Humanity is at the heart of this novel. There are no Kings, no wars, no large disasters, just a small village with its small, everyday tragedies and triumphs. The focus could be parochial; the hero, unusually (think Austen), is poor - a villager, not a landowner, not even a farmer. But Eliot makes us care, and makes us love these people. And I think, or so it seemed to me anyway, that in doing so, perhaps she wants us to look around us and think: well I know people just as unremarkably remarkable as these, perhaps I should love them too?

I left the book at my parents’ house for them to read, so I can’t refer to the text or the introduction is I’d like. But I did read the introduction, and was surprised to learn that a book which revolves so heavily around religious feeling – it's different forms of expression and different ideas of moral duty – was written by an atheist. Eliot, from my brief research, seems to be a fascinating character: a progressive thinker and liberal. I’d love to read a biography – especially as her relationship to her atheism is much the same as mine.

Recently, I’ve started to wonder: how does one reconcile atheism with moral duty and social obligation? Who teaches and guides the atheist? It is not enough to feel right; one also has to be good. I don’t hold with passive goodness. This is a discussion for another time, but I am intrigued to learn that Eliot struggled with the same question: in an atheist society, how does one replace the social function of the church?

I look forward to reading more of her work – and more about her – and learning what answers she came up with.

Tron: Legacy

2011-01-03T21:25:00.000Z

I went to see Tron: Legacy at the IMAX the other day. I’m sure there used to be time when someone had an idea for a story and thought: hey, that’d made a good film. Now it's: hey, that'd look cool.

Not that heavily visual entertainment can’t be good. A lot of art is just sheer visual impact; all eyes, no mouth. Take a good Rothko for example. There’s something about those blocks of colour that bypasses the need for any conscious thought; it burrows straight down the optic nerve and into some deep recess of the brain.

Unfortunately, watching Tron: Legacy is more like staring at a candle flame than beholding a Rothko: it’s bright and catches the eye, but it’s probably bad for you and will only bring on a headache.

Red Mars - Kim Stanley Robinson

2011-01-02T12:10:00.000Z

I read Kim Stanley Robinson’s Red Mars some time ago. I should have written it up then, while it was still fresh in my mind, but I was hoping to find something interesting enough to say about it to do it justice. I never did. However, it’s such a good book that I have to at least mention it, if only to say: it’s really good, read it!

But I’ll try and think of something more …

Firstly: it’s a big book; a massive 668-page brick (and the first of a trilogy, of course). But it’s big in every way: truly epic. It tells the story of an entire planet: that’s not something that can be done in a slim 160-page novel. And it really tries to do it justice - and succeeds. It’s rich with vivid descriptions of the red, dead world.

Yet for all its size, it’s a very human book. You see the planet, its colonisation, its increasingly fraught relationship with Earth, through the eyes of several complex characters (some of them more likeable than others – but all the more believable for it). And despite the scale and power of Mars itself, ultimately its fate appears to rest on the relationships between these few humans.

I also loved it for the science. Though optimistic (e.g. in its speed and ease), most of it seems plausible. Some of it has already happened, or is on the verge of happening (e.g. the genetic engineering of Martian-adapted organisms – take a look at Craig Venter’s work on synthetic genomes). Some people might find it dry, but the attention to detail – the seemingly laborious description of technical details, of geology, of environmental engineering – seems appropriate given that almost all of the book’s narrators are scientists. And of course, a planet covered in dust, and where all the water is frozen, is likely to be a little dry at first … (groan).

The human story is optimistic too. It might not seem that way, given events towards the end, but I think in reality we’d be unlikely to get that far. I came away with the impression that the book is a cautious love-letter to humanity and science.

The third facet that impressed me (perhaps the place where its science and humanity meets), is the political depth of the book. It is quite scathing at times in its depiction of capitalism - e.g. the "Transnats" - hugely powerful corporations which want to exploit Mars' resources.

I was amused and interested to read the description of “eco-economics”, seeming as it’s something that I’ve often thought myself. As an ecology student, I’m sure I’m biased; but reduced down, ecology is only physics: energy exchange in complex systems. Reduced down, this is all anything is. And so it seems like a much sounder foundation for economic theory than political philosophy. After all, you can’t get more out of a system than you put in. Endless growth is called cancer. But shareholders aren’t happy unless each year’s profit is greater than the last. Do they see that as sustainable?

Anyway. Where was I?

Oh yes: Red Mars: it’s really good, read it!

An inordinate fondness for … parasites

2011-01-01T13:24:00.002Z

When a cleric asked the evolutionary biologist JBS Haldane what his extensive study of the natural world revealed about the nature of God, he famously replied that He must have had an inordinate fondness for beetles. This was in reference to their huge diversity: there are over 400,000 described species of beetles (with perhaps another 600,000 still to be discovered).

Haldane could also perhaps have replied that He must have an inordinate fondness for parasites. I don’t blame Him – they’re fascinating (and perhaps, in part at least, responsible for the evolution of sex, so we all have a lot to thank them for).

I’ve been following Parasite of the Day for a while now, and enjoyed their end of the year summary – in which they calculate that it would take 295 years of blogging to cover just the known multicellular parasites.

And as Stephen Jay Gould amply explains in his book, Life’s Grandeur, we multicellular creatures are a mere statistical anomaly – so scarce as to be statistically insignificant (and our importance nothing but the product of a deranged imagination...). The mode of life is bacterial. I’m not sure what that says about God, but I like to keep it in mind. It’s good to know one’s place.

;)

New Year reflections

2010-12-31T11:46:00.001Z

So, the end of 2010, eh? I’m sure I’m normally all sentimental and reflective and what-not around this time of year, but this year … not so much. Perhaps it’s because I’m happier than usual, or busier than usual. Or perhaps it’s because I’m getting old and repetition is beginning to diminish the magnitude of each year’s turning.

Actually, writing this has made me think (writing always makes me think; it’s one of the main reasons I do it), that maybe there are two reasons why I’m finding it hard to stop and pause and give 2010 its due:

One. A huge and horrifically sad thing happened in 2010, and I think I’m still in shock from it. It’s not the kind of thing which conveniently stops affecting one at the end of the year. It’ll stretch out into all the rest of my future.

Two. Next year is going to be busy, and I’m too busy looking forwards to look back. I’ll be getting married, for one thing. I’ll hopefully be granted Australian citizenship. I’ll be moving house. I’ll hopefully get a new job. I’ll start the fourth and final year of my degree. I’ll need to choose my final year experimental project – a choice which might affect the rest of my career. I’ll need to choose, and probably apply for, my postgraduate programme of study – which may well be in a country halfway around the world. And I’ll also need to apply for funding for said postgraduate study. And be successful. Or else: bye-bye career.

So. I suppose I have a few things to keep me busy. Good job, because all those dreamy acres of free time were starting to pall.

Yes, that was sarcasm. But not bitterly meant. I’m happy to be busy. Oh, and in good news: I am able to donate blood. So that’s another thing I’ll be doing next year. I look forward to the free biscuit and weak orange squash. And the whole helping to save someone’s life thing. That’s pretty cool too.

Happy New Year to you all. I hope your 2011 is wonderful in every way.

Away with the birds

2010-12-30T13:39:00.000Z

I don’t tend to make New Year’s resolutions, and any I have made, I’ve never kept. But I thought I’d mention Resolution Revolution anyway, as it’s quite a nice idea. The site encourages people to make social resolutions – i.e. resolutions that help other people, not just themselves.

Examples they give are things like volunteering for charity, or giving blood regularly. I already have two volunteer roles and no time to take on another, but I’d like to give blood. I’ve emailed the National Blood Service to check I’m eligible (I’m on medication). If they say yes, then I’ll sign up to Resolution Revolution and book myself in for a donor session.

I hope everyone had a great Christmas. I was ill with the requisite cold, but had a good time nonetheless. It was good to spend some time up in my parents’ house. They live in Lancashire, in a house surrounded by fields. They’ve spent the last 30 years or so cultivating the wildlife there and have ended up with wonderful richness of birds.

Five minutes brings to the table tree sparrows, reed buntings, great tits, blue tits, blackbirds, robins, goldfinches, collared doves, starlings and field fares. Incredible to a grey-faced Londoner. (Although I’m lucky in having a tree outside my kitchen window which is sometimes perch to a beautiful Jay: one of my favourite birds, and normally quite shy and hard to see, but of course he doesn’t realise I’m watching him from between my kitchen blinds …)

The cold, snow-bound winter has brought the birds to my parents’ garden in unusual numbers. It’s probably the only place keeping them alive – with plentiful food and open water. Even the normally territorial robins have learnt to tolerate each other. I saw three sitting on the same branch. One of them, my parents told me, is very friendly and always comes to say hello when they go out. I was lucky enough to meet him too. I went out to take some pictures of the snow, and immediately he came and sat only a metre or so away. I only had my mobile phone camera, but I still love this photo. It’s the perfect Christmas image:

The 12 days of Coalition Christmas

2010-12-22T15:56:00.000Z

I've been finding it hard to feel festive of late. I wonder why?

On the first day of Christmas,
the coalition gave to me
An England with privatised trees.

On the second day of Christmas,
the coalition gave to me
Reduced DLA,
And an England with privatised trees.

On the third day of Christmas,
the coalition gave to me
High student debt,
Reduced DLA,
And an England with privatised trees.

On the fourth day of Christmas,
the coalition gave to me
Reduced science funding,
High student debt,
Reduced DLA,
And an England with privatised trees.

On the fifth day of Christmas,
the coalition gave to me
No EMA,
Reduced science funding,
High student debt,
Reduced DLA,
And an England with privatised trees.

On the sixth day of Christmas,
the coalition gave to me
Vodafone’s freebies,
No EMA,
Reduced science funding,
High student debt,
Reduced DLA,
And an England with privatised trees.

On the seventh day of Christmas,
the coalition gave to me
No justice for the needy,
Vodafone’s freebies,
No EMA,
Reduced science funding,
High student debt,
Reduced DLA,
And an England with privatised trees.

On the eighth day of Christmas,
the coalition gave to me
Cold deaths for the elderly,
No justice for the needy,
Vodafone’s freebies,
No EMA,
Reduced science funding,
High student debt,
Reduced DLA,
And an England with privatised trees.

On the ninth day of Christmas,
the coalition gave to me
An end to universal benefits,
Cold deaths for the elderly,
No justice for the needy,
Vodafone’s freebies,
No EMA,
Reduced science funding,
High student debt,
Reduced DLA,
And an England with privatised trees.

On the tenth day of Christmas,
the coalition gave to me
Ghettoised London,
An end to universal benefits,
Cold deaths for the elderly,
No justice for the needy,
Vodafone’s freebies,
No EMA,
Reduced science funding,
High student debt,
Reduced DLA,
And an England with privatised trees.

On the eleventh day of Christmas,
the coalition gave to me
Less help for the poorest,
Ghettoised London,
An end to universal benefits,
Cold deaths for the elderly,
No justice for the needy,
Vodafone’s freebies,
No EMA,
Reduced science funding,
High student debt,
Reduced DLA,
And an England with privatised trees.

On the twelfth day of Christmas,
the coalition gave to me
Climate change denial,
Less help for the poorest,
Ghettoised London,
An end to universal benefits,
Cold deaths for the elderly,
No justice for the needy,
Vodafone’s freebies,
No EMA,
Reduced science funding,
High student debt,
Reduced DLA,
And an England with privatised trees!

Merry Christmas everyone!

A round-up of 2010

2010-12-21T12:35:00.000Z

Seeming as the snowpocalypse and a burgeoning chest infection have got me trapped indoors, how about an end of the year round-up post!

It’s been a very odd year. I started 2010 feeling unusually optimistic, convinced it was going to be a good year. I was writing, which always makes me happy. It seemed like a sign that the depression which I’d lived with for sixteen years – and which had crippled me for the last seven of those – was finally lifting. I had my mind back. This would be the year when I found out who I really was, without depression.

And I am finding it out. A year’s too short to find out completely, but I am starting to feel like a person, not an illness. Free of that awful sludge, I can begin to feel the shape of my mind – what I really like, or dislike; what I’m really capable of; my real moods; my strengths and weaknesses. I’ve explored myself a little through writing; I’ve discovered how far (not very) my talent will stretch. I’ve started to read outside of that nice, comforting, escapism fiction which has been a friend and companion to me for so long. I’ve discovered that I’m strong enough now to read about dark stuff without feeling dark myself (although I doubt I’ll ever enjoy it. Some things are only enjoyable when viewed from the outside.).

Events of this year have also meant I’ve had to step up, and grow up. I’m glad I was well enough to do so. And I hope that for the first time I was able to offer strength to others, rather than vice versa. I have many years to repay.

Hmm. Well, that was a little bit of a diversion in a post that was meant to be some lists of books I’d read this year. But I guess as that’s what came out, I needed to write it.

OK: books!

Back in June I did my top five of the year so far. I’m going to break things down into a few more categories this time:

Most enjoyable reads
I guess the books I’ve read this year have been a bit more sober than usual – in previous years this would probably be a list of page-turning fun. I think I’ll treat myself to a few more of those next year.

1. Neal Stephenson - Snow Crash
2. Thomas de Quincey - Confessions of an English Opium Eater
3. Jack Kerouac - On the Road

Books that have taught me the most about writing – style and content [AKA: “I’d quite happily sell my right knee-cap to be able to write a book like this”]
This is actually a really hard list to choose – I’d be delirious with glee at writing something half as good as anything I’ve read this year.

1. James Baldwin - Giovanni's Room
2. Ernest Hemingway - A Farewell to Arms
3. A L Kennedy - Day

Books that have been the most embarrassing to read on the train with someone looking over my shoulder (but enjoyable nontheless!)

1. Charles Bukowski - Factotum
2. William Burroughs - Cities of the Red Night

Books I’d like everyone to read
Not in a preachy way – just because I thought they were fantastic.

1. James Baldwin - Giovanni's Room
2. Anthony Swofford - Jarhead
3. Kim Stanley Robinson – Red Mars (haven’t actually posted about this one yet, but I will do when I get time!)

OK, so that’s it for “best of”s! If I had to choose just one, it’d be … James Baldwin - Giovanni's Room. I’ve never read a book which has had such a profound affect on me.

I’m not going to do a “worst of” list. If I don’t like a book, I don’t tend to finish it. Life’s too short to soldier on with a book that’s doing nothing for you. And I don’t feel like I can properly criticise books that I haven’t read. But just out of interest, here are the ones that didn’t make it:

Mark Charan Newton - Cities of Ruin
Mark Charan Newton - Nights of Villjamur
M D Lachlan - Wolfsangel

Reason: I didn’t think the writing was up to scratch, which made it impossible to relax into the story. I had probably over-hyped them in my mind, too.

China Miéville – Kraken

Reason: This was actually the first Miéville book I’d ever tried. In all honesty, I’d never heard of him until I started reading SF&F blogs. Yes, I know: gasp, horror: I’m some sort of cretin. I started to read this when I was coming down with a bad cold, and my fuzzy brain just wasn’t up to his style of writing. I’ll try it again some time.

Geoff Ryman (ed.) – When It Changed (short story collection)

Reason: I think I’ve mentioned before that I struggle with short stories. I read a few out of the collection, but I hardly ever read collections from start to finish. These stories were OK, but I think it was apparent that the authors had no true love of the particular science they’d been tasked to write about.

Gustave Flaubert – Madame Bovary

Reason: I just really wasn’t in the mood. It’s one I’ll try again in future.

Tad Williams – The Dragonbone Chair

Reason: Dull. Apparently it gets better after the first several hundred pages. I couldn’t be bothered finding out if that was true.

Joshua Ferris – And Then We Came to the End

Reason: If Ferris had come to the end around 150 pages sooner, this might have been reasonably enjoyable, but there’s no reason why this book needed to be so long.

Thomas Pynchon – Vineland

Reason: The writing was superb, but I never connected with any of the characters. I also wasn’t entirely happy with the depiction of women.

James Ellroy – LA Confidential

Reason: I like the film. The book was kinda nasty. I know that’s the point, but Ellroy seems like a misogynist in real life and it comes through in the writing. I did quite like the writing style though.

That list is longer than I thought! And, there’s much more SF&F in it than in the lists above. Hmm. Does this mean I don’t like SF&F?

No. I don’t think so. This is the first year I’ve really started to read outside of the genre, meaning pretty much the whole of non-SF&F fiction is open to me for the first time. And there’s a lot more of it. It’s easier to find a great non-genre book that I haven’t read than a genre one.

OK, enough rambling. How about you: any reading surprises this year? What would be your book of 2010?

Confessions of a Lapsed Standard-Bearer - Andrei Makine

2010-12-17T21:31:00.001Z

It feels a bit weird to put my bookish head on after so long with my nose buried in scientific papers and frantic coursework scribblings. ("Adaptive radiations in phytophagous insects" and "Habitat heterogeneity on a coastal dune system", if you’re interested [Please be, no one else is]. Which makes me pause and reflect on the fact that scientists do like stupid words, don’t they? Basically that translates as: “Plant eating insects wot have split into new species” and “Sand dunes have dry bits, wet bits, green bits and sandy bits.”)

Anyway, having handed in an assignment, and with a whole four weeks til the next one is due, I treated myself to reading some fiction. Only a short book to start with: Confessions of a Lapsed Standard-Bearer by Andreï Makine.

As a reader of epic fantasy, short books have been something of a revelation to me. This one is no exception: 136 pages that paint perfectly a childhood, too-short adolescence and adult reflection on life in Russia after the Second World War. The story is mainly told as a series of childhood memories, interspersed with back stories from other characters. Ellipses often separate scenes, the prose sometimes drifts, becoming dreamy or poetic, and references to history or political theory tend to be oblique. Together with the vivid, crystal sharpness of the descriptions, this perfectly captures the feeling of childish memories: strong visual images in a background of poorly understood or misinterpreted adult meaning.

It is, I suppose, a deeply political book – exploring both the dream and reality of communism, patriotism, war and national identity. But it is an entirely human story, with no grandstanding. Points are made, but feel like personal revelations not laboured lectures.

This is intentional on Makine’s part, and comes across very powerfully in one section towards the end of the book where the narrator is recalling an incident from his time serving in the Afghanistan war. I won’t ruin it for you by quoting it in truncated form – I think it works much better when reading the book as a whole.

And I really would recommend this book. Perhaps I am biased – I’ve always had a fascination with Russian literature (Makine is French, but was born and grew up in Russia). There’s something about the way emotions are described which always seems perfectly right to me; it’s the way emotions sound in my mind, if that makes any sense. Maybe it’s just the translation into English which gives it a stilted, restrained but naive air, or maybe it’s the preoccupation with suffering and doomed love affairs. Or maybe I just really like descriptions of fur coats, snow and horse-drawn sleighs. Who knows. Anyway. Read it. It’s only a short book.

A year in writing

2010-12-02T12:52:00.000Z

I just realised it’s over a year since I started writing (or started my latest attempt at writing). I didn’t think I’d been hugely productive, but looking back, I’ve written more than I thought. None of it is really “finished” (a somewhat major problem), although I do have a few first-drafts – things that at least go from start to finish even if they’re not the final, edited article.

My tally is:

3 novel attempts (being un-novel attempts [groan] in that they are all uncompleted, like most novels). Combined, these add up to 195k words. A slightly depressing number really, if I look at it as wasted effort; less depressing if I look at it as practice.
6 “finished” short stories, adding up to around 40k words.

(Not counting the writing done on ideas, notes and blog posts.)

Which I guess gives me an average writing output of something like 644 words/day, which is not too bad perhaps for a part-timer, squeezing it in between work and study.

Do I feel like I’ve improved? Not really. I’ve realised I’m not exactly a natural, that my English SAT Level 8 score probably wasn’t an indicator of some potential literary genius. I’ve learnt writing is a lot damn harder than it looks. I still struggle with basic things like grammar. Plotting and planning are deceptively greasy tools I’ve never managed to get a grip on. I like to put words together and describe scenes, but I’m not a natural story teller. But I have read more widely than ever before, which has been an education in itself.

I guess my conclusions are that the old clichés are right:

Practice, practice, practice; read, read, read
Write for yourself, and write what you want to write (and read)
Write as much as you can, as often as you can
Realise that to really DO this thing, you’ll probably have to sacrifice something

And, inevitably, you’ll have to ask yourself: is it worth it?

I just hope it doesn't melt...

2010-11-18T13:40:00.001Z

Thanks to Ben Godby and his endlessly interesting blog for the heads up on this: Randy Ingermanson’s snowflake method.

I’ve read the steps of his snowflake method, and despite it leading up to an advert for a software product and having a name like a new-age self-help philosophy, I reckon I’m going to give it a go. The steps seem sensible enough.

I’ve always been a “discovery writer” and so far what I’ve discovered is that I suck. My ideas are fine – they’re for the types of books I’d like to read, which are the only type you should write – but I fail miserably at turning ideas into structured stories.

Maybe Randy has the answer. Who wouldn’t trust a man called Randy? Look at him. Look at his moustache. He’s a theoretical physicist too:

Oh no, wait, that’s Tom Selleck: Magnum PI. Easy mistake to make. Here you go:

So, no more wandering starry eyed into my WIP rewrite only to end up floundering in the bog of indecision and plot-holes known as Argggh. This time I will go armed with snowflake.

Cutting some slack

2010-11-07T17:13:00.001Z

The itch is back. No, not that one. That cream I got from the Doc sorted that out just fine. Er … anyway. I mean the writing itch. It never really goes.

So, I had the urge today to start work again on a “novel” (using the term very loosely) I started a year or so ago, but which I abandoned some time back after the struggle got too much.

Time and distance and prescription strength rose-tinted specs had made me forget just what a monster I’d created. God it’s an ugly thing. No wonder I abandoned it. But I’ve also got some perspective on it. I can see why it’s so bad.

The first 10 chapters don’t need to be there. They’re just back story – boring, sub-plot spawning back story that doesn’t need to exist.

I had no idea what I was doing when I started it. Still don’t really know what to do – but maybe I’ve learnt a few things about what not to do. I can see that I wasn’t telling the story in scenes. I was just recounting every single action. No wonder it was dull. And long.

Because there were no ‘scenes’, everything was told – he did this and then he did this and then he went there etc, etc. Nothing was shown. A scene wasn’t written to reveal information or move the story along. It was written because that’s just what happened to the characters, innit.

So, yes, I need to rewrite the whole thing. But first I need to storyboard the scenes and whittle the story down to what is essential. (The more I attempt this thing, the more it seems that the golden rule is: cut. Cut, cut, cut and then cut some more.)

But at least rewriting a limited number of scenes seems manageable. And hopefully this time I won’t create another monster.

Naturally good

2010-11-05T12:46:00.000Z

Here are some beautiful photos to put you in a good mood for the weekend ... Now I want to go for a walk through the autumn leaves that are glowing outside my window; instead I'm stuck at my desk writing an obituary about an evolutionary biologist.

But I don't mind having to study so much, because I've been inspired this morning by watching this awesome and uplifting video.

I'm not an aggressive atheist – I'm sympathetic to humanity's desire for religious faith, and appreciative of the good deeds that religious teaching inspires many people to perform – but I've always struggled to explain to people of faith just how beautiful and glorious I find the world viewed as a purely material and physical thing. The video above goes some way to explaining what I feel when I read about the inner workings of a cell, or think about population genetics and evolution, or – as in the video – when look up at the night sky.

Numbers worth a thousand words

2010-10-30T11:12:00.001Z

I love the Private Eye's “number crunching” feature. Let's have a look at a few of the recent ones:

£7 billion: Further cuts to UK welfare budget announced last week.

£7 billion: Predicted bonuses to be paid by UK banks this year.

3: Years for which benefits cheats will have payments halted under new rules.

1.5: Years for which Baroness Uddin has been suspended from House of Lords for wrongly claiming £125,000 of taxpayers' money.

And here are a few numbers that have been in the news recently:

795: Years since laws governing Britain's forests were included in the Magna Carta

3: Years in which government plans to sell over 150,000 hectares of state owned forests and other land to the private sector

250 million: Amount expected to be raised from the sales based on current land prices

0.01: Percentage this represents of the government's expenditure (over 3 years)

(And to add some perspective: 517 million: combined annual wage bill of Manchester United, Chelsea, Manchester City and Arsenal. Or: 96 hectares of forest = 1 week's worth of Wayne Rooney. I know which I'd prefer.)

30 million: Amount the Forestry Commission is subsidised by the government

63 million: Additional income generated by the Forestry Commission

4: Years in which the income from the Forestry Commission would equal the amount raised by 3 years of selling its land

315 million: Value produced each year by 150 thousand hectares of forest (if benefits such as erosion protection, pollution absorption, carbon sequestration and health provision are included).

695 million: Amount lost over three years if 150,000 hectares of forest are sold (based on above annual value)

Fun, huh? But let's not forget: it's not just the forests that the government has their eye on: nature reserves are under scrutiny too.

If you think selling off the forests might not be a good idea, you can sign a petition here. And write to your MP.

Science. Fiction.

2010-10-16T10:31:00.000Z

You know I've always had two loves. I've never kept it secret. But perhaps it's time to acknowledge it openly: I love science as much as I do fiction. As part of this open declaration, I've hastily amended my little blog header image. Don't ask me why frog = science. Perhaps because the poor things were always getting dissected in biology classes.

My third year at University has just started. It's the penultimate one, and things are getting more serious. Everything is double-weighted this year, and I need to get a very high aggregate mark in order to proceed on to the experimental project in my final year.

Going back to Uni as a mature student – and having to pay my way out of my own earnings – was a big decision for me. This really is my last chance to get started on the career path I want. There's no room for screwing it up. I work 0.8 full time as well as studying for my degree. Free time is in short supply. I've had to weigh up my priorities – and this year, study has won.

I won't be writing as much, or reading as much fiction, or blogging as much. Although I will still do those things – because I know I will need a break. And also because I don't think I can stop doing those things.

The book that started it all.

I've been reading fiction like a crazy woman ever since I managed to read my first book unaided. (The Ladybird book of The Emperor’s New Clothes. I still remember my sense of achievement when I read all the way through to the last page without help from my mum – and the sudden, weird conviction that this was some sort of magic, this deciphering of code; that somehow I had unlocked the key to it in my head and now I could read anything. Wow. It's still probably my best achievement.). And I've been trying to write books since I was about seven years old and produced my first attempt: a few A4 pages, folded to A5 and covered with scrawl and pictures of ponies; the plot, such as it was, plagiarised entirely from Elyne Mitchell's The Silver Brumby.

Anyway. I just wanted to let you all know that I might be updating here less often, and when I do, it might sometimes be about (very misunderstood) science rather than reading or writing. I feel bad about that, as though I've drawn you here under false pretences. But I hope you'll keep reading.

The Big Fellah

2010-10-15T16:32:00.000Z

A friend sent me a text saying: Would you like to see a comic absurdist play about an IRA safe-house in New York?

Of course I did. What else would I do on a Thursday evening?

I enjoyed it a lot. Written by Richard Bean, The Big Fellah gives a potted history over three decades of the IRA, but from the interesting perspective of Irish Americans in New York. It covers a whole load of things, from national identity to the psychological impact of violence, with one of its most prevalent themes questioning what people are prepared to sacrifice for a “cause” – and their reasons why.

It’s both extremely funny, and extremely dark, and its commentary on terrorism almost uncomfortably current. The acting was great too: really energetic and engaging, managing to bring the entire audience to a complete, stunned silence at several points.

If anyone gets the chance to see it, then I recommend it.

Commitment anxiety

2010-10-15T15:51:00.000Z

I inevitably hate every thing I write. Thoughts that seem alright in my head become awkward and trite on the page. Yet I keep writing them. Probably because it helps me to think. Once a thought is out there, written down, I can look at it and see it for what it is.

Writing a thought down seems to be the best of way of checking if I understand it. It’s easier to overlook mistakes in logic, or fuzzy thinking while it’s bouncing around my skull. But on the page it’s bare – and fixed. I’ve produced it, I'm responsible for it.

Of course I can change your mind, and once I’ve written some I always do. As soon as I write something, I no longer seem to agree with it. I don’t like it. It doesn’t seem like something I’d say … it’s not what I intended to say.

And then I feel embarrassed, and wish I’d never written anything at all, and get the urge to delete everything I’ve ever written.

But how else would I learn?

All dressed up with nowhere to go

2010-10-11T16:40:00.000Z

What do you do with those fragments of story ideas that don’t fit anywhere, that don’t grow?

I seem to get two kinds of ideas. The first kinds are the ones most likely to turn into a story. They tend to start with a ‘what if?’ – What if person X found out Y? What if person A wanted B? If I find that an interesting enough question, I’ll start to slot in details around it: places, organisations, other people, other conflicts, backstory. Once I’ve sketched out the world I’ll do a little mental exploration: I’ll set my proto-character in it and start to walk them around … and see if they start to talk back. If they do, and the scenes seem to be coming along one after the other, I’ll maybe start to write them down. Sometimes the voice will waver and die, other times I’ll carry on to the point where I realise I don’t have a plot or ending, or some part of the world crumbles. If I love the story, I might keep worrying at it until it starts to make sense again. If not, I’ll consign it to the Ideas Drawer – to look at again, maybe, at some point. Very, very rarely, I manage to finish one of these.

The second kinds are the ones which made me want to write to begin with; those out-of-body experiences when, suddenly, somehow, you feel you’re in another person’s skin, looking through their eyes, and a thought of theirs unwinds itself in your mind (it’s not always a person; sometimes it’s an image or a feeling). You pick up a pen, or a pencil, or anything that’s to hand and scribble it down whilst it’s still echoing … and then … and then … they leave you again, and all you’re left with is a dream of memory, a taste on your tongue – and a desire to get to know them better, to give them voice, to find out why they came to you at the exact moment; a desire to do them justice, to find the perfect words.

Except I never really can. Or even if I find something approximate, I never know where to go – because that fragment isn’t a story, however much I love it. And the more I try to turn it into a story, the more remote the idea seems, until I forget why I loved it to start with.

Either kind of idea, I’m generally left with the same problem: a notebook full of half-ideas and lots of half-written stories. And I don’t know what to do with them.

The writing challenge I did showed me that I could still write without any definite goal in mind. Perhaps I should do that. Just write these scenes out, as far as they will go – not care about making it good, not look ahead to where it is going – just write it until it snaps. But surely all I’d be left with is lots of slightly longer unfinished stories.

Or perhaps I should remember that feeling of first sketching out an idea: a purely creative thing, with no thought of stories or structures or plots. I could resign myself to creating scenes: picture postcards. It seems that what I enjoy the most is just putting words together to craft a picture. I don’t care so much what happens next.

I should probably give up writing and learn to paint.

What the Space Pirates taught me

2010-10-11T11:06:00.000Z

I did my writing challenge and ended up with a very silly story of 12,500 words which I wrote over 7 days.

I had thirteen characters to fit in (and kill off), secrets to spill and catchphrases to squeeze in – and a story to make up on the spot.

It’s not going to win any prizes but it was a great learning experience. Having to pack so much into a tight schedule meant I couldn’t wimpily write my way around any difficulties – and there was no going back: once each update was posted, things couldn’t be redacted (take that internal editor). And because the action, sub-plots and cast list were too big for a short story format, it was a bit like writing a mini-novel – which meant I got to practice using techniques in miniature that you might only otherwise employ once every few months in novel-writing.

And I also got to write about space poop, androids in love and icecream. Winner.

BT Beauty

2010-10-04T14:04:00.000Z

If, at work, bored, as I often am, I turn my head 90 degrees to the left, I see – ugly, incongruous, alien – the BT Tower, sticking up like a bad photo-shop behind the genteel honey-yellow brick of the Georgian cluster to which my office belongs.

I love it: its sci-fi parody lines, its Cylon’s-eye band of LED light, its pustule studding of microwave aerials. It looms over the elegant old streets, viewable from Regent’s Park, from Harley Street; poking over the elegant sweep of Park Crescent like a bad neighbour. It’s beautiful in all its moods: today: sulking in the too-wintery autumn sky, purple and dove-blue. But it looks best of all against a storm; lights bright against iron grey; a light house from the future, beckoning to spaceships, surely?

Books round-up: Maalouf, Pohl, Stephenson, Newton, Lachlan

2010-10-01T19:23:00.000Z

I’ve read a few books over the last couple of months which I haven’t been able to write up properly, so I’ll just summarise them quickly:

Samarkand – Amin Maalouf

This is a book of two halves: the first tells the story of the historical figure, Omar Khayyam, a Persian polymath who was born in 1048; the second is set at the turn of the 20th century, and told through the eyes of a fictional American academic as he delves deeper into his complicated and powerful relationship with Persia and Khayaam’s work.

I read most of this book sitting in the sun in Regent's Park; it seemed fitting, given (as I learnt while reading) the Persian love of gardens (our word paradise comes from the old Persian word for “walled garden”).

My grasp of history is appalling, and so I could never be sure which parts of Maalouf’s narrative were true. But how true is any historical telling? The further you go back, the more it necessarily becomes interpretation rather than fact. Certainly Omar lived, and certainly he was a genius. I appreciated this book for introducing me to him – and for reminding me of a side of Persia (Iran) which could sadly be forgotten given the current troubles in that part of the world (and with our attitude to it) – just do a Google image search for “Iran” and you will see what I mean. I think any book which helps us to understand the depth and history of a culture, explore the beauty of its land, and remind us of the humanity behind the headlines, is a good read.

Maalouf writes with skill, and as well as being educational, this was a highly enjoyable journey, taking one through the exotic history of the east to the more modern romance of the early 20th century.

The Age of the Pussyfoot – Frederick Pohl

I actually read this when I was about twelve, and enjoyed it, although its mild sexual references left my young brain with the impression that this was a very rude book, bordering on pornographic. Sadly, on a re-read, I discovered it wasn’t anywhere near as raunchy as I’d remembered.

Written in 1969, I’m not sure it’s aged all that well. And although some of its themes (advanced technology which allows people to be brought back from the dead – and the social consequences of this near immortality – e.g. a lessening of the severity of “murder”, from crime to recreation) are fairly frequent in science fiction, its depiction of society isn’t one I’d recognise, or predict, given the current state of things. It also has one of the most aggravatingly stupid protagonists I’ve ever encountered.

However, my edition does come with a forward and afterword from Pohl about the value of science fiction for everyone – i.e. science fiction isn’t just for nerds: it has something valuable to say. In my opinion, this definitely still holds true. To be honest, technology is so ubiquitous (and its effects so huge [think global warming, or GM]), it’s hard to imagine many modern-day narratives which could completely ignore its influence.

Snow Crash – Neal Stephenson

This is one of those genre standards – hang around SFF fans for long enough and someone will mention this book. Shame on me, I hadn’t read it, but my local Oxfam book shop has a reasonably healthy turnover of SFF fiction and it’s inevitable something I Just Have To Read will turn up sooner or later.

I can see why it’s a standard. Even nearly 2 decades on it’s still a big hitter – a lively, original, clever book. I just wish I’d read it in 1992 when the impact would have been even greater.

Stephenson spends some time in the book explaining the nature of his virtual world – and that, reading in 2010, seemed odd to me. The internet, online social networks, MMORPGS, Second Life: it’s all so familiar to us now. Everyone knows what an avatar is, and if they didn’t James Cameron would have made sure of it. This is mainstream now. But it wasn’t then – indeed, as far as I can tell, it was Stephenson’s Snow Crash which popularised ‘avatar’ as a term for your second, virtual self.

And, as Pohl was saying back in 1969, that’s the power of sci-fi. It normalises the new. It makes the future present. I see it as a sort of mental preparation, a conceptual playground, where we come to terms with the bizarre possibilities of the technology we’ve created. A mental inoculation against futureshock ;)

Nights of Villjamur and City of Ruin by Mark Charan Newton; Wolfsangel by M D Lachlan

I can’t say much about these books, because I haven’t actually read them. I did try. Swept up by the blogosphere’s warm reception to them, I saved up my hardearned and treated myself. Three shiny new books – and I hardly ever buy new books. And so imagine my disappointment when I discovered they just … weren’t very good.

I made three attempts on NoV, two on CoR and two on Wolfsangel. I really did try to like them, to look past the dull, awkward sentences, the ridiculous dialogue, the multiple instances of actions or internal thoughts being described and then repeated again in the next line of dialogue … and so on, and so on. In the end I decided life is too short to waste on bad books. And if it was just money I’d lost out on, I wouldn’t mind, but I still can’t understand the glowing reviews and five-star Amazon reviews. It’s probably an overreaction, but I’ve lost my faith a little in the views of bloggers whose opinions I’d come to trust.

I'll just put it down to taste I guess. Different horses and all that.

Memetic inheritance - an information transfer :)

2010-09-26T11:10:00.000Z

Thanks to a link via Ben Godby's blog (who, coincidentally, wrote a blog post with a similar question to mine ... I guess influence vs plagiarism is a fairly common writing anxiety!) here is a link to an article from Orson Scott Card on the topic.

Inversions

2010-09-26T10:50:00.002Z

One of the things I love most about science is one of the things I love most about fiction: the way it can sometimes cause a sudden switch in perception, inverting received wisdom, twisting the known into something strange, and in doing so, making the world seem a much larger place than it did before.

How about worlds that grow on trees?

Or animals that photosynthesise; or plants that drink blood?

Do we like things that are sweet or sexy, or are they sweet and sexy because we like them?

I think science and literature are often doing the same thing. They both explore the world and our place within it. They both make us pause and question the beliefs we hold. I love them both - which perhaps explains my love of science-fiction :

Memetic inheritance

2010-09-24T17:15:00.000Z

I haven't written anything for a while, for a multitude of reasons, which basically boil down to the fact that I haven't wanted to. But, there's a forum I've been on for several years now, which has a writing section, and in that writing section a fun writing challenge was started, and seeing how much fun it all seemed to be, I got itchy fingers and decided to join in.

And it is fun. Very stupid, silly fun. I don't have to try and be clever. I don't have to try and be good. I can write whatever nonsense I like. I'm really enjoying it; it's reminded me why I started writing in the first place: I enjoy making crap up.

The challenge is to write a 7000 word story in 7 days, 1000 words a day. You can choose a setting (e.g. post-apocalyptic, zombies, or, my one: space pirates). You create a little character form for people to fill in, and then part of the challenge is to make their answers fit into the story. My form was:

Name:
Can I ship you?
Which update would you like to die in?
Human/alien/AI:
Describe yourself in three words:
Your catchphrase:
Do you have a guilty secret that you don't want revealed to your crew mates/colleagues/lovers/enemies?
Will you tell me what it is?

I got 13 responses – which is quite a lot of characters to fit in. It's all totally random, and I'm just writing more or less stream of consciousness, so the quality's not so great, but I'm enjoying it hugely.

But, being me, I can't even do the silliest of non-important things without starting to over-think it; and of course that over-thinking is always angled towards finding some possible reason why whatever thing it is I'm doing proves that I am in some way rubbish.

The rubbishness I've identified in this instance is that nothing I write is original. I'm just making this story up as I go along, so I suppose I'm only writing the first thing that comes to mind, and the first thing that comes to mind is probably going to be something obvious, and what is obvious tends to be what is familiar, and what is familiar tends to be what is unoriginal … so … it's not surprising really. But I don't think it's just this story. I have noticed it in my other stuff too.

For example in my silly Space Pirates story I have giant worms, which are out of Dune. I have ship names, which are out of Banks' Culture novels. I have an AI which is out of Zahn crossed with Banks and a hundred other sci-fi writers. I didn't do any of that consciously, I just wrote and that's what came out.

I can't think of a properly original idea in any of the things I've written. They are all ghosts and shades of things I've read before.

Where's the line between influence and unoriginality? Between genre conventions and dull derivation?

NY Love

2010-09-15T17:02:00.000Z

Well, what can I say, New York was fantastic. Now I understand the ubiquitous ‘I heart NY’ T-shirts. Manhattan is gorgeous. The skyscrapers are stunning. It really has to be seen to be believed. Boston was really interesting too. It felt very different to New York – the sense of history was evident, and I learnt a lot by walking some of the history trails through the town.

I could go on for ages, but I’ll try to stave off your boredom by summing up some basic impressions:

City Life
Pretty much like London – loads to do, great atmosphere, easy to get around, great diversity of people. People say it feels frantic, but it felt calmer to me than London – maybe because I was on holiday and not in a rush to get anywhere; but even with the skyscrapers it feels spacious. The grid system is easy, the subway was never crowded*, and I didn’t have to queue or wait for anything. A lot less green though. Even Central Park seemed to be full of roads.

People
This is probably the thing I had the most preconceptions about, and the one that was a real (pleasant) surprise to me. Most of my holidays have been to countries where English is not the first language. It’s easy then, with a language barrier, to put differences down to that; to think, “we’d understand each other perfectly if we spoke the same language: that’s the only difference between us.” What was really interesting to me, was to go to somewhere where English was the first language, and to still feel the differences – without language as a fog you can start to see where the real cultural differences are. I can’t quite explain it, but the similarities (and there were many) made the small differences stand out more.

The thing that stood out the most was a sort of community spirit – a common identity almost. There appeared to me to be a difference in attitude to other people. We went to a baseball game at Yankee Stadium (loved it), and throughout the game the crowd was celebrated as much as the players. Yes, much of it was commercial – advertising and promotions etc – but when the camera was on someone in the crowd and their picture was up on the big screens, there was something good natured, almost fond, about the response from the rest of crowd. Again, it’s hard to explain, but it felt very different from the atmosphere at an English football match.

Food
Boy, you guys sure like your meat. A sandwich might be nothing but a 5cm thick layer of meat between two thin slices of bread. No salad, no marge even. We had to order vegetables as a side dish most of the time. It was tasty stuff, good quality most of the time – but yes, the portions are larger. Even your cans of coke are like 350ml compared to 330ml here.

Well, I’m still digesting (literally) most of my trip. I might post more about it in the future. In the meantime, I’m sure you’re all desperate to see my terrible, blurry tourists snaps? We gave up using the fancy camera after the first day or two after realising A) we had no idea what to do with it, and B) it’s really heavy. Most of these pics are taken from my terrible 5 year old camera phone.

NYC

Boston

I thought I’d just post up my favourite picture of them all though:

Yes. That is an engagement ring. My boyfriend proposed to me in Central Park - the highlight of one of the best holidays I’ve ever had :)

---
* Heard some woman complaining as we travelled home after the baseball game - because people had to stand up, close to each other. Try the Central Line at 8:45am, woman, when your ribs are bending under the pressure of people!

New York, New York (and Boston too)

2010-08-30T14:18:00.000Z

“On some nights New York is as hot as Bangkok. The whole continent seems to have moved from its place and slid nearer the equator, the bitter grey Atlantic to have become green and tropical, and the people, thronging the streets, barbaric fellahin among the stupendous monuments of their mystery, the lights of which, a dazing profusion, climb upward endlessly into the heat of the sky.”

That's the opening paragraph of Saul Bellow's The Victim. I couldn't help but be reminded of it and Leventhal's sticky adventures when I saw the weather forecast for New York:

Tomorrow lunchtime I'll hopefully be stepping into that heat – ~~fresh~~ crumpled off a plane at JFK. I think the weather's going to be a bit of a shock after the grey, wet and cold August that London has been giving us so far, but it'll be nice to catch a bit of summer before returning to the UK and autumn.

I've not been to the US before. I'm really looking forward to it. We'll be spending a week or so in New York, before heading up to Boston for a few nights. I think our activities will be more culinary than cultural … we lead with our stomachs (and I'm already salivating – my Time Out guide says Manhattan alone has over 22,000 restaurants); but really, what better way to learn about a place than through it's food?

If I manage to look up from my plate, I'm hoping to take some pictures. My Dad very kindly donated me his old camera. It's a Canon EOS 350D – which in the hands of someone half-way competent should take pretty decent photos. Unfortunately, I'm not that person. I've spent the last few days cramming my head with info about aperture size and shutter speed, but none of it has really gone in. I think I'm just going to point and click and hope for the best.

I'll be back mid-September – to bore you with some blurry (and quite probably grease-stained) photos!

We are tech

2010-08-30T10:14:00.000Z

A couple of interesting links:

Artificial ape man: How technology created humans

Timothy Taylor (the archaeologist and anthropologist, not the brewer) talks about the link between human evolution and our use of technology:

“Darwin is one of my heroes, but I believe he was wrong in seeing human evolution as a result of the same processes that account for other evolution in the biological world …. We were never fully biological entities. We are and always have been artificial apes.”

It's an interesting point. Our use of technology may have allowed us to avoid, or at least reduce, some of the pressures of natural selection, allowing what Taylor calls “survival of the weakest.”

“Technology allows us to accumulate biological deficits: we lost our sharp fingernails because we had cutting tools, we lost our heavy jaw musculature thanks to stone tools. These changes reduced our basic aggression, increased manual dexterity and made males and females more similar. Biological deficits continue today. For example, modern human eyesight is on average worse than that of humans 10,000 years ago.”

Taylor extrapolates into the future and suggests our continuing reliance on, and increasing integration with, technology will shape the future of our species:

“Evidence shows that over the last 30,000 years there has been an overall decrease in brain size and the trend seems to be continuing. That's because we can outsource our intelligence. I don't need to remember as much as a Neanderthal because I have a computer. I don't need such a dangerous and expensive-to-maintain biology any more. I would argue that humans are going to continue to get less biologically intelligent.”

Of course, archaeology is largely (it seems to me), a speculative science. We can't really experiment on the past. And as for evolution, it takes place over such large time scales that it's often very hard to 'see' it happening – and as for predicting what will happen in the future, and what pressures might come to bear on our species ... well, it's only ever going to be more, or less, educated guesswork.

But it's relatively easy to find anecdotal evidence of “outsourcing our intelligence”, to some level. (I use Google to spell words for me. I search for how I think the word is spelt, and then use Google's suggestion of 'Did you mean?'.) Does that really have an effect? Taylor states there is evidence to show brain size is decreasing. I'd be interested to see the research which links that with our increased use of Information Technology. (There is already research which apparently shows using the internet can affect the way our brains work.)

One fun (or terrifying, depending on your point of view) extrapolative pathway for all this reliance on, and increase in the power of, computing is summed up by SETI's (the Search for Extraterristrial Intelligence) suggestion that future efforts should look for indications of artificial rather than biological lifeforms:

To hear ET, tune in to alien artificial intelligence

It's a reasonable suggestion to me. Based on what we know about intelligent biological life (i.e. us), it's likely to end up creating more and more powerful computers. We're getting ever closer to creating AI. AI, when it does come, may evolve faster than biological life and not be subject to the same physical (and psychological) constraints: it might be better adapted to life in space; it might possess an indefinitely long lifespan.

“Dr Shostak says that artificially intelligent alien life would be likely to migrate to places where both matter and energy - the only things he says would be of interest to the machines - would be in plentiful supply. That means the Seti hunt may need to focus its attentions near hot, young stars or even near the centres of galaxies.

"I think we could spend at least a few percent of our time... looking in the directions that are maybe not the most attractive in terms of biological intelligence but maybe where sentient machines are hanging out." (From the BBC)

And if you don't get a chill up your spine at that, you're not a Sci-Fi nerd ;)

A note

2010-08-15T10:01:00.002Z

Just to say I may be away from the blog for a while due to a bereavement.

The Fantastic Reality of Frederick Goodge – Gerry Howell

2010-08-12T11:27:00.000Z

Not a book this, but a story still. I went to see it last night in Camden. My boyfriend brought the tickets on the recommendation of a friend. I wasn’t sure what to expect other than ‘comedy’, and went along thinking it would be the typical stand-up show.

Instead, it was a comic one-man play: gently, darkly, sweetly, cleverly funny. Imagine, if you will, that Douglas Adams’ Dirk Gently turns up in a Paul Auster novel running vaguely along the lines of Camus’ The Stranger, and all acted by a cross between Eddie Izzard and the Mighty Boosh’s Noel Fielding. Imagine that. Except that isn’t really what it was like, because the only thing it was like was The Fantastic Reality of Frederick Goodge by Gerry Howell.

I enjoyed it a lot. One of the things I love about London is that on any given night you can turn up in any pub basement/backroom/attic and see wonderful music or comedy or WTF for a few quid. But it always leaves me wondering: why is there so much crap on TV when there’s so much original, witty talent out there?

Altered Carbon - Richard Morgan

2010-08-10T18:27:00.000Z

I pretty much agreed with Richard Morgan’s blog post about the movie Inception, but I did find the following comment amusing:

“Is it asking too much that a large scale SF movie shouldn’t have an assault rifle wank-fest jammed into it regardless of applicability to plot?”

You see, I enjoyed reading Altered Carbon, but every time it started to get interesting and go beyond a standard action/adventure story, someone felt the need to try and kill or otherwise irritate its hero, Takeshi Kovacs (which, by the way, isn’t really a good idea: he doesn’t take kindly to it).

I feel like a twonk for using the terms, but so far this year I’ve been reading non-genre stuff: ‘literary’ fiction. I read Joe Abercrombie’s The Blade Itself in February, but that’s been it so far for clearly identifiable file-it-in-the SF&F-section ‘genre’ stuff.

It was weird, I admit, returning to genre: like putting on an old winter coat for the first time as Autumn's chill begins: you wore it for months, felt right at home in it, but now you notice the smell that clings to the fabric, the weight of it, you find forgotten things in the pockets …. And it's the fact that I did notice something that convinces me there is a stylistic difference between genre and non (some qualitative evidence to add to the quantitative ;) ). Although I will state that any difference is a blurry Venn diagram sort of thing. A little like this (only much more complicated):

The digitising of human minds and their subsequent downloading into new bodies isn’t really a new idea in sci-fi, but Morgan takes it and integrates it into a realistic-ish setting. The story did occasionally explore the implications of this technology – most interestingly, the psychological – but it never really got beyond basic Philosophy 101. Mind/body dualism raises its head, as does the problem of identity, but then the demands of the plot take over again and we’re in the midst of another firefight.

It’s not a criticism. Altered Carbon is an entertaining chunk of cyberpunk-action crossed with a noir-detective story, not a philosophy textbook – and I appreciate that it still managed to raise interesting philosophicky questions (and I very much appreciate the point that SF as a genre is a fantastic tool for raising all kinds of interesting philosophy points). But it did highlight one of the conclusions I’ve come to recently about the differences between typical genre fiction and non-genre: The first concentrates on externals, whilst the latter concentrates on internals.

I described AL Kennedy’s Indelible Acts as exploring a vast psychological landscape. The landscapes covered in genre fiction tend to be the geographical kind. And because the worlds explored are imaginary, much more world-building needs to be done; and because the action is physical, there's lots of moving the characters around. All of which takes lots of words – leaving less room to concentrate on internals: the thoughts and feelings of the characters.

Altered Carbon is a big book – but it’s not really a big story. Most of its weight is description. I’m not sure I need to know the dimensions and materials of every room Kovacs enters, and for a book whose main draw is its fast-paced and action-heavy plot, there are places where the over-description seriously slows things down. For example, when Kovacs heads through a seedy part of town to shake off a tail and is confronted in the street by three thugs – do we really need three paragraphs describing what each thug looks like?

But although it was at times excessive, overall I'm not really critical of the level of description. I have a fondness for it. Part of the charm of these big fat genre books is that they are indulgent and immersive. The weight of words is perhaps necessary to build a comfortably well-padded world in which to escape. And I did enjoy escaping to Kovacs' world. It was fun. It was good getting to know the world and its characters, and compared to others I’ve read, it was well-written. It’s hard to say much more than that, but as far as books as entertainment go, I'm not sure if much more needs to be said.

Some sense at last

2010-08-05T14:55:00.000Z

Good news from California where US District Judge Vaughn Walker has overturned Proposition 8 – the state's ban on same-sex marriage. What We Covet has a good overview of the salient points from the ruling.

As the ruling acknowledges, there can be no rational justification for banning same-sex marriage:

"The court asked the parties to identify a difference between heterosexuals and homosexuals that the government might fairly need to take into account when crafting legislation. Proponents pointed only to a difference between same-sex couples (who are incapable through sexual intercourse of producing offspring biologically related to both parties) and opposite-sex couples (some of whom are capable through sexual intercourse of producing such offspring). Proponents did not, however, advance any reason why the government may use sexual orientation as a proxy for fertility or why the government may need to take into account fertility when legislating" (121-2)

"Proposition 8 [...] enshrines in the California Constitution a gender restriction that the evidence shows to be nothing more than an artifact of a foregone notion that men and women fulfill different roles in civic life. The tradition of restricting marriage to opposite-sex couples does not further any state interest. Rather, the evidence shows that Proposition 8 harms the state's interest in equality, because it mandates that men and women be treated differently based only on antiquated and discredited notions of gender" (124).

Now, if only the UK would follow suit.

Plum dumb Beeb

2010-08-03T16:09:00.001Z

I’m not sure what level of scientific journalism I was really expecting when I clicked the headline link ‘All-over tan “an impossibility”’ on the BBC News website (don’t ask me why I clicked it. Very slow day in the office. I’ll read anything) but whatever level it was, the story went way, way below it.

The ‘news story’ informs us that scientists have apparently discovered a natural all-over tan is impossible to achieve. Did you know that buttocks are the least easy to tan? Well, now you do.

But most impressively, the story describes how: "Using scientific gadgets [the researchers] measured the precise depth of tan achieved."

Yes. Scientific gadgets.

Now, the BBC helpfully included no link to the actual journal article the story was based on (great scientific journalism again, Beeb! Don’t link to your sources!), but I googled and think I found the abstract for the paper they are referring to.

OK. I can see the journo’s dilemma. The abstract describes how:

"Erythema was assessed using reflectance techniques at 24 h and tanning measured as the L* spectrophotometric score at 7 days following noradrenaline iontophoresis."

Deadline is looming. Most translate science techno babble into layman’s terms...

~~Light reflecting technology …~~

~~Spectrophotometry, the measurement of light intensity …~~

~~Equipment which measures reflectance …~~

No. Sod it. Scientific gadgets.

Perfect. File copy. Job done.

Endless forms most beautiful

2010-08-03T09:47:00.000Z

The title of this post is from the concluding line of Darwin’s On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection:

“There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed by the Creator into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone circling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being evolved."

I couldn’t help but recall it when viewing the glorious panoply of forms in this photo gallery.

We often refer to these deep-sea lovelies as ‘alien’ – but in truth, there’s nothing less alien. At the fundamental level, where chemistry, though organisation, becomes alive, we’re all made of the same stuff, we all come from the same source, our forms – however different – are all generated from the same base code. We all live in the same home. How marvellous to see the venus fly-trap sea anemone as brother? and how petty then seem the differences between me and you and any other human being.

And doesn’t it make you think: just how alien will actual aliens be? Inconceivably so, it seems to me. Carbon based? Perhaps. DNA? Surely a code of some kind, but hardly likely it would be anything like ours. And their forms? Their forms will be adaptations to an alien world: different temperatures, different gravity, different chemistry, different seasonality. Different scales of size. I can’t imagine what they will look like, but I expect they would make looking at Asteronyx loveni seem like looking in a mirror.

Speaking in tongues

2010-08-01T15:54:00.000Z

I'm having so much fun trying to learn German. I'm learning using the Michel Thomas method, which I really like. It's quite informal, and you learn by learning little 'building blocks' of phrases and then putting them together. I'm on the third CD of eight in the beginners course. I have all these phrases buzzing around my head and I thought I would have a play around and see if I could fit them together. Here is my embarrassingly awful German screenplay (the English "translation" is at the bottom):

Bringen es!

[Kunde ankommt]

Kaufmann: Sie! … Ah … Wie gehts … Wie gehts … Nein … es tut mir leid, aber Sie können nicht rauchen hier … bitte …

[Kunde raucht. Kaufmann zuckt.]

Kunde: Ist es fertig schon? Haben Sie es? Ich will es jetzt kaufen.

Kaufmann: Ja! Ich habe es. Wollen Sie bitte hier bleiben.

Kunde: Ja, aber ich will nicht lange warten. Verstehen Sie mich?

Kaufmann: Ja. Ich verstehe. Ich verstehe. Ich werde es bald bringen.

Kunde: Gut.

[Kaufmann geht. Kaufmann zurückgibt]

Kaufmann: Ach, scheisse, scheisse. Brauchen Sie es jetzt?

Kunde: Ja. Warum?

Kaufmann: Es tut mir leid, aber ich kann es nicht finden.

Kunde: Sie können es nicht finden!

Kaufmann: Ich weiss nicht wo es ist! Ich kann es nicht sehen!

Kunde: Nicht gut. Für Sie.

Kaufmann: Nein, kommen nicht hier! Bleiben Sie dort! Ich werde es für Sie morgen haben.

Kunde. Ist das richtig?

Kaufmann: Ja, ja. Kommen Sie hier morgen, bitte. Ich werde es für Sie haben!

Kunde: Hmm. Ich sehe. Ich werde morgen kommen. Auf wiedersehen.

Kaufmann: Auf wiedersehen.

[Kunde geht]

Kaufmann: Scheisse!

And here is what it should be in English (although Google Translate – and all of the German speaking world – disagrees):

Bring it!

[Customer arrives]

Shopkeeper: You! Ah … how are you … how are you … No ... I'm sorry, but you can not smoke here ... please.

[Customer smokes. Shopkeeper shrugs.]

Customer: Is it ready yet? Do you have it? I want to buy it now.

Shopkeeper: Yes! I have it. Will you wait here please.

Customer: Yes, but I do not want to wait long. Do you understand me?

Shopkeeper: Yes. I understand. I understand. I will bring it soon.

Customer: Good.

[Shopkeeper goes. Shopkeeper returns.]

Shopkeeper: Oh, shit, shit. Do you need it now?

Customer. Yes. Why?

Shopkeeper: I'm sorry. I can not find it.

Customer: You can not find it!

Shopkeeper: I don't know where it is! I can not see it!

Customer: Not good. For you.

Shopkeeper: No, don't come here! Stay there! I will have it for you tomorrow.

Customer: Is that right?

Shopkeeper: Yes, yes. Come here tomorrow, please. I will have it for you.

Customer: Hmm. I see. I will come tomorrow. Goodbye.

Shopkeeper: Goodbye.

[Customer leaves]

Shopkeeper: Shit!

... With my deepest apologies to any Germans for murdering their language!

A monkey with a typewriter couldn't do better

2010-07-31T21:33:00.000Z

I've done two critiques for Critters today – I can already see how useful it's going to be – but unfortunately it has made my Internal Editor …

HULK OUT!11!

Ah … which has rather put paid to my chances of doing much writing today. But. Who needs to write when there is Drabble-Matic? I'm not sure I could come up with anything better than this:

“The Simple Stranger

The sun was high and the trees stirred lightly in the breeze. Dave strode along the path, making for Shiny Castle with all speed. Hidden from the eyes of man and beast, he carried the Concave Phonebook, which no other must touch until it could be delivered into the safekeeping of the Wizard Neck.

A rustling of the dried leaves beside the path gave him warning and he drew his large chicken just in time to face the yellow woman who flew at him with such grace that he was almost dazzled.

The woman struck brusquely, and Dave barely raised his chicken to meet the attack. They fought long and quickly until all the air rang with the sound of their conflict.

At last, Dave found himself forced to one knee, the woman's chicken pressed to his ugly stomach. "I am Louis of Shiny Castle," she said. "You are an unworthy guardian for the Concave Phonebook. Prepare yourself, for I am about to send you in a cab."

But Dave had been waiting for such a chance and, bringing up his chicken with a twist, overpowered Louis and pinned her to the ground. "What say you now?" Dave said, looking down upon her.

Louis's leg shimmered like a tunnel that betokens mystery. "I have underestimated you, Dave. I was sent to test your fitness for this task. To you I pledge my loyalty...and more."

Dave's desire was enflamed. His stomach throbbed and all his thoughts were to sip Louis like a marmoset. Dave caressed Louis's good leg and she responded. They came together sardonically, and their joining was as dimpled as their battle, and also much louder.

"Ah, my sweet microphone!" Dave groaned and sipped Louis as heartily as he could.

"Ouch!" she yelled. "What the hell is that?"

"Oh," Dave said. "That's where I put the Concave Phonebook for safekeeping. Sorry."

When they had finished their romp, they drowsed lustily on the grass, forgetful of all but their translucent love. "We will stay together forever," Louis said, and they began all over again.

And so it was that the Wizard Neck never got the Concave Phonebook and the forces of evil overwhelmed the land and nobody was happy ever again, at least until the sequel came out.”

Helpful little Critters

2010-07-30T10:21:00.000Z

Thanks to Ben Godby who posted about Critters over at his blog. I hadn't heard of it before, but it sounds like something that could be useful. Or at least interesting. Or possibly terrifying.

Critters the movie. I've never seen it, but it looks awesome, no?

Critters is an online writers' critiquing circle. Basically, you submit a short story or novel chapter, and in return for providing critiques on other people's work, you get critiques on your own. It's free, and the FAQ says you can expect to receive up to 15-20 critiques for each piece you submit – which is a hell of a lot more than I'd get normally.

It's actually the idea of critiquing other people's work which interests me (I don't really have enough finished pieces to submit – and much of what I write now wouldn't be classed as SF, fantasy or horror, which are the three genres covered by Critters). Providing detailed comments on stories seems like a great way to learn what works and what doesn't. Similar to why I started writing book discussions for this blog, it'd force me to really think about a piece of writing. And hopefully, I can then apply what I've learnt to my own work.

The rules of Critters state that you should aim to provide one critique a week. That seems like quite a commitment to me and my writing time is already limited. I wonder if it would just be another distraction. But as far as procrastinations go, it'd be a fairly useful one I guess.

Short shorts that need to grow

2010-07-27T16:03:00.001Z

I surprised myself today by realising that I actually have five short stories on the go (in various stages of completion). I definitely need to get more organised and actually plan my writing time rather than just writing at random. So. I have made a list of my current projects, with notes of what I need to do for each.

Now I just need to actually do some writing and everything will be gravy.

Here, have a nice bum as thanks for reading (I was looking for a picture of short shorts, if you must know :P ):

Here comes the science bit: organic cities

2010-07-27T12:07:00.000Z

Geoffrey West discusses the growth patterns of cities: “Doubling the size of a city increases wealth and innovation by about 15 percent, but it also increases the amount of crime, pollution, and disease by roughly the same amount. Apparently, the good and the ugly come hand in glove, an integrated, almost predictable, package.”

Here’s a more detailed look at the same topic, exploring how the growth patterns of cities follow mathematical patterns similar to those of living organisms.

I’ve read about this sort of thing before, and it always makes me want to write a story ... but I’m just not sure what. I need a way in. Maybe one day it will come to me.

The joy of Deutsch

2010-07-27T09:02:00.000Z

On a whim, I've decided to learn German. I do lots of things on a whim. Starting a blog. Writing a book. Moving to London. Returning to university to study ecology. Actually, I can't really think of much that I haven't done on a whim. I'm just all whimsy me...

I did do German at GCSE – which is a lot longer ago than I care to think about. Although, by saying I 'did German', perhaps I'm giving the impression that my high school actually made some attempt to teach me German. Nein. Nicht wahr. What actually happened, was that when I was in Year 8, the class of Year 9 finally succeeded in giving our German teacher a nervous breakdown ... and then commenced a sorry succession of unfortunate supply and student teachers, who all went more or less the same way.

OK, perhaps it's unfair of me to put the blame on the school … but really … what did they think was going to happen when they stuck thirty pubescent scousers into a chilly, leaking pre-fab, located waaaaay across a playing field, out of all sight and sound of the Head or Deputy Head (an ex-prison warden, school legend had it) and tried to teach them German.

Anyway. I'm having fun trying to learn it. Es ist sehr gut. There's something so essentially satisfying about assembling sounds, words, and creating meaning. It’s reminding me that words are just tokens that represent meanings (and making me realise how frustrating it is not having the words to convey the meaning you want – how integral language is to thought, and how powerless you are if you can’t communicate what you want to say). From a writer’s POV, it’s interesting to think about language in that very basic way.

I think trying to learn German scratches the same part of me that enjoys writing. Creation, communication. And I think it's exercising the same part of my brain: the part that really focusses on a sentence: breaks it down, reassembles it, tries to work out the meaning of each and every part of it … checking for ambiguity, clarity of expression. And God knows, it's a part of my brain that needs exercising. Maybe it'll improve my grammar too. Though that might be optimistic.

Cities of the Red Night - William Burroughs

2010-07-25T18:27:00.000Z

This book starts strange and gets weirder. I don’t feel like I’ve read it so much as experienced it. I’ll freely admit that I have no real idea what it was about, but it never felt like wasted time, I’m not dissatisfied. It’s well worth a read just to experience its kaleidoscope-crazy imagery – which isn’t to belittle it as some eccentric Vaudeville novel read only to be gawked at. Burroughs is an excellent writer: able to paint a scene in a few simple lines when another writer might flounder for paragraphs. (And it takes a lot of skill to do weird and do it well.)

William Burroughs (left) with Jack Kerouac

Cities of the Red Night has three main narrative strands: one written as a detective novel, one as a boy’s adventure story and one as science fiction. All three strands bleed into each other – increasingly so as the book goes on; characters, locations, themes and objects from one story start to turn up in the others until there is no real distinction between them. Throw in travel through time and space, dreams, hallucinations, magic, drugs, open-ended narratives and Burroughs’ cut-up technique and you end up with something that doesn’t make a whole lot of sense – but wonderfully, dizzyingly so.

I've read a fair amount of Fantasy and Science Fiction in my time – genres that pride themselves on being imaginative, weird … really going out there, you know? But nothing I’ve read really holds a candle to the chaos of imagery that Burroughs tumbles into this book:

“Audrey leads an army of twelve-year-old boys carrying banners of colored silk … POLTERGEISTS OF THE WORLD UNITE!

They stand now, still as stone, in a sickening uneasy calm. As the barometer drops and drops, slowly a black cloud gathers over their heads. A little wind stirs brown hair across the mouth, blown lilacs and brown hair, ruffling through hair yellow as corn silk, through auburn, orange, russet and flame-red hair and black Pan curls …

WIND WIND WIND

A sighing sound, a whistle, a shriek, hair standing straight up now as a black funnel whirls around their slender bodies tearing cobblestones up from the street, screaming hurricanes of broken glass as the boys ride this bucking whistling wind – it’s known as a “space horse.” You let it carry you all the way out, glass blizzards stripping flesh from the bones, tossing bloody bones through the air with street signs and branches, masonry, stones, and timbers – the whole city is flapping and shredding.

Thousand-mile-an-hour winds – the fences, barbed wire, and massive iron gates of the Casbah are tearing loose … flying wire decapitates screaming crowds. Pan, God of Panic, rides the wings of Death as the torn sky bends with the wind, prop sky tearing, shredding – incandescent force – the pure young purpose blazes like a comet …

WIND! WIND! WIND!”

I mentioned in my discussion of Burroughs' book Queer that his writing influenced cyberpunk. William Gibson (in this interview) says:

“ … [T]he books by William Burroughs ... affected SF in all kinds of ways. I'm of the first generation of American SF authors who had the chance to read Burroughs when we were fourteen or fifteen years old. I know having had that opportunity made a big difference in my outlook on what SF- or any literature, for that matter- could be. What Burroughs was doing with plot and language and the SF motifs I saw in other writers was literally mind expanding. I saw this crazy outlaw character who seemed to have picked up SF and gone after society with it, the way some old guy might grab a rusty beer opener and start waving it around. Once you've had that experience, you're not quite the same.”

It was his descriptions of Mexico City in Queer which reminded me of those dystopian future cities which are always so evocative to me of that grimy human-meets-inhuman imagery found in cyberpunk; and those city descriptions, and their inhabitants, play a large role in Cities of the Red Night (as the title of the book might suggest), but now these are fictional cities: amped up, drugged up, disturbing, violent and ultra-weird:

“Blue twilight was filling the narrow twisting alleys of the city. The stranger shivered, gathering his ragged cloak about him. Lights were going on behind latticed windows.

Here and there blue streetlights sputtered in sockets. A beggar crawled into the street, barring his way and holding forth a bowl fixed into the stump of his arm like a ladle. His legs were twisted, limp and boneless, his shaven head was fetal, his lips parted with a fetid yellow exhalation of breath. The stranger stepped by him and the beggar muttered curses in a gurgling liquid dialect that seemed to bubble up from noisesome depths. … [H]e could see a misty, blue-lit square. As he stepped into the square, which was littered with rubble half-buried in sand, he found himself surrounded by a gang of filthy youths about four or five feet in height, mewling and chittering and chirruping among themselves as they moved closer blocking his way …. Looking closer he could see they were all in some way inhuman.

Some had long red hair and sputtering green eyes and their hands were armed with needle claws dripping fluid in the blue light. They were wearing leather jockstraps and short fur cloaks …. Others, completely naked despite the cold, had smooth reptilian skins, crystal disk eyes and long flexible tails tipped with points of translucent pink crystal.”

And so on … with much inclusion of those things which I’m starting to think of as reoccurring themes with Burroughs: drugs, boys, sex and guns. And hanging. Lots of hanging.

So what’s it all about? A satire on politics and violence, on governments and regime change? Apocalyptic vision of the future? An exploration of the consequences of excess? I really don’t know. But I think that Burroughs had a point to make. Or several.

A 1981 New York Times article quotes Burroughs as saying:

''Certain passages in the book that have been called pornographic were written as a tract against Capital Punishment in the manner of Jonathan Swift's Modest Proposal. These sections are intended to reveal capital punishment as the obscene, barbaric and disgusting anachronism that it is.''

Personally what I got most from this book is a reminder about the nature of fiction – what you can do with it, the things it’s possible to write about, the ideas it’s possible to explore. I doubt this is what Burroughs was getting it, but as as he quotes in the book from Hassan i Sabbah (founder of the assassins): "Nothing is True, Everything is Permitted."

Object reference not set to an instance of an object

2010-07-25T17:10:00.000Z

I have a new laptop. Joy. Unfortunately it's going to be a while longer before I can load my story onto it and get back to work.

You know I was saying my memory was bad? (Today's example: Me – What happened yesterday? Did I do something? Did we go somewhere? Bf – You went to town and bought a laptop. Me – Oh, yeah!) Well, that becomes a problem when I'm away from my story for a while for whatever reason. I haven't been able to look at any of it for over a week. And although I thought I had the most recent copy backed up … turns out, I don't. I should still be able to get it off the old laptop, but not for two more weeks, until I go to visit my family (they're tecchies … they should be able to perform some sort of surgery on it).

It feels very odd trying to write without having the 'story' there to refer to. I know I made changes – though I can't quite remember what – but I must have done a lot of restructuring work, because none of the chapters on my old back-up match my hazy recollection of them. I'm also missing a whole chapter … and I know there are probably a whole raft of minor edits missing from the other chapters, as well as my most recent outline … and God knows what else.

The story feels very remote. The story I have here is no longer the real one; there have been too many changes. I don't trust it … and I find I can't seem to write without feeling like the story is there, without being able to refer back to it. It's like working in a vacuum. And without working on it every day, I can feel it starting to go cold in my head. Not dying … just … on stand by; not readily accessible. (It feels a bit odd, having always thought the story lived in my head, to realise just how much of it was committed to computer, how integral the computer is.)

So. Fingers crossed I can get it off the old laptop. Otherwise … I'll just have to work at what I've got; try to pummel it into life and reconstruct what I've lost.

Bad Reviews

2010-07-23T14:53:00.000Z

My brain is currently about as functional as my laptop: fried; scrambled … my word count goal is some hazy number – some integer, it doesn’t really matter which, they’re all equally, laughably improbable, being, as they are, followed by a string of hollow, dancing zeros … of which I’ve only managed one: zero … (and for some reason, accompanying that mental image, grinning maniacally at me, looming large above the dancing zeros – who dance at her command like the bewitched and multiplying mops in Fantasia – is my Internal Editor, dressed in the garb of Baron Samedi).

Like I said: fried.

And so, in lieu of the three book discussions I should be writing, have some enjoyably bad Amazon reviews. To be fair, they’re probably more insightful and nuanced than anything I could come up with right now. And to be constructive, I should probably take these reviews, turn around, and say to my Internal Editor: See? You can’t please everyone. So just let me get on with it.

To which she will say:

The five-step programme

2010-07-20T14:27:00.000Z

Madame Bovary: it’s as easy as one, two, three, four, five …

I doubt there can ever be any ‘right’ way to write a book, but it’s always interesting to hear how others do it. Below are Gustave Flaubert’s five phases of writing prose fiction – taken from the always interesting ‘On Fiction’ (a blog that explores the psychology of fiction).

"First, came what Flaubert called the “old plan,” which would change as the project developed. In this stage, Flaubert would daydream around his subject, imagine his characters and their psychology, imagine key scenes, choose locations, and perhaps do some research such as reading, visiting places, interviewing. He continued until he could see the story in his mind’s eye.

Second, Flaubert wrote what he called scenarios, which contained main lines of the narrative but in a very unfinished fashion, with semi-formed phrases, and with names and places signified by x, y, z. In this way he explored vast territories and created, as it were, a set of signposts.

Flaubert’s third stage was to write expanded drafts. Sentences and paragraphs started to take shape as he explored many possibilities of the narrative. The pages of these drafts were thick with corrections and insertions between the lines and in the margins. At this stage he might do more location work, less to check for accuracy than to see scenes through the eyes of each of his characters.

In the fourth stage, the labor of style began. In a series of drafts, elimination occurred: a page might be reduced to a phrase, and large parts of the expansive drafts were deleted. At this stage also, the text was subjected to the test of reading aloud. Further drafting occurred until everything fitted together, like a musical score, to be heard by an imagined reader.

Fifth, a final draft was produced, with no further corrections."

I do some of these things, but not with any great degree of order ... How about you? Is this similar to your process?

Technically, there's a problem

2010-07-19T20:40:00.000Z

My laptop went for a burton on Friday. It is now an ex-laptop. I’ll try to update when I can, but it might be a little quieter here than usual for a short time. It also means I’m having to write my story by hand: an interesting experience …. One benefit of having no word processor is that I don't know exactly how far behind my word count goal I currently am. But if I could offer a qualitative assessment, I’d say: drastically.

Forgotten greats

2010-07-17T10:02:00.001Z

I found this story both heart-warming and a little ... frightening:

“A little-known 70-year-old novel by the Australian author Christina Stead has been given a new lease of life in the US thanks to [a review in the New York Times Book Review by] Jonathan Franzen. …

Sales for [The Man Who Loved Children], which tells the story of the decline of an American family and which Franzen said "operates at a pitch of psychological violence that makes Revolutionary Road look like Everybody Loves Raymond", have hovered "in the hundreds" since Picador first began to publish it in 2001, spokesperson Frances Coady told US books magazine Publishers Weekly. But following the Franzen review, Picador has gone back to press for 4,000 copies and is hoping to reprint again shortly. …

It is published in the UK by tiny press Capuchin Classics, an imprint dedicated to "reviving great works of fiction which have been unjustly forgotten or neglected". But editor Emma Howard admitted that so far, the Franzen effect has yet to be felt over here.

"She is an absolutely fantastic writer. I really think it is a minor masterpiece – it's superb," she said of the novel. "I fear [Stead] may be one of those writers who never quite catches on, but you never know ... We feel there is so much rubbish around, and there is so much wonderful stuff which should be being read – it's a crime that she in particular isn't better known. A lot of modern writers could learn so much from Christina Stead."

The author of 15 novels and many short stories, Stead died in 1983.”

I wonder how many “classics” there have been which have never made it into the public consciousness? How much talent wasted? How many female authors who wrote at a time when female authors were seldom published; how many manuscripts got rejected and their authors never had the heart to carry on; how many great books got published only to somehow never crest the wave – wrong time, wrong place, poor marketing … books for which that that particular set of circumstances that somehow make it happen for a particular book, just never happened?

There is undoubtedly an element of luck in publishing. The whole landscape of literature might be different. What if we’d never heard of Joyce or James or Dickens or Dostoevsky or Austen or Auster or Mieville or McCarthy? What books would we be writing or reading now? Would we be experimenting with different styles, different literary techniques? If we hadn’t absorbed these writers’ characters and stories into the public mind, how different might we be: our children having grown up not in Narnia or Hogwarts or Middle Earth, but completely different worlds, the products of different minds; our writers having been influenced by a completely different set of voices?

Indelible Acts - A L Kennedy

2010-07-16T11:27:00.002Z

If you’ve noticed the lack of book discussions lately … well, to be honest, I simply couldn’t face reading anything after finishing Giovanni’s Room by James Baldwin. Some stories don’t leave room for anything else. I couldn’t write for days afterwards (and still find it hard, as though David and Giovanni are watching over my shoulder; everything I write seems glib and trivial compared to their story). I wanted to write a post about the impact Giovanni’s Room had on me – the way that some books really can change something inside of you. But I can’t find a way to talk about it without sounding mawkish (even this feels too much) and I don’t want to do the book a disservice. And so the only thing I will say (which is the highest praise you can give any book) is: read it.

Anyway, enough weeks went by, and I got the urge to take something from the shelf: Indelible Acts: a collection of 12 short stories by A L Kennedy. I wrote a while ago about how I wanted to learn about the short story form. It’s something I’m very unfamiliar with. And as the people who have been kind enough to read my short story attempts can attest: it’s something I’m not very good at either. I seem to be able to write paragraphs – scenes even – but I struggle to form these into a story. How hard can it be? Beginning, middle, end – right? I get that … but I’m still missing something. Maybe getting familiar with short stories will help, maybe if I read nothing but short stories I’ll somehow absorb whatever it is that makes a short story a story and not just a short piece of writing …

I’m not sure if Kennedy’s stories are the best place to start – not that they aren’t good (if you’ve read my discussion of Day, you’ll know I think she’s an excellent writer) – but because the way she writes is perhaps atypical. One of the criticisms I’ve seen levelled at Day is that it doesn’t have a plot as such: nothing much happens: or at least, what does happen, doesn’t happen in a linear fashion; and it isn’t one action leading to another, but rather, the recollection of one thing leading to the recollection of another. Temporally, at least, it doesn’t go A to B to C – and so in terms of structure, it’s harder to fathom exactly the ‘beginning’, ‘middle’ and ‘end’. And Kennedy’s short stories are the same.

Actual events in each story are almost non-existent: someone waits for funeral at a crematorium to start; a woman sits in a doctor’s office and is given some vaccines; a woman is ill in a hotel room and orders some water from room service; a man and a woman have breakfast and go for a walk in the woods; a man drives to a supermarket and collects some cardboard boxes. That is what happens, but the psychological landscape explored is vast.

Again, as with Day, Kennedy takes us close inside her characters’ minds – uncomfortably, suffocatingly close. As one of the blurbs on the back says:

“Kennedy writes with flaying precision about the things we won’t often admit to ourselves, let alone speak aloud.”

The stories in this collection explore something acutely fundamental: the fierce, desperate, stupid, terrifying need for human companionship: for love, for sex, and how fragile that makes us; the things we would do, would put up with, not to be lonely – which is a painful and complicated subject; and as I suggest in the opening paragraph to this post, it’s a very difficult thing to talk honestly about intense emotions without sounding stupidly sentimental.

It’s a fine line, but I think Kennedy manages it with great skill. I know not everyone agrees – and everyone has a different level of sensitivity (Ursula le Guin, in her review of Day, accuses Kennedy of slipping, at times, into bathos).

You could perhaps find some of Kennedy’s characters' internal monologues humorous; could wrinkle your nose at their extremes of emotion, their raw, ragged feelings. They are at times pathetic. Desperate. But that is the point. Being human, and needing other humans, is almost infinitely humbling. Kennedy hammers that point home with an intensity that is uncomfortable – and yet, reassuringly identifiable.

Slow reading

2010-07-15T12:07:00.000Z

I seem to be micro-blogging and multi-linking today, hypocritical really, ... but it did amuse me to read this article about slow reading today after the post I wrote the other day in which I suggested a slow reading movement was called for. And it also ties in with this post about how online reading habits might affect our brains.

Whilst I worry these things are true, and we're suffering in certain ways for it, I'm not sure there's much that could or should be done about it. (People wouldn't do it if they didn't enjoy it - even if their enjoyment is fake; and life being what it is, people ought to be able to do what they enjoy.) It's the same old worry with the same causes as for example this, and it's not going to go away or stop happening - and for all the negatives there are also positives ... we aren't sufferering from Future Shock just yet.

I write like ...

2010-07-15T11:40:00.000Z

(Everyone's doing it)

So apparently I write like James Joyce. I also apparently write like Douglas Adams. Now there's an interesting style mash-up.

Although, I think, if truth be told, Richard Clegg's I Actually Write Like has it about right, awarding me the following badge:

I actually write like
something rolling about at random on the keyboard, possibly in pain

I Actually Write Like Analyze your writing!

How's your r-TPJ today?

2010-07-13T12:19:00.000Z

The lead on this article is research which shows creativity is supposedly on the decline in America – which is interesting in itself – but it’s also an interesting summary of the neurology/psychology of creative thought:

"When you try to solve a problem, you begin by concentrating on obvious facts and familiar solutions, to see if the answer lies there. This is a mostly left-brain stage of attack. If the answer doesn’t come, the right and left hemispheres of the brain activate together. Neural networks on the right side scan remote memories that could be vaguely relevant. A wide range of distant information that is normally tuned out becomes available to the left hemisphere, which searches for unseen patterns, alternative meanings, and high-level abstractions.

Having glimpsed such a connection, the left brain must quickly lock in on it before it escapes. The attention system must radically reverse gears, going from defocused attention to extremely focused attention. In a flash, the brain pulls together these disparate shreds of thought and binds them into a new single idea that enters consciousness. This is the “aha!” moment of insight, often followed by a spark of pleasure as the brain recognizes the novelty of what it’s come up with.

…

A fine example of [how practice and learning can increase creative abilities] emerged in January of this year, with release of a study by University of Western Ontario neuroscientist Daniel Ansari and Harvard’s Aaron Berkowitz, who studies music cognition. They put Dartmouth music majors and nonmusicians in an fMRI scanner, giving participants a one-handed fiber-optic keyboard to play melodies on. Sometimes melodies were rehearsed; other times they were creatively improvised. During improvisation, the highly trained music majors used their brains in a way the nonmusicians could not: they deactivated their right-temporoparietal junction. Normally, the r-TPJ reads incoming stimuli, sorting the stream for relevance. By turning that off, the musicians blocked out all distraction. They hit an extra gear of concentration, allowing them to work with the notes and create music spontaneously."

Now, I have no idea if I’m deactivating my r-TPJ when I write, but I think it’s that ‘spark of pleasure’ combined with that escape into complete absorption which is why I enjoy writing so much. If I’m writing well, if I’m really into the story, then, for a time, I forget everything – it’s bliss, that being away from yourself, from the world. It’s why people take drugs, it’s part of the pleasure of sex. It also seems to be addictive. At least though, it’s a relatively harmless addition – I might be constantly distracted and scatter-brained, I might get RSI and neglect important relationships, I might end up penniless and living in squalor … but at least I’m unlikely to end up choking on my own vomit in an alleyway somewhere …

I hope.

Re: rereads

2010-07-12T18:31:00.000Z

My memory is bad.

Oh sure, I hear you say, so is mine … I forgot my brother’s/wife’s/child’s birthday the other week! And sometimes I go to the supermarket and forget to buy the one thing I went in there for …

No, no – that’s nothing. My memory is really bad. Some illustrative examples:

Driving up North; motorway sign reads 'Leyland'.

Boyfriend: Leyland … Remember that job you had there?

Me: No.

Bf: That job with the council.

Me: What council?

Bf: Lancashire County Council.

Me: No … What was I doing?

Bf: Some database thing.

Me: Oh. Cool. Was it good?

Bf [hands grip steering wheel tightly]: How do I know! How can you not remember?!

Me: Ah … watch out for that truck, darling …

Not convinced?

I brought my boyfriend a book for his birthday. He unwraps it, looks at it, looks at me.

‘What’s wrong?’ says I.

‘I have this book.’

‘Oh.’

‘You were there when I brought it. Last week.’

‘Really?’

‘I sat in the same room as you when I read it.’

‘Um …’

‘When I finished it, we had a long conversation about why I didn’t like it.’

Me, biting fingernail, brow drawn down contritely, ‘Oops?’

(Of course these also illustrate just what a lucky, lucky chap my beloved is. I am quite the catch.)

Part of the reason I started this blog was to help me think more deeply about the books I read – so that I could actually remember them. And now I can always just look through the archives to see what I thought of a book.

But there are so many books I read years ago which I know were good, but can’t quite remember why. And it’s more than just forgetting … There are lots of books I feel I haven’t quite finished with yet: I don’t think I got everything out of them that I should have. Maybe I read them too quickly, or wasn’t in the right frame of mind, or was too young to properly understand them.

Those books – the undigested – lurk in the back of my mind; a sense of dissatisfaction, something incomplete. It irritates me. I think I should reread them, and wonder if I will ever get the time. There are so many books I haven’t read at all, is rereading a luxury I can’t afford? Perhaps there is need for a ‘slow reading’ movement (like the slow food movement, or the slow blogging movement): careful, considered, savouring each bite.

I like what A L Kennedy writes about “staring at texts until they [unlock]”, and I’m tempted to try what she suggests:

“Something else for an author to try - lie in the standard student position, slumped on the floor, giving a paragraph your full attention, waiting until it starts to sing in you - that's a feeling you could get to enjoy - that is, in fact, the adult return of just the feeling you had on those nights when you stayed awake in bed and wrote and wrote after lights out, wrote the words that were for you alone to be inside. Welcome home.”

There are a quite a few books which would be worth that. When you consider the effort that goes into writing them, maybe more effort whilst reading is deserved? Not just gobbling up the words, but tasting them, letting them roll around your mind.

A mild admonishment to myself: do the reading equivalent of chewing 50 times before swallowing. That way, perhaps, the books I read will slip down easier, become assimilated, and not just sit like lumps, chafing away at the back of my mind.

And in the meantime, some recognition for those worthy books I didn’t give the attention they deserved (the few I can remember, at least):

Books I read when young that I’d like to reread now:

Michael Morpurgo – War Horse
JRR Tolkien – The Hobbit
George Bernard Shaw – Selected Plays
Julian Barnes – A History of the World in 10 ½ Chapters
Leo Tolstoy – War and Peace
Fyodor Dostoyevsky – The Idiot
Fyodor Dostoyevsky – Crime and Punishment
Frederick Pohl – The Age of Pussyfoot
Almost all Isaac Asimov (and Arthur C. Clarke)
George Eliot – Middlemarch
George Orwell – Animal Farm

Books I read more recently but too quickly:

Mikhail Bulgakov – The Master and Margarita
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn – A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich
(There seems to be an inordinate amount of Russian literature on this list … I blame my genes: I’m the grandchild of communists.)
James Joyce – Dubliners

And I’m sure there are many more … but my memory being what it is …

The creative process

2010-07-10T14:57:00.000Z

It's all so very true ...

(NB: short update for reasons of glorious sunshine and picnic beckonings)

Stamina: how long do you last?

2010-07-04T14:30:00.000Z

I’ll look for a pattern in almost anything. Maybe it’s my scientific inclinations, or my vague OCD tendencies. Most likely I’m just dull.

But I have noticed that when I sit down to write, I do about 600 words, and then I run out of steam, or the section naturally ends, or I feel the need to make a cup of tea, or my brain melts.

I’ve heard other people say they write in 1000 word blocks. Some people don’t seem to check the word count but aim for say, a page, or to write for a certain length of time, maybe 1 or 2 hours. I think it would be hard to write continuously for much longer than that. I have occasionally sat down and produced 3-4k in one go … but that was a while ago, when I was amazed just to be writing at all, was very excited by the whole thing, didn’t have wrist cramps and numb fingers, and wasn’t aiming to produce anything good.

I have word count goals – and I must have realised my ‘pattern’ before I set them, because I set the daily goal at 600 words. Doesn’t sound like a lot … but it adds up to 4200 words a week, and is realistic. (There’s no point setting a goal that isn’t realistic. I’ve done that in the past and it just gets depressing when you inevitably don’t meet it.) I won’t manage 600 words every day, and some days I’ll do two or three times that much. So far I’ve manage to keep on target (or a little ahead of target … which is nice).

How about you? Do you have a pattern, or word count goals?

Bugged gleanings

2010-07-02T14:35:00.000Z

So – what did I hear during Bugged's big overhearing event yesterday? Not a great deal, actually. But that was interesting by itself. I suppose I was a little hampered by being at work all day (in a very quiet office) and then having to go home and work on my book; and so all of my overhearing took place on the commute to and from work and on my lunch break. I learnt some things though:

1. Nobody talks on the train in the morning (unless they’re tourists). Commuting is a solitary activity: everyone interacting with words (in books or papers) or with music, but not with each other.

2. Paying attention is tiring (and I have a very short attention span!).

3. Actually opening your ears on the train or tube produces a sensation a little like what they do in TV shows when trying to convey ‘telepathy’ – a chaotic buzz of hundreds of voices and white noise – completely indecipherable, and completely overwhelming. It’s no wonder I block it out!

4. But – actually noticing people is good. People are lovely and varied and interesting (and I realised there’s an astonishingly large number of very pretty men in London …).

But – you’re dying to know – what did I actually hear? Well … here it is:

‘A big fountain thing…’

‘And what time do you get there? Half past?’

‘Is there a fan in your office?’

‘I’ve had cocktails before in this situation – at the hotel.’

‘Why didn’t you say excuse me?’

‘I’m using a calling card, that’s why.’

‘I can’t wait for this week to be over.’

Good, eh? Actually, I think it is. Somehow it’s the most mundane things which give me the most ideas … I’ve already written a piece of flash-fiction for Bugged’s ‘Under 250 Words’ category, and have an idea for a short story too. So, at the very least, it was inspiring!

But as point 4 above suggests – the exercise was good for making me notice more than just what people were saying: faces, clothes, mannerisms. How can you ever be stuck for a character or for a story when every single person you see is one? – Like the boy I saw with the Olympic Shooting Team polo-shirt and the Afghanistan Volunteers wrist band; or the man with the tired eyes wearing a Battersea Dogs and Cats Home jumper covered in hair; or the three young Asian business men, and the one who, sitting next to me on the tube, took a piece of paper from his pocket, unfolded it and read:

Your Gift Voucher:

VIP Reception and cocktails

Choice of three girls

A little light music

2010-07-01T20:48:00.000Z

Will anyone get a Jethro Tull reference that has only a very tentative relationship to this post? Will anyone care? Will anyone come back to my blog now that I’ve outed myself as a Tull fan - especially after the molluscs post? (I was a lapsed fan; have had a recent mild relapse, a flute flare-up: prognosis prog-rock; now perhaps I’m just musically prolapsed.)

Anyway, I was probing around McSweeney’s and found this. (Who can resist a story called ‘It’s Naked Time’?)

Also, this is a little old, and maybe you’ve seen it before, but what’s not to love about a platypus keytar venn diagram?

Enough silliness.

Beautiful creep

2010-07-01T08:43:00.000Z

Today is B-Day; I've had my ears open since I left the house this morning, and already have a vague story idea forming. I'll post my gleanings later, but in the meantime, have some beautiful pictures of marine arctic molluscs. At times like this I feel it’s Imagination 0 : Nature 1.

Don't forget to get on the B-Day tomorrow...

2010-06-30T14:27:00.000Z

Don’t forget – tomorrow (1st July) is 'B-Day': the official ‘overhearing’ day for the Bugged creative writing project. If you have no idea what I’m talking about, here is the low-down from their site:

1 On July 1st 2010, go forth and…. eavesdrop! Wherever you are – in the British Museum or Bradford bus station, in your office, the pub, on the train – listen in to conversations and fragments of speech around you. Be discreet. Try not to get punched.

2 Write a new piece of work based on what you hear. We want poems of up to 60 lines, stories up to 1000 words, flash fiction up to 150 words, scripts up to 5 minutes long. Our favourite recent overhearing is ‘I think it was the turtles that did for her eventually.’ Yours may be tragical, farcical, touching or mundane. You don’t have to quote your overhearing directly – it might just be a starting point for your piece.

3 Submit it to us by email after July 1st, and before August 15th (read the small print first). The sooner the better because….

4 …the best incoming work will be posted on this blog. The earlier it arrives, the better chance you have of beating the crowd. Some very fine writers are already sharpening their pencils – see 5, below.

5 The very best of the work submitted will be published in a printed anthology, alongside well-known names like Jenn Ashworth, Ian Marchant and Daljit Nagra. The book will be launched in October at Manchester Literature Festival and Birmingham Book Festival, and you’ll be able to buy it online.

I think it sounds like a really fun idea. As I’ve already said, I’ve been surprised how hard it is to actually pay proper attention to what’s going on around me. Is that a necessary big-city survival instinct, or do we all go through life with our ears blocked? Is that a bad thing? I’m not saying we should be nosy … but maybe paying more attention to the people around us would be a good thing.

I’m going to try and write something for this – but even if I don’t manage to write anything at all, the exercise is a useful reminder to me to sharpen my observation skills. Sometimes I wonder if the characters and scenarios I write are really true and accurate, or if they’re something I’ve just distilled from the hundreds of fictional representations I’ve absorbed over the years. It would be so much better to return to the real source material, so to speak – actual people, actual words, actual lives.

So, a promise to myself: keep my eyes and ears open every day, not just tomorrow.

Don't be lonely

2010-06-29T13:00:00.002Z

OK, so maybe this was just an excuse to listen to this song:

Bitmap - don`t be lonely by GiGi

But, I have been thinking a lot about how important feedback and interaction are when writing. Not just because it can be a lonely thing, and it's nice to share, but as a way of learning and getting better. I've never been a 'joiner' - not because I'm anti-social and don't want to, more because I'm shy; I've never been part of a writers' group or been on a course, or been to a convention or event or reading or signing etc.

Maybe most writers are introverts anyway, but there's something attractive about the idea of locking yourself away, turning inwards, producing something in isolation - not just physically - but producing something by yourself - the arrogance of wanting to do something without help. And maybe, if you're a natural genius, that works.

I'm a long way off being a genius ... maybe, if there's only a fine line between the two, that puts me quite far into madness ... but anyway, I acknowledge that I need feedback on my work - and I have already seen how much it can help.

I think writers are quite used to self-criticism and self-doubt: those big screaming voices which shout: this is all rubbish! Never write anything again! You have to learn to ignore those ones. It's harder to know which of the little voices to listen to: the ones that whisper: I'm not sure about that word, and that paragraph is a bit iffy ...

Which is why it helps to get a second opinion. And especially because, whilst we might be wracked with self-doubt, we also tend to have egos and make the mistake of thinking we're cleverer than we are. And cleverness has no place in writing. Genius, yes. Talent and skill and hard work, yes. But being clever? No. And definitely not being smug.

Anyway, I think what I'm trying to say is: firstly - thank you, to the people who have read my work and given me feedback. And secondly - I need to stop being a wimp and get some more, and I need to learn to listen: to them, and to the little voices.

Yes - listen to the little voices. Well, I did say I was quite far into madness ...

Well, it's a start ...

2010-06-27T19:28:00.000Z

I was a bit too meh to work on my story today, but I thought I ought to write something. I remembered reading this blog a few days ago and thought this writing exercise sounded fun:

"This is something that the writer Greg Frost suggested -- he got it from a talk that the poet/novelist/short story writer Stephen Dobyns gave, and said that Stephen Dobyns himself came up with it after he once asked Raymond Carver about how Carver approached writing short stories. Carver said, "I write the first sentence, and then I write the next sentence and then the next." Apparently this answer at first annoyed Dobyns, whose usual method involved much more planning etc; later, when Dobyns was marooned for two days in a hotel room, feverish, and unable to catch a flight home, he sat down and tried Carver's method. So here's the exercise: without too much preparation, and without spending too much time -- say, more than an hour -- write down 50 first sentences. Later on, sit down with those 50 sentences, pick half of them, and write 25 first paragraphs. Out of those first paragraphs, Dobyns eventually got half a dozen short stories."

Here are my fifty first sentences (very random! Took about 20-30 mins):

1. I didn’t have a personality yet, but I was growing a moustache.

2. It’s all essentially the same.

3. With birds singing and my hands throbbing from the heat, I began.

4. Out of the smokescreen came the smell of something rotting.

5. It had left something in my heart; a scratch.

6. It was that old feeling: of futility, of a step having been missed, something you could never catch up with.

7. Why did I feel this thing, when it did me no good; when there were others, who felt nothing, and who needed to feel?

8. The bubble of gas rose up in his throat; he didn’t want to let it out, not here.

9. Some things shouldn’t be taken seriously.

10. It was a terrible feeling, like hunger, but in all of him.

11. The magpie was acting strangely.

12. His eyebrows itched, and the top of his cheeks.

13. She was alone in this feeling.

14. Jumping, bounding, the ball skipped across the road.

15. What came first: the chicken or the Ned?

16. It wasn’t the way she’d meant to start it.

17. The sound of cheering came from far away.

18. A mess, it was all a mess.

19. Downtown.

20. Was it meant to look like that?

21. On the toilet again.

22. It wasn’t that he was a short man.

23. Heat prickling skin stopped her from sleeping.

24. She wished she didn’t laugh quite so much.

25. It was always like this at the end.

26. Some things change your life, and you can’t really say why.

27. He had spoken directly to her.

28. What calamity was this?

29. The sombrero suited him.

30. Blue canvas loafers and a leather satchel; that slouch; those eyes.

31. Love means nothing if you never act on it.

32. It was embarrassing, really.

33. She pushed the door harder than she’d intended.

34. The further you go on, the more things get tied down, and the less chances there are to change things.

35. It was three o’clock in the afternoon.

36. They probably wouldn’t have dinner tonight.

37. It was the elephant which started it.

38. There you go, that’s the ticket.

39. If you jumped to the left you might avoid it.

40. It was all the same to me if her heart skipped or not.

41. ‘If you say so,’ said the doctor, smiling.

42. It was a very childish bookcase and not really fitting at all.

43. Some boys have all the fun, and I wasn’t one of them.

44. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘if it isn’t Mickey.’

45. Don’t dice with death was the last thing I ever heard.

46. ‘Just tie it back,’ he sighed.

47. I could feel it between my shoulder blades.

48. Sometimes, there is no time which really matters.

49. I would see his face forever.

50. It was an old song, and she couldn’t remember the tune, or anything really, other than the line: ‘I will surely die.’

... the brain is an odd thing! Not sure any of them have legs, but it was fun to do.

Ladybird, ladybird ...

2010-06-26T11:10:00.000Z

There’s more to life than books. There’s bugs! I saw this video over at Denim and Tweed. Ladybird swarms are one of those natural phenomena which really make you understand why our ancestors might have believed in gods and magic … strange and beautiful and slightly alien.

The closest I’ve come to seeing one was several years ago at Formby beach up on the north-west coast of England. I’m guessing there must have been a swarm which got carried out over the sea, fell down and drowned – but the beach was covered in drifts of red. We couldn’t work out what it was until we got close – just millions of ladybirds washed up all along the beach. Very sad, and quite eerie.

5D and EX1 Lady Bug Swarm from Michael Ramsey on Vimeo.

Giovanni's Room - James Baldwin

2010-06-24T21:22:00.001Z

What makes a good book good? Maybe it’s when you read one that makes that question seem pointless. When you read a book which seems to have always lived in your heart; is a part of you, so that it seems completely real and natural, as though there is no distance between you and the author or you and the page – in fact, no perception of it as a book at all. It’s a book you’ll never stop reading even if you never look at a page of it again.

I’ll say this is the best book I’ve read – which isn’t to say it’s the best book in the world, or the best book you’ll ever read; because everyone’s best book is different, even if it’s the same book. But I think that anyone who reads this book will acknowledge that it’s very, very good indeed.

Giovanni’s Room was James Baldwin’s second novel. Written by a black, gay man and telling the story of a man confronting his own homosexuality, its publication in 1956 was controversial. But though the era, and the era’s attitude to homosexuality, is at the core of the story (and at the heart of its tragedy), this story seems timeless, the writing modern, the themes universal – to all people of any gender or sexuality.

There is something absolutely – excruciatingly, painfully, wonderfully – true about the writing. It hit me in the second paragraph. I knew by then that I was in for something special.

"I may be drunk by morning but that will not do any good. I shall take the train to Paris anyway. The train will be the same, the people, struggling for comfort and, even, dignity on the straight-backed, wooded, third-class seats will be the same, and I will be the same. We will ride through the same changing countryside northward, leaving behind the olive trees and the sea and all the glory of the stormy southern sky, into the mist and rain of Paris. Someone will offer to share a sandwich with me, someone will offer me a sip of wine, someone will ask me for a match. People will be roaming the corridors outside, looking out of windows, looking in at us. At each stop, recruits in their baggy brown uniforms and coloured hats will open the compartment door to ask Complet? We will all nod Yes, like conspirators, smiling faintly at each other as they continue through the train. Two or three of them will end up before our compartment door, shouting at each other in their heavy, ribald voices, smoking their dreadful army cigarettes. There will be a girl sitting opposite me who will wonder why I have not been flirting with her, who will be set on edge by the presence of the recruits. It will all be the same, only I will be stiller."

My edition of Giovanni’s Room is only 224 pages long. It’s an American paperback from 1966, sold for 60 cents, and it’s tiny, the pages small. Somehow Baldwin has used those few pages – only 8 chapters – to tell a heartbreakingly powerful story, and to fill it with incredible detail: observations, inner-thoughts, nuances and subtleties. Things that we all notice in our lives, but which, when writing, I’d think: I can’t put that in, it’s too small, or too contradictory. But people are small, and contradictory; and they’re good, and bad, and nothing; and they can hate and love and feel nothing, all at the same time. It’s Baldwin’s ability to capture this – to capture it, and express it, with beautiful, unsettlingly accurate words – which makes this book not only great, but also gives it its power: to get inside you, and speak to you.

And it’s painful to be at the mercy of something so sad. Reading this book will hurt you. But please, do read it.

For me, this book is why books are written – and I’m not sure I can really say much more than that.

[Edited because I can't count. It has 8 chapters, not 5 as I wrote originally.]

The gloves are off; the game is on

2010-06-22T19:36:00.000Z

OK peoples. University is done with until October. For the first time in two solid years, I have no studying to do. It’s a little dizzying, it’s a little frightening. I’ve developed textbook Stockholm syndrome: I’ve become emotionally attached to my textbooks. I feel something akin to grief at being separated from the things that have held me captive at my desk for so long. Yesterday, I clutched Biology 6th Ed. Campbell and Reece to my chest like a lover. True: that was moments before going into an exam and I was, out of desperation, attempting the absorption method of learning (it didn’t work), but I did feel something for that weighty tome … its reassuring bulk a contrast to its sharp intellectualism; supple, despite its size; and always intriguing...

Hot.

*cough*

Anyway … where was I?

Oh yes – I’m free. Free to write. Sixty-five thousand words by the end of September is my goal. And that, if I do it, should give me the first draft of my book.

I’ve written more, in less time. I’ve written a lot of shit, very quickly. I have few doubts about my ability to produce voluminous amounts of bilge. Creating a semi-coherent, half-way decent first draft on the other hand …

Well. Wish me luck.

:)

A problem...

2010-06-20T11:14:00.000Z

Forgive another dull post, but I have the last exam of my second year tomorrow and should be revising like mad, which means: I have no mental space to think of anything interesting to write, but I do have an overwhelming urge to procrastinate – hence: posting lots of lists.

If you’re a lovely, loyal reader, you might remember in March I swore off buying books. That lasted all of fifteen days before I slipped up in a pile of Poe. And since then, the book buying monkey has been on my back, and he has been a hungry monkey.

These are the books I’ve bought in the last two months:

Gene Wolfe – The Book of the New Sun (Vol. 1)
Steven Erikson – Gardens of the Moon
China Mieville – Kraken
Mark Charan Newton – City of Ruin
M D Lachlan – Wolfsangel
Milan Kundera – The Unbearable Lightness of Being
Muriel Spark – Momento Mori
Neal Stephenson – Snow Crash
J M Coetzee – Disgrace
Michael Chabon – The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay
Andrei Makine – Confessions of a Lapsed Standard Bearer
Richard Morgan – Altered Carbon
Don DeLillo – Underworld
Paul Auster – The Art of Hunger
Alasdair Grey – Lanark
Alastair Reynolds – Revelation Space
Joshua Ferris – Then We Came to the End
Flora Britannica
Ernest Hemingway – The First Forty-Nine Stories
A L Kennedy – Day

I’ve read one of them. That isn’t good.

But let’s be a little fairer and include all the books I’ve read in that time (ones I already owned). Doing this gives me a books bought:books read ratio of 20:6, or, 1:0.3.

That isn’t really good either. I’m buying more than 3 times as many books as I read. Is that excessive? Do you think that counts as a problem?

I’m reading 0.75 books a week. I used to read 2 or 3 a week – until I started writing. Let’s average that out at 2.5 a week … over two months that would be 20 books – which, funnily enough, is exactly how many I’ve bought. It appears that my book buying is still at my pre-writing level. Interesting. To me. I’m sure you’ve probably stopped reading by now …

But just in case you haven’t – let me ask you: do you compromise your reading for your writing? How do you balance those two loves?

And the winners are ...

2010-06-18T13:05:00.000Z

Wow, it’s mid June. Nearly half way through the year. That must mean it’s time for a lazy ‘let’s recap’ type of post, right?

It surely does!

I started this blog in February with the aim of getting myself to: a) read better, and: b) think more, in the hope that it’d make me: c) write better.

I can probably only put a tick next to A – but it is a big fat tick: to the extent that when it comes to me choosing the ‘best’ books I’ve read this year, I may as well point you to the index list of all the books I’ve discussed so far.

But I have to pick just a few. OK. I don’t have to. But I’m going to. These are books that have really made me think or feel, or that have taught me something, or that have been great fun to read. Or all of the above.

And the winners are are:

1. Day – A L Kennedy.
For sheer bloody brilliance. And for reminding me that good writing shouldn’t be easy, and that it is worth the effort.

2. Jarhead – Anthony Swofford.
For honesty, and out of respect for all those people who do things I never could.

3. Big Sur – Jack Kerouac.
Again, for honesty, and for having a big poet’s heart and a love of life and having the skill to share that with us.

4. A Farewell to Arms – Ernest Hemingway.
For showing me how writing can be.

5. Confessions of an English Opium Eater – Thomas de Quincey.
For being a legend.

And honourable mentions go to:

Factotum – Charles Bukowski. For being filthy and not giving a damn.

A Confederacy of Dunces – John Kennedy Toole. For giving me Ignatius J. Reilly, who keeps repeating on me like a Paradise hotdog.

The Dangling Man – Saul Bellow. For reminding me not to be 'defeated by the scale of my ambition.'

I really can’t wait to see what the next six months bring.

Get bugging creative

2010-06-15T21:13:00.000Z

The Bugged writing project asks us to get nosy in the name of creativity …

I’ve been trying to keep my ears open on my way around town – just for practice – I’m not getting a head start, honest. It’s been a lot harder than I thought. I assumed I was always overhearing things. It’s always so noisy outside, after all. But it seems six years of commuting through central London has trained me to block everything – conversations, eye contact, free-newspaper distributors, leafleters, buses I probably should pay attention to, traffic signals, body odour, station announcements, ticket touts, smug iPhone users, crisp rustlers, unwanted flirtation, terrible novels, beggars, mobile ring tones, intriguingly implausible Metro headlines, eccentric fashion choices, over-loud mp3 players, religious preachers and end of the world doomsayers …

It’s only when I started trying to pay attention that I realised just how ingrained the blocking is. It does come in handy though. I can be on an 8:30am stinking hot, packed tight Northern line tube with my face in someone’s arm pit, someone’s groin god-I-hope-inadvertently crushed against my bum, an umbrella dripping on my foot and the corner of a novel jabbing my arm … and yet be I’ll be stretched out on a sunny, deserted dockside eating a peach and listening to the gulls – because I’ll be in my character’s mind, in their world; in short, I’ll be writing. Thanks to London, I’ve learnt to write anywhere, at any time.

But … I do need to keep observant. I need to see and hear and smell and taste and touch things in order to write about them. And so the last couple of days I’ve been making a conscious effort to actually pay attention. I’ve been breaking the cardinal rule of London commuting: I’ve been noticing that there are other human beings around me.

My overhearings haven’t been too wonderful. Either the voices are muffled, or they pass too quickly (I’ve not plucked up the guts to follow anyone yet …), or it’s a foreign language, or I forget what they’ve said before I get a chance to write it down … or maybe the people of London are just boring.

So far I’ve gleaned:

‘Hi Pete, it’s Dave.’

‘Five hundred, five hundred quid.’

‘You could have brought a flask over with you.’

‘Two people cancelled. I don’t know why but they’re not coming now. … Yeah well, they don’t, sweetheart. I’ve tried everything.’

Somehow quite fascinatingly inane … I’m sure there’s more to come. And hopefully I’ll be all ears by July 1st.

I Want My Life Back - A L Kennedy

2010-06-12T11:01:00.000Z

I thought I’d link to this as I really enjoyed it. (I've also got a vague interest in hearing authors read their own work.) And it’s quite topical too: an office worker following the BP oil spill.

I Want My Life Back – a monologue written and performed by A L Kennedy.

And again with the e-books

2010-06-11T13:37:00.000Z

This article (Your Book as a Database) reminded me of my earlier posts (1, 2) on how interactive e-books might look. Now, whilst I'm leaning slightly towards the idea of e-books (primarily because of storage - I simply don't have room in my flat for all the books I want to have), my blood runs a little cold at the some of the things in this article ...

I work with databases - information management is how I earn my bread (I can see the jealousy in your eyes ...). After six years I hate the bloody things (and love them just a little) - but, rather irrationally, all I can say is: don't you dare put them near the precious, lovely stories.

Day - A L Kennedy

2010-06-10T21:30:00.000Z

I’ve been reading A L Kennedy’s blog posts on the Guardian for a while. They’re what made me pick up one of her books. And I’m very glad I did.

Day is a complex, dark and intense little book, a bit like its protagonist:

"Alfred Day wanted his war. In its turmoil he found his proper purpose as the tail-gunner in a Lancaster bomber; he found the wild, dark fellowship of his crew, and - most extraordinary of all - he found Joyce, a woman to love. But that's all gone now - the war took it away. Maybe it took him, too."

Kennedy takes us inside Alfie Day’s mind and it’s a strange, disturbing and yet rather wonderful and fascinating place to be. I’ve never read any book that gets so close to its protagonist. The only thing I can compare it to (and I don’t think it’s really the right comparison) is Kerouac with his stream of conscious style – the way he tries to capture the feel and pattern of thoughts. But Kennedy isn’t writing autobiographically. This is a fictional creation: a man, from a point in history we can only imagine and who has experienced things we can only hope we never do.

I’ll fall in love with anyone who is sad. Not because they are sad, but because I know sad, and so I feel like I know them – or some aspect of them, which might just be a slim part of them and hardly them at all, but still goes deep. And if you know someone, you can’t help but love them a little. Alfie Day is sad. Oh, he’s angry, but he is sad and lonely too. And I know lonely like I know sad - and so of course I loved Alfie Day.

I know this book won’t be to everyone’s taste. It’s very written, if that makes sense. Much of it is in second person, some in third and occasionally it switches to first, and then we get even more intimate than that, with some thoughts in italics. I think it works: echoes the way thoughts sound in your head; the way your perception can switch. And I like to get close to the protagonist. I always prefer close third or first. But then I read (and write) for emotion and for character.

I’ll admit – it wasn’t until I finished it that I fell in love with it. I felt there was one weak section, which is where we’re introduced to Joyce for the first time. Alfie’s reactions seem a little too much and threw me out of the narrative, which is a shame, because everything else rings true (the research feels incredible) – but then I suppose relationships are a little more familiar to me than living through world war two and being an RAF tail-gunner and so that’s the one area where I might spot any inauthenticity.

Perhaps because it seems so ‘written’ and the voice is so intense I was uncertain at the start and kept my distance a little. I wish I hadn’t – and very rarely for me, as soon as I finished I wanted to read it again and commit myself fully to it from the start. I really think I might – or at least dip into it and read over some parts again.

I really recommended reading this book. Even if you don’t love it the way I did, you should still be able to appreciate Kennedy’s skill as a writer. It also works as a piece of history – the research is superb; and importantly, especially now, it reminds us that it’s only humans who make war: that the people we make war on are only human – and that the cost of doing terrible things is always terrible.

A fork in the road

2010-06-09T09:24:00.000Z

More often than I’d like when writing I come to a fork in the story where events could unfold in two (or more) ways but end up in the same desired place (or close enough to it – or even somewhere better).

Sometimes I know I’ve made the wrong decision and taken the wrong turn and I’ll have to backtrack and re-write from where I mis-stepped. Sometimes I’ll go back further because it seems the fork has only arisen because I went wrong a long way back: maybe I’m on completely the wrong path, or maybe it shouldn’t be this character I’m taking for a walk.

But how to know which route to take? Should I think about what would be the most interesting route – entertaining, scenic? Or should I pick the quickest route and keep the pace up? Mostly I seem to find the most plausible path … what option would the character really choose – given what they want and what’s gone before? But if I’ve had any success at creating realistic characters they’ll probably be complicated things, irrational and contrary – and if characters are aspects of the author, completely indecisive too.

And indecision is a little problematic when writing. Every word is a choice. If you multiplied every possible word by every possible combination ...

Choice is a wonderful thing, isn’t it? Yes … but I find it a little frightening, and the lack of boundaries sometimes frustrates me. I’m never convinced by my choices. I know I could have chosen better – the path feels wrong, the shoes pinch, the terrain seems dull and flat, and all the characters want to do is sit around and moan and eat cheese sandwiches.

And then I spy a path running along the next valley over and the path looks smooth and the destination enticing and I wonder if it’s too late to go back and start again …

But then I’ll never get a book finished, will I? No one’s ever said writing a book is a walk in the park (couldn't resist, sorry) – it’s a hard slog and I should just tighten my laces, hitch my pack and carry on.

… Or maybe I could leave the path altogether and see where I end up …

Arabian Nights

2010-06-08T14:56:00.000Z

Arabian Nights was a random choice – not on my planned reading pile at all, though like far too many books it’s one of those ones you feel you should have read if you’re to call yourself any kind of book lover at all (especially when you see Saul Bellow starting The Victim with a quote from one of the tales – although that was followed by a quote from De Quincey’s Confessions, which I had read and so I felt a little smug.)

I think when I was a little girl I had a story book with the tale of Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves in it, and, despite the best efforts of my parents, I eventually watched Disney’s Aladdin (but only when I got to University. In my house, watching Cheech and Chong, Robo Cop and the Terminator when you were still in single figures was fine … but Disney was banned. Along with Barbie. Bad influences, don’t you know.)

I can’t say that the heavily edited, abridged and in all ways more or less completely re-written versions of the tales I’d encountered really gave me any idea of what to expect. It’s impossible to judge a collection of folk tales gathered in the 9th century by today’s standards but the woman-hating and racism is still eye-watering. I suppose I was rather naively expecting whimsical fairy-tales full of magic, but most of these tales are grimmer than Grimm: full of lust, murder, thievery, deception and the occasional rape.

Still … a good story is a good story – and there is something magical about the fact they are still being read and still inspiring new interpretations and writers and readers. For example, I can see what Bellow liked about the beginning of The Tale of the Merchant and the Jinnee. There’s something compelling about the sheer unfairness of it:

“It is related, O auspicious King, that there was a merchant of the merchants who had much wealth, and business in various cities. Now on a day he mounted horse and went forth to recover monies in certain towns, and the heat sore oppressed him; so he sat beneath a tree and, putting his hand into his saddle bags, took thence some broken bread and dry dates and began to break his fast. When he had ended eating the dates he threw away the stones with force and lo! an Ifrit appeared, huge of stature and brandishing a drawn sword, wherewith he approached the merchant and said, "Stand up that I may slay thee, even as thou slewest my son!" Asked the merchant, "How have I slain thy son?" and he answered, "When thou atest dates and threwest away the stones they struck my son full in the breast as he was walking by, so that he died forthwith."”

Most of these old story collections always set me wondering about the nature of story telling throughout history – and the evolution of technique. And then I wish that I’d studied English at university and wonder if there’s time to squeeze in another degree alongside my current one …

… along with learning more about the history of the east, and oh … history in general. Why does the world have to be so interesting?

I did pick up my boyfriend’s copy of Karen Armstrong’s A History of God and started reading the chapter on the origin of Islam. It’s just embarrassing how ignorant I am – about all religion really. OK, about everything. But it was rather fascinating to see echoes of Armstrong’s description of early Arabic culture in the Tales of Arabian Nights.

Amstrong describes how the tribal society of the Quraysh (the tribe to which Muhammad belonged) used to place its emphasis on the tribe, rather than the self; and how, in a world where life was tough and mortality high, they did not believe in an afterlife but in immortality achieved through the tribe and that supreme to everything was the notion of darh (which roughly translates as time or fate): much easier to accept death when you know you can not argue with fate, and when you know the tribe will live on after you.

Time and time again in the tales in Arabian Nights, the characters refer to fate and accept whatever befalls them; and in other stories they refer to Allah and place their lives in his hands.

A collection of stories almost three thousand years old and still interesting and still enjoyable. Not bad.

Dubliners - James Joyce

2010-06-06T08:38:00.000Z

Like Hemingway, Joyce was a Kerouac inspired choice. In Big Sur, Kerouac writes his poem ‘Sea’ – listening to the sounds of the ocean and:

“Writing down these fantastic inanities actually but yet I felt I had to do it because James Joyce wasn’t about to do it now he was dead”.

And of course, Joyce writes beautifully; that’s not news. And the stories were wonderfully observed and alive with detail with every character seeming completely real:

“She respected her husband in the same way she respected the General Post Office, as something large, secure and fixed; and though she knew the small number of his talents she appreciated his abstract value as a male.”

“He lived at a little distance from his body, regarding his own acts with doubtful side-glances.”

The Dubliners is a collection of fifteen short stories (which I didn’t actually realise when I started reading it). They all look at the same thing – Dublin society – from a different point of view, and they’re ordered by time, with age of the central character increasing in each one. They also sort of go full circle – with the first story (Two Sisters) being about a boy (and the death of an old priest) and the last story ‘Death’ featuring two elderly sisters, but also being about the loss of youthful love.

I did enjoy Dubliners, but I don’t know if I got out of it what I should. I think partly that’s my fault. I read the stories too fast and didn’t give myself time to reflect on each one. I’ve always struggled to enjoy short stories. I read (and write) for character, and once I’ve begun to be interested in a character, I want to stay with them. The snapshot view of short stories always leaves me a little … meh.

But I also wondered how much relevance Dubliners can have. Apparently it’s a book criticising the Dublin society of the time (late 1800’s – early 1900s), and I only know that because I read up on it. I don’t think it’s just because it’s about a by-gone time that I didn't connect with it. Somehow Dickens’ criticisms of society still feel relevant today. Of course they’re less subtle: it’s fairly easy to work out what Hard Times is about without being told.

Vague thought, but … when do the essential classics stop being essential and become irrelevant? Surely there’s a book that does what the Dubliners does, but does it for people living now?

Summer break

2010-06-05T21:19:00.000Z

Sorry if it’s been a bit quiet here. Not much of an excuse to give you, other than that the black dog has been nipping at my heels a little – nothing too terrible, just little nibbles, but enough to keep me on edge and make the humour harder to find.

The best way to keep him at bay is to keep myself incredibly busy. My second year of University ends in a few weeks (I can’t believe it’s gone so quickly), and though I’ll still have work of course, I’ll have more free time than I have in a long time – I didn’t get a break last summer due to a field trip and coursework. And what can I fill my time with? Three things I’d like to do this summer:

1) Get the first draft of my new-ish writing project finished.

2) Start learning how to write for science – and maybe have a read of this for inspiration.

3) Go back to doing voluntary work for London Wildlife Trust – which I loved, loved, loved when I was doing it; but I had issues with finding time to study (and getting up early on a Sunday).

Book stats for 2010

2010-05-31T11:13:00.000Z

I can't resist statistics, so following the meme-ish posting of book blogging reading stats, here are mine:

Books read so far in 2010: 20

Years of publication:
Pre 1900s: 4
1900-1920: 1
1921-1940: 3
1941 - 1960: 4
1961 - 1980: 5
1981 - 2000: 1
>2000: 2

The final (shameful) statistic: every book has been by a male author. And looking at my 'to be read' pile, that doesn't look like changing any time soon. Oh dear.

More on e-books - bad for our brains?

2010-05-28T13:36:00.000Z

I found this article interesting given my recent post on e-books . (Thanks to Paul Jessup via Twitter for the link*.)

I don’t know how sure all of the extrapolations are from the studies cited, but I could easily believe some of them.

Good old personal experience has shown me that sitting away from my laptop and reading a textbook, or printing out one of my stories to edit on paper, leads to much better results than trying to work with online/onscreen versions.

I actually write differently on paper than on my laptop. And I make editing decisions on paper that I don’t when editing in Word. I also find it easier to write after spending a couple of hours absorbed in reading a textbook – as though my brain has had time to settle.

I know all this. And yet every day I still get up, turn on and cop out**.

----
* Yes, I'm aware of the irony.

** Freak Power reference, anyone? God it reminds me of being at school!

A Farewell to Arms - Ernest Hemingway

2010-05-27T20:14:00.000Z

I like getting book recommendations from books. I’m pretentious like that.

(It doesn’t work so well in fantasy of course, one’s own brain being the only place that stocks relatively accessible imaginary books. Although a book like the one Ardee reads in The Blade Itself* is probably easy enough to find.)

Hemingway kept cropping up Kerouac’s On The Road, so when I saw A Farewell to Arms for sale in Greenwich flea market (I’m sickeningly middle-class like that) I thought I’d give it a go.

It was a revelation really. I developed something of a writerly crush on his prose. ‘It’s so simple,’ I’d croon. ‘So elegantly spare.’ I’m not going to lie to you – I did possibly make a noise a little bit like ‘mmmh’ whilst reading. I didn’t know it could be this way ...

I read up a little bit on his style. Apparently he called it the ‘iceburg theory’. (Which is sort of what I was trying to get at with the house building part of this post.) He omits the deeper part of the story and allows the reader to construct the meaning in their own mind, based on the surface clues provided in the story.

“… the reader is meant to "fill the gaps left by his omissions with their feelings”.”

And I think that inevitably leads to a stronger emotional connection – after all, your own feelings mean more to you than the writer’s feelings do. He provides the triggers to stimulate your own emotions – rather than trying to feed them to you readymade and second hand.

“Hemingway's intent was not to eliminate emotion, but to portray it more scientifically. Hemingway thought it would be easy, and pointless, to describe emotions; he sculpted collages of images in order to grasp “the real thing, the sequence of motion and fact which made the emotion and which would be as valid in a year or in ten years or, with luck and if you stated it purely enough, always”.”

As an example, a little piece of description which I loved:

“In civilian clothes I felt a masquerader. I had been in uniform a long time and I missed the feeling of being held by your clothes. The trousers felt very floppy. I had bought a ticket at Milan for Stresa. I had also bought a new hat. I could not wear Sim’s hat but his clothes were fine. They smelled of tobacco and as I sat in the compartment and looked out of the window the new hat felt very new and the clothes very old.”

Don’t you know exactly how he feels? Can’t you feel the tight brim of the new hat digging into your forehead – the red line it’s going to leave when you take it off? You feel Sim’s borrowed clothes on you, they don’t fit right; and it’s not just borrowed clothes, is it? It’s a borrowed life – you’re not Sim, and though you’re on the train, you can’t run away from the horrors behind you. You’re feeling old and tired without even a shirt to your name ... and so on. So many layers of meaning and emotion in that little line: 'the new hat felt very new and the clothes very old.'

I could go on, but really you should just read it. And if, like me, you’re a sordid and shameful habitual overwriter, I prescribe you some Hemingway. Listen to the man. Or rather, listen to what he doesn't say ;)

----

*The Fall of the Master Maker. Described as: “Full of wise Magi, stern knights with mighty swords and ladies with mightier bosoms. Magic, violence and romance in equal measure. Utter shit.”

Why Iron Man 2 wasn't very good

2010-05-20T19:22:00.001Z

I loved Iron Man. It was big and fast and fun and just sexy enough to get away with the cheese. I waited eagerly for Iron Man 2.

Never wait eagerly for things.

The only time it is appropriate to do so is when you’re 7 years old and it’s Christmas Eve. Once you’ve passed this stage and learnt Santa isn’t real, only crushing disappointment awaits you. Life has taught me this, but sometimes I forget. Luckily there will always be an Iron Man 2 around to kick me in my foolishly optimistic teeth and grind my face in the poopy mess of reality.

A few days before going to see Iron Man 2, I read this article from Kurt Vonnegut about the structure of stories. I was thinking about this, and trying to work out just exactly how Iron Man 2 had failed, and decided to see what curve Iron Man 2 would plot. The plot, you see, was the main flaw. As far as I can remember, it goes a little something like this:

A picture tells a thousand words. I think I'll rest my case there.

Some quick thoughts on e-books

2010-05-19T14:33:00.000Z

Joe Abercrombie has requested ideas about what people would like to see in the e-book versions of his books. There are lots of suggestions – including quite a few from people keen to see ‘interactive’ hyperlinked text. For example: click on a character’s name and up pops a biography; possibly artwork too.

Which made me think …

If e-books come to dominate the market and largely replace printed books, would the added functionality of e-books begin to influence the way books are written, or read? Imagine reading a book that’s linked to a wiki, that’s linked to the author’s blog, that’s linked to forums and twitter etc. etc.: commenting in real time; communal reading (like One Book, One Twitter writ large).

But also, what could you do with the structure of the book? People have dallied with hyper-text books published on the web (I’m not sure if they ever took off), and then of course there are the ‘choose your own adventure’ books.

But what about things like Julio Cortazar’s Hopscotch – a book that can be read in multiple ways, depending on the order of chapters. If you could hyperlink your novel, shuffle the pages, reverse chapter orders … could you tell stories in different ways?

Imagine you don’t like a character’s name: just ‘find all and replace’ with one you do like. And what about all those god-awful poems and songs that crop up in fantasy novels? Just imagine being able to hear the audio version. Or how about splicing text and video footage – true movie tie-in books.

To be honest the thought makes me shudder a little. I like my books self-contained and well … booky. I think I would miss that absorption in one contained little world, engaged with only through the written word. Your brain works harder when it has to read and actively create a world, and I always feel that the depth of connection is stronger to a story you have visualised for yourself than to one you have been fed in a film or TV.

Plus: maybe we should just read the book the author has written. Maybe there's too much choice these days; too many distractions.

But then I’m just old-fashioned...

Heigh-ho, heigh-ho, it’s back to work I go

2010-05-16T20:40:00.000Z

On Monday, reality slides her cold fingers around my neck and shackles me again to the 9-5.

I’ll be starting my new job. Bit scary – back to work after a month off. But, if the early mornings don’t kill me, it should be good. I’ll be working in a lovely part of London. Sunny days will see me lunching in Regents Park. I’ve bought myself a new notepad and hope to gets lots of scribbling and/or reading done in my lunch breaks. Plus, I’m very close to university, which means the forty minutes or so I’ll have free before lectures could easily be filled with a bit of cheeky writing in the library … or studying. Yeah. Studying. I do that too.

Anyway, things might be a bit quiet for the next week whilst I find my feet (I’m sure I saw them around here somewhere …).

The sound of words

2010-05-13T09:21:00.000Z

Something I find useful when writing is to say out loud what I'm writing as I write it. I can hear the sentences better - see if they balance, if the rhythm is right, if the words sound good next to each other. But when I read, either out loud or in my head, I read with a particular rhythm - which makes the story sound a particular way. Read with a different rhythm the tone changes. That's where punctuation and structure come in I suppose, but you can only set the rhythm to a limited extent - everyone reads to their own beat, and the voice inside is of their own making.

Which makes it very odd when you come across authors reading their own work - and sounding different to how you imagined. This is Jack Kerouac reading from On The Road, and it's not at all how I imagined it:

Which made me want to listen to some of the other authors I've discussed recently ...

This is Charles Bukowski reading one of his poems:

William S. Burroughs doing a reading at the Brixton Ritzy (very local to me!)

Unfortunately I couldn't find any recordings of Thomas de Quincey :(

But I do have a treat for you. I couldn't find a reading from him, but I bet you didn't know Joe Abercrombie could rattle a five-string like a good 'un? Yup. The man's talents know no ends:

Drabble babble

2010-05-12T20:36:00.000Z

Revision gave me brain cramp, so I thought I’d limber it up with a couple of drabbles (OK so drabbles are 100 words or less, but … pft). I found a random topic generator and free-wrote the first thing that came to mind. About ten minutes on each of these, no proper edits. So yeah, they’re not good, but they amused me.

My prompt was: Drummer; fishing; what if they got sick? (Which I didn’t quite stick to!)

The drummer boy

The drummer boy started drumming when he saw the dead fish floating in the lake. When the battle had started he had hidden in the trees by the lake edge. A shell had hit: it sent up a white plume of water and then the dead fish. He stood in the lapping water and hit his drum for each dead fish he saw.

The soldiers found him when they came to the battlefield to find out why no one was answering them. No one was answering because they were all dead. All except the drummer boy. He walked slowly around the battlefield and hit his drum for each dead body he saw.

The soldiers took him in and tried to speak to him but he did not speak. He only looked at nothing and occasionally hit his drum. They handed him to the medics who tried to get him to eat but he would not eat, only drum. When they took his drum away from him he hit the walls or the floor or himself.

The medics tried to find his family but they could not. They put the drummer boy in a room with a white soft bed but he did not sleep. He sat on the edge of it and drummed on the mattress. When he had not eaten or slept for some time he fell sideways and lay on the bed. After a while he no longer drummed. Nobody drummed for him.

Fishing for electric fish

I’m surfing the tail of a comet and fishing for electric fish. Whew! And I’ve got that lazy little Vendrillian in Health and Safety back at the company to thank. Her brood-pouch all full of eggs, head all doozy with mummy hormones, she never got round to checking the haz detectors and so I got a lung-full of naraxadine. You don’t wanna get a lung-full of that, for sure, but the company fixed me up and I sued; they paid out and here I am: surfing for electric fish with Eddie.

Look at him, dumb fuck: suit turned down close to zero. Even so, you only feel like a point point point point nothing of what this comet's got, but he says it makes it real. You gotta get that comet fizz on your skin, he says. Dumb, dumb fuck.

I key my net up, super fine, and spread it wide. It flaps out, burning blue gossamer in the fierce white cloud. Beep, beep – got something. Something juicy. I haul it in; it’s flapping and twisting but it ain’t gonna escape this net. Company money paid for it; it’s top of the range.

Eddie turns and I give him the thumbs up. I head back in – gotta get this baby bottled before it drabs out on me.

Back in the ship lounge I sip a cold one and stare at my bottled fish. It’s a beauty. Thank you, you sweet Vendrillian mommy.

It's either this or revision ...

2010-05-12T13:49:00.000Z

So I'd had all I could take of heathland ecology and decided to take a break ... here is the book habits meme!

(Meme infection via Speculative Scotsman, although original source of outbreak appears to be Speculative Horizons).

Do you snack while you read? If so, favorite reading snack:

I often read whilst I’m eating breakfast or lunch - so, often toast or cereal. For lunch, I sometimes base my cooking decisions around what I’m able to eat one-handed. It’s very hard to read and use a knife and fork at the same time.

What is your favorite drink while reading?

It’ll be whatever I’m drinking at the time: tea, water, booze. Though I’m not sure reading whilst drunk is a good idea.

Do you tend to mark your books as you read, or does the idea of writing in books horrify you?

I don’t write in them, but I’ll mark interesting pages with a sticky note or bit of paper … of if none of those are to hand, by turning the page down (don’t hate me, people!).

How do you keep your place while reading a book? Bookmark? Dog-ears? Laying the book flat open?

With whatever’s to hand. If I’m on the move, generally some detritus from my bag – train ticket, cinema ticket, old shopping list, receipt. At home … yeah, I do lay the book down flat, or stick whatever I can find in it: a pencil, a ruler, another book.

Fiction, nonfiction, or both?

I read a lot on nonfiction for university. I also read a lot of pop-science which is generally tangentially related to uni. But mostly it’s fiction.

Are you a person who tends to read to the end of a chapter, or can you stop anywhere?

Depends on the book. Sometimes I have to read to the end of the book. Not often, thankfully … but I have pulled the odd sickie from work due to staying up til 8am reading. Normally I read to the end of the chapter, unless something urgent calls me away, like smoke coming from the kitchen from whatever I have forgotten about on the stove.

Are you the type of person to throw a book across the room or on the floor if the author irritates you?

Yes.

If you come across an unfamiliar word, do you stop and look it up right away?

If I can – if there’s a dictionary or the internet or a clever person around.

What are you currently reading?

‘When It Changed’ – a collection of short SF stories (based on current science research).

What is the last book you bought?

A Farewall to Arms – Hemingway (from the market in Greenwich)

Are you the type of person that reads one book at a time, or can you read more than one?

I can read fiction and nonfiction at the same time (have to for Uni), but I don’t see the point in trying to read two fiction books at the same time. I already have too many plots and characters to keep hold of with my own writing.

Do you have a favorite time/place to read?

I read whenever I get a moment – usually on the train to work or uni. At home: when I’m cooking; for a few minutes in bed; when I’m eating; if I take a break from study. Very occasionally I get a chance to indulge myself and spend a few hours reading on the sofa or in bed.

Do you prefer series books or stand alones?

I am partial to a good epic fantasy, but I tend to only read them if all the books in the series are out. I’m too impatient to wait. There’s a lot of short stand alone novels which pack more punch that a whole 10 series epic though, and as my time is getting increasingly limited, I find myself going for shorter books.

Is there a specific book or author you find yourself recommending over and over?

Not really. Tends to be whoever I’ve just read at the time.

How do you organize your books? (by genre, title, author’s last name, etc.)

I don’t. Most of them hardly make it onto a bookshelf …

Guest Post: my internal editor

2010-05-10T11:45:00.000Z

Today I’m handing over the reins to my internal editor who wants to speak to you about her job.

---

('Handing over the reins'? Is that the best you could come up with? Jesus.)

OK – I’m not a writer. I’m not here to tell you how to write. I don’t even like words – in fact, the fewer words the better. It’d probably be better if you never wrote anything at all, but seeming as you insist on doing it, these are the types of questions I'm forced to ask to try and make sure it’s not complete shit:

Do you need that word? Really? Think about it. You don’t do you? You just think it sounds cool. Scrap it.

Actually, scrap that whole sentence. The reader gets it already – they’re brighter than you give them credit for. (Actually, scrap ‘give them credit for’.)

And that paragraph? What’s that for? You’ve already explained that in the dialogue. Duh. Bin it.

Stop describing things twice! Pick an adjective and stick to it. You’ve only used two because you’re not sure which is right. Wimp. Commitment-phobe. Think about it. Don’t be lazy. Close your eyes. (Don’t flinch, I’m not going to hit you. Not this time.) Now think: Is that really how it is? Is that really what they’d think? Don’t ask me – they’re your imaginary friends. I think they’re all stupid. OK – which word springs into mind? Really? Will it send people hunting for a dictionary? No? OK. Fine. But you’re only using it once.

What the hell is that comma doing there? And that semi-colon? Are you serious? You’re trying to be clever aren’t you? Well don’t. It doesn’t suit you. No one is reading this to be impressed by punctuation. They want a story. STORY. Remember those? It’s what happens when the words don’t get in the way.

Jesus, my head is killing me. That’s all I can take for today. I need a coffee. Just remember: if I think it's wrong, it is.

---

Er … sorry about that folks. I did ask her to be nice. [Nice? Nice? I hate that word! – Ed. (int.)]

The misappliance of science

2010-05-07T12:43:00.003Z

There’s been a bit of debate going on about fantasy – about literary fantasy and commercial fantasy (for example: the Jub Jub Bird takes a look at the differences between the traditional ‘epic’ fantasy (“fat fantasy” – big books with multiple volumes) and other kinds of speculative fiction, e.g. New Weird).

As someone who’s attempting to write an traditional-ish epic fantasy (with a twist, of course, isn’t everyone, now days? Subverting the clichés is the new cliché …), I found myself wondering more and more about the actual writing style of epic fantasy.

You see, you read up about ‘how to write’ and you get told to avoid certain things: keep description to a minimum; avoid colourful adjectives, adverbs, metaphors etc. But do these ‘rules’ still apply to epic fantasy?

Epic fantasy is … well, epic. Big things happen – to lots of people. It tends to be heavy on action; big, colourful descriptions; magic, dragons, monsters, armies, halls and castles and all kinds of crazy stuff. How do you describe all this without lots of description; without chucking some adjectives and adverbs around?

So … is epic fantasy written differently? How could I tell? Well – by the appliance of science of course!

Disclaimer: What follows is completely unscientific – I’m only playing around (and I’m geekily curious about these sort of things, and because … oh, God … I just love data. Mmm. Lovely data.)

I needed something quantifiable. So I went to the list of author dos and don’ts posted on the Guardian a while back and looked at what elements of writing style were easily quantifiable (i.e. things that can be ‘counted’). This is the list I came up with:

From Elmore Leonard:
No prologues
Don’t open with weather
No dialogue-carrying verbs other than ‘said’
No adverbs modifying dialogue
Avoid the word ‘suddenly’

From Jonathan Frazen:
Don’t use ‘then’ as a conjunction

From Esther Freud:
No metaphors or similes

I picked four ‘epic fantasies’ and four ‘non-fantasies’ more or less at random from my bookshelf. Books received 1 point each time they ‘broke’ one of these rules (meaning a lower score is ‘better’ – according to the Guardian author types). Prologues and openings are easily scoreable and can either score 1 or 0; for the rest I sampled two pages at random.

Here are the summarised results:

(Yellow = Epic Fantasy; Green = Non-Fantasy)

So, yeah … actually quite a clear-cut difference there – I really wasn’t expecting that. What does this tell us? Nothing we didn’t already know. Epic fantasy has a particular style; writers have different tools at their disposal and different tools are required to produce certain styles of writing. I don’t think there’s any value judgement here – certainly not on my part. Maybe Elmore Leonard would wince at reading Elizabeth Moon – who knows. Maybe I’d wince at reading one of his books!

A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole

2010-05-02T19:46:00.000Z

I’ve read enough memoirs and barely fictionalised fictions recently to convince me that for a great many books the story behind the book – the story of the author – might be just as interesting as the one between the covers.

This seems true especially for debuts. I’m always interested to learn what happened to a person to make them suddenly decide to write a book. Let’s face it: writing is more or less irrational; it’s compulsive, obsessive and self-indulgent. You see a book, you think: what went wrong? What made that person decide shutting themselves away to cultivate their delusions, masticate the dark, nutty secretions of their psyche and painstakingly craft the result into a comprehensible, comprehensively soul-searing whole was a good idea? To do all that to produce a book that someone might, if the author’s lucky, idly pick-up in a book shop because … oh, I don’t know, they thought the cover was ‘kinda cool’; maybe read it only to stave off the boredom of their daily commute and then perhaps, if they’re a very lucky, very talented author, later suggest to their friends that ‘yeah, it was OK’?

That’s if you’re lucky. If you’re very unlucky, like John Kennedy Toole, you fail to get your book published and end up depressed and dead.

Toole’s book, A Confederacy of Dunces, was eventually published – thanks to the determination of his mother. Not only was it published, it went on to win a Pulitzer.

Good. I’m glad it got the recognition it deserved, and I’m glad for the chance to read it. But … but … to any wannabe writer, isn’t that sort of terrifying? The guy wrote a book worthy of a fucking Pulitzer and couldn’t get the damned thing published. You’d like to think that merit or quality had some influence on whether a book gets published – but no. It’s a little known fact that the decisions of publishing houses rest on the effects of tidal forces on the fluid mechanics of slush piles – in a phenomenon barely understood by physicists, tidal movements at Minehead at 11:00am on Wednesday mornings may or may not induce a phase transition from slush-state to publish-state. Unfortunately, few people know this and take rejection of their manuscript personally.

Anyway. About the book: Yeah, it’s OK. The cover was kinda cool.

No, really. It is very good. It took me a long time to read. Partly, I think, due to reader fatigue. All the books I’ve read recently have been about slobs and down-and-outs, wastrels and scoundrels; all stuck, tick-like and swollen on the dank underbelly of the American dream. I’ve been like a kid poking a dead dog with a stick: somewhat repulsed, but fascinated. However, it was starting to get old … and I saw the kids in the yard next door playing with a Frisbee that lights up and looks kinda cool and when you throw it, it makes a noise like ‘Zzrrrumm’ … (I think I’ll read some sci-fi next).

Set in the sixties, the story revolves around the character Ignatius J. Reilly. Fat, flatulent, over-educated and under-employed, Reilly waddles and belches his way around New Orleans, lurching from one self-inflicted disaster to another, spewing his bitter contumely* over a richly drawn cast of characters.

He sounds repugnant – and he is – and yet, fascinating too. It’s very rare to find a character so fully … fleshed out (I just couldn’t help myself). From the opening description of Reilly, with his lips sinking “into folds filled with disapproval and potato chip crumbs”, you feel like you know him – even if you’re never quite sure you understand him; and even if you never grow to like him.

This isn’t that lazily overused two-dimensional character – the fat and lonely man with the heart of gold – this is a fat and lazy misanthrope with a closeted heart full of vitriol (and a mind harbouring one of the strangest masturbatory fantasies I’ve ever had the, ah … privilege … of being privy to).

I think it’s the lack of a clearly sympathetic character together with a slothsome plot that combines to give the book its only obvious flaw. It sags quite heavily in the middle. I read the beginning and the end in a day or two, but the bit in between took a couple of weeks. With a million things to do, there was little driving me to pick up the book and finish it.

But I’m glad I did. This is a funny book, full of characters, lines and set-pieces that will stick with you for a long time. And plot-wise, things pick up towards the end when all the various characters Reilly has blunderingly set in motion collide.

(And at the very end … do we see a glimmer of hope for Reilly?)

It almost feels like it was set up for a sequel. Unfortunately for all of us, we’ll never find out what John Kennedy Toole was planning next.

---

* Word of the Day: brought to you by China Mieville (courtesy of everyone's favourite Speculative Scotsman).

My characters are primitive troglodytes

2010-05-02T11:45:00.000Z

I found some notes from an old story I started writing about four years ago. Once I’d got past the screaming nausea and self-loathing provoked by their essential crappitude, I realised there was something slightly familiar about them …

Whilst the characters, locations, and indeed plot, are different to what I’m writing now, down at its very core root, it’s basically the same thing. And looking back at two other main writing projects I’ve started and abandoned – they’re all actually the same story. It seems I’ve been trying to write this thing for over a decade.

Which made me think: Do we really have any control over the stories we write? On a fundamental level, perhaps not. It’s as though there is a deep well somewhere – we’re used to lowering a bucket, skimming something from the surface; we pull it up, shape it, mould it; we change particulars – a character’s age, background, hair colour; but the form of it, the essential substance, and the place from where it was drawn always remain the same.

Are their certain archetypes within our minds – particular to us, our biology and everything we’ve experienced?

I suppose a good author might sink his bucket deeper; might spend longer examining what came up – might send down again for a different load if what came up wasn’t to his taste. And an author that wants to keep original would have to keep his well-source topped up – would have to spread his catchment area wide (this hydrological metaphor is really starting to saturate this piece … Sorry, I should know better.) – open himself up to lots of new experiences, new inputs. But what happens in that strange subterranean world? once those things percolate slowly down and seep deep…?

It seems inevitable that those waters are going to altered by what’s down there – they’ll take on the flavour of the bedrock they filter through; there might be peculiar synergistic reactions as they rub up against what’s there already.

Maybe this is why if you gave a hundred authors one topic, you’d end up with a hundred unique stories. This is why, I suppose, it’s possible to write more than one book – if we were restricted to rigid archetypes, how could we keep on writing?

But I think that no matter how we alter the particulars, embellish, embolden, twist and conflate whatever we dredge up from the murky depths of our minds, any piece of writing will express something very fundamental about its writer.

And perhaps part of the fun of writing (or reading) is trying to find out exactly what that is.

Bring a hard hat, not a magic wand

2010-04-28T20:34:00.001Z

I used to think writing was all drifting around in a ruby-red smoking jacket, breakfast scotch in hand, luxuriating in the rich workings of one’s ineffable mind; that when inspiration came, one would elegantly shake back the silken sleeve from one’s wrist, unsnap the golden lid of one’s fountain pen and inscribe, for all perpetuity, a sentence or two of such unsurpassable greatness – such heart-swelling flawless beauty – that it was as if they had been plucked straight from the mind of God – that indeed He had only created reality and consciousness in order that those very words might be written and perceived.

It isn’t quite like that. Although I still have the smoking jacket and the scotch, on the off chance it might help.

What it is, I'm discovering, is a bloody hard slog. An exercise in grit and determination and all the best of British, including the grumbling and the heavy drinking. It’s about structure. It’s about brutal hacking and carving and hammering. It’s about plans and being organised and bloody post-it notes for God’s sake. Think secretary tries to assemble flat pack furniture whilst creating the instructions as she goes along – but the flat pack pieces are alive and keep mutating and multiplying, and the furniture’s actually the most hideous thing she’s ever seen: a shameful abomination that just looks ridiculous compared to everyone else’s furniture, and instead of wood glue and dowels she has to use the blood and dismembered fingers of her own children.

Yeah. That’s what it’s like.

Except she has to do this at times when normal people are having fun or meals or showers.

And she doesn’t even know why she is doing it.

Roll, wagon, roll

2010-04-24T15:40:00.000Z

Remember that no-book buying wagon I was on? The austere one, all hard wood, no springs, unpadded seats; creaking and rolling its way through a barren landscape; passengers hollow eyed with privation; gasping, hungering… wanting…

Well screw you wagon. Yes I might not have a job or any money, and yes, I might have a pile of forty books waiting to be read, but don’t you tell me what I can and can’t do. (What? The book ban was self-imposed? Listen, Miss Reasonable, don’t get in the way of my indignation. Why don’t you sod off and go and do something useful – go find my Internal Editor. No, I don’t know where she is! She’s probably in the pub again, or outside having a fag – you know what editors are like. She was arguing with Experimental Voice earlier, I’ve not seen her since. Don’t look at me like that. Yes, like that! – like this is all my fault. Look, I need her back, OK? Tell her I’m sorry. But I’ve been writing bullshit ever since she left. Oh yes, go on, agree with me, why don’t you. But really, just look at this mess. She would have stopped this at least two paragraphs ago. Yes I know it’s only two paragraphs long – that’s what I mean. Please, just find her. Oh, and we’re out of rum by the way. Be a love and pick some up? No don’t tell her. You know she hates it when I drink. Yes, go on, bye! What? No, I don’t have any money, I’ll pay you back. Last time? What do you mean I haven’t paid you back for last time? Look, I can’t be expected to remember everything. I’m a creative soul … my absent-mindedness is part of my charm. We’ll sort it out later. Go on, just go, shoo. I’m trying to work here. OK? You’re going? Yes, yes … bye… Finally. Sheesh.)

Well, now I’m sitting here, watching that wagon merrily roll off into the sunset. I might be stranded in the desert, but at least I’ve got something to read (courtesy of Oxfam books):

‘Lanark’ – Alasdair Grey
For some reason this sounded really familiar. I must have read something about it somewhere. (Probably that it’s crap.) But the blurb on the back sounded interesting: “This modern vision of hell tells the interwoven tales of Lanark and Duncan Thaw in the disintegrating cities of Unthank and Glasgow.”

‘The Art of Hunger’ – Paul Auster
I still have a soft-spot for Auster, despite his recent books being pretty much just self-indulgent tosh. (Travels in the Scriptorium? Just embarrassing really.) But his earlier stuff – New York Trilogy, Moon Palace, Mr Vertigo – is worth reading if you haven’t already. The Art of Hunger is a collection of essays (including The Red Notebook) professing to “trace the compulsion to make literature” and sounds suitably pretentious.

‘The Doors of Perception’ and ‘Heaven and Hell’ – Aldous Huxley
It’s Aldous Huxley – on mescalin. Need I say more? Also, it’s only 141 pages long. I’m becoming increasingly enamored of the short book. (Which is odd coming from someone whose first love is fantasy fiction…)

My mother always told me this would happen

2010-04-22T21:28:00.000Z

I’ve been choking the fiction chicken too hard of late and my creative juices have run dry. Well, maybe not dry exactly, just more viscous.

It used to be that when I had a day to myself, a private day, when I could lock myself in my room uninterrupted*, I could probably churn out 6000-9000 words of finger-crippling, wrist-aching** goodness (I say ‘good’…). Now it’s more like a 600-1000 words before I run out of steam.

I think what it’s down to is that before I started writing, I had almost a year when the story was fermenting in my head. The first time I sat down to write and took the lid off, that frothy nectar exploded*** all across the page. Now I’ve used up most of that store. The adolescent fervour**** of those early writing days has died down.

I’m not particularly worried, because to be honest, though that’s a ten-fold decrease, the stuff I’m writing is probably better – and it’s consistent. I know I can do it each time I sit down***** to write. Now I take things slower; I let myself explore what my ~~body~~ mind is telling me. Each scene is better crafted; I don’t just whack out a quick one******. And I like what I’m writing now; it feels closer to what I was aiming for.

Of course, this means there’s going to be an awful lot of editing to do on those early pages. But I’m looking forward to that challenge.

* Sorry.
** Again, sorry.
*** A little mixed metaphor there – brewing as well as the art of self love. But still: sorry.
**** It was more subtle, but it was there. Apologies.
***** You can read one in there if you want, but you’re the one with the sick mind.
****** I give up.

Big Sur - Jack Kerouac

2010-04-18T20:25:00.006Z

I love those serendipitous reading choices – like when you pick up a book that says something to you at exactly the time in your life you needed to hear it, or when two books you read one after the other resonate off each other perfectly.

Not knowing anything about Jack Kerouac, I think I got lucky in reading On the Road first followed by Big Sur. On the Road was the start of things – the book that got Kerouac known as ‘King of the Beatniks’. In Big Sur, we see Kerouac aged 40, sick of fame and attention, sick with drinking, sick of everything really (most of all himself) and ‘realising that [he] … had to get away to solitude again or die…’ It wasn’t quite the last book he wrote, but it feels like the end of something.

“In Big Sur, the mirror of the Beat way of life is hammered at and it shatters. The Kerouac hero “cracks up” while doing the things he has always liked to do.”

Kerouac (barely fictionalised as Jack Duluoz in the book) has fled to the west coast to stay in at a friend’s cabin in Big Sur – a remote beauty spot on the Californian coast; sanctuary, retreat, ‘… all homely woods and gladness.’ But even before he arrives a sense of doom hangs over the tale. His escape gets off to a false start: he wakes in San Francisco to the sound of church bells, hungover, groaning and ‘woebegone’ after a two-day drunk.

He flees again (‘One fast move or I’m gone…’) and arrives at night, making his way to the cabin on foot through uncertain blackness. He’s unnerved by the dark, by the cliffs and the sea he can not see. His descriptions are wrought, almost gothic – the sound of the unseen river is:

‘… crashing mysteriously at me from a raging battle among dark things, wood or rock or something cracked, all smashed, all wet black sunken earth danger … A slimy green dragon racket in the bush – An angry war that doesn’t want me pokin around – It’s been there a million years and it doesn’t want me clashing darkness with it – It comes snarling from a thousand crevasses …’

And it’s with this ominous welcome that Kerouac begins his getaway. We know it’s going to go wrong. It’s not long before he’s back in the city, drunk; back at the cabin, drunk; back to all and everything and everyone one – drunk.

With searing honesty and intensity, Kerouac relates the story of his break down. His alcoholism, the pressures of life and age and innumerable things we can only guess at have taken their toll. He suffers hallucinations, nightmares; the shakes, paranoia and depression of delirium tremens.

What Kerouac does is communicate feelings. His writing isn’t about stories, it’s not about things happening. It’s a big raw ball of human emotion. When life is good, as in On the Road, it’s exhilarating; when life is bad it’s … well, it’s not happy, but it’s a privilege, and there’s humour, intelligence and insight enough that it never becomes a chore to experience it with him.

Big Sur is written closer to the stream-of-consciousness style in which Kerouac wrote On the Road before it was edited into a more regular structure. He seldom uses full stops; they appear only at the end of long paragraphs, within which long dashes take their place, so it reads like one long sentence - it reads the way thoughts feel. The style echoes the communicative flood of his long, long conversations with Dean Moriarty (Neal Cassady); this is a soul being bared.

It reads more like poetry to me, with words chosen for feeling and jumbled together in an idiomatic way. I think of Keats, of who it was said “he never beheld an oak tree without seeing a dryad.” And Kerouac can’t look at a mule without seeing a 'Sacred Burro' in his sacred grove; the mountains behind his cabin become the magical and terrifying Mien Mo mountains of his nightmares; the sea speaks to him and he feels duty-bound to write down what it says, though it frightens him and ‘probably drove him mad’.

Kerouac seems to have been a man who felt too keenly; too raw open to the world to be blithe and happy – has any happy man ever been an alcoholic?

“And who killed Jack Kerouac the man? A spy in his body known as Jack Kerouac the writer.” - William Burroughs.

Up Song, Down Song #2

2010-04-18T13:48:00.000Z

Far sooner than anyone ever expected - or wanted - welcome to another edition of Up Song, Down Song!

Up Song
Has your get up and go got up and left? Are you feeling brain idle and lazidasical? Well, slap this in your brain box and get a move on to happy town:

LCD Soundsystem: Yeah (Crass Version)

Down Song
Whew! … I think we could all do with something a little calming after that. Here’s a poignant little sliver to soothe your frazzled synapses:

Cinematic Orchestra: To Build a Home

;)

Silent write, holy write ...

2010-04-16T12:33:00.002Z

I need to find a way of writing silently. You see, I’ve managed to turn most of that wasted time spent doing stuff like sleeping and eating into writing time. Nights are when I plot out the next day’s writing: I tell the story in my head – like watching a movie – and then transcribe it the next day. Sometimes (who am I kidding: frequently) an idea/description/bit of dialogue of such staggering genius comes to me that I just have to write it down. Right Now. Or it might get lost – and the world would be a much poorer place.

Unfortunately for my boyfriend, my fevered midnight scribblings are noisy. Normally I type into my phone – but the buttons are dreadfully clicky and it insists on beeping at me. So sometimes I end up going into the bathroom to type … yeah, roll with that mental image – sleep sodden and red eyed, tapping away on the can at 4am.

(Fact: writing is both glamorous and sexy.)

However, the bathroom is cold. Also, I tend to have lots of little ideas at random intervals, which means getting up every few minutes like a nervous incontinent. After a night boozing. Overdosed on diuretics.

I’ve tried writing in the ancient way with a sort of inky stick on mushed up tree, but this produces lots of scratchy ruffley sounds – a lot more than you’d think.

So. What other options are there? Ideas please …

(Image from here).

Confronting the monster

2010-04-14T21:11:00.000Z

My story – I call it my story because it’s less scary than calling it a book or novel – my story – my lovely little story that’s been growing steadily in my brain like an alien parasite, that’s been gradually extending its insistent tendrils into every aspect of my life, stealing my sleep, invading my dreams, causing me (against my will, of course) to bore my nearest and dearest with its every detail – my story – this beautiful burbling baby – had matured to the point where it was starting to run away from me and get itself into all sorts of trouble – the time had come to put a leash on it:

It was spread all over the place: twenty or so word documents; two notebooks; various bits of paper and backs of train tickets; 250+ draft messages on my phone (much easier to write in a phone than a notebook when you’re on the move). So I collated it all together into one word document. It's name is DRAFT. It’s a good word document: it’s got headings and navigation and hyperlinks and it’s studded all over with red comment boxes like some sort of rash. It’s a strong, vigorous healthy word document of 182 pages and 101k words.

I looked at it and made a strange noise. It was a little bit like ‘meep’ only more pathetic.

Having it all in one place makes much more difference than I thought it would. I was hoping it would make it easier to get to grips with the overall structure – and it does – but it’s also quite scary to see just how big this thing has grown, and how much work there is still to do. I’m only just over a third through the first draft, but I’m at the stage where I really need to start balancing all the story threads and short arcs, and having more than one POV character means I need to be careful to balance all their narratives.

The first draft should be around 270k. There will be a very heavy round of editing. I’m all for keeping things sleek and lean – doorstep fantasies have their place, and I do love them, but I’d rather pack a short, tight punch if I can. I’m getting better every day at keeping things to a minimum (this post isn’t the best example, I know) – and I’ve learnt the joy of jumping right into the meat of the scene rather than doing lots of tedious scene setting. I’m living by the motto: if it’s boring to write, it’ll be boring to read.

I’ve stared into the eye of the monster I’ve spawned. I quailed at first, but I think I’ve got the measure of it now. I know what needs to be done to bring this baby home.

Inane anxiety of the day: #5

2010-04-14T13:46:00.000Z

No headphones in the world fit me. They fall out of my ears, or off my head, and my ear canal is too small for noise-cancelling ones – which are the ones I really need, tending to listen to music mostly on public transport.

I have two theories about this. One: I am actually not human, but a superficially similar humanoid creature differing only in a few minor details, like ear shape. This would explain my supernatural abilities, like the ability to eat a whole pack of 12 crumpets in one sitting with no ill-effects. It would also explain why I have fingers instead of thumbs as this photo will illustrate. My second, and less popular, theory: I am a freak.

Factotum - Charles Bukowski

2010-04-13T21:41:00.001Z

I learnt quite a few things reading Factotum by Charles Bukowski. One: It’s probably best not to read this on a packed train carriage with someone looking over your shoulder. Two: Yes, it is possible to use the word ‘fuck’ and variations thereof twelve times in one paragraph. Three: Being an alcoholic doesn’t sound as much fun as I’ve always thought it might be. And four: There’s a particular facial expression only produced when reading about a vicious blow-job by an aged prostitute which ends with the mentally indelible line ‘this time she got it like a vanilla malt through a straw.’

Yeah … that’s the one.

After Kerouac’s On The Road and Burroughs’ Queer, Factotum was the next stop on my 'beat generation' road-trip. I said that Queer lacked Keroauc’s glee … well, Factotum wouldn’t know glee if it bought it a bottle of wine, shoved $5 down its beaded G-string and took it out back for a couple of expletive laden paragraphs. It’s all beat, no swing.

But that’s not really a criticism. It is what it is. And what it is, is the largely autobiographical account of a few years of Bukowski’s/Henry Chinaski’s life.

“Henry Chinaski, an outcast, a loner and a hopeless drunk, drifts around America from one dead-end job to another, from one woman to another and from one bottle to the next. Uncompromising, gritty, hilarious and confessional in turn, his downward spiral is peppered with black humour.”

I said to my boyfriend after reading it that I found it hard to sympathise with Chinaski – he’s an idiot, with few redeeming features, other than the odd nice line in witty dialogue and cynicism. My boyfriend’s response was that Bukowski never asks for your sympathy. And that’s true enough. In fact, Chinaski’s lack of self-pity, his seeming emotional detachment put me in mind of Meursault (from Camus’ The Stranger) at times. I got the same eerie feeling of mental ‘space’ – that there was just something missing in his mind. Basically, I think it’s just that he doesn’t give a damn. He has the alcoholic’s lack of self-preservation.

Hard is it might be to sympathise with him, I think anyone who’s ever worked a job they hate can relate to him. We see early on why wannabe writer Chinaski might shrink from the idea of a 9-5 job:

“I remembered how my father used to come home each night and talk about his job to my mother. The job talk began when he entered the door, continued over the dinner table, and ended in the bedroom where my father would scream “Lights Out!” at 8 p.m., so he could get his rest and his full strength for the job the next day. There was no other subject except the job.”

Kinda makes you shudder doesn’t it … mostly because it’s so true. Later, up pops another truism:

“We were packing comic books and something had gone wrong across the table. The two women became violent as the argument went on.

‘Look,’ I said, ‘these books aren’t worth reading let alone arguing about.’

‘All right,’ one of the women said, ‘we know you think you’re too good for this job.’

‘Too good?’

‘Yes, your attitude. You think we didn’t notice it?’

That’s when I first learned it wasn’t enough to just do your job, you had to have an interest in it, even a passion for it.”

And one that I can certainly relate to right now:

“I couldn’t get myself to read the want ads. The thought of sitting in front of a man behind a desk and telling him that I wanted a job, that I was qualified for a job, was too much for me. Frankly, I was horrified by life, at what a man had to do simple in order to eat, sleep, and keep himself clothed.”

In conclusion: it’s pretty much a book about life, that’s like life. It’s not very pretty, it’s not too clever, but it’s unavoidably, embarrassingly real.

Up Song, Down Song

2010-04-13T16:31:00.002Z

Welcome to 'Up Song, Down Song' - a new, totally non-regular feature in which I pick two random songs to lift you up and take you down. Smoooooth.

Up Song
I think this is going to be one of my songs of the summer - for chilled, park drowsing, sun lushed happiness:

Girls: Summertime

Down Song
And this has been my anthem of the last few days:

Neil Young: Fuckin' Up

Thank you ... you've been listening to SF radio.

Dog fleece

2010-04-12T10:47:00.001Z

I was getting off the train when I saw the man in front was wearing a fleece all covered in dog hair. You’ve got to love a man who wears a dog hair fleece at 9am on a London city morning, walking the sharp and staring streets all covered in rustic rough and tumble, with faded jeans and hiking boots, the rubber soles frayed a little. All warm biscuit smell and thick thumbs. Oblivious and unreached by the dry and grimy air, striding with a big heart full of wide skies and dog love.

David Mamet tells it how it is

2010-04-11T16:06:00.000Z

This is supposedly a letter David Mamet sent to the writers of TV show The Unit. He teaches us about writing dramatic scenes, in a DRAMATIC WAY (CAPS = drama, right?). There's some useful stuff in there - stuff I need to remind myself of in my own writing, even with my new-found scene-cutting ruthlessness.

Pity The Unit isn't very good. Although it does have an actor called Max Martini. Yes. That is the coolest name ever. Well OK, apart from Titus Bramble.

Queer - William Burroughs

2010-04-11T15:26:00.002Z

OK, so Kerouac’s On the Road sent me off into a little detour away from my list, but all the books I’ve read since have been in the flat – I haven’t bought any – so technically I haven’t cheated.

The next stop on my beat generation road trip was Queer by William Burroughs. (Burroughs was friends with Kerouac – showing up in On the Road as Old Bull Lee.) Queer is a sad little story of unrequited love. The main character, William Lee – first seen in Burroughs’ book Junky – is off the junk; as Burroughs describes in his introduction, Lee is no longer ‘protected’ by junk; he’s going through a withdrawal and ‘everything that has been held in check by junk spills out’. He’s desperate for contact, for an audience, he’s horny as hell, and he seeks all these things in Eugene Allerton.

For a story a little over 100 pages long, Burroughs manages to cover a lot: drug addiction, life in Mexico City, a love story, a trip to Ecuador in search of fabled drug called Yage (which supposedly gives telepathic powers), and several darkly funny ‘routines’: Lee’s ‘improvised’ monologues – witty conversational set-pieces designed to impress Lee’s ‘audience’, especially Allerton (my favourite is the one about chess). Yet it never feels cramped or rushed – in fact it feels remarkably open, the descriptions spare and uncompromising, and the more powerful for it.

Like On the Road, it’s impossible to draw the line between what is autobiographical and what is fiction. William Lee – Bill Lee – Old Bull Lee – William Burroughs: what’s true and what’s not? Burroughs was in Mexico City, he was addicted to junk, he did go in search of Yage, and supposedly Allerton is based on a real man (Adelbert Lewis Marker). The introduction (from Burroughs) is written in first person. The main story (from Lee – though it switches around a little and we see occasional things from Allerton’s POV) is written in third, but then the epilogue (also from Lee) returns to first person.

Lee isn’t exactly a pleasant character by any stretch of the imagination – drunkenly shooting heads off of mice for kicks. But his yearning for Allerton, and his dismay at Allerton’s lack of interest, is raw and real and it’s hard not to feel sympathetic.

I have to say I enjoyed it, but, soppy sentimental thing that I am, I missed Kerouac’s glee. There’s no wild joy at living in Queer. Let’s compare Kerouac’s and Burroughs’ descriptions of Mexico City:

Kerouac:

“In downtown Mexico City thousands of hipsters in floppy straw hats and long-lapeled jackets over bare chests padded along the main drag, some of them selling crucifixes and weed in the alleys, some of them kneeling in beat chapels next to Mexican burlesque shows in sheds. Some alleys were rubble, with open sewers, and little doors led to closet-size bars stuck in adobe walls. You had to jump over a little ditch to get your drink, and in the bottom of the ditch was the ancient lake of the Aztec. You came out of the bar with your back to the wall and edged back into the street. They served coffee mixed with rum and nutmeg. Mambo blared from everywhere. Hundreds of whores lined themselves along the dark and narrow streets and their sorrowful eyes gleamed at us in the night. We wandered in a frenzy and a dream. We ate beautiful steaks for forty-eight cents in a strange tiled Mexican cafeteria with generations of marimba musicians standing at one immense marimba.”

Burroughs (from the introduction):

“[Mexico City] appealed to me. The slum areas compared favourably with anything in Asia for sheer filth and poverty. People would shit all over the street, then lie down and sleep in it with the flies crawling in and out of their mouths. Entrepreneurs, not infrequently lepers, built fires on street corners and cooked up hideous, stinking, nameless messes of food, which they dispensed to passersby … Mexico was basically an Oriental culture that reflected two thousand years of disease and poverty and degradation and stupidity and slavery and brutality and psychic and physical terrorism. It was sinister and gloomy and chaotic, with the special chaos of a dream.”

OK, so neither is going to win any awards for political correctness. Same city, similar descriptions – and they both like the city – but the descriptions give quite different impressions. Somehow Kerouac’s Mexico City seems fun despite the whores and the poverty and the sewers. Probably neither description is accurate, maybe both are – I don’t know, I’m only judging it as a work of fiction.

You can see though, I think, in Burroughs’ description, a little of why he was an influence on cyberpunk - that description could be lifted straight out of some hellish dystopian mega-city.

Yes, cyberpunk too. Burroughs sure did fit a lot into 100 pages.

On the Road - Jack Kerouac

2010-04-10T16:53:00.002Z

Life being what it is, I decided I felt like a break from murder so I put my book on the holocaust aside for something a little lighter: ‘a paean to … the “ragged and ecstatic joy of pure being”’ in fact – so the blurb on the back describes On The Road by Jack Kerouac.

It’s one of those books I’ve heard of, been vaguely aware of, without really knowing anything about it or the author. I bought my brother a copy when he moved to Canada. It seemed like the thing to do. But I’d never actually read it.

So I did, and loved it, and wistfully stared into the middle distance, mind empty of everything but the empty American vastness: the road, stretching on: possibility, flux … the thing about travelling being, that when travelling, the only thing you have to do is travel; you only have to be, and the time between saying goodbye to one set of folks, and saying hello to another is nowhere time, with no expectations, and no duty other than to arrive – and not even that, if no one is waiting.

“… there was nowhere to go but everywhere …”

The book has been criticised for its sentimental and patronising attitudes on race, and I’ll also add a criticism for its attitude towards women: yes, there’s bigamy, domestic violence, 15 year-old prostitutes … and even considering the time it was set (late 1940s to 1950s), it’s still pretty dubious on all those fronts.

But it’s hard not to love it, for all its faults. The prose – talk about narrative voice. There is no plot, not really. The prose, the style, is the story. Kerouac’s stream of consciousness writing (edited into a more regular style in my version from its original continuous scroll) feels evocative of rolling wheels, wide horizons, jazz and drink-hazed thought. It does sweep you along, it lifts you up with its ecstatic wham!s and yes!s and digging this and digging that, and running for a truck with your “soul whoopeeing. And what a driver - a great big tough truckdriver with popping eyes and a hoarse raspy voice who just slammed and kicked at everything and got his rig under way” – and you’re off!

Yet for all the drinking, partying and the obsession with ‘gurls gurls gurls’; for all the wooping and digging and jazz; for all Dean Moriarty’s ‘yes! yes! yessing!’, it’s the sentimental, sad, tender, deep loneliness of Kerouac (Sal Paradise in the novel) which stayed with me the most. This is often a sad book, about a man who never seems comfortable with his place in “this big brown world.”

Amongst Kerouac’s 'beat generation' friends was William Burroughs (his pseudonym in the book is Old Bull Lee). Burroughs, and a lot of the ‘beat’ crowd seemed to interested in telepathy. Burroughs himself travelled through South America looking for a drug called Yage which supposedly gave or aided telepathic powers (his trip is recounted in his novel Queer).

I just kinda got the feeling when reading On the Road, that what Kerouac was really after, in all his travelling, his alcoholism, the drugs, the parties, his deep friendship with Dean Moriarty (in real life: Neal Cassady), was a solution to his loneliness – like he wanted to merge his soul with another, subsume himself in another mind. Yage, telepathy … they might have held an answer.

Of his short relationship with Terry, a Mexican girl he meets on the road, he describes them sitting out under the stars at night:

“… most of the time we were alone and mixing up our souls ever more and ever more till it would be terribly hard to say good-by.”

Of Dean Moriaty’s first meeting with Carlo Marx (Allen Ginsberg in real life):

“A tremendous thing happened when Dean met Carlo Marx. Two keen minds that they are, they took to each other at the drop of a hat. Two piercing eyes glanced into two piercing eyes – the holy con-man with the shining mind, and the sorrowful poetic con-man with the dark mind that is Carlo Marx. From that moment on I saw very little of Dean, and I was a little sorry too.”

He describes Dean and Carlo’s conversations – every night, sitting cross-legged, knee to knee, sharing every thought, being honest to the bottom of their souls – trying to get to that one last thing; and Sal says: ‘That one last thing is what you can’t get, Carlo. Nobody can get to that last thing. We keep on living in hopes of catching it once for all.’

Sal seems to feel as though Dean might hold the answer, referring to him as a ‘prophet’. The answer to what? We never know … Dean calls it ‘it’ – IT – but perhaps it’s the answer to loneliness. He describes Dean, ‘covered with sweat and throbbing veins, saying, ‘Yes, yes, yes,’ as though tremendous revelations were pouring into him all the time now, and I’m convinced that they were.’

Later, Sal takes the place of Carlo in conversation with Dean:

“Then I began talking; I never talked so much in all my life…” “… Dean and I both swayed to the rhythm and the IT of our final excited joy in talking and living to the blank tranced end of all innumerable riotous angelic particulars that had been lurking in our souls all our lives.”

He describes Dean as like a ‘long-lost brother’, and in real life, Kerouac’s brother died young. Wikipedia suggests he never got over his grief and this is part of the reason for the alcoholism which killed him at age 47. Perhaps whatever he was seeking was an answer to loss, a permanent connection to another soul, or at the least, an escape from a place which feels lonely.