How Now Brown Cow

Wow. It's been a while since I blogged. I'm writing this on my mobile so I'm not going to check how long, but long.

I haven't written since the end of September and now here we are at the end of November. That should be shameful; rest assured that I think it is too. There has, however, been a very good reason as to my lack of writing be it blog, prose or tweet. Smartphone.

I had and once again have, though not for much longer, an HTC Desire HD. I love it. It's beautiful, powerful and has enough weight to feel important. It is also disfunctional, awkward and uses charge faster than an over zealous traffic warden. I have sent it to be repaired four times and it is still not working properly. In its place I have been given a sequence of temporary replacements, the highlight of which was a nokia's game of snake.

I write on public transport sometimes peacefully. In this endeavour my phone is only marginally less useful than a pen. I block out the world around me with my music, I check my notes with Evernote, I tweet, I blog and use the thesaurus. Not having my phone has been karmic punishment for something or other. I don't know what it was but it must have been bad. Two months without writing...

I have lost weight. I have trouble sleeping and I have become grumpy. I lie awake with a bubbling head, all the thoughts that go through my pen being forced to bounce and rebound through my noggin.

I intend to restart on Monday morning. I am ready to go, slowly at first but soon gathering up speed until Christmas whereupon I shall stop again.

Writing's a bitch sometimes.

DR

Well what happened there then?

I believe that my previous post should have been a lot longer. I do not understand why it is not except that perhaps when I posted it off my android phone, it seemed to have a little difficulty.

This is a shame as I was relying on this blog as a reminder of my plans.

I had plans to divide my day up into one hour segments in order to get everything I wanted to do done. I had worked out a specific schedule and everything and now it's all gone. *sniff*

Still, it hasn't really worked out anyway as my brother and his girlfriend have come to visit. My plans started at nine o'clock in the morning and now it's eleven and they are still here.

I'll try again after lunch.

DR

P.S. If anyone does find the remainder of my missing post, I'd be grateful to have it back.

Sometimes it's hard to be a woman...

...especially when you have the genetalia of a man.

That's how the song goes anyway. It's hard to be a writer too. Life gets in the way. I'm totally envious of real life writers who have the opportunity to write for three or four hours at a stretch. If I could do that, I'd be a very happy man.

But I may not. I have bills to pay, work to do and a girlfriend to love.

The journey of a thousand miles begins with the first step.

I decided that I wanted to be a writer at an early age. I don't really remember at what age that the desire gripped me, it's something that I've always wanted to do. I have never craved being published, the knowledge that I have completed a book is quite enough. The enormous sensation of success when I do it is what drives me to continue. At least the sensation that I hope I have.

However, I do remember quite clearly the realisation that being a writer actually required me to write. I was fourteen, (I think), years old and it dawned on me that I would probably need some practice before I started to be a bad writer. I'm a firm believer that the default position for starting to learn a new skill is 'scrote'.

So write I did and it was probably very bad. Bad enough for me to realise that it was bad whilst still in the scrote position. I think that that doesn't class it as probably very bad but as very bad.

Nevertheless, it was the first step and I realised that I wanted to be a writer simply because I enjoyed the puzzle of finding the right words to match the picture in my head and not have it be bad writing. I really like the actual process of writing so I decided to write a really long book.

That book is the book I am writing now despite it's many iterations and my occasional desires to burn the damn thing. It is the seemingly endless grind of word by word, chapter by chapter that seems interminable. Yet it is with the first step that I took all those years ago that I started and all the thousands of intervening steps that have been taken and that are yet to be taken, that the journey will be completed.

And so now I wonder, is it the desire of my destination that forces me on, or is it the journey itself.

After all, it's a really, really big book.

DR

The Hydra Story

Well, the truth of the matter is that I'm meant to be writing. I am, I'm writing this blog, I know. What I mean is that I should be writing a chapter. I wish I were but sometimes the hydra rears its many heads and prevents me from doing so. In a previous chapter I mentioned a number of street gangs and they are the hydra of my day. I want to refer to them again in a little more detail but I can't, I can't remember their names. I don't want to have a lot of blank spaces in my text is the first thing. The second thing is that I have a visual memory. If I can't see a thing, it's difficult to write about it. In order to see such a thing in my mind's eye, it needs to have a name do that it can be recalled. They do have a name and thus, when I discover what I named them, will be able to write about them.

They are a hydra because the problems of internal consistency are such that whenever you think you've solved a problem you actually find that you've created two more. The only way to resolve them is to take the problem and burn it all the way back to the mechanics of your universe. Sometimes this creates enormous problems that involve scrubbing out large portions of prose, plot points or indeed entire characters. It must be done.

I first tried to write this book at the age of fourteen. I still, somewhere, retain the first few pages that I wrote. I weep with disdain at my feeble efforts. Nevertheless, it contains a few seeds of the book now. I discovered fairly quickly that my universe was entirely inadequate and that everything I had written was suitable only for lighting fires. The second attempt went the same way. As did all other attempts three through forty-seven.

Yet each one has led me, inexorably, to the hydra that I have today. A many headed beast that needs constant fighting, each of the heads burning all the way down to the body of the underlying universe.

Ultimately, this is a battle I'm now winning. Many, many words have been written and it all stays strong. I will find those gangs, burn them down and keep going.

I'm rambling.

DR

Books, Pens & Other Instuments of Pleasure

I know that one of these days, I will get to the very end of the last chapter. On that day I do not know what I will do. The easy answer is, of course, to start writing another book straight away. That is the problem. I enjoy the physical aspects of writing; the creation, the tender flow of ink on paper. It's soothing.

And into this heaven strides the devil himself; Redrafting.

And that is what I'll have to do. I will feel obliged to take what I have written and to put it into a coherent format ready to be mailed, published etc. I really don't want to. But the more that I write the closer that mountain comes. The more I write, the higher the pile of paper that needs to be typed until at last!

No more writing but a wealth of notebooks looking snidely as I procrastinate endlessly over the hateful job of typing up.

One of the big problems of typing up is the joy of writing, it's pleasure heightened by an increasing sucession of Pilot G-Tec-C4 pens. They write extra-fine with a 0.4 gel ink nib. I have also bought today, for my guilty pleasure, a new notebook, having finished the previous this afternoon. Chapter, Pen and Book my own private intellectual tennis victory. It's narrow ruled, firm backed with a little pocket at the back for my notes. Oh! woe is me, it really is too much to suggest that I resist the succulent tempatations. So I shall continue to write.

At least until someone comes up with a computer smart enough to read my handwriting...

DR

The Unexplained Explained

Hello everybody,

I know, I know. I haven't been blogging, nor tweeting. In fact I haven't even been writing. Cardinal sin I feel.

Well, I intend to start again. Today in fact. I suppose that I should write 'intended' as i have left my book at home. So I'm taking this opportunity to write this blog and to expose my mystery silence.

When I write, like many writers, I require an uninterrupted moment of peace. It is why I put on my headphones and listen to music when I write. I can block it all out.

About ten days ago, I went on a weekend break. Despite having to change trains I hoped to have an uninterrupted three hour space in which to write. I had not counted on my indomitable girlfriend who continually signalled to me that I should remove my headphones and give her my opinion on anything from a pair of shoes to Lady Gaga. It was not appreciated but it continued and destroyed all my concentration.

During that weekend, we were busy in foreign parts so I didn't tweet. Upon my return I had to overcome a break in routine, the restart of my normal life and a change of books. As people might remember, It's not that I particularly suffer from white page syndrome but not having a weight of pages for me to go through and feel the flow of the story slows me right down. At the minute I'm actually having to carry around two writing books; one for writing and one for continuity.

Equally troublesome has been my evolving work routine. I have not had the long journeys, wrapped up in my own mind with nothing to do but put pen to paper.

So i said, 'bugger it, I'm going to have a little break.'

I know that there will come a moment where my stomach will say to my brain, 'get a bloody move on, we've got things to write so why aren't you doing it'.

That moment is coming.

So my silence is due to a lack of writing environment. I shall get in contact with greenpeace directly. I believe that the environment falls into their remit.

I know, I know. I'll do better next time.

DR

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

The Trouble with Mechanics

As anybody who follows my Twitterfeed will tell you, I haven't been writing over the last 10 days or so due to something that I call Mechanics. More correctly I should say that I have been having problems with a specific Mechanic.

A Mechanic is a system, either in the writers head or codified on paper, that retains the internal consistency of the universe in which the writer is writing. Sometimes the Mechanic is no different from the premise or the setting. The book 'Fatherland' is a good example. The Mechanic is also the setting in that Heydrich survived and the Nazis won the war. The internal consistency must be continued. If the Nazis won the war then alluding to Italian liberal arts could detract from the suspension of disbelief. Something that is very important not to do.

In my book, the characters are capable of creating wonderous effects that in our society would be classed as magic. Having a character who one moment creates flights of birds but at the next moment claims not to have the power to bake a cake requires explanation. This explanation must be level headed and logical in 'real-world' terms as the explanation is not for the characters but for the readers.

Tolkien remarked that he wished that he had explained how magic worked. In his head, I'm confident he had a Mechanic. I have also had a Mechanic and it has worked very well. Until now of course.

Suffice to say that I will have to go through my work to implement my Mechanic but other than that, I should be restarting my writing tomorrow.

Hopefully I won't break the universe this time.

DR


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Back, Again.

Once again I haven't been blogging but my (late) new years resolution is to try and to spend a little more time on my Online existence.

I have had a few ideas on how to make myself more available to the online world and I am going to try doing that.

This means, more tweeting, more blogging, more flickring, more tumblring. (OK, the last two aren't real but you know what I mean. More facebooking too I suppose.

What's new? Well I haven't been writing since Christmas. Instead I have been reading. I have been reading a wide variety of things just as fast as I can devour them but that seems to be now finished. I shall start writing again tomorrow whilst I travel to work.

Currently I am winding through the tangled threads of three particular characters. Normally I take each character to a point where they interact with another character and then I take the other character and also take them to that point. Then I write their interactions and carry on. However, these three principle characters are currently working in unison and so I have taken to writing chronologically. I find that I don't write as nicely when this is the case but in the end it doesn't make any difference. This first draft is a simple hewing into shape. Beyond that the sanding down and buffing up takes place at a later date.

This maybe as I don't really know how I write; don't know who my inner voice is. When I have found it, I will, redraft to my heart's content.

It is on my 'to-do' list.

DR