Becoming Tony Blackburn
Wednesday, April 30, 2003
Tuesday, April 29, 2003
Monday, April 28, 2003
Sunday, April 27, 2003
Friday, April 25, 2003
You mean that's okay? That's how it is for other people too? Other Real Writers?
I thought it was me - that I was doing something wrong. I've always been frightened to actually study writing because I can't do all that stuff - the analysis and planning. I try, I really do - but when I put together a plan, or try to work out any kind of reasoning behind my story, it falls apart. I don't know why the things that happen, happen. I try to look at things like chapter structure and plot development, and I spend hours deciding what should happen next - and when I sit down to write what comes out is something else entirely. I decide that it is absolutely essential at this point for Ally to go home and have a confrontation with her mother, and yet I find instead she goes to the office and Jude tells her he is leaving Susan. I was as surprised as she was - I genuinely didn't know that was going to happen.
I guess I just have to try and trust that my imagination knows what it's doing.
My writing style in general is fairly sparse, as I cannot abide flowery (or even crepuscular, heh) prose, and get bored very quickly with long descriptive passages. I don't care that much what it all looks like, I want to know what is happening.
I am finding that I write in a similar style as I read - paying scant attention to the visual aspects of the scene. To a certain extent this may be beneficial, as it seems to create a good pace, but I worry that I am losing out on the opportunity to tell extra layers of story through description. The way someone looks, the gestures they use - all these can say just as much as the dialogue itself. When Ally talks to Ray about being tested, he says "You don't need it," and I finish the scene with 'He stood up, obviously believing that was all that needed to be said on the matter.'
'He stood up'. Bare. Ok, it's being used to signify that the coversation is over as far as Ray's concerned, but I'm sure I could do more with it than that.
Thursday, April 24, 2003
Wednesday, April 23, 2003
Inspired by Dark Flower's new extra-purple-ness, I have coloured my date and post headers. (Once I realised that the style name has to be COLOR not COLOUR, that is. I couldn't figure out why it wasn't working for ages...) I've tidied up the template code, which was tatty with table entries that I didn't need once I changed the layout from multicoloured to purple, and added my 'Currently Reading' list.
I've also changed the links so that they open up in new windows, and finally figured out how to make the left hand strip wider - again, thanks to Dark Flower's code. You rock, girl!
My latest go at personality testing, at Bloginality makes me an INTP:
Love theory and abstract ideas
Truth Seekers - they want to understand things by analyzing underlying principles and structures
Value knowledge and competence above all else
Have very high standards for performance, which they apply to themselves
Independent and original, possibly eccentric
Work best alone, and value autonomy
Have no desire to lead or follow
Dislike mundane detail
Not particularly interested in the practical application of their work
Creative and insightful
Future-oriented
Usually brilliant and ingenius
Trust their own insights and opinions above others
Live primarily inside their own minds, and may appear to be detached and uninvolved with other people
The Star Trek version had me as an ISFP whereas the official Myers-Briggs site said INFP. Three different results, yet every time I read the personality description I go "Yep that's me all right. Totally spot on." So is there a lot of overlap between types, or am I developing multiple personality disorder? Oh joy, another neurological condition to worry about...
Personally, I was always on the dragon's side.
Tuesday, April 22, 2003
Started a new book today, 'The Gate to Womens' Country' by Sheri S Tepper. I vaguely remember being quite a fan of hers a good few years ago, so was looking forward to this. I still have high hopes, although by page 2 it had already got on my nerves. In a scene stated to be taking place at dusk, it described rays of light as 'crepuscular'. Crepuwhat? It sounded like it should have something to do with lobsters, but somehow I doubted that it did. No-one in the canteen had ever heard of it, so I was forced into scouring the office for a dictionary. So I come back, having wasted ten minutes of precious lunch-time and completely shunted myself out of the story, to find that it means 'of or pertaining to twilight'. Wha? Redundant much?
It's dusk, and the light has the quality of twilight.
You don't say.
So what the hairy hell was the point of it? To make us realise how inferior our vocabulary is compared to the author?
What I can learn: Never, ever do that. It's not big and it's not clever, it just pisses people off.
And at the other end of the spectrum: just watching Die Hard 2. Now there is a story that knows its level. Hurrah for a good bit of mindless vest action.
Monday, April 21, 2003
I have a strange memory. While visualisation comes easy to me, I find it hard to expand an image - ie. I can bring to mind a certain place but not anything else around it. Hence, I get lost very easily because I don't know where anything is in relation to anything else. In compensation, I had a very good memory for words - names, definitions, etc. I navigate by street names, and can be relied upon to know the name of the road other people call 'that one-way street by the pub, near the lights on the way in to Romford' (it's Albert Road). Likewise, if anyone at work needed to know the name of 'that claim with the geezer in Hackney who had rats' they came to me.
However, in the last few years my memory has been getting noticeably worse. A lot worse. Words don't stay in my brain the way they used to, and events have been disappearing altogether. What started it was a conversation I had with Sam about her brother's wedding. She told me a few details about it, and we discussed it accordingly, and it wasn't until a week later that she said, rather embarrassed, "you must have thought I was crazy, telling you all about Danny's wedding." "Why's that?" said I. "Because you were there," she said.
It was true - I checked it. I went to the wedding. A whole weekend in fact, in Birmingham. And I didn't remember. With immense concentration I managed to recover three images - Sam in her bridesmaid's dress, the present they bought her, and the bride walking down the aisle, but that's it. That's it, for the whole weekend. The rest of it disappeared into the Dead Zone. Cue lots of worry about premature senility, early Alzheimers, genetic dementia, mad cow disease - you name it, we worried about it. Was it due to eating crap meat in the 80s? Was due to not eating meat for the last twelve years and missing out on some kind of vital fish oil or something?
Then, in the middle of all this, there was I'm a Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here, and Rhona Cameron's famous 'sometimes we're all like that' speech. You couldn't argue with Rhona when she pointed out that Tony 'sometimes misses things because he’s slightly slower". Bless him, he did spend most of the time being very vague and collecting logs.
So then Sam made the scary connection - what did we have in common, besides appalling memories? We're both long-term vegetarians. Who else is a long-term vegetarian?
Tony Blackburn...
There has been a fascinating debate going across several weblogs, about truth, honesty and fiction, and where - if at all - the lines should blur. This is a post that summarises it all quite well, with links to the other points of view and to the original source of the debate, his Ikuko story.
It reminded me of a time when I was about eight or nine, sitting in my nan's house earnestly debating the motivations of someone on a tv show (I think it might have been Starsky and Hutch) with a friend. After she'd gone, my grandad came in and said, in a very gentle voice, "It's not real, you know." I remember looking at him in complete confusion and saying something like "Of course it is - we didn't imagine it watching it, did we?"
At the time, I absolutely did not get it. I'd watched those characters live their lives - seen it with my own eyes - so how was that not real? I understood that it was fiction, but that didn't mean it wasn't real. As a kid, I never made the distinction. I'm not sure I ever have.
Reality is too subjective to be real. When we relive an argument at three o'clock in the morning and minutely examine all the nuances and implications that we saw in it, over and above what was actually said, are they real? When we are infatuated and all the Universe consists of is one person, are those feelings real? When I do or say something that goes into the Dead Zone never to be remembered again, was it real? If I find a theme or concept in a story, or an emotional response in a character that the author didn't intend to be there, is that real?
Did Jonathon's Ikuko story actually happen? Yes. In order to write it he had to live it - he may only have done so in his head, but to me that's never made a difference.
Sunday, April 20, 2003
Slightly disappointing. The promo blurb, allegedly by Joanne Harris, the author of 'Chocolat' describes this as 'clever, quirky, hip and funny' but I'm afraid I didn't see any of those things in it. The 'mythic creature living in the modern world' angle has been done before - and considerably better - with vampire stories, so the 'woe is me, turned into a monster and yet still trying to have a normal life' angst - and boy was there a lot of it - didn't move me at all, and in fact rather got on my nerves. The werewolf aspect seemed sadly under-used, as there was little to convince me that these characters really were wolves - a few mentions of having fur and a great sense of smell didn't cut it. I found myself wanting some scientific info about wolves - other than a rather twee 'oh, we must all do what the pack Alpha says' there really wasn't much. If you were a werewolf, wouldn't you study wolves? Wouldn't you want to know everything about them - their biology, behaivours and habitats? I couldn't help getting the impression that the author had decided to write about wolves without doing any research at all, and this made me struggle to suspend my disbelief.
As for quirky and funny - nope. Terry Pratchett's Sergeant Angua is often both, but none of the characters here were. In possibly the worst problem of all, I didn't like them. Elena was possibly supposed to have the hard-bitten vulnerability of Anita Blake, but it didn't come off. Most of the time she just came across as whiny and self-obsessed. Clay was overdone - gorgeous, brainy, strong and loyal but with a wild uncontrollable streak. Yawn. Pass the Mills & Boon, someone, I fancy a nice bit of bodice-ripping.
The progression of this relationship, as told by Elena, was incredibly clunky. From the early hints about how she came to be a werewolf in the first place (Oh my god, it was Clay who bit her. What a shock) to the 'I hate him, I could never love him, I will never go back to him, oh no hang on, I do love him after all' ending, it was painfully obvious what the 'hidden truth' behind Elena's words was.
The one I liked best was poor old Philip, obviously put there to be a boring counterpoint to Elena's exciting 'true' life. I found myself hoping he would find some way to put them all in a circus or something.
What I can learn: Don't overdo the self-deception in 1st person POV, and don't leave it too long to resolve. If she'd had her 'I love him really' epiphany earlier, it wouldn't have been so bad. Watch how sympathetic a character Ally is. If we don't like her, we won't care about what happens to her. She needs flaws, but it can go too far. Keep the relationship with Jude off-beat, don't let it go Mills&Boon traditional.
Friday, April 18, 2003
A New Zealand site, Scoop, has photo-essays regarding the war, including a lot of very graphic and disturbing images. They invite reader feedback, and while the majority of comments are along the lines of 'you did right, people need to see the real face of war rather than the sanitised version on most US/western media' there are a few of the insane 'if you're against the war you're pro-Saddam/terrorism' types, a few of the more-sensible-but-still-ultimately-insupportable 'yes some people have died but Saddam killed more' types, and an anti-protest one which frankly dumbfounded me: 'By the way, those crowds in San Francisco are mostly gays - Arab kind of people.' WTF is that about??
And then there was this one: 'Where do you draw the line when it comes to fighting an evil and what price are you willing to pay?'
I found that compelling. It is one of the shortest posts but easily says more than a lot of the others put together. Or rather, asks more.
If you could stop a killer by having him killed, would you?
If you could stop him by killing him yourself, would you?
Would it make a difference if he had killed fifty people or a million?
Would it make a difference if he had killed only one person but it was someone you loved?
Would you kill someone else to stop him?
Would you kill twenty people? A thousand? A million?
Would you kill yourself?
Would you kill someone you loved?
Isn't it always going to be easier to pay a price that involves the death or suffering of people you don' t know?
Is the death toll of this war a price you would have paid to remove Saddam?
If you could have achieved that by the death of only three people but they had to be you and two members of your family, would you have paid that price?
I think that would be an interesting question to ask Blair and Bush.
Thursday, April 17, 2003
Tuesday, April 15, 2003
Johnny Smith, the hero of this story, suffers brain damage after a car crash. When he awakens from his coma, he finds himself unable to visualise certain images - a stop sign, I think one was. He knows what it is, but he just can't bring the image to mind any more. He describes it as having gone into the Dead Zone.
I know how he felt. Sometimes, I simply cannot bring to mind something that I know I know. Unlike Johnny, these things are usually word-based rather than image-based. Spelling, for example. From a kid, I was always gifted at spelling. It was just something that came naturally. Lately however, I am losing my confidence. When I type, the red line that Word uses to show a spelling mistake is appearing more and more. Getting the spelling wrong in the first place is bad enough, but what is even worse is that sometimes I look at the word and I cannot tell what is wrong with it. I have to resort to the spellchecker. Five years ago that would never have happened.
Sometimes I 'lose' whole words. I know there is a word to articulate what I want to say, and I cannot find it. It goes into the Dead Zone. Today, I have lost a name. Last night I had a dream about attending some kind of function, and there were a few famous people there. I was writing this into my dream journal and when I got to this guy I stopped because I couldn't think of his name. It is the actor who played Tony in Men Behaving Badly, so as I was short of time I just put that. I assumed the name would come to me in a few minutes, but it didn't. And still hasn't. I tried concentrating on it and deliberately not thinking about it, but neither approach has worked. This kind of thing happens, I know - but not usually for so long with something so easy. He is hardly obscure, after all. I know it is there, but I can't access it.
I won't ask anyone, or look it up, because I don't want my Dead Zone to win, but it is driving me crazy. What the hell is his name? I keep thinking about Neil Pearson and Nick Berry, so I'm guessing it begins with N. I think it might even be Neil. Neil what? I don't know.
How long before I forget my own name like this?
Scary.
Monday, April 14, 2003
My name is Shelley King - no, bad start. Strike that. My name is actually Michelle King, although since starting work three and a half years ago in an office which already had both a Michelle and a Mrs King, I have used the variant Shelley. I tend to use Shelley even when I could use Michelle, as I found something quite liberating in choosing to change my name. I make no guarantee that I won't suddenly become Ermintrude one day. My husband calls me Mollusc, although we have both long forgotten why. Assuming there ever was a reason in the first place, of course. We do talk bollocks rather a lot.
I was born 13th December 1966, which makes me a Sagittarian and 36. I usually have terrible trouble remembering how old I am, and most people think I am younger than I am - which I put down to not having kids. Never being a parent means never having to grow up. It also means you don't go to prison for neglect after leaving your offspring on buses, so it is probably a wise choice for me. Utter lack of maternal instinct and a shockingly bad memory do not really say 'good mother material', do they?
I have two cats, Maddy who is eleven and Jasper, who will be fourteen in May. Maddy is ginger and white and sheds hairs everywhere. Especially in yoghurt. He has a thing for sitting in the sink and has the temperament of a sloth. Considering Jasper is about 73 in human terms, he looks and acts about fifteen. He is a few hairs short of a furball, bless him, and falls out of windows a lot.
I am writing my first novel, which I actually began making notes for when I was 19. I am currently thinking it may end up having a sequel, which at this rate I will be writing during my third reincarnation from now. The novel is the kind of story I like to read - I would describe it as a dark metaphysical fantasy - and I am about half way through the fourth draft. It has changed form more times than I have changed my hair colour (which is saying something) but I am finally happy with how it is going. I am finding that my long-story writing has followed the pattern of my short-story writing - which is basically spend three-quarters of the total writing time faffing about drafting and re-drafting the first quarter and then magically get the rest done with no changes. I am therefore hoping that this stint will now produce a complete, edited book that will be immediately snapped up by a top agent who will get me a great publishing deal which will enable me to spend the rest of my life as a professional novelist.
Did I mention I'm an optimist?
My other passion is tarot, and I help to run TABI, the Tarot Association of the British Isles. I am the Editor for the quarterly newsletter, TABI News. I own about fifty decks at the moment and still have loads on the wishlist.
For four days a week I work as a Claims Technician, handling household insurance claims, but I usually try to blot that from my memory - which, let's face it, isn't hard.
Ten Random Facts:
My hair started to go grey at 21. I have dyed it every colour you can image, including blue, sometimes all at the same time.
I got married when I was 30, in the back of a limo in Las Vegas.
My maiden name was Larn, which someone once told me meant 'testicle' in an unidentified asian language.
I have no sense of balance, cannot skate or ride a bike, and have trouble standing on one leg.
I love wombles.
My friend Sam and I once stood next to George Michael in a club, and snubbed him.
I can call someone a son of a whore in Spanish.
I once accidentally ate someone else's toenail.
If money were no object I would buy a stationery and art supplies shop, and a yellow beetle with the personalised plate BUG1.
I have a mild phobia about buttons.
Sunday, April 13, 2003
The condition of my gums has improved a lot, according to my dentist, so much so that I now don't have to go to the hospital and have the horrible scraping-out procedure. And I don't even need any fillings. Even more of a result.
[Happy dance]
Friday, April 11, 2003
I have been linked to. Wow. The comment I wrote about hypertext got noticed by Mark Bernstein, the author of the article - presumably by some sort of trackback (hey, am I getting the hang of this techno lark or what?) and he wrote about it in his blog.
Following Mark's recommendations, an About Me page is coming soon. I think I didn't do this before because, even though by definition this site is public, I never actually expected anyone to read it.
The first I knew about all this was when I received an email from Jon Buscall to say he'd followed the link and liked my site. (Both guys liked the colour, which gave me a warm purple glow and made all that late-night fiddling with codes I didn't understand worth while). Jon is the Writer-in-Residence at the Department of English, Stockholm University. He teaches creative writing, has a consistently interesting blog with some really inspiring thoughts about writing and, most importantly of all, he has published a novel. He did it. He made the decision to write, he - important bit here - actually wrote and he hung in there until he found someone who wanted to publish it. My hero.
Anyone who dismisses personal blogs as navel-gazing is both missing the point and missing out - my blog, which started life as a semi-joke on the advice of one of my Dementia websites ("Write a journal. That way, even if you can't remember something at least you'll know it happened") has brought things into my life that would otherwise not have been there: conversion to Web Geekdom with an evangelical fervour, the exciting discovery of hypertext fiction and the ability to peek straight into the heads of people all over the world. One of my major passions is simply people; why they do what they do. It is a passion that can never be safisfied - because after all, who really knows? - but reading blogs is a great way to try.
Jon Buscall's blog is invaluable - he writes, he thinks about writing and he writes about writing. When I read it, it makes the whole thing more real. If Jon can do it, I can do it. One day, I too can go to Amazon, type in my name and see a listing appear with a review from someone who says they can't wait for my next novel. The book, College.com sounds good to me. I need to order some Web Geek books from Amazon, and College.com will be going in the cart too.
The Bret Easton Ellis comparisons intrigued me, because although I haven't read Rules of Attraction, I loathed American Psycho with a deep and abiding passion and still think it is one of the absolute worst books I have ever read in my entire life. Not because of the content (I like a bit of blood and gore as much as the next guy - hey, my childhood favourite film was Zombie Flesh Eaters) - and not because of the unsympathetic characters (I completely adored the serial killer in Thomas Harris' Red Dragon and couldn't stand the hero cop) but because it was just so incredibly tedious. This was obviously deliberate, and part of the whole point he was making, but that didn't stop it driving me insane with boredom. I'm sure Jon won't bore me to death. College.com: a review - coming soon...
Thursday, April 10, 2003
Today's War Thought: I think I finally get it - the pro-war position. Matt and I had another heated debate today, and something he said suddenly made it click. I'd asked him what he thought the reason for the war was, if he really believed that it was for either security or human rights reasons. He couldn't say yes - who could? - but what he did say was "I don't care about any of that, it doesn't matter. What's happened is a good thing, and none of that stuff will change that."
That's the key issue: the pro-war people focus solely on the removal of Saddam's regime - which, yes, is a good thing. They don't look beyond that. Everything else - the political and economic issues, the humanitarian problems, the civilian casualties, the uncertain future - just isn't as important. Iraq is no longer ruled by Saddam, which is a Good Thing, and that is all that really matters. I see it, now. I think it is incredibly simplistic and naive and I don't agree with it, but at least I see it.
I think the underlying issue is one of personal philosophy, ie, whether your believe:
a) That the end justifies the means
b) That it is justified to sacrifice some people in order to save a larger number of others
I don't.
Wednesday, April 09, 2003
I seem to have lost two week's worth of my archives - I have 9th March to 16th March, which just contains my first post, and then nothing til 1st April. Blogger says all posts should be automatically archived, but these just don't seem to exist. All the help file can offer is to set 'no archive' and then republish, but that doesn't work. It must be something to do with the fact that I changed the settings from weekly to monthly when I started the blog, but I don't know how to fix it. Obviously I was a bit premature in being so impressed with my own Web Geek skills.
Today's War Thought: I do find it ironic to see Bush so full of praise for the Northern Ireland peace process. As this article points out, he doesn't seem to have understood any of its lessons. Listening to some of the ecstatic reports about the reception given to the US troops, it made me think of a book I read a while ago, Wild Swans, which was a historical/autobiographical account of 20th century China, particularly the Cultural Revolution. I've forgotten most of it (of course) and only have a hazy recollection, but I seem to remember something about a 'liberation' carried out by troops - I think they might have been Japanese, possibly called something like Komintang? They were first seen as heroes, but soon became the enemy.
What I'm trying - and probably failing - to say here was described a lot better in the Northern Ireland article: 'So the president seizes on the welcome US and British troops are now receiving in Iraq, as if that augurs an amicable, long-term relationship. His in-flight briefing material should have told him that Northern Ireland's Catholics welcomed British troops, too, back in 1969 - and look where that led. Ulster's lesson is that a military presence, no matter how well received initially, is soon resented.'
War Thought 2: Reading that article led me to another, Chemical Hypocrites. Can this seriously be true? In a war supposedly needed to prevent the possible future use of chemical weapons, are the US preparing to do exactly that? I have long been terrified of the Bush administration and where they seem determined to take us, but even I am struggling to believe they would go this far.
But then, who can stop them? If they simply declare that international law, the Geneva Convention, whatever, doesn't apply to them - seemingly for no other reason than that they are America - what can be done about it? [Begin Blair Witch Mode] I am so scared right now. [End Blair Witch Mode]
Monday, April 07, 2003
I've been kind of watching 'Battlefield Earth' tonight - it's been on, but I've not really been paying attention. If you asked me to summarise it the best I could offer is that there are lots of explosions, and guys with long hair who call each other rat brain. Actually, as insults go I rather like that. I'm sure that has potential for day to day use. I can think of at least five rat brains without even trying.
To get back to the point, what I really liked about Battlefield Earth was the way it was described in the little online Sky review - 'ambitious'. I liked that a lot - lovely subtle use of language to say soooo much with just that one word.
Have been learning more html today - I have decided, while Novelist will always be my Number One Ideal Occupation, the Number Two slot is rapidly going to Web Geek. I have this vision of myself as Dennis Nedry from Jurassic Park, spending my days in a little world of my own, tapping arcane symbols into a computer while stuffing doughnuts and other yummies. Although I would pass on the whole getting-eaten-by-poisonous-dinosaurs thing, preferably.
Sunday, April 06, 2003
Have been messing around with the blog's colour scheme - yay for purple - today, in the html and even css. I have no actual idea what these things are, let alone how to use them, but I've played around by trial and error and have somehow managed to make it work. I know I could buy a program which would do all this, but that feels like cheating. I want to know how to do it myself before I let software do it for me.
I've got links, formatting and colours sorted, I think I need to learn tables now. Which is probably easier said than done.
Maybe when I am a web designing millionaire superstar, I will look back fondly on this entry as the start of it all...
Went greyhound racing on Saturday, and managed to keep up my impressive losing streak. 47 races without a win now. Gambling is SO not my thing. It's probably because I don't need it - if I went in there with £1 to my name, I'd probably win. Jupiter looks after me like that. I'm fortunate rather than lucky - if I don't really need it, I don't tend to get it.
So how do I persuade Jupiter that I really do need to win the lottery?
Saturday, April 05, 2003
Read a fascinating little article about electronic publishing. No, you can't take a laptop into the bath with you, which is apparently the primary objection, but I can see how this media could provide so much more scope than the printed page. Hypertext fiction, from what I can tell, includes video or sound clips, and you can follow the story through links - a page may have three or four links in it, and you can choose which aspect of it you want to explore next. Non-linear stories would work a damn sight better in this format than they ever can in physical books. It's not that far off what people do in blogs, really - tell an interactive story that readers can actually participate in.
Some blogs are fictional, so it really isn't that far removed at all. The creative possibilities are very exciting, although part of me can't help thinking of Uncle Rogi and his shop The Eloquent Page, taking a last stand on behalf of printed books. How many sci-fi predictions will end up coming true, I wonder? We already have mobile phones smaller than the original Star Trek communicators, computers the size of books, video phones, virtual reality, the Internet itself... I just wish they'd hurry up with transporters and replicators. And I could certainly live without the standard 'we went right to the edge of destroying ourselves with war and violence before we evolved enough to realise that was incredibly stupd' bit. Can't we just skip straight to the Intervention? Lylmik, where were you when half the world was united in anti-war demonstrations? Oi, wake up!!
Friday, April 04, 2003
Newsflash: Tony Blair makes No. 48 on the 50 Most Loathesome People in America List They let him in on a technicality - apparently being America's bitch is good enough.
The Guardian Unlimited IQ Test puts me in the 120+ band (18 out of 25 correct) and a cash/cleverness coefficiant of 8 - a zero means you are paid the average salary for your IQ, while a positive number means you are underpaid. Hah. Tell me something I don't know.
It says:
---
It's official. Your IQ is significantly more powerful than the average for your salary bracket. Demand a pay rise while you still have your faculties.
---
While you still have your faculties?! Come on, don't they know I have Dementia Phobia? That was just cruel.
Today's War Thought: A reporter on the news this morning was discussing the post-war reconstruction of Iraq and posed a question to an anti-war economist-type-chappy along the lines of "well it all worked out in Afghanistan after the war, so why can't it be the same for Iraq?" The guy looked faintly horrified and said 'If we're using Afghanistan as a template, then the Iraqis are in even more trouble than I thought they were." Outside Kabul, Afghanistan is in chaos. Warlords and badits still hold the power, schools are closed, disease is rife, women are still oppressed, the maternal mortality rate is among the highest in the world. Yeah, we sure made a difference over there, didn't we?
I have surfed the web instead of writing, today. Bad, bad girl.
Spam, spam, spam, spam...
The Spam Haiku Archive. Quality.
Tuesday, April 29, 2003
Read: The Gate to Women's Country by Sheri S Tepper
Engaging, glad I read it. It's a post-apocalyptic tale, where the surivors of a nuclear war are rebuilding their society along new lines - gender separated lines - to ensure that the 'convulsions' never happen again. All aspects of this society are strictly controlled, particularly agression, sex and war. Boys are taken to military garrisons at the age of five and trained as warriors, only being able to return to Women's Country between the ages of fifteen and twenty five, and then only as 'servitors' to the women. Regular wars are fought against other towns' garrisons, with all combat being up close and personal - guns and other such weapons are no longer available or allowed. The warriors, inititally satisfied with their lives of honour, games, combat and regular 'carnival' - read 'orgies' - come to suspect that the women have more knowledge and power than they're letting on, and of course they're right.
It's not easy to tell whether this was intended as a story with a genuinely feminist moral, or as a satire on such views. The basic premise of 'men are warlike aggressors who must be controlled for their own good and couldn't run a bath, whereas women are peaceloving, civilised and should be in charge of everything' is way too simplistic a generalisation to be a real belief, surely? Everyone does remember Margaret Thatcher, yes?
Regardless of intent, the story takes that idea and runs with it, pushing it to nightmare extremes in a fascinating exploration of both the spiritual and mundane consequences of such a philosophy. The objectives are slowly being achieved, but it comes with a high price that everyone has to pay whether they realise it or not.
The story is told in three different timelines - Stavia, the lead, is shown at ten, 22 and 37 simultaneously - which is unusual and more than a little distracting, because just as you're getting into one of the story threads and want to know what's going to happen, you're suddenly jolted forward or back to pick up one of the others. For most of the way through I through this was a serious mistake, because it's hard to sustain tension about the fate of the ten or twenty year old Stavia when you know how she turns out at 37 - but when you get to the end you realise that's actually kind of the point. That said, I still think the story would have been better served by normal chronology, or at least with the older stuff told complete, in flashback.
The tone was rather strange - it had an old-fashioned quasi-formal feel, almost courtly at times (at one point the scene is describing a young female medic going about her work, and then says 'Stavia, for it was Stavia...' I felt like I was being addressed by a thirteenth century bard or something) which did fit the nature of the story, but every now and then you would get a very modern and graphic sexual reference which managed to be obscene and clinical at the same time. I suppose it was meant to illustrate the mix of archaic and modern lifestyles/morals, but it really jarred. The language was probably my pet peeve - I can't remember the last time a book sent me scurrying to the dictionary quite so many times. Crepuscular, leitmotif, logy, crapulent, lubricious - sure, I've learned some new words, but it happened at the expense of the story.
Peeve - and uncertain politics - aside, it was an enjoyable read with characters drawn just the right side of generic - heroes, villains, stoic mothers, wayward daughters etc - to be appealing while also being used as ways to describe the nature of the story environment. I liked it, and will try some of her others. I know I've at least read 'Grass' before, but obviously don't remember it...
What I can learn: Don't mess with chronological order unless it's really necessary - it's hard to find enough pros to outweigh the cons. Watch the choice of language - if an obscure word is absolutely the only one which will describe what you want to say then fair enough. Otherwise, use a more readily-understandable alternative. Don't use lubricious if lewd will do. Don't necessarily be afraid of using a character to make a narrative or emotional point - as long as you draw them well enough, it will work. Taking a concept or idea to the most extreme end of its spectrum is a good way to get or expand on a theme.
Monday, April 28, 2003
Critter Pants
Just watching the first of the new series of I'm A Celebrity Get Me Out Of Here. (None of them are going to be a patch on Tony Blackburn, I can feel it). The first Bush Tucker Trial saw John Fashanu having to don 'critter pants' - huge plastic pants like an upturned umbrella, into which he had to pour successive boxes of critters - stick insects, cockroaches, worms, rats... Niiiice. The best bit of the show - as it always was - is the sheer fun Ant and Dec have. If I ever manage to find a job which amuses me as much as watching John in his critter pants amused these two, I will consider myself blessed indeed.
Sunday, April 27, 2003
It isn't real, you know... and what a shame that is
How much safer would you feel if 24's David Palmer really were the President?
Sea Breeze
If you make a Sea Breeze with Blavod black vodka, it goes a gorgeous deep purple. I think I shall call it a Flurblewig.
Welcome to the modern world
Finally, thanks to my dear technogeek friend Carl, we have a DVD player. We always meant to get one, but when they first came out we decided to wait until they came down in price, then we decided to wait until they made recordable ones, then we decided to wait until they came down in price... and somehow, it never happened. In the meantime Carl, a Gadget Addict, ended up with one for every room of the house. So we have unselfishly taken one off his hands, and I am very impressed with the picture quality on pause mode - can't wait to stock up on Buffy DVDs and some lingering Spike shots...
and, speaking of which...
SPOILER, SEASON SEVEN EPISODE 'GET IT DONE'
Well, what a speech that was. I was torn between wanting to slap her for being such a bitch to Spike - what more has the guy got to do for you? - and cheering because well, yeah, he did need to start getting his act together. So it sucked that he had to get everything he's done for her thrown back in his face again, but it absolutely rocked that he got both his coat and his snark back. I've wanted to see him get a bit of oomph back in him all season, and hopefully that's what we're about to get. Yay for Season 2-Spike-but-without-the-evil-murdering-bloodthirsy-monster bit!
Oh, and Principal Wood? Don't even think about it.
Friday, April 25, 2003
First, make a plan
Philip Pullman explains how to write a book: 'First, make a plan...' Which involves big bits of paper, post-it notes, library research, photocopying etc... I did this. I planned, plotted and researched for years. I have boxes, folders and exercise books full of notes. I have a huge plot sheet made from yellow paper all sellotaped together, with a giant flow chart which links all my plot points together. I have character sheets, and outline summaries, and just about every goddamn thing you could imagine except an actual written novel. And then, Philip says:
Well, then you take your big piece of paper with the plot on its yellow Post-It Notes, and your careful notes about the characters, and your photocopied information about castles and Finland, and you bundle it all up into a heap and you throw it all away.
Forget it.
It's useless.
And you start writing something completely different, something that you have no knowledge of, something that just came into your head, something that is utterly strange to you.
You mean that's okay? That's how it is for other people too? Other Real Writers?
I thought it was me - that I was doing something wrong. I've always been frightened to actually study writing because I can't do all that stuff - the analysis and planning. I try, I really do - but when I put together a plan, or try to work out any kind of reasoning behind my story, it falls apart. I don't know why the things that happen, happen. I try to look at things like chapter structure and plot development, and I spend hours deciding what should happen next - and when I sit down to write what comes out is something else entirely. I decide that it is absolutely essential at this point for Ally to go home and have a confrontation with her mother, and yet I find instead she goes to the office and Jude tells her he is leaving Susan. I was as surprised as she was - I genuinely didn't know that was going to happen.
I guess I just have to try and trust that my imagination knows what it's doing.
Novel Notes
My descriptive elements are too bare.
My writing style in general is fairly sparse, as I cannot abide flowery (or even crepuscular, heh) prose, and get bored very quickly with long descriptive passages. I don't care that much what it all looks like, I want to know what is happening.
I am finding that I write in a similar style as I read - paying scant attention to the visual aspects of the scene. To a certain extent this may be beneficial, as it seems to create a good pace, but I worry that I am losing out on the opportunity to tell extra layers of story through description. The way someone looks, the gestures they use - all these can say just as much as the dialogue itself. When Ally talks to Ray about being tested, he says "You don't need it," and I finish the scene with 'He stood up, obviously believing that was all that needed to be said on the matter.'
'He stood up'. Bare. Ok, it's being used to signify that the coversation is over as far as Ray's concerned, but I'm sure I could do more with it than that.
Thursday, April 24, 2003
I'm not ready for you to not be here
Said Buffy to Spike. Ah, be still my shippy little heart.
Wednesday, April 23, 2003
Tweaking
Inspired by Dark Flower's new extra-purple-ness, I have coloured my date and post headers. (Once I realised that the style name has to be COLOR not COLOUR, that is. I couldn't figure out why it wasn't working for ages...) I've tidied up the template code, which was tatty with table entries that I didn't need once I changed the layout from multicoloured to purple, and added my 'Currently Reading' list.
I've also changed the links so that they open up in new windows, and finally figured out how to make the left hand strip wider - again, thanks to Dark Flower's code. You rock, girl!
Will the real Flurblewig please stand up?
My latest go at personality testing, at Bloginality makes me an INTP:
Love theory and abstract ideas
Truth Seekers - they want to understand things by analyzing underlying principles and structures
Value knowledge and competence above all else
Have very high standards for performance, which they apply to themselves
Independent and original, possibly eccentric
Work best alone, and value autonomy
Have no desire to lead or follow
Dislike mundane detail
Not particularly interested in the practical application of their work
Creative and insightful
Future-oriented
Usually brilliant and ingenius
Trust their own insights and opinions above others
Live primarily inside their own minds, and may appear to be detached and uninvolved with other people
The Star Trek version had me as an ISFP whereas the official Myers-Briggs site said INFP. Three different results, yet every time I read the personality description I go "Yep that's me all right. Totally spot on." So is there a lot of overlap between types, or am I developing multiple personality disorder? Oh joy, another neurological condition to worry about...
St George's Day
Personally, I was always on the dragon's side.
Tuesday, April 22, 2003
Mama, look what a big word I can use
Started a new book today, 'The Gate to Womens' Country' by Sheri S Tepper. I vaguely remember being quite a fan of hers a good few years ago, so was looking forward to this. I still have high hopes, although by page 2 it had already got on my nerves. In a scene stated to be taking place at dusk, it described rays of light as 'crepuscular'. Crepuwhat? It sounded like it should have something to do with lobsters, but somehow I doubted that it did. No-one in the canteen had ever heard of it, so I was forced into scouring the office for a dictionary. So I come back, having wasted ten minutes of precious lunch-time and completely shunted myself out of the story, to find that it means 'of or pertaining to twilight'. Wha? Redundant much?
It's dusk, and the light has the quality of twilight.
You don't say.
So what the hairy hell was the point of it? To make us realise how inferior our vocabulary is compared to the author?
What I can learn: Never, ever do that. It's not big and it's not clever, it just pisses people off.
And at the other end of the spectrum: just watching Die Hard 2. Now there is a story that knows its level. Hurrah for a good bit of mindless vest action.
Monday, April 21, 2003
What's this Tony Blackburn stuff all about then?
I have a strange memory. While visualisation comes easy to me, I find it hard to expand an image - ie. I can bring to mind a certain place but not anything else around it. Hence, I get lost very easily because I don't know where anything is in relation to anything else. In compensation, I had a very good memory for words - names, definitions, etc. I navigate by street names, and can be relied upon to know the name of the road other people call 'that one-way street by the pub, near the lights on the way in to Romford' (it's Albert Road). Likewise, if anyone at work needed to know the name of 'that claim with the geezer in Hackney who had rats' they came to me.
However, in the last few years my memory has been getting noticeably worse. A lot worse. Words don't stay in my brain the way they used to, and events have been disappearing altogether. What started it was a conversation I had with Sam about her brother's wedding. She told me a few details about it, and we discussed it accordingly, and it wasn't until a week later that she said, rather embarrassed, "you must have thought I was crazy, telling you all about Danny's wedding." "Why's that?" said I. "Because you were there," she said.
It was true - I checked it. I went to the wedding. A whole weekend in fact, in Birmingham. And I didn't remember. With immense concentration I managed to recover three images - Sam in her bridesmaid's dress, the present they bought her, and the bride walking down the aisle, but that's it. That's it, for the whole weekend. The rest of it disappeared into the Dead Zone. Cue lots of worry about premature senility, early Alzheimers, genetic dementia, mad cow disease - you name it, we worried about it. Was it due to eating crap meat in the 80s? Was due to not eating meat for the last twelve years and missing out on some kind of vital fish oil or something?
Then, in the middle of all this, there was I'm a Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here, and Rhona Cameron's famous 'sometimes we're all like that' speech. You couldn't argue with Rhona when she pointed out that Tony 'sometimes misses things because he’s slightly slower". Bless him, he did spend most of the time being very vague and collecting logs.
So then Sam made the scary connection - what did we have in common, besides appalling memories? We're both long-term vegetarians. Who else is a long-term vegetarian?
Tony Blackburn...
It's not real you know...
There has been a fascinating debate going across several weblogs, about truth, honesty and fiction, and where - if at all - the lines should blur. This is a post that summarises it all quite well, with links to the other points of view and to the original source of the debate, his Ikuko story.
It reminded me of a time when I was about eight or nine, sitting in my nan's house earnestly debating the motivations of someone on a tv show (I think it might have been Starsky and Hutch) with a friend. After she'd gone, my grandad came in and said, in a very gentle voice, "It's not real, you know." I remember looking at him in complete confusion and saying something like "Of course it is - we didn't imagine it watching it, did we?"
At the time, I absolutely did not get it. I'd watched those characters live their lives - seen it with my own eyes - so how was that not real? I understood that it was fiction, but that didn't mean it wasn't real. As a kid, I never made the distinction. I'm not sure I ever have.
Reality is too subjective to be real. When we relive an argument at three o'clock in the morning and minutely examine all the nuances and implications that we saw in it, over and above what was actually said, are they real? When we are infatuated and all the Universe consists of is one person, are those feelings real? When I do or say something that goes into the Dead Zone never to be remembered again, was it real? If I find a theme or concept in a story, or an emotional response in a character that the author didn't intend to be there, is that real?
Did Jonathon's Ikuko story actually happen? Yes. In order to write it he had to live it - he may only have done so in his head, but to me that's never made a difference.
Sunday, April 20, 2003
Read: Bitten by Kelley Armstrong
Slightly disappointing. The promo blurb, allegedly by Joanne Harris, the author of 'Chocolat' describes this as 'clever, quirky, hip and funny' but I'm afraid I didn't see any of those things in it. The 'mythic creature living in the modern world' angle has been done before - and considerably better - with vampire stories, so the 'woe is me, turned into a monster and yet still trying to have a normal life' angst - and boy was there a lot of it - didn't move me at all, and in fact rather got on my nerves. The werewolf aspect seemed sadly under-used, as there was little to convince me that these characters really were wolves - a few mentions of having fur and a great sense of smell didn't cut it. I found myself wanting some scientific info about wolves - other than a rather twee 'oh, we must all do what the pack Alpha says' there really wasn't much. If you were a werewolf, wouldn't you study wolves? Wouldn't you want to know everything about them - their biology, behaivours and habitats? I couldn't help getting the impression that the author had decided to write about wolves without doing any research at all, and this made me struggle to suspend my disbelief.
As for quirky and funny - nope. Terry Pratchett's Sergeant Angua is often both, but none of the characters here were. In possibly the worst problem of all, I didn't like them. Elena was possibly supposed to have the hard-bitten vulnerability of Anita Blake, but it didn't come off. Most of the time she just came across as whiny and self-obsessed. Clay was overdone - gorgeous, brainy, strong and loyal but with a wild uncontrollable streak. Yawn. Pass the Mills & Boon, someone, I fancy a nice bit of bodice-ripping.
The progression of this relationship, as told by Elena, was incredibly clunky. From the early hints about how she came to be a werewolf in the first place (Oh my god, it was Clay who bit her. What a shock) to the 'I hate him, I could never love him, I will never go back to him, oh no hang on, I do love him after all' ending, it was painfully obvious what the 'hidden truth' behind Elena's words was.
The one I liked best was poor old Philip, obviously put there to be a boring counterpoint to Elena's exciting 'true' life. I found myself hoping he would find some way to put them all in a circus or something.
What I can learn: Don't overdo the self-deception in 1st person POV, and don't leave it too long to resolve. If she'd had her 'I love him really' epiphany earlier, it wouldn't have been so bad. Watch how sympathetic a character Ally is. If we don't like her, we won't care about what happens to her. She needs flaws, but it can go too far. Keep the relationship with Jude off-beat, don't let it go Mills&Boon traditional.
Friday, April 18, 2003
Philosophical Musings
A New Zealand site, Scoop, has photo-essays regarding the war, including a lot of very graphic and disturbing images. They invite reader feedback, and while the majority of comments are along the lines of 'you did right, people need to see the real face of war rather than the sanitised version on most US/western media' there are a few of the insane 'if you're against the war you're pro-Saddam/terrorism' types, a few of the more-sensible-but-still-ultimately-insupportable 'yes some people have died but Saddam killed more' types, and an anti-protest one which frankly dumbfounded me: 'By the way, those crowds in San Francisco are mostly gays - Arab kind of people.' WTF is that about??
And then there was this one: 'Where do you draw the line when it comes to fighting an evil and what price are you willing to pay?'
I found that compelling. It is one of the shortest posts but easily says more than a lot of the others put together. Or rather, asks more.
If you could stop a killer by having him killed, would you?
If you could stop him by killing him yourself, would you?
Would it make a difference if he had killed fifty people or a million?
Would it make a difference if he had killed only one person but it was someone you loved?
Would you kill someone else to stop him?
Would you kill twenty people? A thousand? A million?
Would you kill yourself?
Would you kill someone you loved?
Isn't it always going to be easier to pay a price that involves the death or suffering of people you don' t know?
Is the death toll of this war a price you would have paid to remove Saddam?
If you could have achieved that by the death of only three people but they had to be you and two members of your family, would you have paid that price?
I think that would be an interesting question to ask Blair and Bush.
Thursday, April 17, 2003
Neil...
Morrissey. Aaaahhhhh. It took two days, but I got it.Tuesday, April 15, 2003
The Dead Zone
Johnny Smith, the hero of this story, suffers brain damage after a car crash. When he awakens from his coma, he finds himself unable to visualise certain images - a stop sign, I think one was. He knows what it is, but he just can't bring the image to mind any more. He describes it as having gone into the Dead Zone.
I know how he felt. Sometimes, I simply cannot bring to mind something that I know I know. Unlike Johnny, these things are usually word-based rather than image-based. Spelling, for example. From a kid, I was always gifted at spelling. It was just something that came naturally. Lately however, I am losing my confidence. When I type, the red line that Word uses to show a spelling mistake is appearing more and more. Getting the spelling wrong in the first place is bad enough, but what is even worse is that sometimes I look at the word and I cannot tell what is wrong with it. I have to resort to the spellchecker. Five years ago that would never have happened.
Sometimes I 'lose' whole words. I know there is a word to articulate what I want to say, and I cannot find it. It goes into the Dead Zone. Today, I have lost a name. Last night I had a dream about attending some kind of function, and there were a few famous people there. I was writing this into my dream journal and when I got to this guy I stopped because I couldn't think of his name. It is the actor who played Tony in Men Behaving Badly, so as I was short of time I just put that. I assumed the name would come to me in a few minutes, but it didn't. And still hasn't. I tried concentrating on it and deliberately not thinking about it, but neither approach has worked. This kind of thing happens, I know - but not usually for so long with something so easy. He is hardly obscure, after all. I know it is there, but I can't access it.
I won't ask anyone, or look it up, because I don't want my Dead Zone to win, but it is driving me crazy. What the hell is his name? I keep thinking about Neil Pearson and Nick Berry, so I'm guessing it begins with N. I think it might even be Neil. Neil what? I don't know.
How long before I forget my own name like this?
Scary.
Monday, April 14, 2003
Portrait of the Writer as a Not-So-Young Woman
The About Me bit, circa Spring 2003...My name is Shelley King - no, bad start. Strike that. My name is actually Michelle King, although since starting work three and a half years ago in an office which already had both a Michelle and a Mrs King, I have used the variant Shelley. I tend to use Shelley even when I could use Michelle, as I found something quite liberating in choosing to change my name. I make no guarantee that I won't suddenly become Ermintrude one day. My husband calls me Mollusc, although we have both long forgotten why. Assuming there ever was a reason in the first place, of course. We do talk bollocks rather a lot.
I was born 13th December 1966, which makes me a Sagittarian and 36. I usually have terrible trouble remembering how old I am, and most people think I am younger than I am - which I put down to not having kids. Never being a parent means never having to grow up. It also means you don't go to prison for neglect after leaving your offspring on buses, so it is probably a wise choice for me. Utter lack of maternal instinct and a shockingly bad memory do not really say 'good mother material', do they?
I have two cats, Maddy who is eleven and Jasper, who will be fourteen in May. Maddy is ginger and white and sheds hairs everywhere. Especially in yoghurt. He has a thing for sitting in the sink and has the temperament of a sloth. Considering Jasper is about 73 in human terms, he looks and acts about fifteen. He is a few hairs short of a furball, bless him, and falls out of windows a lot.
I am writing my first novel, which I actually began making notes for when I was 19. I am currently thinking it may end up having a sequel, which at this rate I will be writing during my third reincarnation from now. The novel is the kind of story I like to read - I would describe it as a dark metaphysical fantasy - and I am about half way through the fourth draft. It has changed form more times than I have changed my hair colour (which is saying something) but I am finally happy with how it is going. I am finding that my long-story writing has followed the pattern of my short-story writing - which is basically spend three-quarters of the total writing time faffing about drafting and re-drafting the first quarter and then magically get the rest done with no changes. I am therefore hoping that this stint will now produce a complete, edited book that will be immediately snapped up by a top agent who will get me a great publishing deal which will enable me to spend the rest of my life as a professional novelist.
Did I mention I'm an optimist?
My other passion is tarot, and I help to run TABI, the Tarot Association of the British Isles. I am the Editor for the quarterly newsletter, TABI News. I own about fifty decks at the moment and still have loads on the wishlist.
For four days a week I work as a Claims Technician, handling household insurance claims, but I usually try to blot that from my memory - which, let's face it, isn't hard.
Ten Random Facts:
My hair started to go grey at 21. I have dyed it every colour you can image, including blue, sometimes all at the same time.
I got married when I was 30, in the back of a limo in Las Vegas.
My maiden name was Larn, which someone once told me meant 'testicle' in an unidentified asian language.
I have no sense of balance, cannot skate or ride a bike, and have trouble standing on one leg.
I love wombles.
My friend Sam and I once stood next to George Michael in a club, and snubbed him.
I can call someone a son of a whore in Spanish.
I once accidentally ate someone else's toenail.
If money were no object I would buy a stationery and art supplies shop, and a yellow beetle with the personalised plate BUG1.
I have a mild phobia about buttons.
Sunday, April 13, 2003
Dementia Watch Update
I think this is helping, I really do. More thinking, more writing, keeps the brain oiled. This week I remembered to book both my dentist appointment and my eye test, which is quite a result.The condition of my gums has improved a lot, according to my dentist, so much so that I now don't have to go to the hospital and have the horrible scraping-out procedure. And I don't even need any fillings. Even more of a result.
[Happy dance]
Friday, April 11, 2003
My fifteen minutes of fame
Or should that be my fifteen bytes of fame?I have been linked to. Wow. The comment I wrote about hypertext got noticed by Mark Bernstein, the author of the article - presumably by some sort of trackback (hey, am I getting the hang of this techno lark or what?) and he wrote about it in his blog.
Following Mark's recommendations, an About Me page is coming soon. I think I didn't do this before because, even though by definition this site is public, I never actually expected anyone to read it.
The first I knew about all this was when I received an email from Jon Buscall to say he'd followed the link and liked my site. (Both guys liked the colour, which gave me a warm purple glow and made all that late-night fiddling with codes I didn't understand worth while). Jon is the Writer-in-Residence at the Department of English, Stockholm University. He teaches creative writing, has a consistently interesting blog with some really inspiring thoughts about writing and, most importantly of all, he has published a novel. He did it. He made the decision to write, he - important bit here - actually wrote and he hung in there until he found someone who wanted to publish it. My hero.
Anyone who dismisses personal blogs as navel-gazing is both missing the point and missing out - my blog, which started life as a semi-joke on the advice of one of my Dementia websites ("Write a journal. That way, even if you can't remember something at least you'll know it happened") has brought things into my life that would otherwise not have been there: conversion to Web Geekdom with an evangelical fervour, the exciting discovery of hypertext fiction and the ability to peek straight into the heads of people all over the world. One of my major passions is simply people; why they do what they do. It is a passion that can never be safisfied - because after all, who really knows? - but reading blogs is a great way to try.
Jon Buscall's blog is invaluable - he writes, he thinks about writing and he writes about writing. When I read it, it makes the whole thing more real. If Jon can do it, I can do it. One day, I too can go to Amazon, type in my name and see a listing appear with a review from someone who says they can't wait for my next novel. The book, College.com sounds good to me. I need to order some Web Geek books from Amazon, and College.com will be going in the cart too.
The Bret Easton Ellis comparisons intrigued me, because although I haven't read Rules of Attraction, I loathed American Psycho with a deep and abiding passion and still think it is one of the absolute worst books I have ever read in my entire life. Not because of the content (I like a bit of blood and gore as much as the next guy - hey, my childhood favourite film was Zombie Flesh Eaters) - and not because of the unsympathetic characters (I completely adored the serial killer in Thomas Harris' Red Dragon and couldn't stand the hero cop) but because it was just so incredibly tedious. This was obviously deliberate, and part of the whole point he was making, but that didn't stop it driving me insane with boredom. I'm sure Jon won't bore me to death. College.com: a review - coming soon...
Thursday, April 10, 2003
Snow...?
It snowed today. It is April the 10th, nearly Easter, and it snowed. That is just not supposed to happen. I like my weather in standard patterns - winter cold and snowy, spring cold and wet, summer slightly less cold and wet, autumn cold and dry. That's why going to Florida for my birthday in December is so freaky - lying by the pool sunbathing and listening to the hotel speakers play 'Frosty the Snowman' is just plain wrong.Today's War Thought: I think I finally get it - the pro-war position. Matt and I had another heated debate today, and something he said suddenly made it click. I'd asked him what he thought the reason for the war was, if he really believed that it was for either security or human rights reasons. He couldn't say yes - who could? - but what he did say was "I don't care about any of that, it doesn't matter. What's happened is a good thing, and none of that stuff will change that."
That's the key issue: the pro-war people focus solely on the removal of Saddam's regime - which, yes, is a good thing. They don't look beyond that. Everything else - the political and economic issues, the humanitarian problems, the civilian casualties, the uncertain future - just isn't as important. Iraq is no longer ruled by Saddam, which is a Good Thing, and that is all that really matters. I see it, now. I think it is incredibly simplistic and naive and I don't agree with it, but at least I see it.
I think the underlying issue is one of personal philosophy, ie, whether your believe:
a) That the end justifies the means
b) That it is justified to sacrifice some people in order to save a larger number of others
I don't.
Wednesday, April 09, 2003
Where did March go?
I seem to have lost two week's worth of my archives - I have 9th March to 16th March, which just contains my first post, and then nothing til 1st April. Blogger says all posts should be automatically archived, but these just don't seem to exist. All the help file can offer is to set 'no archive' and then republish, but that doesn't work. It must be something to do with the fact that I changed the settings from weekly to monthly when I started the blog, but I don't know how to fix it. Obviously I was a bit premature in being so impressed with my own Web Geek skills.
Today's War Thought: I do find it ironic to see Bush so full of praise for the Northern Ireland peace process. As this article points out, he doesn't seem to have understood any of its lessons. Listening to some of the ecstatic reports about the reception given to the US troops, it made me think of a book I read a while ago, Wild Swans, which was a historical/autobiographical account of 20th century China, particularly the Cultural Revolution. I've forgotten most of it (of course) and only have a hazy recollection, but I seem to remember something about a 'liberation' carried out by troops - I think they might have been Japanese, possibly called something like Komintang? They were first seen as heroes, but soon became the enemy.
What I'm trying - and probably failing - to say here was described a lot better in the Northern Ireland article: 'So the president seizes on the welcome US and British troops are now receiving in Iraq, as if that augurs an amicable, long-term relationship. His in-flight briefing material should have told him that Northern Ireland's Catholics welcomed British troops, too, back in 1969 - and look where that led. Ulster's lesson is that a military presence, no matter how well received initially, is soon resented.'
War Thought 2: Reading that article led me to another, Chemical Hypocrites. Can this seriously be true? In a war supposedly needed to prevent the possible future use of chemical weapons, are the US preparing to do exactly that? I have long been terrified of the Bush administration and where they seem determined to take us, but even I am struggling to believe they would go this far.
But then, who can stop them? If they simply declare that international law, the Geneva Convention, whatever, doesn't apply to them - seemingly for no other reason than that they are America - what can be done about it? [Begin Blair Witch Mode] I am so scared right now. [End Blair Witch Mode]
Monday, April 07, 2003
I've been kind of watching 'Battlefield Earth' tonight - it's been on, but I've not really been paying attention. If you asked me to summarise it the best I could offer is that there are lots of explosions, and guys with long hair who call each other rat brain. Actually, as insults go I rather like that. I'm sure that has potential for day to day use. I can think of at least five rat brains without even trying.
To get back to the point, what I really liked about Battlefield Earth was the way it was described in the little online Sky review - 'ambitious'. I liked that a lot - lovely subtle use of language to say soooo much with just that one word.
Have been learning more html today - I have decided, while Novelist will always be my Number One Ideal Occupation, the Number Two slot is rapidly going to Web Geek. I have this vision of myself as Dennis Nedry from Jurassic Park, spending my days in a little world of my own, tapping arcane symbols into a computer while stuffing doughnuts and other yummies. Although I would pass on the whole getting-eaten-by-poisonous-dinosaurs thing, preferably.
Sunday, April 06, 2003
Have been messing around with the blog's colour scheme - yay for purple - today, in the html and even css. I have no actual idea what these things are, let alone how to use them, but I've played around by trial and error and have somehow managed to make it work. I know I could buy a program which would do all this, but that feels like cheating. I want to know how to do it myself before I let software do it for me.
I've got links, formatting and colours sorted, I think I need to learn tables now. Which is probably easier said than done.
Maybe when I am a web designing millionaire superstar, I will look back fondly on this entry as the start of it all...
Went greyhound racing on Saturday, and managed to keep up my impressive losing streak. 47 races without a win now. Gambling is SO not my thing. It's probably because I don't need it - if I went in there with £1 to my name, I'd probably win. Jupiter looks after me like that. I'm fortunate rather than lucky - if I don't really need it, I don't tend to get it.
So how do I persuade Jupiter that I really do need to win the lottery?
Saturday, April 05, 2003
Read a fascinating little article about electronic publishing. No, you can't take a laptop into the bath with you, which is apparently the primary objection, but I can see how this media could provide so much more scope than the printed page. Hypertext fiction, from what I can tell, includes video or sound clips, and you can follow the story through links - a page may have three or four links in it, and you can choose which aspect of it you want to explore next. Non-linear stories would work a damn sight better in this format than they ever can in physical books. It's not that far off what people do in blogs, really - tell an interactive story that readers can actually participate in.
Some blogs are fictional, so it really isn't that far removed at all. The creative possibilities are very exciting, although part of me can't help thinking of Uncle Rogi and his shop The Eloquent Page, taking a last stand on behalf of printed books. How many sci-fi predictions will end up coming true, I wonder? We already have mobile phones smaller than the original Star Trek communicators, computers the size of books, video phones, virtual reality, the Internet itself... I just wish they'd hurry up with transporters and replicators. And I could certainly live without the standard 'we went right to the edge of destroying ourselves with war and violence before we evolved enough to realise that was incredibly stupd' bit. Can't we just skip straight to the Intervention? Lylmik, where were you when half the world was united in anti-war demonstrations? Oi, wake up!!
Friday, April 04, 2003
Newsflash: Tony Blair makes No. 48 on the 50 Most Loathesome People in America List They let him in on a technicality - apparently being America's bitch is good enough.
The Guardian Unlimited IQ Test puts me in the 120+ band (18 out of 25 correct) and a cash/cleverness coefficiant of 8 - a zero means you are paid the average salary for your IQ, while a positive number means you are underpaid. Hah. Tell me something I don't know.
It says:
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It's official. Your IQ is significantly more powerful than the average for your salary bracket. Demand a pay rise while you still have your faculties.
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While you still have your faculties?! Come on, don't they know I have Dementia Phobia? That was just cruel.
Today's War Thought: A reporter on the news this morning was discussing the post-war reconstruction of Iraq and posed a question to an anti-war economist-type-chappy along the lines of "well it all worked out in Afghanistan after the war, so why can't it be the same for Iraq?" The guy looked faintly horrified and said 'If we're using Afghanistan as a template, then the Iraqis are in even more trouble than I thought they were." Outside Kabul, Afghanistan is in chaos. Warlords and badits still hold the power, schools are closed, disease is rife, women are still oppressed, the maternal mortality rate is among the highest in the world. Yeah, we sure made a difference over there, didn't we?
I have surfed the web instead of writing, today. Bad, bad girl.
