I remember the first time I was really made aware of Weaponizer when I was accused of keeping the site to myself. I'm embarrassed to say that I'd been following the Weaponizer Twitter for a while without paying much attention. My silence was more to do with being dim than selfishly hogging a place for people to have their writing shown off.
When I went to the site I was pleasantly surprised at how welcoming, yet packed it was. At the time I was doing my own fiction blog on my late MySpace page (RIP, a wee bit), but I put together an original bit of flash fiction and sent it along. The editor was enthusiastic about this little horror tale and soon 'The Torch Skull' was sitting on the site. Since then I've had a few other pieces, including a comic, accepted by the site.
In the just over four years since that first story appeared on the site I've got to know Bram, the editor, mastermind and driving force behind Weaponizer.
This brings me to the big news. Bram is bringing Weaponizer to the print world. There's a plethora of writers and fantastic artists on display within it's pages (and me, but you make up your own mind there). I'm looking forward to the final product juggling in my grimy mitts.
On top of all that the Weaponizer site (www.weaponizer.co.uk for those who don't trust embedded links) is coming back up to speed, along with a new line up of editors taking the pressure off Bram. It looks like a bright future for Weaponizer and I'm glad to be part of it.
Will
Monday 30 April 2012
Tuesday 24 April 2012
Fans don't care about ticket prices.
Do any of you remember the days when going to a concert was affordable, even cheap? You could go into a shop and pay six or eight quid to go see a band you liked. Some bigger bands, playing bigger venues, would ask for twenty, maybe thirty quid.
(For the real crusties out there, I'm sure you could get a ticket for ha' penny and a bacon sandwich in your day; it all ties in with what I'm saying, really.)
Today, in my meanderings through my usual internet haunts I came across the news that Motörhead are touring and will be hitting the O2 Academy in Glasgow later this year. Having seen something of a trend in recent years, I decided, perhaps counter to my heart health to take wee look at the prices for the gig. Now, the O2 Academy is a middle-sized venue, which for better or worse will always inform my view of the ticket prices. Once I'd followed the links from the official site and got nowhere, I found somewhere that gave them. When these tickets go on sale in the next couple of days they'll be looking for a whopping thirty-one quid. Twenty-seven pounds plus a four quid booking fee, the rise of booking fees has been a point of contention for me for a long time too.
What the cunting fuck?
That's a disgusting price for a gig in a medium-sized venue. And, as I feared it tied in with other gig pricings. Chris Cornell playing the same venue are a staggering forty-odd quid! What's he going to do? Paint the stage in twenty-four carat gold and sit in a paddling pool of caviare? If I paid that I'd expect at least to have a butler waiting on me all night.
I won't even go into the price tag Iron Maiden tickets had, it just makes me angry, after Bruce Dickinson's protestations that the band just want people to have an affordable good time. A bit difficult when fans are being charged fifty quid a ticket in this economic climate (yes, I said it, I'm adult, no need to be embarrassed).
The thing is, I'm not sure who to blame for the price-setting. How much control do the bands have? How much is driven by the venues themselves? There's no question that anyone who can ask for that kind of money with a straight face is a cunt. It's just too murky to point the finger at any one entity (I did it with the Iron Maiden thing, out of anger and frustration). I know that everyone's been hit by the economic downturn, but if you're that desperate to tour you might consider being a bit more conservative with your pricing.
One thing we should be doing is maybe telling them to fuck off. That's right, a wholesome boycott. Don't go to gigs by big bands and back it up with an email or (gasp!) snail-mail campaign. They'll get the message and you'll see the prices drop.
But then that hits the wall when you come to fans. Fans of things are great, the more fans of something there are, the longer it (whatever you want to replace 'it' with) hangs around (or it might end up horrible, depending on what the 'it' is). The downside is that fans are often uncritical of those things that they like, so you end up in a situation where a band charges fifty or sixty quid and the tickets vanish like vapour in a few minutes. And then these same fans will smugly say when you offer your legitimate concerns over pricing, "You're not a real fan, are you?"
To which I have to answer 'no'. I've discovered that I'm not a real fan of anything. I can't deal with things uncritically any more. From comics, to books, to music, to films. I look at things and weigh them up. Of course I want to enjoy things, but I'm not going to ignore dreadful things or things just not to my taste. I love the writing of Alan Moore, but I'm just not interested in 'Promethea' and found 'America's Best Comics' patchy. I think Iron Maiden are a fantastic band, but I still can't listen to most of 'Piece of Mind'. So any attempt to gouge money is going to be met with a very stern expression.
There's my little call for activism, I'll be over here, trying to be invisible.
Will
(For the real crusties out there, I'm sure you could get a ticket for ha' penny and a bacon sandwich in your day; it all ties in with what I'm saying, really.)
Today, in my meanderings through my usual internet haunts I came across the news that Motörhead are touring and will be hitting the O2 Academy in Glasgow later this year. Having seen something of a trend in recent years, I decided, perhaps counter to my heart health to take wee look at the prices for the gig. Now, the O2 Academy is a middle-sized venue, which for better or worse will always inform my view of the ticket prices. Once I'd followed the links from the official site and got nowhere, I found somewhere that gave them. When these tickets go on sale in the next couple of days they'll be looking for a whopping thirty-one quid. Twenty-seven pounds plus a four quid booking fee, the rise of booking fees has been a point of contention for me for a long time too.
What the cunting fuck?
That's a disgusting price for a gig in a medium-sized venue. And, as I feared it tied in with other gig pricings. Chris Cornell playing the same venue are a staggering forty-odd quid! What's he going to do? Paint the stage in twenty-four carat gold and sit in a paddling pool of caviare? If I paid that I'd expect at least to have a butler waiting on me all night.
I won't even go into the price tag Iron Maiden tickets had, it just makes me angry, after Bruce Dickinson's protestations that the band just want people to have an affordable good time. A bit difficult when fans are being charged fifty quid a ticket in this economic climate (yes, I said it, I'm adult, no need to be embarrassed).
The thing is, I'm not sure who to blame for the price-setting. How much control do the bands have? How much is driven by the venues themselves? There's no question that anyone who can ask for that kind of money with a straight face is a cunt. It's just too murky to point the finger at any one entity (I did it with the Iron Maiden thing, out of anger and frustration). I know that everyone's been hit by the economic downturn, but if you're that desperate to tour you might consider being a bit more conservative with your pricing.
One thing we should be doing is maybe telling them to fuck off. That's right, a wholesome boycott. Don't go to gigs by big bands and back it up with an email or (gasp!) snail-mail campaign. They'll get the message and you'll see the prices drop.
But then that hits the wall when you come to fans. Fans of things are great, the more fans of something there are, the longer it (whatever you want to replace 'it' with) hangs around (or it might end up horrible, depending on what the 'it' is). The downside is that fans are often uncritical of those things that they like, so you end up in a situation where a band charges fifty or sixty quid and the tickets vanish like vapour in a few minutes. And then these same fans will smugly say when you offer your legitimate concerns over pricing, "You're not a real fan, are you?"
To which I have to answer 'no'. I've discovered that I'm not a real fan of anything. I can't deal with things uncritically any more. From comics, to books, to music, to films. I look at things and weigh them up. Of course I want to enjoy things, but I'm not going to ignore dreadful things or things just not to my taste. I love the writing of Alan Moore, but I'm just not interested in 'Promethea' and found 'America's Best Comics' patchy. I think Iron Maiden are a fantastic band, but I still can't listen to most of 'Piece of Mind'. So any attempt to gouge money is going to be met with a very stern expression.
There's my little call for activism, I'll be over here, trying to be invisible.
Will
Monday 16 April 2012
Got Any Spare Paragraphs, Mate?
Hello, I'm Fabrizio Giullare, and this is another of my long-running series on writing dos and don'ts.
Just for those who need a little bit of a catch-up, and can't be arsed looking back over the rest of my posts. I'm the writer of a number of novels and comics. My biggest novel has been Shepherd With Some Straw, that's currently in the process of being turned into a movie. While my most recent novel is Claiming Benefits from the Wrong Window. Both of which are available on Amazon.
My highly acclaimed comic work includes Little Dots, my collaboration with famed Japanese artist Yuudi Maeda and my work at Marvel on the Drooling Slugs crossover event.
Now that we've got the re-introductions out of the way, lets get down to what you're here for. In the past I've talked about the importance of having too many paragraphs on the page, it's an annoying habit that lots of writers have that puts readers off. I know my editor gets quite ratty when I hand her a manuscript with more than four paragraphs on a page.
"Fab," she says to me. "Why do you need to clutter up the page with so many different paragraphs. I've come to terms with your overuse of sentences, but this is almost too much for me."
And I have to agree with her and I find myself putting the offending clumps of words together into that glorious pattern of monolithic blocks of text that I know people love so much. Bear in mind, this only happens three or four times in a nine hundred page manuscript – my editor is an exacting woman, and she hates to see a page with too much white space. That's free space in which you can be telling the reader about the character's favourite hat. It all adds up to that wonderful power of narrative that you're building.
"But, Fab, surely it doesn't entirely matter! Surely you need to let the work flow as freely it obviously needs to!" I hear you cry. And I answer by saying, "Watch the adverbs, buddy, there are ladies present."
I know it may seem like it's a completely arbitrary thing to fixate on, but you need to wake up and smell the bergamot, my friend, this matters. It's on a par with naming characters Beryl or Angela – who the fuck does that any more? It brings people out of the story that you're creating and makes them think about old ladies who smell of lavender and pee. The same goes for too many paragraphs, except without the lavender and pee, it makes your reader start to wonder if you know what you're talking about. A good, confident writer knows that a strong block of text on the page tells the reader this guy knows what he's talking about and makes them more eager to read what you give them. Heavy slabs of text give your reader something to hold onto and strengthens your narrative.
I've come to terms with my editor's hatred of the full stop and she's come to terms with the fact that I'm not going to stop using it. We both agree that plants should never be involved in a story, for any reason whatever. This is just lazy writing and your readers will forget what their names are and probably start selling their bodies for Victoria sponge. That's how serious getting the writing correct is, you'll ruin human civilisation. I know you don't want to do that, you're a nice guy, so behave.
Until next time, I'm Fab Giullare, saying write well!
Just for those who need a little bit of a catch-up, and can't be arsed looking back over the rest of my posts. I'm the writer of a number of novels and comics. My biggest novel has been Shepherd With Some Straw, that's currently in the process of being turned into a movie. While my most recent novel is Claiming Benefits from the Wrong Window. Both of which are available on Amazon.
My highly acclaimed comic work includes Little Dots, my collaboration with famed Japanese artist Yuudi Maeda and my work at Marvel on the Drooling Slugs crossover event.
Now that we've got the re-introductions out of the way, lets get down to what you're here for. In the past I've talked about the importance of having too many paragraphs on the page, it's an annoying habit that lots of writers have that puts readers off. I know my editor gets quite ratty when I hand her a manuscript with more than four paragraphs on a page.
"Fab," she says to me. "Why do you need to clutter up the page with so many different paragraphs. I've come to terms with your overuse of sentences, but this is almost too much for me."
And I have to agree with her and I find myself putting the offending clumps of words together into that glorious pattern of monolithic blocks of text that I know people love so much. Bear in mind, this only happens three or four times in a nine hundred page manuscript – my editor is an exacting woman, and she hates to see a page with too much white space. That's free space in which you can be telling the reader about the character's favourite hat. It all adds up to that wonderful power of narrative that you're building.
"But, Fab, surely it doesn't entirely matter! Surely you need to let the work flow as freely it obviously needs to!" I hear you cry. And I answer by saying, "Watch the adverbs, buddy, there are ladies present."
I know it may seem like it's a completely arbitrary thing to fixate on, but you need to wake up and smell the bergamot, my friend, this matters. It's on a par with naming characters Beryl or Angela – who the fuck does that any more? It brings people out of the story that you're creating and makes them think about old ladies who smell of lavender and pee. The same goes for too many paragraphs, except without the lavender and pee, it makes your reader start to wonder if you know what you're talking about. A good, confident writer knows that a strong block of text on the page tells the reader this guy knows what he's talking about and makes them more eager to read what you give them. Heavy slabs of text give your reader something to hold onto and strengthens your narrative.
I've come to terms with my editor's hatred of the full stop and she's come to terms with the fact that I'm not going to stop using it. We both agree that plants should never be involved in a story, for any reason whatever. This is just lazy writing and your readers will forget what their names are and probably start selling their bodies for Victoria sponge. That's how serious getting the writing correct is, you'll ruin human civilisation. I know you don't want to do that, you're a nice guy, so behave.
Until next time, I'm Fab Giullare, saying write well!
Tuesday 10 April 2012
Flicky-clicky! The Art of Intolerance.
The last couple of posts have been very writer-centric. I may have already alienated folks. Now I reckon I'll alienate a couple more. Now, how can I do that?
It's a love/hate relationship I've had since I was young. Like most people of my generation, I suppose, but being the introverted antisocial troll that I was, I took it a bit further. I won't go into just how insular I was, you might cry and I don't want anyone getting their keyboard all soggy on my account.
As I've got older though, I haven't watched quite as much television. Other diversions have vied for my attention: computer games, writing, reading, going out to (hey look at that, finally!) socialise and, of course, women. But I always go back, quite often to disappointment and repeats.
My current deep disappointment is aimed at programmes like Jersey Shore and The Only Way is Essex. These are programmes that I'm put off of the moment I see trailers for them, as they look like the most vapidly lazy programming. They all centre around the worst that humanity has to offer, which wouldn't be so bad, if it weren't for the feeling that the characters (because let's all be honest here, that's what they are, there aren't any real people, just actors looking for an easy break) are being held up as role models. Now, I can't say for certain (and I'm not some big city lawyer), but I'm sure that the original intent was to mock these orange caricatures. Instead what we have is a world in which Snooki (urg, can't people see the producers are taking the piss?) has a lucrative book deal. Yes, a woman who is supposed to look and act like she has trouble reciting the alphabet has a book deal, and I can't get la- er, published*.
Yeah. It annoys me. They clog up the airwaves with as much mediocrity as soap operas. We all know the reason for it, smart arse. I know why I don't like having my toe crushed by a mallet, doesn't change my opinion on it.
Another kind of 'reality' television that I have less intolerance for are cookery programmes (take a look at this for more on my cookery programme fascination). I can hear you smirking, fucko. Nothing wrong with enjoying cooking and eating. It's life enriching. You should think about that the next time you're choking down a sausage supper with enough cholesterol to clog the London Underground Central Line.
But, in this, dear reader I have my prejudices. Let us take the sainted (or at least ordained) Nigella Lawson. I used to quite like Nigella as a programme host, outside of the weird, fetishy sexualisation (and that her father is a Tory and she followed suit, boo! Hiss!) of food she seemed quite personable. Then I started noticing something, something that made me blink in slight confusion and now it makes me want to attack the TV with a fucking tenderising mallet: snobbishness. There's always room for a bit of snobbishness in life, but not if it's presented as THE ONE TRUE PATH. Ingredients that seem innocuous to the layman become a benighted spectre to Nigella Lawson. Use the wrong (read: least expensive) kind of capers and pal you better have a good fuckin' excuse. It's infuriating and quite often it's utterly arbitrary. Use what you can use and fuck what some rich woman on the TV says.
Speaking of crazy women cooks. My wife and I have been watching the The Little Paris Kitchen which involves woman-child eternastudent Rachel Khoo proving that she's almost mental enough to start throwing buckets of molten butter over her balcony onto any heathen who deviates a tenth of an iota from TRUE FRENCH PATISSERIE. Seriously, this woman is bonkers. She lives in a Paris flat that's barely large enough for an adult and runs a restaurant from her optimistically named front room. A lot of her cooking looks rather nice, but her style gives an over-romanticised view of France and Paris in particular that doesn't quite match up to the living quarters she has. Perhaps she's deluded or perhaps she really is happy there; all I know is I'd be gnawing my arms off because of the claustrophobia.
Or maybe I'm deluded and should step away from the remote, verrry slowly...
*(Yes, yes, I understand that there's a demand for it. I'm not ignorant of these things. I'm still allowed to rail and have the opinion that it's peddling mediocrity and general human shittiness.)
Will
Television!
As I've got older though, I haven't watched quite as much television. Other diversions have vied for my attention: computer games, writing, reading, going out to (hey look at that, finally!) socialise and, of course, women. But I always go back, quite often to disappointment and repeats.
My current deep disappointment is aimed at programmes like Jersey Shore and The Only Way is Essex. These are programmes that I'm put off of the moment I see trailers for them, as they look like the most vapidly lazy programming. They all centre around the worst that humanity has to offer, which wouldn't be so bad, if it weren't for the feeling that the characters (because let's all be honest here, that's what they are, there aren't any real people, just actors looking for an easy break) are being held up as role models. Now, I can't say for certain (and I'm not some big city lawyer), but I'm sure that the original intent was to mock these orange caricatures. Instead what we have is a world in which Snooki (urg, can't people see the producers are taking the piss?) has a lucrative book deal. Yes, a woman who is supposed to look and act like she has trouble reciting the alphabet has a book deal, and I can't get la- er, published*.
Yeah. It annoys me. They clog up the airwaves with as much mediocrity as soap operas. We all know the reason for it, smart arse. I know why I don't like having my toe crushed by a mallet, doesn't change my opinion on it.
Another kind of 'reality' television that I have less intolerance for are cookery programmes (take a look at this for more on my cookery programme fascination). I can hear you smirking, fucko. Nothing wrong with enjoying cooking and eating. It's life enriching. You should think about that the next time you're choking down a sausage supper with enough cholesterol to clog the London Underground Central Line.
But, in this, dear reader I have my prejudices. Let us take the sainted (or at least ordained) Nigella Lawson. I used to quite like Nigella as a programme host, outside of the weird, fetishy sexualisation (and that her father is a Tory and she followed suit, boo! Hiss!) of food she seemed quite personable. Then I started noticing something, something that made me blink in slight confusion and now it makes me want to attack the TV with a fucking tenderising mallet: snobbishness. There's always room for a bit of snobbishness in life, but not if it's presented as THE ONE TRUE PATH. Ingredients that seem innocuous to the layman become a benighted spectre to Nigella Lawson. Use the wrong (read: least expensive) kind of capers and pal you better have a good fuckin' excuse. It's infuriating and quite often it's utterly arbitrary. Use what you can use and fuck what some rich woman on the TV says.
Speaking of crazy women cooks. My wife and I have been watching the The Little Paris Kitchen which involves woman-child eternastudent Rachel Khoo proving that she's almost mental enough to start throwing buckets of molten butter over her balcony onto any heathen who deviates a tenth of an iota from TRUE FRENCH PATISSERIE. Seriously, this woman is bonkers. She lives in a Paris flat that's barely large enough for an adult and runs a restaurant from her optimistically named front room. A lot of her cooking looks rather nice, but her style gives an over-romanticised view of France and Paris in particular that doesn't quite match up to the living quarters she has. Perhaps she's deluded or perhaps she really is happy there; all I know is I'd be gnawing my arms off because of the claustrophobia.
Or maybe I'm deluded and should step away from the remote, verrry slowly...
*(Yes, yes, I understand that there's a demand for it. I'm not ignorant of these things. I'm still allowed to rail and have the opinion that it's peddling mediocrity and general human shittiness.)
Will
Friday 6 April 2012
My god, it's full of words!
Hey, how are you doing? I wasn't expecting you. Really I wasn't expecting to be here myself, just popped my head in to do a few things and then go back to the ole novel.
But since we're both here, pull up a pew and I'll sputter more nonsense at you. No, really, it's the least I can do after you went to the trouble of looking in on me.
I've always been in awe of writey-type folks who have a way with word count. There I've said it and it feels so good to get it out there. Yes, I am that shallow to see word count as a major part of writing, I can't help it, it's just the way my mind works. People like Gary Gibson, Dean Koontz (sorry, I'm not going to send you to his website, it's too much selling and quite frankly his output in the last decade has been appalling), China Mieville and yes, even though I'm not a fan at all, Stephen King, among others. Folk who can throw out four, five, six, seven, eight or more hundred page books with distressing regularity and, often quality (with the noted exceptions, of course).
It's not something I'm proud of and I hide the fact like a chronic masturbater who's hoping not be noticed cranking one out in a public toilet stall for the seventh time that day.
Word count isn't anything like a mark of quality in a work, yet from the time I started using a word processor and was given a way of tracking my word count, it became a compulsion to get higher and higher. You can't believe the sense of accomplishment the first time I broke the 100,000 word mark. What I'd written was a colossal piece of shit, but I'd made it. Then I saw that other authors regularly managed 160,000 words and more (and Stephen King has the crazy notion that 180,000 is 'goodish', like more is better...hang on a sec...DAMN YOU, KING , YOU BROKE ME!) and I looked at my paltry sum of words and I despaired.
There's no basis for this to be the case (except for that formative experience from On Writing, the best thing King has written, bar none and a recommended read despite what it's done to me) as some very good, classic books just squeak into novel-hood; the one that springs to mind is A Clockwork Orange, a great book that still has a pertinent message to this day. That couldn't be more than 60,000 words, it puts my desperation to stack up them thar words as high as I can into perspective.
For a while there I didn't worry about it, since the books I was writing were hovering around that 100,000 word mark, and I was happy with that, I thought it was the best that I could do. I still watched the word counts go up, but I didn't sweat it – if I got to it, great; if I didn't that was good too. I'd hit a little bit of Zen in my writing.
Now I'm up to my hips in a new novel-writing project. And going by what I've written so far and the detailed synopsis I've made (this is thanks to Gary Gibson, and I recommend doing this, it's a great way of seeing problems and mining new aspects of a story) it's going to be a fucking monster. My estimates suggest it's going to be at least 180,000 words and probably more - if it ever sees print it will be a six hundred plus page doorstop.
And you'd think I'd be pleased with this, not a damn bit of it. It's not huge just for the hell of it; the length is dictated by the story I want to tell. Instead I'm intimidated in a way I haven't been by writing for a very long time. There's the fear that I'll fall short and make an arse of myself (to who? I dunno, that weird wee guy who's always looking over my shoulder when I'm writing...the one that's only in my head) or that I'll get to the heady heights of 200,000 words and discover I've written an unreadable slab of compressed shit. Normal, understandable fears, right? Right?
Still the procession of words continues and the other fear I have rears its head. It's another fear that I've had from even before I started writing novels when I was fifteen - the terror that I'll run out of words, that the well of things to say will offer nothing more to me than a proverbial word bucket full of watery rat poo and kidney beans. It's something that hasn't happened to me so far, but it's there in my mind like a blank-faced imp, saying, "This is what you've got to look forward to, Couper! Ha ha ha! Look at my impish wang and snivel!"
Or worse, it will cause me t snap one day and I'll spend the next few months adding 'u's to the giant 'duh' I've decided to put onto page after page in my brain-crippled state.
And that's where I am right now, fighting the ball-retracting fears that I'm going to tumble into dementia or that I'm continuing an exercise in self-deceptive incompetence.
Welcome to my happy writery world! Aren't you glad you stopped by? Why not have a custard cream?
Will
But since we're both here, pull up a pew and I'll sputter more nonsense at you. No, really, it's the least I can do after you went to the trouble of looking in on me.
I've always been in awe of writey-type folks who have a way with word count. There I've said it and it feels so good to get it out there. Yes, I am that shallow to see word count as a major part of writing, I can't help it, it's just the way my mind works. People like Gary Gibson, Dean Koontz (sorry, I'm not going to send you to his website, it's too much selling and quite frankly his output in the last decade has been appalling), China Mieville and yes, even though I'm not a fan at all, Stephen King, among others. Folk who can throw out four, five, six, seven, eight or more hundred page books with distressing regularity and, often quality (with the noted exceptions, of course).
It's not something I'm proud of and I hide the fact like a chronic masturbater who's hoping not be noticed cranking one out in a public toilet stall for the seventh time that day.
Word count isn't anything like a mark of quality in a work, yet from the time I started using a word processor and was given a way of tracking my word count, it became a compulsion to get higher and higher. You can't believe the sense of accomplishment the first time I broke the 100,000 word mark. What I'd written was a colossal piece of shit, but I'd made it. Then I saw that other authors regularly managed 160,000 words and more (and Stephen King has the crazy notion that 180,000 is 'goodish', like more is better...hang on a sec...DAMN YOU, KING , YOU BROKE ME!) and I looked at my paltry sum of words and I despaired.
There's no basis for this to be the case (except for that formative experience from On Writing, the best thing King has written, bar none and a recommended read despite what it's done to me) as some very good, classic books just squeak into novel-hood; the one that springs to mind is A Clockwork Orange, a great book that still has a pertinent message to this day. That couldn't be more than 60,000 words, it puts my desperation to stack up them thar words as high as I can into perspective.
For a while there I didn't worry about it, since the books I was writing were hovering around that 100,000 word mark, and I was happy with that, I thought it was the best that I could do. I still watched the word counts go up, but I didn't sweat it – if I got to it, great; if I didn't that was good too. I'd hit a little bit of Zen in my writing.
Now I'm up to my hips in a new novel-writing project. And going by what I've written so far and the detailed synopsis I've made (this is thanks to Gary Gibson, and I recommend doing this, it's a great way of seeing problems and mining new aspects of a story) it's going to be a fucking monster. My estimates suggest it's going to be at least 180,000 words and probably more - if it ever sees print it will be a six hundred plus page doorstop.
And you'd think I'd be pleased with this, not a damn bit of it. It's not huge just for the hell of it; the length is dictated by the story I want to tell. Instead I'm intimidated in a way I haven't been by writing for a very long time. There's the fear that I'll fall short and make an arse of myself (to who? I dunno, that weird wee guy who's always looking over my shoulder when I'm writing...the one that's only in my head) or that I'll get to the heady heights of 200,000 words and discover I've written an unreadable slab of compressed shit. Normal, understandable fears, right? Right?
Still the procession of words continues and the other fear I have rears its head. It's another fear that I've had from even before I started writing novels when I was fifteen - the terror that I'll run out of words, that the well of things to say will offer nothing more to me than a proverbial word bucket full of watery rat poo and kidney beans. It's something that hasn't happened to me so far, but it's there in my mind like a blank-faced imp, saying, "This is what you've got to look forward to, Couper! Ha ha ha! Look at my impish wang and snivel!"
Or worse, it will cause me t snap one day and I'll spend the next few months adding 'u's to the giant 'duh' I've decided to put onto page after page in my brain-crippled state.
And that's where I am right now, fighting the ball-retracting fears that I'm going to tumble into dementia or that I'm continuing an exercise in self-deceptive incompetence.
Welcome to my happy writery world! Aren't you glad you stopped by? Why not have a custard cream?
Will
Tuesday 3 April 2012
Hellooooo, Mister Whitescreen!
It's a common complaint amongst writers about that moment when they sit in front of the computer (or if you're archaic or doing some weird back-to-basics exercise, in front of the typewriter*) and they're faced with the blank white screen (or page, to the troglodytes).
They talk in hushed whispers, from behind the pint they're nursing, about the way it just stares at them, taunting them, sapping the very marrow from their souls. They feel terror and apprehension as they try to urge words onto the glaring whiteness before them. It breaks them, just this part of the process, you can see the hollowness in the eyes where a bright intelligence used to be. Even when they manage to splatter their creative cum onto the screen (page, goddamn Luddite) some fundamental part of them lies in bloody tatters around their feet, whimpering its last pitiful breath.
And it shouldn't need to be this way. For all that every writer's process is different to one degree or another, this grisly, demeaning part of writing shouldn't even feature. You should look at that screen and shake its shake its fuckin' hand and say, "Hey, man! Nice to meet you, we're going to do cool shit together, you and I, so lets get down to it." And you whack a word on that damn whiteness; could be anything, could be what you had for breakfast or how hard you want to punch a member of your most hated political party, hell you might even want to go out on a crazy limb and write the first word of the story or novel or script you're planning to do.
Writing has enough hardships as it is (and yes it has some astoundingly easy things, but that's not what we're discussing here, concentrate) without adding the prospect of the opening salvo of sticky, sticky creative goo to the list. That right there, in case you missed my subtle suggestions, should be one of a series of wonderful orgasmic releases, and not the shameful ham shank while no one's looking. Remember, this is likely to be a first draft, you can always go back and change it – no biggie, it's part of the writing process.
For me, starting isn't a problem, my greatest bugbear is word count: am I doing enough? Am I just vomiting description onto the page just to change another digit in the thousands column? Should I just hit delete and consign the whole mess to the thing to the attic of my mind where it will be fed nothing but cat litter and Rizlas? At the moment this is hitting me harder than ever; I'm in the middle of a book that, by my calculations is going to be – forgive the technical term – fucking huge and those are just the worries that plague me every time I open up the file to add more of my mad or mediocre ravings. That's perhaps a discussion for another day.
* I don't get the freakish romanticism associated with typewriters, particularly the monstrosities people like Hunter S Thompson did his work on. These aren't mystical machines that will help you channel the ghosts of literary greats past, all they'll do is channel your inner pretentious twat. I used a type writer once, in the misty past, it was an electronic thing and I can tell you this, since using a word processor, it adds more complexity and frustration to the process than is needed. So fuck that jive, man.
Will
They talk in hushed whispers, from behind the pint they're nursing, about the way it just stares at them, taunting them, sapping the very marrow from their souls. They feel terror and apprehension as they try to urge words onto the glaring whiteness before them. It breaks them, just this part of the process, you can see the hollowness in the eyes where a bright intelligence used to be. Even when they manage to splatter their creative cum onto the screen (page, goddamn Luddite) some fundamental part of them lies in bloody tatters around their feet, whimpering its last pitiful breath.
And it shouldn't need to be this way. For all that every writer's process is different to one degree or another, this grisly, demeaning part of writing shouldn't even feature. You should look at that screen and shake its shake its fuckin' hand and say, "Hey, man! Nice to meet you, we're going to do cool shit together, you and I, so lets get down to it." And you whack a word on that damn whiteness; could be anything, could be what you had for breakfast or how hard you want to punch a member of your most hated political party, hell you might even want to go out on a crazy limb and write the first word of the story or novel or script you're planning to do.
Writing has enough hardships as it is (and yes it has some astoundingly easy things, but that's not what we're discussing here, concentrate) without adding the prospect of the opening salvo of sticky, sticky creative goo to the list. That right there, in case you missed my subtle suggestions, should be one of a series of wonderful orgasmic releases, and not the shameful ham shank while no one's looking. Remember, this is likely to be a first draft, you can always go back and change it – no biggie, it's part of the writing process.
For me, starting isn't a problem, my greatest bugbear is word count: am I doing enough? Am I just vomiting description onto the page just to change another digit in the thousands column? Should I just hit delete and consign the whole mess to the thing to the attic of my mind where it will be fed nothing but cat litter and Rizlas? At the moment this is hitting me harder than ever; I'm in the middle of a book that, by my calculations is going to be – forgive the technical term – fucking huge and those are just the worries that plague me every time I open up the file to add more of my mad or mediocre ravings. That's perhaps a discussion for another day.
* I don't get the freakish romanticism associated with typewriters, particularly the monstrosities people like Hunter S Thompson did his work on. These aren't mystical machines that will help you channel the ghosts of literary greats past, all they'll do is channel your inner pretentious twat. I used a type writer once, in the misty past, it was an electronic thing and I can tell you this, since using a word processor, it adds more complexity and frustration to the process than is needed. So fuck that jive, man.
Will
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