Time To Be Resolute

I don’t believe in setting New Year’s resolutions. They have a tendency to be discarded along with the decaying stump of the Christmas tree on Twelfth Night. Some don’t even last that long as born-again tee-totallers top up their New Year hangover, or those who vow to have clean lungs for a new calendar promise they’ll quit smoking ‘as soon as I’ve finished this pack’.

Only once have I publically declared a resolution. A few years ago I, a life-long salad-dodging fat bloke, said that I would get of my sofa-filling backside and run a road race in aid of the British Heart Foundation. I found the necessary motivation by committing to do A Good Deed for others.

But this year is different. For once I’m setting some resolutions for me. I need to write – and I need to sell my writing – to pay my bills. So with that in mind I hereby resolve to…

·         Publish at least two books

·         Enter at least five short story competitions

·         Earn a set amount from my writing. I’m not going public with precisely how much that is, but I will let you know later in the year whether I achieve it or not

·         Continue to publish one free short story per month on my www.shaunfinnie.com website.

And while I’m at it, I may as well throw in another, more personal one. I’m still far too fat for fun, so how about if I pledge to lose at the very least two stones in 2012? That’s 28 pounds or almost 13 kilograms if you’re using a different set of scales to mine.

Back when I resolved to run that 10km for charity more than a few people were surprised that I kept my word and kept up a steady jog around the entire course. This time I might even surprise myself.

© Shaun Finnie 2011

Wishing You a Happy… erm…

I’m guessing that it won’t have escaped your notice that this weekend is December 25^th, and for many people around the world it’s a very special occasion. I don’t mean the overindulgence on dried fruits and eggnog (though be honest - have you ever even seen eggnog?) nor the excited kids severely depleting the world’s stock of gaudy wrapping paper and batteries.

Worldwide over two billion Christians will have a holy-day  for Christ’s-mass and celebrate the birthday of Jesus, or at least the date that sometime in the early 4^th century the Roman Catholic church decided would be the day allocated to this feast. Research shows that dates in April and May would appear to be much more likely contenders for the birth date of the baby Jesus but the Roman church, like the British press, never let the truth get in the way of a good story. Nor did the first Christian Roman Emperor, Constantine the Great, who made the date official throughout his empire.

Of course, those ancient Romans loved a good mid-winter bash, so to them this time of year was already party time for the feast of Bacchus and the festival of the unconquered sun, or ‘Dies Natalis Solis Invicti’. The 25^th of December also conveniently matched up to, and eventually assimilated, not only the end of their  festival week of Saturnalia, but also the Greek honouring of Dionysus , the old calendar Winter Solstice Brumalia celebrations  and the feast days for celebrating the birth of the Persian god Mithra, the Syrian feast of Elahgabal and Sol the Sun God. In this way the spread of Christianity meant that those who didn’t really fancy changing their favoured flavour of worship could still enjoy their old festivals at the darkest time of the year.

The Christians won’t be the only ones celebrating this weekend though. For the Taiwanese people December 25^th is important as it’s their Constitution Day. The Vainakh people of the North Caucasus celebrate their Malkh festival on that date too, and Pakistanis will be partying as it’s the birthday of their country’s founder,  Quaid-e-Azam  Muhammad Ali Jinnah Baba-e-Qaum; the great leader Muhammad Ali Jinnah, father of the nation. Hindus too will be taking to the streets for the brilliant orange day of Pancha Ganapati, a celebration of Lord Ganesha.

Others prefer to go down more unconventional routes. Some may have no religion at all but still want to join in the mid-winter fun, so they’ve affiliated themselves with such unlikely holidays as Snowflake Day (from the ‘Clone High’ cartoon series), Wintersday (from the game Guild Wars), Feast of Winter Veil (World of Warcraft), Holiday Number 11 (TV series ‘Quark’) or Refrigerator Day (TV show ‘Dinosaurs’). And of course, all good Star Wars geeks will know that this is the time of year that the Wookies celebrate Life Day. Honest.

Non-believing humans who don’t want to be left out have invented alternative holidays such as Agnostica or Frostival too, but surely there’s no need for these? Don’t non-Christians have as much right to a celebration on Christmas Day as non-Norse folks have to enjoy every Wodensday and Thorsday?

As long as nobody gets hurt who doesn’t want to, then I’m not going to knock anybody’s beliefs or indeed complete lack of. Wouldn’t it be nice if we really could have peace on Earth and goodwill to all men at this time of year? Just a few days when the devout refrain from fatwas, jihads or crusades, and non-believers abstain from pointing out that anyone with a religious belief is probably a little too old to have an invisible friend?

However you spend it, have a fantastic weekend and for those of you still using the Julian Calendar, read this again in a couple of weeks. I hope you have a great celebration on January 7^th.

© Shaun Finnie 2011

The Deadline Before Christmas

It can’t have escaped your notice that it’s nearly Christmas. I didn’t realise until the start of October when I heard my first burst of Roy Wood in Debenhams. That was the time that I knew I should start writing a short story on the theme of Christmas for a woman’s magazine. I had a plot worked out that I thought would get me into the magazine’s Christmas Special with no problem. It’s about a boy who wakes up at precisely the wrong (or, for the sake of my story, precisely the right) moment and chats with Santa, telling him that the one thing he really wants this year is to help his ailing mother pay off the bailiffs. She’s dying of severe X Factor withdrawal and the only thing that can save her is to see her son make an incredible journey on Skating on Ice. Probably from the changing room to the recovery room. Something cloyingly sweet like that always goes down well at this time of year.

I rang around my list of potential buyers to find when they wanted subscriptions in by, and that’s when my spirits began to drop lower than a dachshund’s dangler.

‘August!!! You can’t have wanted them in that early! I was enjoying the sunshine then, not thinking about Santa, carols and sickly mothers on ice!’ As one magazine editor politely put it, she knew of several thousand other writers who hadn’t been sunning themselves over the summer.

I’ve now learned a valuable life lesson. If I want to support myself and my Beloved through my wordsmithery I’ll have to live my life several months in advance. So watch for the post: your Easter eggs may arrive any day now.

And while I’m on the subject of timings, I thought I’d share a story that my Beloved told me this week. She received yet another unwanted spam text message the other day, but this one was a little different. It wasn’t asking if she’d had an injury in the last twelve months or if she wanted to change her energy supplier. No, this text was reminding her of the great deliver service that a certain pizza company provide. The only problem was, they were in Basildon. I suspect that, as we live in Yorkshire, they wouldn’t make good on their promise of, ‘if we don’t deliver in half an hour you get your pizza for free’!


© Shaun Finnie 2011

Down Down

I sat at my desk the other day, typing away as usual. There was the sound of the wind howling around, the tippet-tap of my fingers on the keyboard and the thundering of jackdaws clog dancing on my dormer roof. All quite normal sounds for here, even the world’s heaviest jackdaws.  However these were then unexpectedly joined by another noise: A ‘pffft’ sound almost exactly the same as that made by the air escaping from a Scotch egg when you bite into it.

Sadly though the noise wasn’t accompanied by the Scotchy’s delicious salty meatiness and rough texture on my tongue, rather by a slow but inexorable sinking feeling. The compressed air cylinder in my chair had given up the ghost and I slid ever so slowly towards the floor.

I suppose I should be grateful that it hadn’t exploded, catapulting me though my attic office window and launching me into the twinkling night over the grim ex-mining towns like a portly Billy Elliot. Only I’d be the version without the aid of an Elton John tune or stagehands struggling with heavy duty flying cables, obviously.

So it now seems like I needed a new office chair. That would be about £150, which is money that I simply don’t have to spend, especially at this time of year. There’s no way that I can afford it. The cash I’d saved for Christmas had already gone to Santa’s financial services (at only slightly better rates than Wonga.com) and I’d already blown my recently awarded ‘Twenty years’ service’ money on setting up my home office. So like most of the western world I’m officially skint. And of course it’s not my fault, oh no.

I blame the government. That’s usually the correct thing to do when you have no money isn’t it?
And a large portion of fault has to be apportioned to the previous government too. Like the BBC, I have to be seen to offend all political persuasions equally.
And the Greeks / Irish / Italians / whoever’s in the worst Eurozone trouble by the time you read this. I can’t keep up.
And of course the bankers can be accused of anything. They’re a popular scapegoat. I think they were behind 9-11, the faked moon landings and Kennedy’s assassination too.
And while I’m at it I’ll also point the finger at Jeremy Clarkson. He won’t mind.

Or I could just be insolvent because I spent too much on beer and pizza?

Despite my financial embarrassment I still needed something to sit on, so I did what I usually do in these circumstances: I looked in the Argos catalogue. Glory be, they had the perfect  black (fake) leather number. I couldn’t afford it, but what the heck, it’s Christmas.

Just before I set off I had one final fiddle underneath the chair, and guess what? I found another lever, a teensie weensie one that I hadn’t noticed before. And guess further what? It was a locking bar, and it had worked loose. Once I slid it into the correct position the chair worked perfectly again. It went up. It went down. It went boing-boing when I bounced happily on it – an action which may, if I’m being honest, have contributed to it failing in the first place. You can imagine how foolish I felt.

But looking on the bright side, I’ve now got £150 to play with!

Did I mention that I failed my A level economics?


© Shaun Finnie 2011

Christmas is Coming

‘What do you want for Christmas, love?’  It was a little early but my Beloved likes to plan. So she asked the question straight after I’d finished unwrapping my birthday presents in July. I know from experience that it’s easiest to just go with the flow, but I don’t think that she expected my truthful answer.

‘I’d really love a huge encyclopaedia of criminal pathology please.’ It’s true, it’s what I really want, much more than the usual annual underwear upgrade, and as an author I’m all set. I’ve got a desk, paper and pens, a shiny new laptop and a printer. What else does someone who writes for a living really need? Apart from talent and a really good proffredder, obviously.

As I’m in the middle of a crime novel at the moment then a book about the criminal mind-set would be just the thing. I know that I could just trot down to my local nick and ask to interview some bad lads and lasses, but I don’t thing that would be tax deductible.

I’ve always been told by accountants that if, as a new business, you don’t make a sizeable loss in your first couple of years then you’re not trying hard enough. If my projected income for next year is as low as I suspect it will be then there will be no problems on that front .

But what would I legitimately be able to claim for as a business expense? I know that it’s a bad idea to say this publicly (as the tax man may be reading) but I don’t have any real expenses. I’m never required to travel anywhere for my work; I can email everything off, so there won’t be any delivery charges. All of my saleable stock comes from my imagination; it’s not as if I have to buy stories in and then sell them on. And I certainly don’t want the restriction of allocating a room in my house as a dedicated office. I like the idea that, if needs be, it can become a bedroom again at very short notice. All I have to do is unfold my sofa bed if the Beloved and I have a quarrel about something like stupid Christmas gift ideas. And when the time comes for us to sell, I really can’t be bothered with the business of working out capital gains tax on the one room, as would be required if I declared it as a designated work space.

So I’ll be self-employed with (initially at least) very little income and just about the same amount of outgoings. At least there won’t be many transaction charges on my bank account.

© Shaun Finnie 2011

Happy Anniversary

I went to a gig this week. I know, look at me trying to be hip and trendy at my age. But don’t get any ideas about me seeing any cool young bands. I went to see a guy called Mike Peters, who was celebrating 30 years of his once-quite-popular beat combo The Alarm. He’s older than I am and so were many in the audience. There wasn’t much thrashing, moshing or stage-diving in evidence. To be honest there wasn’t much movement from the crowd at all, unless you count the frequent trips to the loo. Well at our age, and with many of us having a prostate the size of a goat’s head, after a few beers it’s a case of one in, one out.

But it was a great gig, I loved every moment of it, just as I did when I saw 10cc not too long ago. Kiss were fantastic too and so were the old guys in Yes. I think it’s fairly obvious that I don’t see young bands these days. I prefer to relive my youth, my glory days (not that there were that many of them - and they weren't particularly glorious).

But isn’t that what most of these guys are doing? OK, they’ll maybe throw in a few new songs in the hope of attracting interest in a new album (and to give us in the crowd time to replenish our glasses) but in most cases they’re living on former glories. Some of them are blatantly cashing in on them. Bryan Adams’ upcoming ‘twentieth anniversary arena tour of the Waking Up the Neighbours arena tour’ springs to mind. He has nothing at all to promote apart from an evening of unabashed nostalgia. But hey, if it makes people happy.

A look at the upcoming gig list shows that Big Country, Shakin’ Stevens and Go West are all soon embarking on thirtieth anniversary tours. Rush, W.A.S.P., Level 42, Ultravox – they’ve all recently done the same with varying degrees of success. Perhaps I should take a twenty-night road trip around the country, seeing a random band in a new city every night to celebrate my thirty years of gig-going?

But why should this kind of thing be restricted to musicians? Many major authors do book signing tours too, and those are usually much more intimate affairs than seeing a band in a huge arena or even in a sweaty club. With authors you usually at least get the chance to get your copy of their latest product signed and maybe even have a little chat with them. It’s much more civilised.

So as we approach 2012 I’ve come up with a cunning plan. I’ve taken a look at a list of books published in 1982 and have decided to have a word with my local branch of Waterstones to see if they could arrange some thirtieth anniversary tours.

Published in 1982
Graham Greene – Monsignor Quixote
Sidney Sheldon – Master of the Game
Robert Ludlum – The Parsifal Mosaic -
Isaac Asimov – Foundation’s Edge
Arther C Clarke – 2010:Odyssey Two
Roald Dahl – The BFG

Ah. Looking at that list of authors, I think there may be a slight flaw in my proposal.

© Shaun Finnie 2011

I Want to Turn My Brain Off!

I’m a writer. I write. I get up and turn on my laptop. Then I write, all day long. Eventually I’ll log off and have my evening meal. When that’s done I tell myself that I’ve stopped working for the day, which is why I never turn my laptop back on after, say, seven pm (I eat early). But I always make sure that I have a notebook and pen close to hand just in case inspiration strikes (as it so often does) when it’s least expected. So even when I’m chatting with my Beloved, watching a film, sitting in the pub, even at these times I’ve still not really finished writing because the thoughts are still there, the stories are still growing, bubbling, fermenting away at the back of my mind. My characters are still living their little back-stories in my subconscious whether I want them to or not. And I even dream new ideas. I’ve been known to keep a notebook in the bathroom so that I can scribble things in the middle of the night without waking my Beloved. I might wake her regularly because I’m a heavy snorer (apparently), but never because I’m an author.

Now that I’m living my dream of being a full-time writer I find that it really is full time. Like Moira Shearer in ‘The Red Shoes’, I can’t stop. (Come on, I can’t be the only fan of 1940’s ballet movies, can I? Or perhaps you’re more a devotee of the 2005 Korean horror version?)

New ideas dribble out of me constantly, oozing like a stream of consciousness. I’d love for them to pour forth, but at the moment I’ll accept a little trickle. I can‘t keep up with them as it is. I start hundreds of stories and articles, but only finish a fraction. In some cases I realise that the quality of the piece isn’t what I initially thought and I pull the plug on it, but many times it’s simply that I’ve thought of something new – and new equals exciting. I simply can’t find the enthusiasm to finish the job in hand.

That’s the difference between nature and nurture I guess, the inborn talent versus the craft and graft of the author’s trade.  My fear is that I’ve had some fantastic ideas and missed them while I was concentrating on the mediocre ones that I’ve continued to work on. And as I haven’t yet developed a good quality filter, I’m trying to do them all.

Even the best ideas need polishing. Mine certainly aren’t the best that mankind has ever had, but they won’t even be seen by anyone else unless I finish them off. And I don’t mean finish off as in polish, bump or knock off. I mean that I have to complete something.

Just like this.

© Shaun Finnie 2011

I Can Smell Burning Pants

Without wishing to cause offence to those lovely people on Dragon’s Den, The Apprentice etc, or anyone who runs their own business, I have a question that probably will do just that: To be a successful businessman or woman do you also have to also be a successful liar?

The question arose when I was watching one of daytime BBC’s many antique trading programs. The expert picked up a piece of pottery. ‘It says on the label three hundred and fifty pounds. What’s your very best price?’

The trader sucked his last remaining tooth. ‘For you guv, three hundred quid.’

‘Really? That’s the very best that you can do? Shame, I was hoping more like one twenty.’

They bantered on like this for a while and eventually the pottery changed hands for two hundred pounds. Deal done. But hold on a minute: just a few moments ago the trader said that his ‘very best price’ was three hundred. So three hundred wasn’t his very best and he knew it. He lied. If the orange antique experts on TV are to be believed then it seems to be a common tactic.

And of course every single trader in the land must have heard (and maybe uttered) the dreaded words, ‘The cheque’s in the post’. A week later they’re unsurprised to find no cheques littering the doormat, so they call again. ‘Really? It’s not turned up? It must have got lost in the post. I’ll write you another’.

When I was a bookkeeper I was on the receiving end of this sorry story so many times that it became a bit of a joke with some customers. I always wanted to ask one question in return: ‘If my postal service is so bad, how come my gas bill never gets lost?’

My Beloved has for many years sold items on eBay, and in that time has had more than her fair share of failed transactions. After a while this has made her naturally rather suspicious of all non - and late - payers.  One of my favourites recently was when a woman claimed that she wasn’t going to pay up for something she’d bought as ‘it wasn’t me, it was my eight-year-old niece what bid on it.’ Did she now? Using your account name and password? Clever girl.

Or how about ‘I know I’ve bought these items but I cannot pay for them as I’m new to eBay and I don’t have a cheque book or a PayPal account’. I suggested that the Beloved should write back, ‘No problem! I’ll just take whatever form of payment it was that you’ve used for the 83 other items that your eBay record shows you’ve bought and paid for over the last three years’.

The least pleasant of all though are those that claim, ‘I’m sorry I haven’t paid you but my child/partner/parent has just died.’ I’ve been amazed at how many times she’s been told this as a reason for late payment. It’s absolutely incontestable. Of course she has to sympathise and allow as much time as is needed. It’s astounding though how many people recover from their grief on the first of the month.

So now I find myself in the job of sending work to magazine editors and having to trust that they will pay for all work used and that the amount they send is the going rate. Surely they wouldn’t be unscrupulous, would they?

© Shaun Finnie 2011  

Mwah-ha-ha-haaa!

Boo!

Did I scare you? It’s the time of year for general spookiness, when the nights are cold and dark but generally clear and dry. At least that’s what the weather people tell us it’s historically been like in mid-Autumn. Not this year though – it’s mostly wet and grey around here. I think that a peek out of the window is required before I venture outside. And fireworks? Damp squibs are the order of the day I suspect.

Hallowe'en and Bonfire Night both give us good reasons to go out and party, or hide behind the sofa depending on how social you’re feeling. Or maybe you’re just terrified of the local kids with their trick-or-treats and their bangers. Innocent fun or heathen licenced thuggery and theft:  your call.

Two of Britain’s most ancient celebrations just happen to fall in the same week; just how lucky is that? Really? I suspect that it’s nothing to do with luck and more to do with the Catholic Church fiddling with our calendar. They did it when they picked a fairly random date to celebrate Christmas, so why not these two?

And the clocks have gone back too, meaning that somehow there are many more hours of darkness than this time last week. This means that many of us now go to work in the dark and come home in the dark. The farmers and muggers must love it.

So at this most fearful time of the year when the veil between the realms of the living and the dead is (allegedly) at its thinnest, what scares you? Me? Well it’ll come as no surprise to those who know me well to find that clowns terrify me. My coulrophobia to give it its posh name) isn’t as bad as it used to be, but I still don’t like to even see a clown, let alone have any interact with one. Real clowns, puppets, toys, even paintings of clowns, all put the fear of clowns up me. I know what you lot are getting me for Christmas now.

I’m told that it’s a much more common phobia than non-sufferers imagine. I know that a lot of my irrational fear comes from watching films like Tim Curry’s sublime ‘It’ and the ridiculous foam rubber creations in ‘Killer Klowns from Outer Space’, but I think that my inner terror is much more deep-seated than that. It’s a fear of all masks really. They all seem so unnecessary to me. What’s hidden underneath there? What does the so-called funny man have to hide? And in modern Britain, clowns aren’t regarded as all that funny either by most people. They’re a relic of bygone cabarets, ghosts of a dead comedy form.

So now it’s your turn. Turn down the lights, pull a chair up to the fire and tell us: what are you afraid of?

© Shaun Finnie 2011

School's Out

Have your local children been on holiday this week? It’s been half term around here and hordes of the little loves have been camping out at the local shopping mall. At least ‘Claire’s Accessories’ won’t have any financial worries in the near future.

I’ve been talking to a few old school friends recently with whom I haven’t been in contact for the best part of thirty years (ah the wonders of the internet!). We were reminiscing about the old days, as you do, and I was pretty surprised at what a diverse group we’ve become. We have a massive spread of location, employment and family situations. I suspect that you’d find the same with your old school buddies. About the only things that we have in common now are our ages, our teenage history and our agreement that we got a good education and are generally better people for it. The best of our teachers contributed to making us what we are today. And so, presumably, did the worst.

Then I spoke to a couple of current teachers. Independently they both told me the same tale: how they feel like quitting most of the time; how they’re sick of being spat at, kicked and verbally abused on a regular basis by children who always seem to know their civil rights but are unwilling to learn anything beyond that; how they spend much of their days afraid for their own present and their pupils’ future.

I don’t want to sound like a grumpy old man (even though I’m fast heading in that direction) but I can’t remember any of that occurring when I was at school. Certainly not in class 5E. There was very little pupil-on-pupil violence, let alone pupil-on-teacher. Maybe it was the constant threat of cane, slipper or Miss Bennett’s deadly flying blackboard rubber.

I’m sure that there were some horrid kids and events back then, the same as there are many wonderful students today. Perhaps I should stop reading the Daily Mail.

And I’m also sure that if I asked, every one of you would assure me that your child wouldn’t do these things. Would they?

© Shaun Finnie 2011

Murder By Schmaltz

Have you heard of the term ‘Cosy Crime’? It’s quite a big literary genre relating to a particular style of novel, usually a murder mystery whodunit kind of thing.

I’m fully aware that all fiction is what my mum would call ‘storytelling’ – basically just a pack of lies. But putting the words ‘crime’ and ‘cosy’ (or ‘cozy’ as the Americans call it) seems like taking things just one lie too far to me. How can any crime be a cosy, friendly, homely thing? A local librarian gets stabbed in the eye and the crime is solved in time for everybody to enjoy jam and cream scones for tea. Hurrah! That’s just plain weird. Or an outsider is found dead on the vicarage steps but the vicar, while expressing immense sorrow, is unmoved enough to deliver his sermon on loving thy neighbour,  thus proving that he’s a cold-hearted killer. It’s all so very British – a Britain that no longer exists if it ever did at all.

The queen of cosy crime had to be Agatha Christie with her Miss Marple books. A lovely English village, a doddery old lady whose body is falling apart but whose mind is still sharp as a tack, and the death of someone despicable who everyone agrees (behind the victim’s bloodstained back of course) pretty much deserved it. Miss Christie never felt the need to throw in any complex subplots, she just churned out light books to be read for fun. Perfect holiday reading, we’d call her novels today.

And although it could never be described as high art, there is plenty of cash to be made in this particular literary field. The homely nature of these books represent a world where, however bad things get (and multiple murder is pretty bad) we always have friends, family and a pint of mild in the village pub to return to in the final chapter. Nothing in the world of cosy crime ever changes, they just hit the reset button on the final page ready for the next book in the series – because it’s always a series. These authors know that they’re onto a winner so they milk that cash cow until it’s teats squeak.  It may not be realism but we all need an escape from the real world some time or other.

Anyhow, I’d better leave it there for today. I have a cosy crime novel to work on.

© Shaun Finnie 2011

For Free or not For Free?

... that’s today’s question.

Or, is it a good idea to give away my ‘art’ for promotional purposes?

Let me explain. For a while now I’ve been building a collection of my short stories ready for publication. These are tales that are either not suited to the lucrative woman’s magazine market or have been rejected by their intended editors (may these illiterate mongrels die a thousand painful deaths). Since you’ve never heard of me as a writer you’ll have gathered that I get lots of rejection letters, so there are quite a few of these stories lying around the house. These are the tales that nobody adopted, the ones looking for a good home. They sit on my laptop with their big sad eyes begging to be let out of their digital cage and longing to be loved.

So what do I do with them?

One idea is to share them freely. In fact that’s just what I’ve done with some of them at www.shaunfinnie.com/tales.html  - I hope that link works, I’m not too wonderful at this technology malarkey. When I was a lad we only had wood-burning laptops...

I own the copyright to these so there would be no problem with me gathering them together at some later date as a book of short stories and publishing them myself if I have to. But is that defeatist? Every publisher in the country wants new product and generally won’t entertain anything that’s already been published – even if it’s ‘only’ been published online (like on my own website). So by posting them there I pretty much damn them to self-publishing hell.

Is that a bad thing? Is releasing them myself and admitting that they’ll only ever get a limited readership better than taking the risk on a publishing house actually taking them up, but knowing that the truth of the matter is that they’ll never make it past the first editorial glance? Possibly, but I’m also sacrificing them for the greater good, as they could potentially drum up interest in my paid work.

So should I be a corporate whore or give away my goodies for free?

Answers on a postcard please. 

© Shaun Finnie 2011

Blockhead

I’m pretty much spending all of my days writing full time now. I get up, I fire up the laptop and I start typing. After about an hour or so my Beloved awakes and we have breakfast together. And then I write again. Maybe I’ll break for lunch, maybe I won’t. I’ll continue writing until my evening meal. I write because I love to, but also because it’s my job.

I have so many different projects whirling around in my brain that it’s difficult to concentrate on just one and I find myself with half a dozen documents open at once, inefficiently flitting from one to the other, inserting a word here or editing a sentence there. One thing that I have to learn to do is stop that and actually finish something. I’m not great at finishing things off but I never have trouble starting a piece of work.

The point is that I never run out of things to write. They may not all come to fruition but the ideas are constantly flowing.  I’ve trained my brain to think that way, to play ‘what if?’ in every situation. Yet some authors – including quite a few well-known and respected ones – apparently find this difficult.

The Oxford English dictionary defines Writer’s Block as ‘the condition of being unable to think of what to write or how to proceed with writing’.

It must be true; it’s in the OED. But with all due respect to those learned chaps and chapesses at Oxford, it’s complete and utter rubbish.

How many times has an accountant complained to his wife, ‘I don’t feel like going into the office today dear, I think I’ve got a dose of accountant’s block’?  No construction worker ever moaned of having Builder’s Block, and I’m pretty certain that if there were such a thing as Student’s Block then schools and universities up and down the land would be quite empty. Apart from student bars, obviously.

Your friendly neighbourhood plumber who has to pay his gas bill and buy new shoes for his children can’t afford to cite Plumber’s Block as an excuse for letting your toilet cistern continue to overflow for weeks on end. ‘Ooh, sorry mate. That looks nasty. I’d love to help but I’ve got Plumber’s Block at the moment. Maybe at the end of next month?’

If he tried it he’d never work again and I suspect that he’d find it difficult to claim on his health insurance for it. ‘Hello is that BUPA? Ah yes. Am I covered against loss of earnings due to Plumber’s Block?’  Yet writers seem to think that it’s OK to miss deadlines and assignments due to a problem that’s so aligned to one industry that it even has it’s own specific name? I think not.

I have my own definition of this so-called affliction of Writer’s Block: ‘a fabricated condition created by idle would-be writers who want an excuse to avoid getting down to work’.

(Shaun now sits back and waits for the flaming to begin...)

© Shaun Finnie 2011 – Don’t forget Shaun’s website – www.BooksAboutDisney.co.uk

If Only I Could Remember My Name

When I write factual pieces – magazine articles, web pages and the like – I invariably use the name Shaun Finnie. It’s convenient, and it’s mine.

Fiction writing is a different matter though. I’ve published stories (and let’s be honest, that’s what a fiction writer does all day: tells lies) under several different noms de plume, depending on the tale and its market.  For example a rough and ready ‘lads mag’ story might be sent to the magazine under the name of Lee Barker. If the market I’m writing for is aimed more at the upper class Englishman then I’d probably submit work as Simon Harper; it just seems more suitable for that field. Simon’s sister Gemma Harper has made several appearances when I’ve been writing for the women’s magazine market where it’s more difficult to be accepted as a male writer, or occasionally I’ve used the more ambiguous name of Chris Daniels for them too.

My point is that, just as I tailor my work to my market, so do I adapt the author’s name. It really doesn’t matter to me; the cheque gets made out to S P Finnie whatever.

When preparing a piece recently for an Irish magazine I decided to make my name sound even more Irish than it already does. I’m always getting mail addressed to ‘Sean Finney’ so I thought I’d try that pseudonym to see if it fit the piece better. If I’m using a pen name I always do a quick check to see that there isn’t already a working writer using that name. I wouldn’t want to tread on anybody’s toes, or for them to get my payment by mistake! 

All of the names I’ve used above are all mine, I don’t know of anyone else that writes under those. But a slightly altered version of my own name, the one I’ve had to live with for over forty years since my parents decided against calling me ‘Carl’ at the last minute? Yes, there’s an American poet doing very nicely publishing as Sean Finney.

So here’s today’s question: Should I (or any other writer for that matter) have to change my name to fit my writing style and the demands of the market? Or should I stick proudly to my birthright even though it would probably lose me some commissions?

What would you do?

© Shaun Finnie 2011

Moan, Moan, Moan

I’ve been away this week. The exact location is a closely guarded secret for nature security reasons, but it was to a lovely cabin in the woods ‘up north’. I planned to have a relaxing week in a completely different atmosphere, perfect for writing. And as a bonus, the hut in which we stayed is famous for having stripy-nosed visitors most nights.

It was my ninth annual badger-watch week.

I unpacked my notebooks and pens as soon as we arrived and immediately started making some new story notes. This was an excellent start but the surroundings were so beautiful that it wasn’t long before the wild began to call. Pretty soon my Beloved and I were squealing like delighted children as we noticed birds that we don’t see at home and most amazingly some absolutely gorgeous red squirrels.

Back at the lodge we settled down to an evening of badgery entertainment. Believe me, there’s nothing like lying on the floor close to the patio windows with a family of real live wild badgers doing their thing just inches away on the other side of the glass.

Our days pretty quickly fell into a pattern: We’d get up, eat a breakfast that was far too large and unhealthy (but who cares, holiday calories don’t count) and then go for a walk. Then come back to the cabin and think about writing for a while, before our evening meal and a night of badger spotting.

The problem was that all of that laying flat on my belly didn’t do my historically-fragile back any good at all. And all the walking caused rubbing on my delicate tootsies; specifically the areas where I’ve recently lost a few toenails. So for a change one day we went to a golf driving range and hit a few balls. But this was the first time in years that I’d picked up a golf bat in anger, so my shoulders ached pretty badly afterwards. I know, all this moaning makes me sound like a great big Jessie. That’s probably because I’m a great big Jessie. In fact my Beloved was pointing this out to me when I fell over.
I was trying to justify my grumbling instead of looking where I was going and simply didn’t realise how uneven the path at the golf range was. Before you could say ‘where there’s blame there’s a claim’ I was down. If it wasn’t for that fact that I was wearing brand new glasses I’d have landed face first, but luckily my natural aversion to spending cash overcame my fear of pain and I twisted in mid-air, cat-like, to land on my shoulder. Actually I’m not that agile. I didn’t quite make it all the way around to the shoulder so landed heavily on my elbow instead. At least my glasses were safe.

So with all the bruising, aches and pains, wildlife watching and drinking (did I forget to mention that bit?), the idea of my little holiday being a writing retreat sort of took a back seat.

Perhaps I should stay at home next week, it’ll be safer.


© Shaun Finnie 2011

Room at the Top

Every author needs a calm workspace, a place that he or she can relax and let the creative juices flow. For me this has been my dining room table, my front doorstep and even a lovely glade in the woods but as I’m moving more towards full-time writing I’ve realised that I need somewhere more permanent. Sharing a spare bedroom / office with my Beloved’s eBay business is becoming something of a problem now that I’m claiming more time in there, so I’ve been shunted off to the attic.

This isn’t as bad as it might seem as it’s bright and airy (but not as much as it was before I got the roof replaced) and absolutely huge up there. It’s by far the biggest room we have, running the entire length of the house. She hasn’t allowed me to have it all to myself of course, but if I face in a certain direction I can avoid seeing the jumble of Christmas ornaments, bags of old clothes and piles of eBay stock that won’t sell no matter how low she prices it.

Being so far from our main broadband hub is a little troublesome though. When I initially set the roof space up as my workplace, I found that the connection was intermittent. Sometimes it happily logged on. Sometimes it cruelly didn’t. And sometimes, out of pure malice, it waited until I was in the middle of sending some huge and important document before dropping out. But I soon developed a cunning work-around for this problem. If I picked my laptop up and leaned over the steep attic stairs, balancing the computer precariously in one hand and clinging on to the banister with the other, then the signal came through nice and strong. I could still claim to be totally within my own workspace but it was only on a technicality. I tried this a few times and it worked a treat, but one day last week I leaned a little further than usual and heard a nasty crack. I didn’t feel any pain, so either I’m a lot tougher than I look or the banister’s had it. To give you a clue I’ll say that one of us has suddenly developed a nasty wobble.

So it was time to move my desk setup. I’m now seated directly at the top of the stairwell, with only a thin sheet of plywood between me and a case of fatal plummety death. It’s not the best desk placement in the world, especially with the large dormer window directly at my back creating a huge glare on the screen with a Shaun-shaped shadow in the centre, but at least I have an excellent internet connection from here.

Which means that, on those occasions when writer’s block strikes, playing Angry Birds is a whole lot easier. 

© Shaun Finnie 2011

The Real and the Counterfeit

Douglas Adams is dead. Long live Douglas Adams. 

So too Virginia Andrews and Robert Ludlum. Yet they apparently continue to write, as their characters refuse to die alongside them. Just like Ian Fleming’s James Bond and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes. All dead, yet still alive in endless time, endless art.

This week’s blog questions the validity or otherwise of certain continuations compared against our expectations. For example, if we didn’t know that a book in a well-loved series was by an author other it’s original creator, could we tell? And would it matter? Clive Cussler freely admits to having collaborated with other authors on many of his novels. How many ‘name’ writers have done the same but less openly?

Taking a sideways step, comedians often complain that while one television appearance can expose them to millions of potential new fans, it can also use up material that it might have taken them years to accumulate. Once we’ve heard a funny tale, it’s gone; they can never tell that joke again. But why should this be? Why is it that we want a stand-up to tell us new jokes every time he stands up? For example, Billy Connelly still occasionally does his act in front of packed houses, but would the crowds still turn out if he were to begin his show with, ‘Here’s a story you might remember from my 1978 tour…’

Yet it’s completely the opposite with musicians. How many times have you heard people return from a live gig and say, ‘it was brilliant, they played all the old stuff’? Sure, we expect them to play a couple of new tracks so that we have time to go to the bar, but it’s the old favourites that we all turn out to hear, the songs that made us fall in love with them in the first place. So why not comedians?

The same argument can be applied to stage plays. Can you imagine going to see Shakespeare’s ‘Hamlet’, only to find that the classic ‘To be or not to be’ soliloquy had been removed because the director thought we’d have had enough of the stuff that was written around 1600? We still want to hear the words that we know and love.
 
Musicians may be forgiven for living off former glories, but they’re much less likely to survive multiple line-up changes. If Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr were to announce a tour as ‘The Beatles (featuring a couple of new recruits on guitars)’, there would be howls of outrage. We want to hear our aging heroes playing the songs that they’re famous for, but not if it means that only half of the group are involved. Please play ‘Yesterday’ at your solo gigs Paul, and we’d go crazy if Ringo turned up too, but don’t try to use the precious band name. And heaven forbid that you should allow anyone else to perform under that name. That way lawsuits lie.

Yet if a football fan goes to see Manchester United playing at Old Trafford it would be unthinkable for them to moan that George Best or Bobby Charlton weren’t pulling on the famous red shirt. There are no complaints to the Office of Fair Trading after every match; we expect the next generation of players to continue Best and Charlton’s legacy. Why is it acceptable for sports teams to dabble in the transfer market but not rock bands or authors?

Are we, the paying public, not guilty of double standards in these things?

Tribute acts are another judgemental minefield. Going to see a band like Bjorn Again may be seen as a fairly cheap and fun night out, but as the ‘real’ ABBA aren’t likely to tour again anytime soon, are the ‘fake’ versions not only the best that we have, but actually a valid version of the real thing in their own right?

And what is the London Philharmonic Orchestra if not a huge covers band? They play old music that we know and love, and they’re the best that’s available because the guys who originally wrote and performed these classics are no longer around to play them. How does that differ from an Elvis imitator?

So do we honestly want art for art’s sake or simply to relive former glories?

Next time you read a novel in a long-running series ask yourself; what have you really paid your money for?

©  Shaun Finnie 2011

Can You Trust A Writer?

They say that writers and poets observe life more intensely than ‘normal’ people. Well I’m no poet, and I’m certainly not normal, but I guess it’s true that I do mentally store away more little observations than most. Everything interesting that I notice in the pub, while waiting in line at the supermarket or driving on the motorway, it all gets file away in the back of my mind.

Much of this stuff resurfaces later in my writing. Sure, I change things around and fictionalise events but scratch deeply enough and you’ll find the seed of truth in there. A lot of scenarios that I place my characters in are taken from my own life – they’re the strongest experiences that I have to draw upon – but others are taken from things that I see. And as I see my friends and family more than I see total strangers then it stands to reason that their experiences are used more than most.

For example a friend who felt that her day wasn’t complete without at least an hour’s exercise was written into a tale of addiction. What would she have thought if she’d been able to recognise herself as the inspiration behind my character? She’s a lovely woman but the person that she became in the story was less than nice, as he lost his job, home and wife to his obsession.

I have many other examples but, as some of my sources may read this, I’ll not be giving them away.

It works the other way around too. On reading my work some people have asked, “Is that supposed to be me?”  No, it’s supposed to be a believable character in a short story, but it’s interesting that sometimes people see links where there were none intended.

So today’s question to you is – how would you feel if you recognised yourself in my writing?

©  Shaun Finnie 2011

Am I an author?

Hello. I’m Shaun Finnie, and I’m an author.

Well that’s what I say I am, but I’m not the kind of author you’ve heard of. I haven’t written any bestsellers. If you look for me on Amazon or in your local bookshop you might find just one book published under my name, and that’s non-fiction. Look on the net and you might see lots of articles that I’ve written, but does producing them count as being a writer?

At what point do I become a real author and not just a guy who writes stories and feature items as a hobby?

Maybe selling my first piece takes me out of the ranks of amateur? I did that years ago, but I still feel a little bit like I’m ‘playing at it’.

Perhaps I could view a proper author as one who writes all day, every day? Well I’m preparing to leave my job and step into the big scary world of full-time writing at the end of the year. Does that add more validity to auctorial qualification?

Or maybe I have to be able to pay my bills through my writing to claim the title? That certainly isn’t happening at the moment. It’s nice when people tell me not to worry because there have been many writers and artists who never made a sale during their lifetimes but are considered masters of their craft now, but I don’t want to die alone and penniless in my writing garret. I want to earn enough cash to pay for the garret and the rest of the house, keep my Beloved happy and most of all allow me to do the one thing that I love – writing fiction. If I can provide a valuable entertainment form that takes people away from their normal lives (and I’m not going to even attempt to define ‘normal’) and just for a short while evoke some kind of emotion, then I’m a happy man. If I can get paid for it too, I’ll be a happy author.

In today’s economic climate, is that too much to ask?

© Shaun Finnie 2011