Get Smart

I want to be thinner.

I want to drink less.

I want to be a little richer.

It’s that time of year when we make promises that we hope to keep but aren’t really prepared to put work in to make happen. These three above are among the most popular New Year’s Resolutions and many people will be telling themselves and maybe others on Tuesday that they will be thinner, more sober and richer in 2013 than they were in 2012.

But you know what? Lots of these people will be the same ones who made the same resolutions at the same time last year. And the year before. And the year before. Because most New Year’s Resolutions don’t work.

Or at least, ones like those above don’t.

To start with they begin with ‘I want’. This allows a sneaky little suggestion of failure. We want, we hope, we wish it would happen but those words don’t involve any work on the wanter’s part. We’re much more likely to succeed if we say ‘I will’ do something rather than ‘I want to’ do it. That would help, but most of all we have to get SMART with our resolutions.

It’s an old business mnemonic but it really does work. You’re much more likely to stick to your resolutions if they’re SMART.

Significant – What’s the point of making a pointless resolution?  ‘I will walk to the pub every day’ is no big deal for me as I’m able-bodied and the pub is just thirty-four steps from my house. ‘I will run to the pub in the next village, not stop for a drink and then run home’ would be much more of a challenge.

Measurable – ‘I will get fit’ is a common resolution but it’s so fluffy and vague that it’s unachievable. Define ‘fit’. Is it being able to run a mile without stopping? Or losing a stone in weight? Or being able to button up those skinny jeans that you bought on a whim in last year’s sale but now sit at the back of the wardrobe mocking you every time you pull on an old baggy pair instead? If you can’t measure a goal how do you know if you've achieved it?

Achievable – there’s no point in me saying ‘I will win an Olympic 100 meters sprint medal in 2013’. No I won’t. I’m forty-seven, fat and have no sprint training. And most importantly, there are no Olympic games in 2013. But I could resolve to gradually build up to being able to run a mile.

Realistic – ‘I will sprout wings and fly around the building’ might be something that I’d love to do but with the best will in the world it ain’t gonna happen. Stretch yourself, but know the limits of human ability.

Time-specific – ‘I will lose six pounds in weight’ isn’t a good resolution either. It gives the resolver permission to pig out all year in the hope that a starvation diet in the autumn might achieve the goal. ‘I will lose at least half a pound every month all year long’ is much more like it.

So have a great New Year and a brilliant 2013, and if you’re making any resolutions just remember that you have a much greater chance of keeping them if you make them SMART. Me? I just have three resolutions.

I want to be thinner.

I want to drink less.

I want to be a little richer.

© Shaun Finnie 2012

Which List Are You On?

It’s nearly time. Santa’s getting sore eyes from reading all those letters, the reindeer are going through their visualisation techniques for perfect rooftop landings after a full year of training and turkeys all over the world are wondering why all their buddies keep disappearing.

It’s nearly Christmas.

Children the world over are hoping that Father Christmas (or whatever local name he has where they are) has placed them on his ‘Nice’ list. Whatever their age, nobody wants to be on the ‘Naughty’ list.

We all know that good children get good gifts, but how come nobody ever talks about what happens to those who have been bad? Maybe it’s a shame thing, like how nobody talks about a particularly embarrassing rash or that strange old Uncle that no one’s seen for the longest time?

Wonder no more. And never say that my blog isn’t educational. The ‘Naughty’ list was once a very real threat.

This is one of those things that the man with the sack has evolved over time, like changing the colour of his cloak from predominately green to red or climbing down chimneys to deliver his gifts instead of just dropping them into stockings hung beside an open window. These days of course he prefers using his magic key instead of messing about with the chimney climbing. It must be his age.

Maybe that’s why he’s mellowed over the years too. There was a time when the naughty children of the world could expect some serious punishment from the jolly old fat man. He’d actually whip them, so legend has it, or pop them into a sack while they slept and carry them off to Spain, where he is said to spend his summer holidays. Suddenly he doesn’t seem quite so jolly.

He didn’t used to do these unpleasant things on his own though. While these days he just has his jolly elves to help him deliver goods to the world’s good boys and girls, once upon a time he had a shackled demon called Black Pete to assist him with the punishment of naughty kids. The story goes that Saint Nicholas defeated the demon and enslaved him, making Black Pete do his dirty work. And let’s face it, if you have to be whipped by someone then I guess an angry demon in chains would be far from the top of the list of people you’d pick to do it.

I guess that Santa has been working on his P.R. more in recent years though, as the whole whipping thing has been hushed up and he seems to have cut right back on the child-abduction too. All in all I think that’s a good thing.

As for Black Pete, well he’s rarely heard of these days, except in Scandinavian countries where he’s still sometimes seen helping his beardy boss in the run up to the big day. Even there he’s been given a make-over though, seeming to have become almost as jolly as the main man himself. The worst he does these days is threaten to leave children a lump of coal instead of gifts if they haven’t been good, or maybe a twig to remind them of the olden days when he’d deliver a thrashing with one.

So with this in mind, I hope that everyone in your household has been good this year. And that Father Christmas continues to get nicer as he gets older.

Have a great Christmas.

Wash Your Mouth Out

‘I’m not a racist but…’

I’m guessing that you’ll have heard those words sometime in your life. And if you have, then you’ll know what comes next – the person whose mouth they came out of invariably goes on to say something which many people would interpret to mean that they are indeed a racist of the highest order.

The same thing goes for sexism. ‘I’m not a sexist, but…’, before launching into some tale attacking whichever gender isn't represented among the speaker or listeners. Or ageism. ‘ I've nothing against the kids of today, but…’  Some people just love denying that they have a problem with anyone from a social or political group to which they themselves do not belong. With this in mind and a sizable spoonful of irony here’s my rant of the week.

I’m not a prude, but… how come young comedians (and comediennes – I’m not sexist) feel the need to swear profusely in their stage routines? Now I’m a proper Northern bloke who can eff and blind along with the best of them – years of suffering on the terraces watching Sheffield United will do that to a man – but when did it become normal everyday speech as far as stand-up comedy is concerned? In the ‘sixties Lenny Bruce fought important freedom of speech battles against the authorities, finding his humour in the absurdity of obscenity laws. His use of language that hadn’t been heard on stage up to that point was ground-breaking. And here in Britain a decade later the likes of Billy Connolly pushed the boundaries of industrial language using the shock factor to illicit embarrassed laughter alongside genuine observational wit. For many people this was the first time they’d heard these words uttered in polite company and they didn't know whether to laugh or hide in shame. It was a perfect example of the shock of the new.

But now? Most live comedy shows are littered with swear words without any reason. The difference between seeing a comedian’s act on a BBC show or on a live DVD is staggering. Four-letter expletives can appear in every sentence as a potty-mouthed garnish. I have to ask, why? Occasionally I can understand they’re used for emphasis but mostly it’s simple unthinking punctuation. The comic scatters them throughout their act in a way that they wouldn’t if they were, say, at a bakers buying some bread. “I’d like six rolls and an uncut ****ing bloomer please” would be completely unacceptable to most people so why do we have a need for “This nun goes into a ****ing chemists”?

What strikes me most is the sheer amount of expletives that they deliver. Add the number of unnecessary words up over the length of their act and then realise; these unnecessary interjections take the place of well-thought out comedy. They eat up time for no reason. They actually rob the audience of a couple of good jokes over a set. A few years ago, as an experiment, Frank Skinner cut all the swearing out of his act for just one night during a tour. The show went really well and the audience laughed just as hard and in just the same places as on the other nights of his tour. They hadn’t even noticed the change that he’d made to his delivery. The only difference was that his act was quite a bit shorter than usual.

So is there any real need for it? Comedians who pepper their shows with words I wouldn’t use in front of my mother aren’t shocking or proving any political point. They’re actually committing the worst sin that any entertainer can commit. They’ve become boring.

Ripon

I overheard a couple of girls in the pub the other day. They weren’t girls in the sugar-and-spice, pre-teenager sense, but girls as in that they were about twenty-two years old. I suppose they were technically young women but at my age any female under thirty is still a girl. But even old dogs can learn new tricks and these ‘girls’ taught me one. It was one of those lessons that I particularly love to learn. They taught me a new word.

‘I got a fantastic Ripon in Matalan yesterday’, one proudly said to the other. Now being male and in my late forties I had no idea what a Ripon was. That’s not really unexpected though, given that it took me a while to work out what a Matalan was. I presumed that a Ripon was some kind of handbag or maybe a skirt named after the hotbed of haute couture where it was first designed. I’m not really au fait with women’s fashion. Or men’s fashion either come to that. I tend to just stumble around in the dark of a morning, grab whatever’s lying on the floor and that’s my attire for the day. If it fits then I know it belongs to me and the Beloved, and that’s good enough for me.

What the other girl said explained the situation though. ‘I love it when you get a Ripon, it’s nice to get your own back. They try to rip you off so much these days.’

Ah! So it wasn’t Ripon, the cathedral city of North Yorkshire. She used the term rip-on  to mean the opposite of rip-off, a bargain, a transaction where she got more value for money than she’d expected.

I loved it. Isn’t the English language magnificent?

© Shaun Finnie 2012

There's A Light

Surely somewhere in the world somebody is having their driest year ever in 2012? We here in England are having our wettest for decades. It stands to reason therefore that, if the scientists are right when they say that there’s a finite amount of water in the earth’s seas, rivers, lakes and atmosphere, somebody somewhere must be having a terrible drought.

If they could give me a call, I have some buckets for them.

Similarly, I only ever hear on the news this year about how much my country owes to other countries. Then I hear that those other countries all have huge debts of their own. Looking at various economic reports I’m hard pressed to find a country that isn’t making repayments to others. So surely there’s a way of cancelling some of these circuitous contra-debts? They just seem to go round and round gathering interest, on and on forever.

One thing that doesn’t go on and on forever (see what I did there?) is the humble light bulb. The average life of the old fashioned (to us in Europe, that is) incandescent bulbs was supposed to be around a thousand hours. The newer, energy efficient bulbs are much more expensive than their incandescent ancestors but their makers claim that they can last ten times longer or more. Keep in mind though that these are the same makers who included ‘planned obsolescence’ into the filament design meaning that the bulbs had an artificially shortened lifespans. Allegedly.

I bring this up because I had to change a bulb this week. I turned the light at the top of my stairs on and *poof* it blinked out. I didn’t really enjoy standing on a wobbly chair at the top of the stairs (especially as it was on precisely the part with the uneven floorboards) but hey, some things just have to be done.

It was quite a sad event actually as this bulb had become something of a talking point, almost an old friend. We’ve lived in our house for well over twenty years now and he’s been there, shining brightly with a slight green tint (can you even get tinted bulbs any more?) for all that time – and presumably for quite some time before. I can’t imagine that the previous owners would have put new light bulbs in just before selling up. He cast a slightly sickly glow but we've become used to it, almost attached to it over the decades. But now he shines in a better place.

Now I know it’s not in the same league as a bulb that’s been shining almost non-stop in a San Francisco fire station since 1908 but still, I was pretty impressed by its longevity. And by its matching pair which is still working fine at the other end of my first floor landing. That one’s been there for the same length of time too and is still going strong. So now part of my landing lit sickly green, the other a slow-to-awaken bright cream glow of new eco-brilliance. Hmmm….

In memory of the dear departed illuminator I thought I’d close this week with my Beloved’s favourite joke. It’s old and it’s not the best in the world but she loves it. A bit like me, really.

Q: How many surrealists does it take to change a light bulb.

A: Fish.

© Shaun Finnie 2012

The Mutants Are Coming

How do you fancy making a snowman that looks like Sir Alex Ferguson this winter?

Assuming that – unlike last year – we actually have enough snow to make the job viable, it’ll be easy. All you need to do is make a regular snowman and then, when it’s time for putting his nose in place, pop down to any good grocers. I went to my local Asda. Those of you who are posh can go to a farmers market and those who aren’t pricked by a social conscience might find Tesco is good too. They should all sell what you want though.

Buy a purple carrot, that’ll do the trick nicely.

We got a pack of mixed carrots this week. There were some normal-looking orange ones and some that were pale yellow, the colour of turnips. The white ones looked more like parsnips than carrots yet tasted disappointingly normal, but by far the most interesting were the purple ones. They weren’t purple as in ‘slightly tinted’ but purple like the colour of boiled beetroot. Proper purple. They even discoloured the water when we boiled them too. The best bit was when we cut one open though. Through its centre were points of a much more carroty orange, like a starburst all the way through it. It was like a carrot in disguise but with bits of it’s true self peeking through. Beautiful.

And this got me thinking. What else is there that the general public don’t know about? Orange cauliflowers, black apricots, yellow and red striped tomatoes. Big tomatoes that are square so they fit onto sandwiches better when sliced. These all exist and so do many others. We should try them out I guess. My philosophy is to try everything twice: once to see if you like it and again just to make sure that you weren’t just unlucky with a bad batch the first time. But not garlic of any kind, of course. That would be just plain wrong, like iced coffee.

So today’s challenge is for us all to look at things in new ways, re-evaluate things that we’ve come to know and have maybe become a little bored of. Like our jobs, our relationships or our homes.

And carrots.

© Shaun Finnie 2012

Ring Out the Bells!

Are you now or have you ever been a man? Have you ever been associated with men in any way, shape or form?

If so, you’ll know what absolute spineless jessies most men can be when it comes to visiting the doctor. They can be the biggest, roughest, toughest manly man ever to walk the earth but when it comes to getting themselves checked out medically they turn to quivering wrecks and go into petulant teenage sulks – ‘I’m not going and you can’t make me, so there’.

I know this because I am a man.

My hearing used to be so good that I could hear the waspy buzz of a Pizza Hut delivery moped half a mile away. I could have poured the beers and got the napkins ready (have I mentioned that I’m posh, for around here at least?) before he’d dinged, let alone donged. And I could certainly hear well enough to work out that I couldn’t hear my Beloved giving me a list of household jobs that needed doing.

But many moons have sailed the sky since then and years of gig going and the onset of middle age have begun to take their toll. I’m losing my hearing but I’m finding other things.

I’m finding that every newsreader in the world mumbles.
I’m finding that I can’t enjoy the fun of screaming abuse at foreign PPI claim salesmen called ‘Steve’ (allegedly) because my phone appears to ring less and less.
I’m finding that modern singers are rubbish because you can’t tell what they’re saying, not like back in my day.

Worst of all I’m finding that Roger Whittaker has taken up residence inside my right ear. There’s a constant whistling in it (young readers, you might want to search out the least-trendy old person you know for an explanation). Or perhaps it’s a high pitched humming. Or maybe it’s the constant ringing of a bell. Whatever it is, it’s damned annoying and it’s called tinnitus.

Some say that I should go to the doctors with it but I’ve been reading on the internet – why should I talk to one G.P. when I have the shared knowledge of the entire world at my fingertips? – and I found that there’s no cure for this particular ailment. Worse still, it’s often linked to hearing loss. Great. So not only will I have what appears to be the world’s only bee that can hum in the G two octaves above middle C stuck in my ear but odds are that I’m going to get deafer too. It’s enough to make a grumpy old man even grumpier.

But still, I should look on the bright side. It’s great for three a.m. on Friday and Saturday nights, the time when the local young guns shout their drunken goodbyes down the street. They used to annoy me and keep me awake for hours but now  I can just roll with my good ear to the pillow and zone them out behind the bells and whistles in my right one.

And I wouldn’t mind the ringing in my ear so much if it were some Christmas classic. All together now, “Ding! Dong! Merrily on high….”  –  what, still too early?

© Shaun Finnie 2012

Dedication's What You Need

Lots of brownie points go to anyone who can remember where today’s title comes from.

It’s true though – if you want to be the best and if you want to beat the rest, dedication’s what you need. This summer’s Olympics and Paralympics reinforced that lesson. Those men and women have spent many long years in single-minded devotion to their goal. Credit to all of them, however well or otherwise they did.

There’s an initiative that comes around this time every year. Some go for Movember – the growing of a moustache throughout the month of November to raise funds and awareness for male cancer charities. If anyone that you know is participating in this event then I’d urge you to support him in their worthwhile cause. It’ll make you feel much better when you’re laughing at his feeble attempts at face fur.

I’m not doing the Movember thing though. Whenever I’ve tried to cultivate a moustache it comes up patchy and multi-coloured. It’s like I have a mangy tortoiseshell cat’s tail on my upper lip. Not attractive. Instead I’m taking part in the lesser known and lesser-pronounceable NaNoWriMo; National Novel Writing Month.

The idea is that it encourages those of us who lack commitment to a single project or might be easily distracted from our writing to sit down and just get the damned thing written. The goal is to produce at least a first draft of a 50,000 word novel during the month of November. That’s about 1,700 words a day, every day. To give you an idea of how much that is, this blog is 576 words long. I can knock these stream-of-consciousness things out quite easily but when it comes to prose with convincing human characters and a satisfying plotline, well they can sometimes be like pulling teeth. My interest starts to wane and I wander off to a web browser in search of obscure research or try do a bit more work on my family tree. Or shoot some virtual zombies. Anything to avoid the intimidating blank page.

I’m usually happy to produce a thousand quality words in a day though; that’s a decent enough amount. But I love a challenge. As they used to say in an office where I once worked, stretch objectives help you to grow. If it stretches me and I think I can have a go at it, even if it’s a little daunting, then just bring it on!

That’s why NaNoWriMo seems to be working for me. I know that I can write 2,000 words in a day, I’ve done it before when the muse has been whispering in my ear and my fingers have been moving in a tippiddy-tap blur over the keyboard. But to keep that up over a month? Well, there’s the challenge. We’ll see.

I’ve had ideas about an adventure thriller set in a theme park for some time now and have made a few aborted stabs at it, but NaNoWriMo seems to be the vehicle I need to kickstart this project. After seven days I have eighteen hundred words in my file, and I’m regularly backing it up just in case. You never know. It would be a shame to lose them because I’m actually quite pleased with not only the quantity but the quality of the words on screen.

Even if some of them are ‘this section needs rewriting’ or ‘expand this bit!’

© Shaun Finnie 2012

The Goose is Getting Fat

I'm a child of the sixties, which means that I spent much of my formative years in the era of that much maligned musical genre, glam rock. I love a bit of Sweet, Mud or T. Rex, but even I have my limits. And I'm not just talking about the social unacceptability of admitting a liking for Gary Glitter's musical output. 

No, much as I love them I don't want to listen to Slade or Wizzard's Christmas classics while some people are still trying to plan their summer holidays. Like the first cuckoo of spring, Christmas can be said to start when Noddy Holder first bellows "It's Chrissssssssssss-maaaaaaaassssss!!!" from behind the Halloween trimmings in Clinton's Cards. This year he started earning his royalties in the middle of September.

The preparation for Christmas seems to start earlier and earlier each year when kids start emailing Santa the order number for their most coveted toys from the Argos catalogue, but it seems to come around with more frequency too. I could have sworn that it was only ten weeks ago since last Christmas and yet, like Ken Dodd's farewell tours, another one's here already. It seems as though nowhere near a year has passed since the last one.

I have a theory about this. I think that the frequency of Christmases doesn't change as we get older, but the way that we store them in our heads does.

Remember how, when you're very young, summers seem to last forever? The summers in your forties, fifties and beyond go by in the blink of an eye but those when you numbered your age in single figures? They seem to stretch to the horizon and beyond even though logically they can only have lasted the same three months maximum as those of your later years.

I think that it's because our brains only have a finite amount of space in which we can hold 'Summer Memories', like a fixed-size hard drive. So when we're (say) seven years old we can stick massive amounts of detail about the few summers that we can remember in there. We hold on to the smell of a newly painted shed, the lazy drone of a honey bee, the sickly sweet taste of a lollipop. As we age that same hard drive in our brains has to try to hang on to the tiny special memories of tens of summers. It can't do it, so it compresses them, making them all seem the same. A generic summer with just the very special parts standing out. And as they all merge into one big memory then they seem to come around with alarming swiftness.

And, as it is with summer, so with Christmas. An adult lifespan's-worth of them all crammed into a memory box designed for just those magnificent Christmases of childhood when all we had to worry about was how Father Christmas would manage to get into our house since the previous owner had removed the chimney a decade before our birth (don't worry kids; he has a special key).

I tried this theory out on my Beloved. I figured that she'd smile, nod and agree that this must be precisely how our memories work, I must have stumbled upon the reason why we think that there's less time between Christmases now than there used to be.

After all these years together you'd think I'd know better. She just laughed and said, 'No love, they only seem to come around quicker because you're getting old.'

Ah. Maybe that's it.

© Shaun Finnie 2012

Divide and Conquer

“Come on, Barnsley! Come on, Barnsley!”

It was Saturday and it was just after three o’clock and young men were bellowing their support for their team. Normally I'd see nothing wrong with that. I’ve spent time at Oakwell, the quaint little football stadium just outside of Barnsley town centre, and I understand the stylised tribal warfare that is the modern game. It's a safe (unless Leeds are involved) outlet for the passions and rages of clans protecting their own turf against out of town invaders. All good clean fun.

The problem was though that it was three in the morning, not the afternoon. And the guys that were doing the shouting weren’t at the ground, they were walking down my street.

As far as I know, no Barnsley F.C. representatives were involved but I don't give a hoot. Actually, as there are quite a few owls living within hooting distance of my house, I'd prefer a hoot or two from them to the loud and rather industrial football chants that dragged me from my slumbers.

So what's the correct response in this situation? It's not listed in my copy of Debrett's. The etiquette was simple in the old days when I was young and dinosaurs walked the earth. There was usually a guzunder close to hand…  (congratulations and apologies to anyone old enough to understand that one).

Should I have politely requested that they keep their noise levels down a bit? I can imagine the response to that would have been quite pithy and Anglo-Saxon. Maybe I should have rhetorically asked them if they knew what time it was? I suspect that - Barnsley Best Bitter being what it is -they neither know nor cared.

I don't need to tell you what I did though, do I? You guessed it: I waited patiently for them to go on their very merry way and lay there for a while before insomnia got the better of me. That's why I'm typing this in the early hours of Saturday morning. I know that in a few hours I'll feel tired again but right now I'm at the top of my game (which isn't high enough for me to get vertigo but it's the best I get) so I may as well make the most of it. And what do you know? I've been churning words out, my fingers flying over the keyboard and even occasionally hitting the letters that I want them too. Perhaps I should put a light on.

I've always done my best work first thing in the morning but I never knew that I could be so productive in the very small hours until recently. This idea of waking up and getting things done in the middle of the night then having a nap later is certainly not what most of us would call normal, but I've found that it works for me whether I want it to or not. Is it wrong? Apparently not. Some academics argue that this segmented sleep is the way that we human animals should get our rest naturally. Apparently we're designed to nod off earlier than most of us do, sleep for a few hours then wake to do something around two or three o'clock before heading back to bed for another couple of hours kip. Indeed it was the norm up until the 19th century so perhaps I'm 'right' in my sleeping patterns and the rest of the western working world is 'wrong'? Hmm, perhaps.

I think it's also quite likely that my sedentary lifestyle combined with a creative mind-set leaves my brain racing while my body hasn't been tired out. I should get some balance and some exercise.

But that's something to consider tomorrow. Right now, if you'll excuse me, I'm off for some sleep. Part two.

© Shaun Finnie 2012

Mostly Autumn

Just like Jeff Wayne’s nameless departed lover, I get a real buzz from kicking my way through autumn’s golden gown. I most definitely love this time of year. There is no way that any fallen leaves in my path would ever go undisturbed.

The sudden sharp downturn in the temperature, the early dusks, the primal thrills of Halloween and bonfires – this is by far my favourite season. But apart from clogging up gutters and drains with its wet and rotting leaves, what’s the point of autumn really? When you look closely the other seasons have a definite place in nature. Autumn? Well it just sort of fills the windy gap between the heady delights of summer and the semi-hibernation of winter doesn’t it?

I mean, spring is really useful, I get the point of it. It’s the season of new birth. I can pretty much guarantee that if you were asked to think of an image to sum up spring then you’d conjure up a picture of new lambs happily bouncing about in a hilly green field. They’d almost certainly be gambolling. Has any other creature ever gambolled? It’s like the two words – ‘gambolling’ and ‘lamb’ – are joined at the hip, like ‘lying’ and ‘politician’.

The winter season is a time of cleansing, of killing off the weak and old to make way for all that new growth in springtime. That’s perhaps not such a good thing in nursing homes but really useful in our fields and woodlands. When the trees are stripped bare of their leaves they let the light in to the forest floor where all the nasty creepy creatures that we don’t like to think about can do the kind of work that we want to picture even less – most of it involving chomping on something that’s decaying. It might not be pretty but don’t knock it. We all have to earn a living somehow.

Summer is a celebration, a time for growth and fattening up of all things before the harvest to come at its end. Assuming that summer hasn’t been rained off (and that’s a big assumption) then crops grow tall, people north of Watford try to work out just what the heck to do with Pimms and I try my best to dodge salads for the two weeks or so that we see the sun in England. Summer’s fine, I understand summer.

But autumn? I can’t see where autumn fits into this cycle so neatly. Spring is birth, summer is growth, winter is death. It’s all nice and neat.

I have a theory though. Perhaps autumn’s just there for me to go out and enjoy? Maybe it’s sole purpose is to let us have fun in nature’s playground when it’s not too hot, not too cold and not too crowded. And you know what? That’s good enough for me.

Thanks, autumn.

© Shaun Finnie 2012

All In The Family

We made a big breakthrough this week while researching our family trees. We discovered that my Beloved (whose family have never moved far from a little village near to where I live now) and one of my closest friends (whose ancestors also lived in the same village for centuries) are related. Very distantly related, it’s true, but related all the same. It turns out that he’s the great-grand-nephew of the husband of my Beloved’s great-grand-aunt. On their fathers’ sides. I’m not sure if this knowledge is going to bring them closer but I think it might mean that they’re ineligible to marry.

Why do so many of us feel the need to trace our family trees? Genealogy is the second most popular topic searched for on the web (I think that you can guess what the first is). A recent study found that 84 million of us worldwide are actively searching for our ancestors. Those who want to get serious about it can spend hundreds of hours, pounds and miles tracking down that elusive great-great-great-aunt, about whom the only bit of information they know is that she was the sister of a boy named Valentine and she died in infancy sometime around 1749. Give or take a decade.

And on the other hand why do some of us not care at all? The past is the past, they say, and a family tree is just a list of names and dates, dull and boring like some kind of trainspotting with gravestones? Some people also don’t have the blokey-collector attitude required to spend hours tracking down the missing item, although the highest demographic of family historians are ladies in their late-middle age. Maybe it’s a generational thing too? Certainly more of us start taking an interest in researching our bloodline as we get older.

Not everybody wants to share their family information either. Many people have asked, ‘Tell me about your grandparents and aunties, Granny’, only to be met with pursed lips and a reply of ‘Oh you don’t want to hear about that old stuff. Now come and cut my toenails for me, there’s a good lad’.

My Mum once told me that I shouldn't ask questions about the family’s history if I wasn't prepared for the answers. I haven’t found any particularly juicy stories yet but you only have to watch a couple of episodes of ‘Who Do You Think you Are?’ to know that most family’s cupboards hold a couple of unexpected skeletons. It’s the historical equivalent of ‘Does my bum look big in this?’

Anyhow, so my Beloved is related to my mate. Me? As far as I know I’m not related to the actor Albert or the football legend Tom, even if they had ever learned to spell their surname correctly. But I suspect that I may have famous blood in my veins, even if it’s severely diluted by generations and beer. Some people dream of being related to a pop star or a supermodel perhaps? I’m aiming for one of the angriest, grudge-holding geniuses that this fair land has ever produced.

My mother’s family hail from a tiny village in Lincolnshire. Even now it’s not much more than two streets, a general store and a couple of derelict buildings where the pub and the post office used to be. In the seventeenth century – when just  about every second servant in the area bore my family name and the squire’s offspring – it was even smaller, the only building of any note being the manor house where little Isaac Newton was born. Now in those days people didn't have Sky Movies or X-Box to pass the winter evenings. They had to make their own fun. I reckon that I’m just one broomstick-jump away from grafting my tree to that of the country’s most famous fruit-header. How d’you like them apples?

It’s nice to see where we come from but ultimately I guess that those of us who research our family’s history don’t do it for ourselves. We do it for our kids, our grand-kids, our nieces and nephews born and yet to be. We do it so that they will know, long after we’re gone, that we were here and we cared. And so did those who had gone before us.

© Shaun Finnie 2012

Dream a Little Dream

 “I’d love to be rich.”

“I wish I were famous.”

“I have this dream of being a star.”

How many times do we hear people say things like that? How they want to be world renowned for something, whether it’s as a musician, a sports person, a writer or just ‘a celebrity’.

It’s good to have aspirations and (putting the selfish nature of these particular ones aside for a moment) we should all aim to be the best person that we can. Ambition is good, but there’s just one thing wrong with these statements.

Wishing, dreaming and hoping won’t make things happen.

There is not a single successful person in the world whose wishes dreams and hopes came true simply by sitting on the sofa and wishing, dreaming or hoping. Every single one of them got up off their collective behinds and lived their dreams.

Several times recently I’ve heard people say that lack of money or opportunities is stopping them reaching their goals. Do they really think that Jessica Ennis, 50 Cent, Richard Branson or Helen Mirren (replace with your own idol as you see fit) had fame and fortune handed to them on a plate? Or did they put in years of hard work, unseen and unrecognised, before becoming an overnight success?

If you want to be the best at your chosen discipline then follow their lead. Think of the things that will get you the life that you want and start to make them happen. Nobody will do it for you. If there are obstacles in your way, remove them. You can do it. Remember that hero of yours? They did it. Why can’t you?

This is going to sound hard but the truth is that in many cases the person stopping you from being the success that you want to be is you.

“But I need some cash to help me start up!” Then stop watching reruns of Star Trek and go and find a second or third job to earn that start-up cash.

“But I need a talent scout or agent to recognise my ability!” Then get out and show them your work, either physically or by mail. And don’t just target one or two potential customers either but tens, hundreds, thousands of them if that’s what it takes to get your talent noticed.

“But I don’t know how to….” Then teach yourself. That’s part of the job.

“Stop being so hard on me!” Sorry. No. If you’re going to put your work out in a public arena you’re going to hear much worse criticism than this. You and your work will be savaged. That’s how it is. Live with it or quit.

It isn’t easy. Nothing worthwhile is. That’s why there is only one Number One in any given field.

Dreamers dream. Workers win the prize. Most of us get the success we deserve.

 

© Shaun Finnie 2012

Self Service

In the olden days things were simple. A writer wrote something that they though other people might be interested in reading and they sent it off to as many agents and publishers as they could thing of (or find listed in The Writers’ and Artists’ Yearbook). Then they sat back, bit their nails and waited for the rejection letters to pour in, which they inevitably did.

If they were very, very lucky someone would print their book and promote it, they would get a small advance and manage to pay their food and lodgings just long enough to see them through the writing of their next manuscript. And the cycle would start again.

These days things are different.

The best thing about the internet is that anyone can now see his or her work in print.
The worst thing about the internet is that anyone can now see his or her work in print.

It’s an oft-used cliché but it’s true. Everyone who feels that they have a book inside them can now log on to one of the many online publishers and make an e-book available for sale within minutes. With just a little more effort they can produce a proper paperback, or even a hardback – which puts them on a par with that Dickens fellow, doesn’t it?

Many would argue that self-publishing is basically worthless, that no author of any value would have to resort to self-publishing as the quality of their work will shine through the dross in the slush pile at a publishing house.

I’m not so sure. There’s some truth in that but surely luck and timing play their part? And won’t some writers always prefer to have full artistic control of their work? Self-publishing is certainly a way to keep that, but the price is that you then have to do all the promotion and publicity yourself as well.

And of course self-publishing is nothing new. It’s been going on since the Catholic Church got their buddy Johannes Gutenberg to knock up some bibles for them, a small vanity press project that brought printed material to (the) masses.

Way back when I was young and dinosaurs walked the earth I self-published my own magazine called ‘Cult Movies’. I was fourteen and didn’t know that there was any other way. I wrote it, printed it – after negotiating a bulk business rate on the photocopier at my local Post Office – and made it available to the masses via the small ads in the back of the NME and other youth-culture magazines of the day.

I learned about sales and what to do when you don’t have any. I learned how to meet deadlines and I learned how to self-promote. Truthfully I wasn’t much good at any of these things – ‘Cult Movies’ folded after just five issues – but the theory was sound.

I now have five self-published titles available and copies of them sell every single day. I can’t tell you how gratifying that is, that people who I don’t know are spending their hard-earned cash on something that I’ve created.

Now, if only it was as financially gratifying as the work of a guy called John Locke. He’s sold over a million copies of his self-published books.

Good luck to him. I think I need him to teach me the art of self-promotion.

© Shaun Finnie 2012

Categorically Speaking

I’m fat. I’m grey haired. I’m in my forties. I’m English. I’m a Sheffield United fan.

Does any of the above make you automatically like me any less? (I’ll excuse you if it’s the Sheffield United part. Some things can’t be helped) I hope not. In these so-called enlightened days I’d hope that most of us would be able to see past the superficial and make our own judgements (unless we’ve brainwashed by some ‘religion’ into thinking that all people who think differently to us are evil – I still can’t get my head round that one).

Still with me? Good. So you can think for yourself. And you read stuff. I know you do, you’ve made it this far.

But what kind of books do you read? What sections of a bookshop do you automatically walk towards? What if a book has a pink cover bearing a cartoon of a young woman walking a poodle. Or a rocket ship blasting off into space. Or a couple making use of some bondage gear. Would you even take it from the shelf or would you just dismiss it automatically because you already know that kind of thing isn’t for you?

Book covers are designed to tempt us into thinking ‘I’ve read and enjoyed something that looked similar before, therefore I will probably like this book too’. But it’s all too easy to fall into their idle trap and become complacent. We see certain types of books as being aimed specifically at a particular demographic and sometimes find it difficult to think outside of this box. But why should that be? We’re smart folks aren’t we? We can think for ourselves? Why can’t we enjoy writing that ‘they’ won’t aim at us?

And isn’t automatically dismissing a particular genre of book (and even, by extension, giving books any genre label) a form of discrimination? Enlightened people don’t do discrimination. Suggest that war stories or sci-fi are just for men and love stories are solely the domain for women and you really should be slapped with a sexist label quicker than you can say ‘Caitlin Moran’.

So why do many of us pull our noses up and say ‘Fantasy books? Urgh, no. I can’t be doing with trolls and such’ or ‘crime fiction? It’s all clichés isn’t it?’ even though we’ve never actually read any of the objects of our derision? Apparently we just know we won’t like it so we don’t even try.

I thought I’d left all that behind in my teenage years – ‘I can’t listen to that stuff, it’s Mod music. Look – there’s a kid wearing a parka on the cover, so I definitely won’t like it’. I never understood that kind of argument any more than the one that that haughtily says ‘of course, the finest science fiction is allegorical in nature’. Huh? That’s as idiotic as saying that the erotica works at its best when it has something to say about the socio-economic condition of Eastern Europe since the fall of the Berlin Wall. Where’s the difference between an ignorant person saying ‘I don’t like westerns’ and ‘I don’t like ginger haired people’?

Book readers are supposedly intelligent people so act like one. Don’t take pride in your total rejection of a particular style of writing. That’s prejudice, pure and simple. Have an open mind. Expand your horizons. Read a different kind of book or better still, get out of the mind-set of pigeonholing literature and just think of all books as just, well, books. There are so many authors whose work deserves at least a look.

Graham Green and Günter  Grass. Jasper Fforde or Katie Fforde. HP Lovecraft and MC Beaton. Even the wildly differing political views of Ayn Rand and George Orwell. They’re all classics if you’re prepared to step outside your normal reading habits and give them a go. That’s why reading groups are such a great idea. They force their members out of their comfort zones. Sometimes it works, sometimes it backfires horribly. But at least it exposes the reader to something new, and that’s always a good thing.

It’s International Book week. Go on. Try something new.

© Shaun Finnie 2012

“mmmm….” (crunch) “ow!”

There are some phrases guaranteed to strike fear into the human heart.  “The tax inspector will see you now” is one, as are “should it really be that colour?” and “We need to talk”. And also there’s the one that I’ve been forced to say this week; “It’s no good, I’ll have to go to the dentist”.

Kit Kat Chunky has to be the best chocolate bar in the world. It does exactly what it says on the label – it’s a Kit Kat but it’s chunky. Fantastic. They’re especially tasty straight from the fridge. Unfortunately that makes them a little more like yummy concrete than normal, so my usual “mmmm” of pleasure became “mmmm….” (crunch) “ow!”  The chocolaty deliciousness melted away, leaving jagged pain behind as I found the remnants of my broken tooth.

I’ve since had it fixed but the dentist made it quite clear that my days of biting through hard things are over. I’m to be careful what I nibble on for the rest of my life. Chomping through a hard pear (or indeed a cool Kit Kat) is a pleasure that is now in my past.

I’d heard it said of old people many times – “A nightly tot of whiskey is one of his few remaining pleasures” – but this was the first time that I can remember one of my own personal pleasures being placed firmly in my past. I have never before noticed something that I like becoming something from my past. It has happened though, obviously. Things slip in and out of your pleasure zone as age and fashion dictate. For example, I no longer actively seek out the pleasures of sucking my thumb, skateboarding or lusting after Susan Stranks from ‘Magpie’. Well, she is seventy-three now.

I guess the moral of this story is, if you like doing something then do it now. Don’t wait until tomorrow because you never know what tomorrow may bring.

For me, it brings the small change of cutting up my Chunky Kit Kats from now on. I’m nothing if not adaptable.

© Shaun Finnie 2012  –  follow Shaun on Twitter  @ShaunFinnie 

A Fresh Start

I don’t know about where you live but the children around here went back to school this week. I saw some of the younger ones trooping past my house, clutching tightly to their mums’ hands. Some seemed excited, some a bit nervous; all were on the verge of a new start.

It was a same at the bus stop around the corner with the older kids. Pushing, jostling, fighting, texting, doing what kids in or approaching their teens do. Every one of their young lives had changed in the last few weeks of summer. All were advancing a school year or in many cases moving up to a brand new school. Some were starting formal education for the first time. They all had different histories and different things to look forwards to but the were all the same in one crucial respect: they’d all grown up a little.

On the same day that I saw this our national news showed images of people in Belfast hurling missiles and abuse at police and other people who have different views to their own – mostly religious ones. Then they showed images of people in the Middle East doing pretty much the same thing.

So in the twenty-first century we’re still playing the ‘my god’s better than your god’ game? And the people involved think that they’re showing the world how great their god is by attacking anyone who thinks differently? I’m shaking my head in genuine bewilderment as I type this.

I’m no history student but it seems to me that religious intolerance has been the cause of more wars than any sneaky land grabs or political assassinations. And we all know who to blame, don’t we? It’s ‘the other guy’, the one who looks strange or has customs that seem entirely alien to us. It’s easy to look at a ranting fanatic and think that he’s an idiot who should simply take a chill pill. But isn’t that thought in itself a kind of religious intolerance? And aren’t supposedly-enlightened atheists and agnostics just as guilty of this thought crime? Casting my mind way back to my own schooldays, I was taught that The Crusades supposedly ended around seven hundred years ago. Looking at the state of the world today I’m not so sure.

Those children walking down my street showed signs of growing up. It seems that many alleged grown-ups are yet to follow suit.

© Shaun Finnie 2012  –  follow Shaun on Twitter  @ShaunFinnie

Shaun Finnie is the author of ‘Make Easy Money from Writing’ and several other books – available from Amazon now.

Starman

As you may have heard Neil Armstrong, the world’s most reluctant hero, died last week.

Armstrong was the first person to walk on the moon, a true giant of exploration, yet he hated talking about it. In his view he was just doing his job and it was no more interesting than yours or mine. He was one of only twelve people to have stepped on the lunar surface. When I was a boy sending people to our satellite was commonplace – there was a new launch every few months, all heading to the moon and, crucially, returning safely. In my childish naivety I imagined it would always be like this and so, apparently, did they. When Gene Cernan, the last human to stand on the lunar surface, was preparing to leave for home he said ‘I take man's last step from the surface, back home for some time to come – but we believe not too long into the future’. But it hasn’t turned out that way. In December it will be forty years since Cernan came back from the moon and there are no definite plans to go back even now.

The ‘seventies were a magical time; a period that many believe was the peak of man’s technical ability. We went to the moon. We flew from London to New York in three and a half hours on Concorde. Since then we seem to have started looking at the short term cost of these kind of engineering marvels instead of the long term benefits.

After Armstrong’s death I looked at the BBC’s news website. Sure enough, they reported it well as you’d expect from such an august organisation. The article was their second most-viewed internet page that day. But what was the most-viewed? What did visitors to the BBC site want to read about more than the news of the passing of the greatest pioneer of my lifetime?

Louise Clarke, a dancer from the 1970’s ‘Top of the Pops’ dance troupe Pan’s People, had died on the same day. More people wanted to read about that apparently.

This week there are different kinds of heroes performing miracles in the Paralympic Games. As we watch them pushing the boundaries of human ability and endeavour shouldn’t we all ask ourselves: what have I done to improve our world – and ourselves – today?

Neil Armstrong, 1930 – 2012, RIP

Louise Clarke, 1949 – 2012, RIP

© Shaun Finnie 2012  –  follow Shaun on Twitter  @ShaunFinnie

Shaun Finnie is the author of ‘Make Easy Money from Writing’ – available from Amazon now.

Innocence Revisited

I absolutely adored being young. Don’t get me wrong, being a grown up isn’t too shabby either but the halcyon days of my youth held a special kind of precious vitality, when every new experience was magical and exciting. That freshness is almost impossible for any of us to regain in later years. I loved every minute of it.

I loved the long lazy summer days that may or may not have existed in the numbers that I recall. I loved the safe, happy cocoon of my family home that nothing as mundane as money or health worries could invade. I loved the fresh taste of the air and the cooling shock of the crystal clear stream that ran through the woods near home.

In my memory/imagination every day of my pre-teen years was filled with clear blue skies and sticky tarmac, the soft buzz of honeybees and the scent of Granny’s bread, fresh from the oven.

Running back from the corner shop with a melting ice-lolly in one hand and Mum’s change clasped tightly in the other. The whole family eating together around the dining table before all sitting down to watch television – together of course, though Granny would only occasionally raise an eye from her knitting. These memories have a sepia glow around them in my mind’s eye, as if plucked from a ‘my golden years’ TV special.

Did these things happen as I recall? Honestly, I can’t say. Probably not. It was forty years ago and my memory has never been all that great, but there must be a grain of truth in at least some of them, I don’t have a good enough imagination to make it all up in such detail.

A few days ago I went to see a film that, for the first time in years, brought those same feelings rushing to the surface again, a clear nostalgic stream of innocent fun. It had no hidden agendas, no post-modernism, no irony, no eco-friendly moralising or other political message. And no explosions. There were no multi-level jokes that were aimed at one specific demographic but would go over the head of another. No clever knowing winks to the camera, no sneering at those who ‘just don’t get it’. Nothing to exclude anyone.

It was a Disney film. The latest offering from their Pixar division, to be more precise, called ‘Brave’. You may have heard of it and immediately dismissed it as a kid’s film. I’m sure that most kids will love it. But I can’t see why adults can’t enjoy it as well, if they allow themselves to.

Sure, the gas bill still needed paying when I came out of the cinema. My dodgy knee still hurt too, that hadn’t gone away. But I had forgotten about them for a short time and I had a big silly grin on my face at the end of it.

‘Brave’ won’t solve the problems of the real world because it doesn’t try to. It just entertains in a way that we can all enjoy if we only let our guards down for a couple of hours. It’s not a nostalgia trip – even I’m not old enough to remember the medieval Scotland that the film is set in. It’s just good clean fun for all the family, as the cliché goes. That’s the same ‘Good clean fun’ that seems to have become a dirty word (or three) these days – something to be sneered at, something that we don’t need because we know better in this enlightened age. But do we? Have we adults (and maybe our less-innocent children too) lost the ability to smile at something just because it’s nice?

I left the cinema feeling happy. What’s so wrong with that?

© Shaun Finnie 2012  –  follow Shaun on Twitter  @ShaunFinnie
Shaun Finnie is the author of ‘The Disneylands That Never Were’.  See shaunfinnie.com  for details.

"We Can Be Heroes"

Despite having his song “Heroes” used as an unofficial anthem for the London 2012 Olympic Games, David Bowie declined the offer to sing it at the opening ceremony. I’ve been a huge fan of Bowie since my childhood so his non-appearance disappointed me but t wasn’t really a surprise. Pageantry, nationalistic jingoism and royalty have never been important to Bowie (as proven by his two rejections of offers of a knighthood).

Kate Bush was invited to play too but she also refused. Presumably this was due to her well-documented stage fright and being an intensely private person. The Rolling Stones were apparently high on the wish-list of the producers of the closing ceremony as well but they didn’t want to do it. And the Sex Pistols turned down their request to play because… well, they’re the Sex Pistols. Conformity was never Mr Rotten’s strong point.

The Spice Girls, George Michael and The Who all turned up and played their party pieces though. It’s worth noting that everyone who did appear was paid just £1 (as contracts must have some monetary value) but the cynics among us would point out that these three have new product available to buy soon so would gain some promotional benefits from their appearance. Indeed George was for some reason allowed to push his new single at this global event. Hey, I guess business is business and they’re perfectly entitled to play their music whenever and wherever they want – or not – but it seems a little sad that many British superstars didn’t want to support this celebration. I know several musicians who would’ve given sold their proverbial grannies to appear at the closing ceremony. I guess when they first started out so would many of those who turned it down this time around. Now that they’ve achieved a huge level of success they apparently no longer feel those same creative urges, the same love for their work. It may not have lessoned but it certainly appears to be a different kind of artistic passion.

Is it the same for authors? If a writer has some success do they then feel pressured to keep regurgitating that same product? It’s well recorded that Sir Arthur Conan Doyle became sick to the teeth of his greatest creation, going on record as saying ““If in one hundred years I am only known as the man who invented Sherlock Holmes, then I will consider my life a failure”. I find his attitude towards his famous detective so sad, that a literary genius should feel so overshadowed by his once-loved character that he wrote to his mother: "I think of slaying Holmes... and winding him up for good and all. He takes my mind from better things."  And he did, he threw Holmes over a waterfall to his death only to feel forced by the ensuing public outcry to resurrect him.

Sir Arthur felt that he was trapped by the popularity of his own creation.

So today’s closing questions are these: When an artist (of any kind) releases their work to the world, who owns it? If it becomes popular, does the artist have an obligation to the public to provide more of the same? Or are they entitled to say ‘It’s my pen (plectrum, brush, whatever), I can do what I want with it’?

These are problems that many artists can only dream of.

© Shaun Finnie 2012 ( follow Shaun on Twitter  @ShaunFinnie )

Revenge of the Insomnioid

You hear people talk about ‘suffering’ from insomnia like it’s some kind of tropical disease. ‘You know our Shaun?’ they’ll ask when they meet each other in the street or go for a conspiratorial coffee, ‘He suffers from terrible insomnia’. Then they’ll sadly shake their heads at each other as if insomnia’s some kind of virulent flesh-eating disease or at the very least a strange sort of gaseous internal combustion. I half expect them to go on and explain how ‘our Shaun’ caught this awful affliction while paddling down the Orinoco or perhaps via some ill-advised dalliance in Thailand.

For a writer there are far worse disorders to fall prey to than lack of sleep. And I should know for I, dear reader, am that insomniac. Actually I prefer to call myself an Insomnioid. Note the capital letter for dramatic emphasis. It sounds so much more intense, like I’m the main creature in a dreadful late-seventies David Cronenberg movie. ‘Beware the Insomnioid!’

You might think of me as a sufferer but I don’t think of insomnia as sufferance at all. I see it more as an opportunity. My body obviously doesn’t need that much rest – it’s not as if I’m wearing it out with my sedentary lifestyle – so I may as well make the most of the extra time that my sleeplessness allows me at night-time. I’m getting used to waking in the wee small hours now. Me and Lady Moon are BFFs, don’t you know. And it’s not like having only three or four hours sleep is playing havoc with my work. Far from it. I don’t need physical strength to dig drains or alertness to operate heavy machinery. I’m a writer. I need ideas, and it takes more than a little tiredness won’t stop them. They zoom around inside my head and, in glorious isolation in my upper room, I form them into sentences on a page or a screen for the education or entertainment of people like you. This involves hours of lonely toil with as few interruptions as possible. When the words are flowing and I’m on a roll I can be completely focussed on the job, almost in a hypnotic state for hours, my pen flowing across the notebook or fingers dancing on the keyboard almost without any prompting from my brain. So what better time to do this than when the rest of the world – and the rest of my house in particular – is fast asleep?

I have to admit though that after several nights of little rest it does start to catch up on me. The last few nights have been particularly interesting. On each occasion I’ve gone to sleep shortly after eleven as is usual for me (I have no problem dropping off at all) but have been wide awake at around three or so. Sometimes I’ll try to roll over and at least lay resting in the dark for a while but most times I’ll know that sleep has deserted me for the night so I might as well get up and do something useful. And, if the words are there buzzing about waiting to be captured, that involves writing. If I get tired later I can always have a lunchtime nap but if I ignore the thoughts flying around my head then they may disappear forever.

Take last night for example. When I first looked at the clock the little red numbers said 2:30. That was a bit early to start work even for me. I tried to go back to sleep but the sheep kept moving around, making them difficult to count, so the irritation of that failed ovine numeration exercise removed any possibility of snoozing. And anyhow I had way too many thoughts, all rushing through my brain and crying out to be recorded. So I got out of bed, got myself a hot drink and began to write them down before the drifted away.

But now it’s mid afternoon and I think that I might

© Shaun Finnie 2012

Picture This

I’m not a photographer. I express myself with words, not images. If you want a poem writing for a loved one, something to let them know the emotions trapped within your heart and soul in ways that you could never express on your own then give me a call, we might be able to do a deal. Or if you want a tale of terror to keep you awake at night, then I have confidence that I could show you something disturbing that would give you the willies.

However If you want someone to take a quick snap of you and the kids in front of a stunning vista, give the camera to someone else. Ask me to do it and you’ll end up with a picture of you looking like you’ve been visiting with Madame Guillotine or a shot so blurry that it could’ve been taken by someone drinking their eighth espresso of the day during the world’s foggiest earthquake.

I’m not a photographer; nor am I a graphic designer. I’m a writer and it would be foolish and arrogant of me to think that I can do as good a design job as someone with real talent and experience in the graphic design field.

It’s coming to the point where I need to produce the cover for my next book, the first in an on-going series. Now I have several design packages on my loaded on to my laptop; I actually paid for one of them so as a true Yorkshireman I feel that I should get some commercial use out of it. But would doing the job myself be false economy? I could do a half-decent job with one of my own half-decent ideas and a half-decent photograph. But I’d end up with a half-decent cover that, frankly, anyone with the same kit as me could do.

Perhaps, in these days of financial uncertainty, I should do my bit for the struggling economy and employ someone to do a much better job than I could. Not only would this improve my book’s chances in the marketplace but it would also free up my time to get on with the next in the series.

There’s a lot to be said for knowing your strengths and working to them. But you should know your limitations too, and know when it’s time to put your hand in your pocket.

Any offers?

© Shaun Finnie 2012

Living the Dream

Everybody has a dream. Something that they’d do if money were no object, if they hadn’t made the life choices that they did, or if Kelly Brooke hadn’t taken out that restraining order.

Some of us are fortunate to be able to live our dreams, and mostly our lives turn out much for the better because of it. But everyone who’s ever nodded off after watching a scary movie after an ill-advised late-night cheese sandwich will know that not all dreams are good ones. Some turn out to be nightmares.

They say that you should be careful what you wish for, and some people most definitely dream dreams that are bad for them. Me? I dreamed of being a writer and due to circumstances that were at least partly out of my control (though maybe asking my boss to step outside a pub for a full and frank discussion on his managerial policies wasn’t my finest ever moment) I can now live that dream.

Is it what I expected? Pretty much, yeah. Although there are some things that weren’t in my gameplan. Even in my wildest dreams I knew that there would be a lot of hard work, that I’d spend much of my time wracked with self-doubt, that my mail would be mostly loads of rejections punctuated by the occasional successful publication. But loneliness? No, I hadn’t planned on that one. I should maybe have realised though that churning out a thousand words or so every day is something that you can only do on your own and the more enthralled by it you are, the more isolated you become, but I didn’t expect that I could go days on end without talking to anyone, that I’d become so wrapped up in my work that I don’t even realise that there’s an outside world to interact with.

I didn’t imagine that I’d start losing track of days either. My Beloved keeps asking why I’m always asking her what day is it. It’s because, from up here in my writing garret, they’re all the same. Wake, work, eat, sleep – and dream of stories.

But you know what? Whatever the downsides, every day that I spend writing is a heck of a lot better than being in a nine-to-five (and sometimes well beyond) office. Having the freedom to do the work that I want, when I want and being able to write wherever my imagination and my notebook take me nothing short of magnificent. Especially on days when the sun is shining.

Now I don’t know about where you are, but today is one of those days. So you’ll have to excuse me – I’m logging off and going for a walk. I’m working in the woods today.


© Shaun Finnie 2012

Ideas Man

‘Where do you get your ideas from?’

That must be the question that all authors across the years have been asked more than any other. And like many other writers, it’s the question that I have the most trouble answering. I have several stock responses, but none of them seem to fit the bill…

·         ‘I don’t really know, they just appear’. It’s a very weak reply, and incredibly unimaginative for someone who allegedly makes a living from their use of words. And it leaves the asker disappointed in the answer and the writer giving it.

·         ‘The story fairy delivers them to me’; ‘I steal Dan Brown’s rejects’; ‘I buy them from a little shop in Rotherham’. These are my standard flippant answers and sometimes they get a laugh, but they all avoid the question and are disrespectful to the asker. If I give one of these answers then I can usually expect a response of, ‘No, but really, where do you get them from?’

·         ‘I believe that there are stories floating all around us, we just have to be attuned to them and let them flow through us.’ This one’s all a little bit California-new-age-hippy-tree-hugger-crystal-gazing-crap for my liking. It’s also a guaranteed conversation killer.

So honestly, where do ideas come from?

Well I can’t speak for other writers but for me… I make them up. I think them into being inside my head. They might try to hide in the faraway corners of my brain but I force them into the open by asking the most important question any writer can possibly ask: ‘What if…?’

But that’s just the beginning, the start of the story if you will. I’ll then take that fragile little germ of a story and work on it for days, weeks, months, polishing every single word until their collective whole is as good as I can make it. That’s what all authors do. That’s our job.

The best writers are the ones who can nurture these ideas in such a way that the average reader thinks the process is so simple that anyone could do it. And I firmly believe that anyone can have a great story idea, but the dedication, the natural ability and the learned craft to make it worth reading? That’s the difficult bit.

So a better question would be, ‘Which are the best ideas to spend your time following up on?’

And if you have an answer to that one, my friend, you’ll have taken your first steps on the way to a bestseller.

© Shaun Finnie 2012

The Public's Library

The internet has competition. There is another, long neglected source of information available. Like the World Wide Web, it’s mostly free and is an excellent source of entertainment and research, but it’s been around much longer than any website.

It had been far too long since I’d set foot in my local library. I’d simply lost the habit. Life, as they say, had got in the way. It’s one of those things that you don’t do unless you make a special effort. So I made that special effort, and I’m extremely glad that I did.

The slightly stuffy atmosphere that I remembered from my youth was gone, replaced by a helpful, friendly ambience. The dark wood shelves and heavy velvet drapes had been replaced too, by a light welcome airiness. Most delightfully, I felt a return of the sense of wonder that visits to the library had always conjured up in my youth. The endless possibilities held within each book was still there, but now they had been joined by computer terminals and data discs which, just like their paper cousins, were filled with everything that an inquisitive mind might desire. The adventure, the horror, the learning of the ages and so much more were still there to be rediscovered by each generation just as I had done all those years ago. More information than any one person could ever hope to learn was held within this building, a living and growing thing available to anyone prepared to make the smallest of efforts.

I was taken aback by the number of different uses that the building has been given over to. Yes, it was predominantly a lending library, but was also an art gallery and a coffee shop. It was a community centre with the obligatory notice board advertising everything from poetry readings and writing classes to jazz and dance festivals. There was even gentle soothing music being piped in from somewhere, though never loud enough to be obtrusive.

The variety of people in the place was impressive too. Middle-aged couples researching their family history, ladies in colourful robes testing their English on each other, families looking for a film to go with a pizza later and old men simply passing the time until the next bus home; all were here, and yet nobody seemed out of place. Like a multi-faith church the public library welcomed all, no questions asked, but with answers for everyone. In the years of my absence the public library had become the public’s library.

So the next time I have research questions, or feel like giving some new music a try, or simply fancy reading some escapist fantasy, perhaps I should turn the laptop off. Maybe it’s time to rediscover my local library.

© Shaun Finnie 2012

Grey, Grey, Grey (repeat 47 times)

They say that everyone has a book in them.

My standard reply to this has always been a flippant, ‘Yes, but most people’s books would be unreadable’. You only have to look at some fan fiction on the web to see that. Pick any film or TV show (or even Radio 4’s ‘The Archers’) that has a substantial following and likely as not there’ll be some budding author online extending the official story in prose form – and usually with some pornographic content thrown in for good measure (though thankfully not in the case of ‘The Archers). It’s a nice idea – if you can ignore the copyright infringement – that anyone can have a go at taking his or her favourite characters into situations that the ‘official’ cannon won’t.

When ‘Snowqueens Icedragon’ posted ‘Master of the Universe’, her erotic fan fiction based on characters from the ‘Twilight’ vampire saga, she was basically just transcribing her own filthy daydreams. ‘This is my midlife crisis, writ large’, she says. ‘All my fantasies in there, and that's it’. Could she have imagined in her wildest (and cleanest) dreams the success it would have when she removed the copyrighted details, changed her pseudonym to E. L. James and rebadged her work as ‘Fifty Shades of Grey’? It’s now become the UK’s fastest selling paperback. Good luck to her and her many readers.

But the problem with most online fiction (and many self-published ones) is the total lack of editorial control. Much of it is simply dreadful. Happily though some of it’s good and some of it – like ‘Master of the Universe’ – finds a niche market.

I’ve recently re-examined my views on this article’s initial statement and I’m no longer sure that my default response to it is correct. I don’t think I still believe that everyone has the ability to write a book, whether a good or bad one. I’m not sure that everyone has the dedication. Sure, everyone could have the idea for a book, a one-off spark of inspiration – ‘ooh, that would make a great plot for a novel’ – but to carry it through to completion? No, I don’t think so.

One thing that E. L. James did that they (and I) have yet to do? She finished what she started. She has three completed novels out there in the market. I have none. I do though have half a dozen novels lying around in various states of progress. My hard drive is currently a graveyard of dead and dying novels. Some I still like, some I despise for having wasted so much of my keyboard time. I’ve learned something from starting all of them, but sadly none of them have taught me how place 100,000 words in a precise order that other people could take an interest in and even recommend to their friends. Yet.

Anyway, that’s all I have time for this week. I must dash – I’ve promised to complete my next self-published book by the end of the month.

© Shaun Finnie 2012