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