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

On Your Bike

I note that it’s Tour de France time again. Some will be getting excited at the possibility of a British victory. Some will see it as a chance to lust after fit young men in skin-tight Lycra. And others will already be typing their articles about ‘drug cheats’, just itching to insert the latest star name into their writing.

Because sure as boxers will go through their ridiculous macho pre-fight weigh-in posturing pantomime, sure as weak-ankled Premiership footballers will roll around in agony as if taken out by a sniper in row J at the merest nudge from an opponent, sure as Pakistani cricketers will overstep the mark every time that they overstep the mark, then cyclists will feel that they have to test the substance testers’ testing abilities. I don’t know what it is about this particular sport but it seems that, more than any other event, the winner of a cycling tour isn’t finalised until all the urine’s been analysed and the court rulings have been overturned several times.

(All of the above is ‘allegedly’ of course.)

It’s terrible the stuff that people put into their bodies to give them an extra competitive edge, isn’t it?

Isn’t it?

I’m not so sure. Let’s take the hypothetical case of two athletes – pick any sport you want. Athlete A sticks to a healthy diet of grilled chicken and fish with plenty of fruit and vegetables, protein shakes and isotonic drinks to aid recovery. Athlete B regularly eats pizza and chips and washes them down with eight pints of beer.  Now if all other things are equal then you’d expect Athlete A to come out on top in their chosen event, but isn’t that just because they both partook of substances that they knew would alter their performance – one for better, one for worse? Could it not be argued that eating a protein-packed tuna steak is no different to taking some other substance that will increase muscle strength? The Olympic motto is made up of three Latin words: ‘Citius, Altius, Fortius’, which translates as ‘Faster, Higher, Stronger’. Surely steroids, stimulants and all the other drugs on the World Anti-Doping Agency’s banned substance list are designed to make the human body do just that: run faster, jump higher, be stronger. Isn’t one of the aims of the Olympic movement to test the limits of human ability? How fast can we go, how high can we jump, how strong can we be without the aid of physical attachments?

Which brings us to Oscar Pistorius, the incredible South African ‘Blade Runner’. Sprinting on his carbon fibre prosthetics he is, quite literally, in a class of his own. But that’s the problem. Oscar wants to be able to run against all the other kids in the other classes too. He’s not content with demonstrations and private challenges. Having rightly become a Paralympic legend, Oscar feels that he should be able to take on the best able-bodied athletes in the world in regular competitions like the upcoming London Olympics and has taken his case to court several times. Now I think that what he’s done with his life is magnificent and his drive and determination put most other people’s to shame, but if we allow Pistorius to compete against able-bodied athletes, where do we draw the line? Could we eventually see an old bloke who works at B&Q winning the weight lifting with the aid of his fork lift truck? Should shot putters be allowed to take a howitzer into the circle with them as part of their legal equipment?  While he is undoubtedly a supreme physical specimen, at least some of Oscar’s successes must go down to the technology which aids his phenomenal natural ability, and this must prevent him from competing against those whose abilities aren’t also mechanically enhanced.

There are some mighty big questions there and they’ll be discussed long after this summer of sport is over. One thing’s for sure though. I won’t win any medals. I’ll be too busy watching it all from the safety of my sofa with beer and snacks within arm’s reach.

© Shaun Finnie 2012

Self Censored

Boy meets girl. They fall in love. Then the boy – and isn’t it always the boy? – does something stupid to ruin the situation. Just when things are at their worst something miraculous happens and they get back together. The end.

How many short stories have followed that basic formula? Thousands? Millions? And many of them have been written by much better authors than me. There’s no way that I could write a top quality short story along those lines, but it hasn’t stopped me trying, many times.

No, if I’m to be successful in the short story field (however you might define ‘success’ – there’s a whole ‘nother blog in that) then I have to try something different. I have to make my stories stand out from the crowd in some way.

Fortunately I’m not afraid to take the road less travelled, to write about subjects that others might shy away from, so maybe this is the way that my writing should veer: towards the dark side. Don’t get me wring, I couldn’t and wouldn’t fill my tales with ‘gorenography’, sexual deviance or distasteful political and personal viewpoints just for the point of titillate the reader, but I wouldn’t automatically reject them as subjects if they were part of a good plot. For instance, I once wrote a short story about internet grooming. It conjured up unpleasant thought in me and hopefully in the reader too but it was integral to the storyline and, believe it or not, the final twist gave it a ‘feel-good’ ending. Sort of.

I’m currently working a tale about assisted suicide. That one doesn’t have any twist but hopefully gets the reader to ask a few questions about themselves and the society in which they live. The same applies to another about domestic abuse. These aren’t taboo thrills shoehorned into my prose for shock value. They’re jumping-on points, integral themes without which the story wouldn’t even exist.

So my question to you today is this: Am I wrong to tackle these subjects? And if not these, are there some topics that are just too raw to write about, just too objectionable to put into a piece of fiction the point of which is, let’s face it, simply to entertain?


© Shaun Finnie 2012