"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