Revulsion Compulsion

All good writing (and most bad) is at least partially autobiographical in nature. Our own life experiences form the basis of our thoughts, dreams and imaginations. My fiction is no different. I plunder my history as much as any author does, giving characters parts of my own lifestyle and memories, giving them my own prejudices and desires, experiencing my own life wish-list through their actions. They say ‘Write what you know’. That’s what I do. That’s what all writers do if they want their work to appear believable.

But of course ‘Write what you know’ doesn’t mean that if I don’t know something right now, I can’t learn about it and then write knowledgeably. That’s the point of research. Read up on a subject; then I’ll know about it and will indeed be able to write what I know.

But research can only take a writer so far. For instance, I’ve written from a female point of view despite (last time I checked) being very male. After I’ve rewritten (and rewritten, and rewritten) and made that kind of story as good as I can, I then send it to several women friends to see if my female character sounds and acts in an authentic manner. I guess they’d have a better insight into her then I do. Similarly I recently wrote a story from the point of view of a young American boy growing up in the 1950s. That’s not something I personally experienced so I got an American friend to check it out. His cultural suggestions made a huge difference to the believability of that character.

Sometimes though I just have to rely on my imagination. I don’t personally know any really repugnant people. Even my ex-boss who I always claimed that I wouldn’t spit on if he were on fire had some good points. Like getting made redundant before I did; lots of people found that very entertaining.

I don’t know any mass murderers. I don’t know any far-right neo-nazis, or any far-left revolutionaries for that matter, although I do know several people who are ‘far out’ in many other ways (‘man’). I don’t know any mad scientists who spend as much time refining their plans for world domination as they do practicing their trademark evil cackle. ‘Mwah-ha-haaaaa’.

I’ve never really come into contact with anyone who I’ve found irredeemably loathsome so how can I write from the perspective of a completely despicable character? And I do want to. Actors say that the villains are the best part to play, that they relish the challenge of trying to convince an audience that they’ve become a character as far removed as possible from their own. What are writers if not just actors who use the written word instead of the spoken one?

Yet if I manage to create a believable character who disgusts the reader in some way, does it mean that part of me is morally repugnant too? Is it harmful to go digging, to bring these socially unacceptable sections of my psyche to the fore?

I guess there’s a bit of (insert your favourite villain here) in all of us.

© Shaun Finnie 2012

Imminent Linguicide

Alot is not a real word. It’s two words, as in ‘I rant at my screen a lot’. That’s not hard to learn, surely?

Apparently so, because I see it all the time throughout the internet.

There’s no such word as ‘forums’ either. It’s fora. It’s a simple enough lesson, but if you look at most online message boards you’d think that learning a new word was as impossible as implementing a decent European fiscal policy or teaching D*n Br*wn how and when to use exposition.

I’m utterly dismayed when I read things like the following, which is a large forum creator’s explanation that he knows that ‘fora’ is the correct plural, however…

‘…whilst we are against most forms of language dumbing-down, we are also against unnecessary complication. Everyone knows and understands the word forums. Most people don't know what fora means. There is almost no chance of changing that situation significantly, no matter how hard the purists might want to. Like the failed Esperanto language, we believe reality wins over idealism. It's sad but inescapably true. We don't believe it makes sense to promote fora as the "correct" pluralisation because it creates confusion, offers no real benefit, and can't work anyway so it's pointless trying.’

That’s that then; it’s pointless trying. I know that you can’t see me, but I’m shaking my head in disbelief and exasperation. He may as well have said, ‘I’m going to die so it’s pointless living’.

We have the language of Keats, of Milton, of Shakespeare and it’s pointless trying to retain its magnificent complexity. We may as well reduce it to ‘Shl I kmpr u2a smrs day’.

It’s as ridiculous as saying (as I heard this week) that a new blockbuster movie is ‘awesome’. If the great Cthulu and all his fictional deity mates ripped the sky apart and came screaming through the lacerations in the fabric of the of the space-time continuum along with the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, and if they were all lead by the late, great, Charlton Heston in full Moses regalia…  now THAT would be awesome indeed. But a movie? No. That’s not awesome, it’s merely entertaining.

Do these things matter? Well yes, I think that they do, in the same way that correct apostrophe use is important – just how did a film called ‘Two Weeks Notice’ ever get released? On grammatical AND artistic grounds? Was nobody at all in the Warner Brothers organisation taught about apostrophe usage with possession and omission? Or maybe they know but decided against the apostrophe on artistic grounds?

These are rules, and if we play fast and loose with these, then what other rules can we decide to ignore? Tax evasion? Speeding? Murder? Where do you draw the line?

I think that you can tell by the tone of this piece that I’m feeling particularly old this week. I’ve noticed that there are more grey hairs on my chest than black ones and that when I stand up my knees crack like a shot from Chuck Connors’ rifle; you might need to look that one up if you’re not old yourself.

If I’m honest I know that change is good. Change is healthy. The world is made for the young. Otherwise we’d still be living in Elizabethan squalor, doffing our caps to the local Squire and eating frumenty.

There is no point whatsoever in ranting against linguistic changes, trying to turn a tide whose advance is – as the owner of that forum said – inevitable. It only leads to frustration, stomach ulcers and a reputation for being the local nutter.

Language evolves, innit? But there’s still no such word as ‘alot’.

© Shaun Finnie 2012

Bring on the Dancing Horses

This might not mean anything to non-British readers but apparently a dog won a talent show this week.

It picked up its prize on a Simon Cowell TV show. I’ve never seen any of his product, but I did see a picture of this cute dog (and its cute owner) in my newspaper. They are now officially ‘celebrities’.

They will now be photographed falling out of nightclubs at three in the morning, have their love lives dissected and reported in graphic detail in the press and no doubt will be odds-on favourites to have the Christmas number one single. And in a year’s time they’ll be in rehab to break their prescription Bonio addiction and that will be the last that we’ll hear of them.

I’m not a fan of competition TV. The entire point of these shows is negativity: each week the crowd roars its approval as someone is told that they’re not good enough (“you’re fired” as they say on another show I’ve never seen). The hard-nosed business of ‘show’ is by its very nature a cruel one, that’s true, but these cheap programs add nothing to the world’s cultural landscape. There’s no aim to produce artists with long shelf-lives. Most of the British and American Factor/Got Talent performers signed by Cowell to his record label have been released within two years.

I understand the argument that these shows are really no different from the ‘New Faces’ or ‘Opportunity Knocks’ of my youth, but I can’t really remember Middle of the Road, Fivepenny Piece or Millican and Nesbitt dominating the charts and newspapers of the day in the same way as today’s contestants do. And these were only once-a-week shows. Cowell’s televisual behemoths and their like (Big Brother, Get me out of the Jungle etc.) clog up weeks of prime-time schedules like a major sporting world championship but three times a year.

And while ever these shows are taking up hours of TV there’s less airtime and budget available for quality drama. Which means that there are fewer openings for scriptwriters and actors than there were in the pre-reality TV days. It makes sound financial sense I guess. You can’t really do an arena tour of ‘Lark Rise to Candleford’.

But I’m guessing by the popularity of elimination shows that I must be in a very small minority. The reason that they’re shown so often is that they’re popular. It’s what the masses want, guv.

I’ll get my coat. There’s probably an unsold script in the pocket.

© Shaun Finnie 2012

In the Wee Small Hours of the Morning

‘I can’t do Tuesday, we have to go and see Tyler’s teacher that night. How about Thursday?'

‘Ooh no, that’s my Zumba class. It’ll have to be a week on Monday then.'

Riveting stuff, isn’t it? Not exactly the kind of conversation that you want to eavesdrop on at any time, but especially not when yelled down the street at two in the morning. My neighbour Kayleigh and her friend Laura have never been known for their respect to others though. I really wanted to lean out of the window and scream, ‘If you don’t shut the hell up you’ll not see daylight, let alone next Monday!’ (or perhaps even something witty) but my duvet and my Beloved were very comfortable so I snuggled up with both and tried to get back to sleep.

I’ve lived near a pub for almost twenty-five years now and it’s mostly been fine. When I say close I mean really close; just thirty-four steps from my back door to the bar, though it’s occasionally taken many more steps to get back home. In all that time we’ve never really had much to complain about, not even on traditional nights of revelry like New Years, people have generally been pretty quiet when leaving in the early hours. But not last night when these two young ladies decided that a hundred metres was the optimum distance to have a conversation.

By the time they’d eventually said their ‘goodnight’s the damage had been done. My body wasn’t quite awake but my mind was, and it was racing with ideas that screamed to be preserved. Much as I wanted to just burrow my way further into the duvet and fall back to sleep I knew that I couldn’t. I’d been here before and was well aware that if I didn’t immediately write down these gifts from my nocturnal muse then they’d fade aware to nothing like dreams in the morning light. I couldn’t afford for that to happen. One of these ideas could be The One, the spark of inspiration that could propel me to literary stardom, or at least brings in a three-figure cheque.

So that’s how I found myself in the wee small hours of the morning sitting on the loo with a notebook and pen in my hand. Initially it wasn’t just ideas that were flowing (I’ve learned at my age never to pass up a bathroom opportunity) but eventually I found I’d filled twelve sheets. A big chunk of notebook.  It was quite possibly the best use of paper that my bathroom has ever seen.

Now I just have to begin the mammoth task of typing it up and making sense of it all. Writing, like all acts of creativity, is one per cent inspiration, ninety-nine per cent perspiration. I’m not sure that Thomas Edison was thinking of my and my bathroom when he came up with that idea but it still holds true. I have the ideas, now it’s time to put the hard work into making them into something that others would find interesting.

But first I think I deserve a little nap.

Time Flies

All writers want to write. If you want to plumb or arch instead, then you’re in the wrong job. Invest your time in plumbing or archery. It’s not a vague fancy, a passing whim, it’s a vocation. It’s a basic need as important as air, food and access to a reliable broadband service. The mythical ‘they’ claim that everyone has a book inside of them, but many people don’t understand this basic truth of the writer’s yearning. That’s why many books are unreadable tosh. Or even worse, D*n Br*wn.

If you don’t want to write every day, you’re not a writer. My advice would be to find something else that eats away at your insides instead like being a defence lawyer or gargling with acid, because this is how it is when the stories need to be released . Writers have stories that burn inside them, little bundles of information that yearn to claw their way out and be seen by the world.

Sounds easy, right? Have the desire, put in the time, reap the rewards. The problem is that unless the writer is hugely successful they simply won’t have too much time to devote to the craft of writing. Life will get in the way. The kids will still need bathing and the bills will still need paying. For most that means a day job. Giving away those eight hours or so out of every twenty-four to an employer means that the writing gets shunted to the dark ends of the day when the mind is at its edgiest. Some would say that’s a good thing but even so it would be nice to have a choice.

Even for those writers who are fortunate (and fortune plays a huge part in it) to be able to make the break and write full time, they still won’t be able to commit all their working hours to their chosen creative art. There’s the small matter of promoting their work to be done. It’s no use writing the world’s most florid prose if nobody gets to read it, so for those at the bottom of the success ladder that can mean hours spent online telling the world about their work, formatting their self-published books, designing covers, chasing payment from third parties, keeping track of accounts… unless the author is scrupulous in their timekeeping these hours can soon build up until they take more time than the writing itself.

So, what do you do for a living? A full-time writer, you say?

There’s no such thing.

© Shaun Finnie 2012

One Wedding and a Funeral

A few days ago I went to a wedding. The bride was beautiful, the groom was handsome and their mothers were teary. All was as should be and a great time was had by all. It was also the first wedding I’ve been to with a Jewish element (‘mazel tov!’). This made the arrival of a huge plate of bacon sandwiches a surprise but very tasty addition to the proceedings.

There has to be a story there somewhere.

Then two days later we had a family funeral. As you can imagine it was a much more sombre affair and they didn’t have bacon sandwiches in the service. But the place was full of people mentally reviewing their personal histories with the deceased and with the other attendees, some of whom they hadn’t seen since the last family funeral. The crematorium was in a very peaceful rural location with a magnificent view over rolling fields and a lovely walled duck pond. As the preacher preached my eyes strayed to this pond and in particular to a lovely white duck looking over the wall to the water where all his ducky mates were splashing happily around. He looked, bobbed up and down a bit and leaped, just as the preacher asked us to bow our heads in prayer.

Unfortunately his tasty little ducky legs failed him. Or maybe it was his tasty little ducky wings. Or his inability to do the distance / mass / energy required calculations in his little ducky head. Anyhow he missed, slipped off the wall and landed on his fat ducky parson’s nose in a flurry of feathers and indignant quacking.

And so it was that among the solemnity of this terribly sad event there was a little laughter. From me and the Beloved at least.

There has to be a story there somewhere.

These kind of major events with lots of people interacting are goldmines to any writer worth their salt (note to self: stop thinking of bacon). But it’s not just big gatherings like this that should trigger the writer’s imagination. Just keeping our eyes open to everyday events should inspire us too. A brief hug between friends in a coffee shop. A group of children on their first unsupervised trip to the cinema. An old lady struggling to get on the bus with her shopping.

Stories are everywhere. We just have to be open to them.


© Shaun Finnie 2012

Weigh-Hey

I’ve never felt gruntled. I’ve felt disgruntled many times but I can’t ever remember gruntling even once.

I don’t believed I’ve ever ruthed anyone either. I’m sure that I’ve been ruthless a few times though.

And, while I’ve had many mishaps in my life (and occasionally been hapless too for that matter), I’m not sure that I’ve had too many haps.

My point is that here are some things in life that you can only do one way. Gruntling, ruthing and happing are some of them. And so is losing weight. Despite what you might read in glossy magazines there’s no short cut to weight loss. Forget all the fad diets and pills promoted by celebrities. The only thing you’ll lose by following them is your cash.

It’s a simple logical formula: if the amount of energy you stick in your mouth is less than the amount of energy you use, then you’ll lose weight. And I was recently shocked into the realisation that I really need to lose some weight when I’m worked out that I was around twice the size of my Beloved. And no, the idea of fattening her up to redress the balance isn’t a good one.

So I’m cutting down on my beer intake and upping my hill walking. I’m replacing crisps and chocolate with fruits and nuts. And I’ve done something that I’ve thought about doing for the last thirty years but could never bring myself to do. It’s something that many teenagers go through a phase of doing but I never did. I thought about it lots but never got the chance to put those dreams into practice. Well I guess I’ve finally made it to my teens, as I’ve bought some weights.

I read that doing squats while holding weights at chest height is a good way of burning the fat so I gave that a go. Three sets of ten squats, go! I held a dumbbell against my sternum and dropped to my haunches. I immediately heard a series of cracks like gunshots as my knees complained but that was OK. There was no pain so it must be alright. And even if it’s not, I’m ignoring it as that’s The-Manly-Thing-to-Do.

Slowly I pushed myself back up and, much to my surprise, made it all the way to five foot nine again. That was good, no bad results. Down again and up again. With The Archers playing in the background this really wasn’t too bad. I was actually enjoying myself.

After the first set of ten squats though I began to reassess the situation. By the time Leonie told Lynda and Robert Snell her shocking news (I didn’t see that coming, Archers addicts!) I was starting to feel the burn. It was in my thighs, just above the knee. It felt like someone had used a lighted match as an acupuncture needle. But I sucked it up and pushed through it to the end of the reps. And do you know what? My knees didn’t smoulder, ignite or spontaneously combust. I must be made of sterner stuff than I’d thought.

Like many people I started the year with a resolution to lose some weight, but unlike some I kept pretty quiet about it. It was my little secret. Well, one of them, but you don’t need to know about the others. I don’t want lawsuits.

But now it’s time to come clean. I’ve lost eleven pounds since January. Let’s see how low I can go.

© Shaun Finnie 2012