Tag Archives: trying to be a writer

This morning, I woke from a dream in which McMini and I were trapped in a version of my parents’ bedroom in our house in the school in which I grew up. We were about to be mauled to death by a very well-meaning and playful – but nonetheless large, powerful and dangerous – semi-adult tiger cub. It was early but even so, I was uncharacteristically pleased to be waking up at such an hour, the alternative being a certain mauling. Groggily I looked at the clock and I realised it was Sunday.

On Sundays, I attend church via t’interweb. This one was no exception. As a somewhat stolid anglican, I tend to go for the Church of England website. Also it’s at 9 am and if I have to set myself apart from the McOthers to do it, as opposed to going somewhere, it’s easier if it happens earlier than later. Something said by the lady preaching struck me. She was talking about trust, trusting in the future, in a future and it got me thinking about routine.

Routine is something I’ve written about before. When things get a bit overwhelming – in my case, in the situation with Dad – hanging onto the small bits of routine can keep your feet on the ground and get you through. This Corona thing … this feels like the opposite. I don’t know about you but my routine had been severely disrupted. I don’t go out or to the same places, the morning routine is different. We are all here together every day, which we are lucky enough to enjoy. But is it the same? No. Not at all. And that’s the thing.

If you think about it. We humans are often creatures of habit. We like routine. Without routine, everything feels a bit impermanent. I’m guessing this is a part of our self-preservation genes. Doubtless, to our cave dwelling ancestors, impermanence and change were synonymous with danger. Life on the move, looking for food and water which might not always have been abundant. Moving from one source of water to where we hoped there was another … everything was a risk. No wonder we stopped and put down roots. No wonder we grew our food, which gave us a much higher guarantee of eating then wandering around trying to forage for it. We could store it, too, rather than carrying a little with us. Maybe it was being settled with part of the day’s chores done – like finding a place to sleep and maybe building a shelter for the night – that gave them that little bit more time to think and have ideas.

Coming back to us, with routine, there are bits of the day you can conduct pretty much on autopilot, freeing up important mental resources for other things. My grandmother always used to say that innovation and technological thinking in the ancient world was bound to be centred round the Mediterranean because it was warm. She felt that those of us unlucky enough to live in Northern Europe at that time had far too much surviving to do. She reckoned that after we’d kept warm through the winter and then spent the summer months gathering and growing enough food, and finding enough wood, to get through the next winter without starving, time was scarce for for thinking, discussion and sitting about having ideas. I’m not sure it quite holds water – after all, look at the way dire times like war always seem to put a bomb under science, which there is never quite enough money for in peacetime (yes, that’s what happened to scram jets and Australia to London in 3hrs, no war, no money, no-one bothered) – but I reckon she might have been onto something.

Personally, I have this theory that on an instinctive, animal level, freeing up brain power and thinking time is what the whole routine thing is about. You don’t think about cleaning your teeth every morning, you just do it. If you did have to plan it and think about it every day it would take longer and it would take more brain capacity. So we’ve learned to do some small tasks, unthinkingly by rote. Once we’d evolved that big brain, it makes sense that changes in our behaviour might have evolved to give ourselves the time and space to use it. Could it be that we are evolutionarily hot-wired to thrive on stability and routine? Maybe it could. Especially as the first of our ancestors who settled were probably safer from predators – although I should imagine they were a bit of a sitting duck in the face of surprise attack from other hostile humans. Hence the practise among our ancient forebears of putting walls around towns.

The thing about Covid:19 is it’s completely buggered this routine. I reckon that’s going to leave certain humans feeling very vulnerable straight off, even if they have no idea why. There is no certainty. What lies ahead? A lot of money troubles for starters. Barring a handful of billionaires, every single person in the world is going to take a hit financially. A lot of people are going to be completely and utterly screwed. Except that may not be the case. We don’t know for certain, because we don’t know what the future holds. The solid ground on which we stand has shifted, but it’s difficult to do anything more than try to stay upright for the moment, until it stops moving.

Then there’s the uncertainty. Each day I set out in hope; hoping the virus will become a bit less virulent and SARS like. Hoping that, if I catch it, I’ll be one of the lucky ones who gets sick without dying. I imagine a lot of the people who died in the Blitz felt the same way as I do at the start of the Second World War. Their hopes and dreams were just as valid as the ones who made it to the other side but … they didn’t. Even so, everyone must have felt like this, survivors and casualties; unsure of the future, wondering whether they would come out the other side. Whether they’d be one of the lucky ones. It’s hard not to keep wondering, which one am I?

Life with Covid: 19 is the human race stepping off the precipice. Nothing above us, around us, below us. Out into the blackness of the unknown. I think that, without the Dad thing, that would have disturbed me a lot more than it does. I like my routine and my life. It being my life, though and my routine, I’m aware that there’s nothing more guaranteed to provoke Sod than getting comfortable, or content in my existence. Doubtless everything is about to go completely tits up, accordingly. That’s how my life goes. But even so, this is the first time I’ve felt that my weird, mixed up manner of existence has put me at an advantage. Because that side of it, at least, holds no fear for me now. I’ve done it and come through the other side.

It’s true that I dislike change, I dislike the feeling that I’m not in control but I know the only thing I control is my reaction. I learned that lesson years ago.

What I’m trying to say is that although it’s a pain in the arse and can also be very sad and painful – depending on how, exactly, Sod and his law choose to fuck up your life, good things can come of it too. Case in point. Writing.

Writing is the best thing ever. I love writing. One of the reasons I loved the jobs I had in marketing was down to the amount of writing required and the fact I didn’t have to look for it or think about it. It was just always there, as part of the job. Explaining concepts and ideas, instructions, press releases. I liked the geeky stats, the parsing spread sheets because I can’t add up and all that, but I enjoyed the writing bit above all else. It’s why I ended up specialising in branding, because they liked my ‘voice’.

Loads of people who want to write a book never do.  The existence of the K’Barthan series is down to many things but there are two specific events that were mostly responsible. Two events which, on the face of it, could each be classed as a bit of a fucking disaster. Since I’ve nothing better to do this week, I’m going to share them with you now.

Event one; I was in an extremely unsuitable job which was not working out, at all. It was a two and a half year contract for a great deal less per annum than the previous job I’d been in (but it was in Cambridge where you pretty much need a maths degree to get on a work experience scheme, and as I have no maths qualifications it was kind of needs must). It was also in a university museum so, for an art history graduate, it should have been ideal. It wasn’t. They did their best but I never really learned how to get on with my boss.

When I arrived, a month after accepting the job, I had no work station. I fished an old desk out of a nearby skip along with a chair. That was my work station the first few months until my actual desk arrived. They tried so hard to be a decent employer but they were struggling with a university politics nightmare that made it tricky. I believe they did crack it eventually but only some years after I’d left. For the first six weeks I did nothing because I had no computer. Even after it arrived, neither of my bosses would give me anything beyond the most mundane secretarial tasks to do, although one was slightly ahead of the other in that respect, and significantly so as she began to trust me to write her correspondence. It was still very much PA stuff though rather than the assistant’s role I was supposed to be in. She left soon after I arrived. With the other one … I guess I just completely failed to gain her trust.

I should add that the Museum, itself, was a great place to work and the people, including my boss, were lovely. But though the boss meant well she was pathologically unable to delegate. Most of the time I would invent spurious tasks to do for the Friends organisation that involved going into the Museum so I could twiddle my thumbs looking at the exhibits rather than sitting at a desk. If that job was a crisp flavour this would be it … a combination of things that are fine separately but which, put together, are stonkingly awful.

It was well into year two of this job and I was looking for an out before my contract expired. It really wasn’t going well and an extension looked unlikely. Another department in the Museum was advertising a very much better paid and more senior job and the department head contacted me one day, while my boss was at a meeting, and invited me in for a chat about it. I left his office with what sounded like it might be a job offer … possibly … at the least, I’d just been invited to apply if the job was advertised. It looked very hopeful.

Back in the office, my boss had returned from her meeting. She knew the job was coming up and seemed to know I’d been to see the department head about it. She expressed what appeared to be a genuine interest. I was delighted, as usually any conversation I had with her was like the Handsome Dan scene in Wayne’s World. She’d ask me a question and then about half way through the first sentence of my answer I’d realise she wasn’t listening. Then I’d be in a quandary as to whether I should just stop talking with my reply half said – which felt a bit odd – or soldier on as if she was actually listening. But no, on this occasion, she was friendly, open, encouraging and all years. I admitted to chatting, informally, with the head of department. She was very enthusiastic and interested and asked all about it, including how much they were offering. Moron that I am, I told her the salary range he’d mentioned.

The next morning, arriving at work, there was a lot of shouting coming from somewhere. One of the voices was my boss and she was having a stand up row with someone in another part of the building. She appeared in the office an hour later, and, when asked if she was ok replied with a rather tart, ‘yes’ and nothing more. Then she got down to work. Shortly after she had left for the day I was called over to see the head of the department who’d discussed the job with me.

Turned out he hadn’t told my boss, she’d guessed. Turned out I wasn’t supposed to say but he hadn’t told me that, and I was a very naive 28 year old, and too dim to clock it on my own. And because my boss said she knew and gave me the impression she and he had talked about it, I thought it was OK. Clearly I had got completely the wrong end of the stick from him about what salary range he was offering because he told me he’d never mentioned the figures I’d remembered. He said he couldn’t possibly offer me the job, now, because the internal politics of it would be too complicated. They advertised it a week or two later. I was told I needn’t apply.

Wow. Invited to apply for the ruddy job, at the very least and I’d still managed to blow it. That took some going. I had completely fucked the dog, as the Americans say. OK. So maybe the world was trying to tell me something. Maybe I wasn’t cut out for the world of work. Maybe I should write that book. So I did. I wrote three books. OK so reading them now, I kind of wish someone else had written them but I got them done. And I learned things. And eventually, before my contract expired I got a much, much more interesting job as a marketing manager for a transport group.

Four years later, working for a company who’d acquired the transport group, I was in a High Powered Job that also paid reasonably well. For the first time in my life I was a Successful Human Being in that respect. OK so my salary was still nowhere near what McOther was earning, but it was getting close to my secondary ambition, to earn what he paid in tax. I was masquerading as a Normal. Succeeding on their terms without compromising on who I was. I was valued, so valued that I’d survived four rounds of redundancies. I was flying.

One Monday morning a very excited colleague greeted me on arrival. He told me he’d been to a company meeting the previous Friday and that the MD had gathered the entire junior management together and told them, among other things, that if they wanted to know who his ideal employee was they should come to the marketing department and seek me out. ‘That’s what I’m looking for in a manager,’ the MD had told them. What he didn’t know, when he held me up as a shining example to his junior managers, of course, was that my salary was paid by a different part of the organisation and their MD didn’t value my input quite so highly. Despite hearing this shining accolade upon my arrival, the HR Director arrived a couple of hours later to tell me about the special fifth round of redundancies they were making for one employee: me.

See? Sod. I remember thinking at the time, ‘This would be quite funny if I wasn’t living it.’

If I put either of those events in a book, people would say, ‘well that would never happen.’ But both did. You couldn’t make this shit up. I remember driving back to Cambridgeshire from Birmingham after my redundancy in a state of complete disbelief. It felt as if another version of me from a different reality had somehow swapped our timelines. Weirdly, I felt the exact same thing, in reverse, when Gareth appeared out of nowhere and wanted to narrate the K’Barthan Series. To the point where there were several occasions where I caught myself muttering, ‘Ha! Take that you cow!’ at her.

Again, the bombshell stopped me in my tracks and the world fell away. It was back to hunting for a job in Cambridge, land of maths and science geeks, looking for someone, anyone, willing to give an arts graduate a job. Opportunities were extremely thin on the ground. It didn’t help that I wasn’t actually qualified to apply for jobs at the level on which I’d been operating. And of course after working in Birmingham, where salaries are exponentially higher than Cambridge it was a tough call applying for jobs which paid what the people working for the people who worked for the people at my level earned. After a couple of months sharing my pain with McOther, he said, ‘I think we can survive if you don’t work in a full time job.’ So I went freelance. And one day, when things were a bit slow, dusted off the appalling books I’d written and thought, ‘hmm I wonder if I could write a real one …’

It’s always been about communication, I guess; about the writing. Writing corporate puff was the lazy way to write for a living. No plotting required, just clear, concise and (hopefully) charming prose and a really big learning curve. I thought I was happy with that. And if sod hadn’t shat on me I expect I would have been. That’s the thing isn’t it? We get comfortable in life. We think we’re OK.

But brand manager wasn’t a vocation.

And I’m an authorholic.

As well as communicating, I need to tell stories – to escape Real Life into a world of my own creating. Sitting down at the desk and writing is completely fulfilling. It doesn’t matter that hardly any fucker reads the lunacy produced, so long as writing it is fun and it means something, anything, to the handful who do read it, that’s enough. Writing books is what I’m for. But it took two major setbacks to realise it.

In conclusion, I guess what I’m saying is this: the whole corona virus thing feels like a kick in the teeth to the human race from Sod doesn’t it? Each one of us everywhere is being shat on by Sod right now – to a greater or lesser degree. Trust me though. No matter how difficult it feels. You will come out the other side of this stronger, more confident, smarter and with any luck wiser and kinder. Because when Sod kicks someone in the soft and squelchy bits it’s amazing how often it ends up doing that person a favour. Not then, but somewhere else, later down the timeline. One of the most interesting reactions to my redundancy was that of one of my oldest and dearest friends who said, ‘It was a great job and I know you had a wonderful time, but it had to end. It wasn’t real. None of it was real. It wasn’t you.’

Take my hand, walk into the darkness with me and we will step into the void without fear. After all, God knows we’re not alone, the entire chuffing planet is in the same shit.

Are you happy now, Sod?

_____________________

If reality is feeling a bit dystopian for your taste right now you can always escape into a good book. Close Enough, K’Barthan Shorts, Hamgeean Misfit No 3 will be available from many public libraries (check your app or contact your librarian) and is available for preorder from most of the major retailers. For more information click here:

Close Enough … available 18th June 2020

This week lockdown continues. There’s no going back. All our lives have changed, although it seems that the basics of existence in my home town haven’t. I may have to stand two metres away from every one I meet but I still meet people I know on most occasions I leave the house. Accordingly, I still end up wittering on at the poor buggers for hours. So far, I have had one appropriately socially distanced walk with a friend who was going the same way with me and numerous chats.

It made me wonder … for the first time ever in my life, it feels as if I am living through a piece of serious History. Maybe I’m beginning to understand what it was like in the War … great for those who lived but probably a bit of a pisser for the 60 million who died. As a kid I remember asking my father,

‘What was it like in the war, Dad? We’re you scared? Did you know we were going to win?’

To which Dad’s answers were, basically;  exciting, yes but not as much as one might expect looking back on it and yes.

Meanwhile, there’s the lovely story about Mum in the garden at her grandparents house seeing an aeroplane and rushing out to wave at it, little realising that it was an ME109, presumably hedge hopping home. Her grandfather tried to persuade her to come and hide under a tree. She told me,  yesterday, that the plane came back for a second pass during which, as he skimmed the lawn, the pilot waved. I know the pilot skimming the lawn and waving bit was true but it’s the first time she told me he did a second pass. He was low enough, and close enough, for her to see that his breathing mask was hanging off his face, that he had blonde curly hair and that he was smiling. She thought he must have a little girl like her at home. Perhaps, but more likely, he was just … human.

Talking to a friend in Australia the other day she said that, over there, they appear to be winning and the numbers of cases are stabilising. However, if they eradicate it from Australia that means the entire country will have to close its borders until there is an effective vaccine or treatment; two years, minimum. That’s … a hell of a thing.

Are we going to revert to a time when hardly anyone travelled, but, isolated as we are, everyone has a lot more time to think?

Until the big nationalist backlash recently, the world seemed headed to become an increasingly international place. Most youngsters seemed more likely to see themselves as citizens of the world or, where I am, certainly of Europe. They’d watched StarTrek, they assumed that at some point the world would be governed centrally. And of course, we have the internet. The fact I’m discussing the vagaries of lockdown with a friend in Australia says a fair bit. These days, there are many folks I would consider to be my friends who are all over the world. I have never met them, may never do so. It seems weird that, on the one hand we have this internet based, global identity as human, and on the other … nationalism is booming. What’s that all about?

The thought of Australia closing its borders and, potentially, other countries, reminded me of something that happened to McOther and I when we moved into our first house. It was in a small village in the deepest, darkest fens in Cambridgeshire. Our first evening in the village we decided to go to the pub, but it was shut, so we went for a walk. As we stood admiring a lone and slightly incongruous mandarin duck on the village pond an old man joined us and we got chatting.

‘You work in Cambridge?’ he asked us, at one point.

‘Yes …’

‘Hmm, I went to Cambridge … twice.’

Turned out he went there once for a shopping trip, thoroughly disapproved and hadn’t been since. The first time was at the start of a trip to Africa to fight Rommel.

Is that where we’re headed? Less travel, more time to stay at home and think? While time to think is good, open minds are one of the benefits of travel, and heaven knows, it would be a pity if the average English-speaking internet user’s mind narrowed any further. But is that narrowing of minds a reaction to the internet? A clinging onto the stable in the face of a rather rapidly changing environment? Maybe. I dunno.

At the moment it strikes me we are at a tipping point in history, but I don’t know how or why or what for. The political rhetoric over the pandemic sounds increasingly empty and pointless to me. It’s really time we all said bollocks to parties, formed a coalition and worked together. As another friend was saying on t’interweb the other night, we have a chance to make a new start, a different world. The old ways need to change, but what we change them to … ? Neither of us knew.

Czechoslovakian-made black glass button – try saying that with your mouth full.

Despite being locked down life continues to be surprisingly busy. Trying to keep my statutory two metre distance on a rather narrow footpath the other day, I wandered over the verge into the field next to it. It’s currently fallow, nothing but maize stalks. I immediately found a black button. I thought it was plastic and I was going to throw it away until, turning it over in my hand, it had that rainbow iridescence which only glass gets when it’s been buried a good long time. Thinking there was an outside chance it was made of glass, I put it in my pocket just in case.

It looked quite gothic, or Victorian. Turns out that from about 1850 black glass buttons were all the vogue – Victorian then. I suspect this is what I have, although I can’t be 100% sure. I did discover that many of them were made in Czechoslovakia by highly skilled button makers. Mine is not exactly the apogee of craftsmanship but still a nice find. As I walked beside the footpath, eyes down, I found some shards of clay pipe, the obligatory one pence piece that is always found on any trip out that involves looking for stuff, and a piece of Bellamarine jug – a kind of wine vessel used in the fifteen and sixteen hundreds. I was really chuffed as I recognised this and it was confirmed when I posted it on line and it was seen by an expert.

Occasional Bury St Edmunds skywriting

Also I came home and stumbled on the answer to another riddle. For some time now, I have noticed the occasional sky writing over Bury St Edmunds. I remember a few years ago seeing someone draw a smiley face with the help of an aeroplane. Yesterday it was this one. Shortly after seeing it, there was a knock at the door and the lovely peeps who run McMini’s boy’s brigade group had delivered an Easter egg. They were just stepping back out of range as I opened the door so I thanked them and pointed out the sky writing, which was still there. Saying how great I thought it was and that I’d seen others. Oh yes, it was the C3 church’s turn this year, they told me. So know I know it’s my fellow Christians. And that also explains why I haven’t seen it the last couple of years – because it’s a Good Friday thing and we’ve been away for Easter. Anyway, I’ve always loved it. There’s a joyous generosity in doing something fun, or funny, when you may never see the reaction. It’s one of the things I love about eyebombing, the secret, quiet, just-for-myself, in-jokiness of it. I think it’s a lovely idea.

Meanwhile, McMini having spent much time playing computer games with his friends is now doing video calls during which they all bust light sabre moves. Yes he has set up a group and they have light sabre combat sessions. It’s chuffing marvellous. He gets plenty of exercise and needless to say he is horrifically geeky about it – ‘this is fourth position, drop stance,’ he tells me cheerfully as he kneels on the floor with a pair of light sabres extended towards me. He’s also learned the special word for fighting with two, which I forget. I am frequently called to the darkest part of the house to fight duels with him. Me using the Darth Vader red one versus his Luke and Anakin. It’s a bit like Power Rangers. There’s a lot of posturing and poncing about during which, usually, you can just stick yours in his stomach and tell him you’ve cut him in half. That said, he keeps cutting my hand off. Obviously as the parent my job is to lose as spectacularly as possible in a manner that causes me the least physical injury. We’re doing OK so far.

This should be my desk right now.

On the work front, I’ve been having some time off, well … when everyone else is, you have to, right? But it was our holiday so now is a time for pretending I am abroad and drinking a bit more than usual. But also, I had a bit of a crisis of confidence.

Short stuff is not my metier. I like it but it’s not going down too well, lacking world building, too many hints, clumsily dropped abut stuff going on which our hero doesn’t know but we do.

It’s probably safe to say that I do better at long and rambling. But I don’t have the mental capacity for that right now. The long and rambling I’ve chosen to write has a fiendishly complicated plot which needs to mesh seamlessly with the permutations of the even more nightmarishly complex plot of the original K’Barthan Series.

This is where my desk actually is …

What in Arnold’s name am I doing? NEVER write a full length prequel, people it’s the most gargantuan nightmare ever. But this one is looking as if it could easily hit three books. I want it to be good though, I want it to be Rogue One good. Not … bodged like the Phantom Menace. It’s so complicated that I had to put it aside for a while because my brain is too mushy to cope these days. Sigh.

On the up side, I think I’m close to nailing a decent marketing strategy for the audio books. Also, I’m beginning to have that twitchy feeling in my fingertips I get when I want to write something new, so after resting the complicated nightmare, I reckon I’ll have to get on and finish that. Also, I finally got the alts off to Gareth this week. Woot! Jeez I was dying inside doing those, really not sure that I was doing the right thing. Luckily I had to ring him about some other stuff so I was able to check, properly speaking check rather than filtered through WhatsApp messages and my phone’s auto gag, that I wasn’t being a gargantuan bell end. Amazingly, it seems I really was being helpful and not the most god-awful nightmare client. Phew.

So now I have a bit of marketing work to do … a lot, which is a bummer as it involves using my actual, real computer which is rubbish outside. So I’ll have to write it all first, I think and then go in and do an hour a day. Mailerlite is fab but it does take a terribly long time to open and close the interface when I want to edit the hello protocol or send an email. Which reminds me, I do need to send something to the lovely peps on my mailing list, flagging up the impending arrival, I hope of audio. Although it’s a case of seeing if the books go live first … the first two are live in many places but Audible will take another three months or so.

Also in production is the K’Barthan Shorts, Hamgeean Misfit: No 3. Not my best work, the shorts, but people seem to be enjoying them a reasonable amount. Next one is due out in May or June, along with the first two K’Barthan Series audio books, probably (officially) June or July but as I said, it’s a bit of a mix and some are already live.

The week after next, for some ridiculous reason unknown even to me, I’ve signed up to do an online book festival. All well and good, except I’ve now realised it’s on Twitter yegads. I had completely given up on Twitter. I couldn’t work out how to follow a feed I was interested in and could find nothing of worth in the wall of noise. I am appearing on 22nd April at 2.00pm BST, which is NOT British Summer Time as you’d expect. Apparently for their own bizarre reasons, the Americans call Greenwich Mean Time, British Standard Time. I’ve no clue what they call British Summer Time … I should probably try and find out. But I’ve been caught by this one before, when everyone was on line waiting and I didn’t turn up until an hour later because … we were on British Summer Time at the … well … time, and I’d foolishly assumed that’s what BST was.

Anyway, long and the short is, I hope to be there at 1.00 on 22nd April, although I won’t really know when to start because I’m guessing that’ll be dependent on my actually finding my cue; a twitter post from the festival organisers introducing me … Gulp. It’s highly unlikely that I will find it but I’ll have a go anyway. Then I have to work out how to stream live on twitter – I might try that over the course of the coming week – and do an 8 – 10 minute reading from a book and answer questions  … if anyone at all is able to find me. I’ve chosen Escape From B-Movie Hell and I’m pretty sure which bit I’ll read, but I’m wobbling about this and not quite sure whether to persevere with learning to make something meaningful of Twitter or bow out gracefully, before disaster occurs. There’s an author friend who is also doing this so I will seek twitter guidance from her and if it looks too complicated I’ll withdraw as soon as I can so as not to mess them about. I’ll let you know more, or less if I quiche, next week.

So yeh, life goes on. Weirdly but at the same time, surprisingly normally, considering the bizarre times in which we live.