(I'm not happy with my re-write of the character guide at all. It reads like the washing instructions on a pair of discarded sweatpants - boring, unnecessary and a little smelly. My last version was way punchier and I even managed to slip a few jokes in. But of course that one has gone to the great writing room in the sky and I'll never get it back... lousy laptop. I'll keep working on it, but in the meantime I promised you something to read, so here's another thing that I've been working on.)
I see some pretty strange things when I'm walking around this city. Well, I think they're weird - a lot of it can probably just be explained by simple human nature. Humanity is just one of those creatures I'll never truly understand. Like the platypus. I think that's one of the reasons why I write - because you humans make no sense to me, so by chronicling what I see I hope that one day I'll figure it all out and be able to join the human race instead of sniping at it from the outside like a leper jealous of everyone else's clear skin.
So in addition to offering you all some of the finest writing guides available on the web (unless there's anybody else trying to do this) I'm going to be presenting you with first hand accounts of weird shit that I've seen. I don't know, maybe it'll make some sense to one of you.
This one I'll call;
The Fountain Child and His Weird Grandparents
Okay I'll admit it's not the punchiest of titles, but as you read on you'll discover how any other possible title might get me arrested.
I was coming out of the gym the other day when I remembered that I needed some groceries from town. The usual stuff, bread, milk, duct tape and 'various assorted lubricants.' It wasn't raining too much and I could still feel my fingers. It was a nice summers day by English standards. So I decide to walk the long way through town, past all the tourist areas and the other places where I probably wouldn't get mugged.
There's a square between me and the shops. The type of place were tourists can sit around on the benches and watch people go by. There's these little nozzles built into the pavement that squirt jets of water into the air. I can see kids weaving through the spray - laughing like they don't know that this is the best time they'll ever have. One day they'll have to get jobs that they hate, get stuck in a relationship with some cash vaccuming succubus and then it'll all be downhill once they squeeze out kids of their own. Let them have their fun, I say, and I'll get on with my wandering towards the food store.
One of the kids catches my eye. You know how sometimes you see something really wrong? Like you spot a guy yelling commands at one of those invisible dog leashes? Or you see a woman pushing a pram with no baby in it down an empty road? A shirtless old man yelling obscenities to the sky? It was one of them things - it immediately drew my attention and at once I wished my attention was anywhere else.
There was this kid, can't have been more than two or three, parading through the fountain jets in nothing but a nappy. I say parading because that's exactly what it was - put a stick in this little fuckers hands and some Mickey Mouse robots might just appear behind him.
He looked like something you might see in a documentary about orphans in Calcutta. Except he seemed so happy. I figured, why wouldn't he be? It's technically a summers day and there are people milling about - one of them could be his parent or guardian. He wasn't in any immediate danger. But I wondered why his parents weren't stepping in to call him back. Like I said there were people milling about and according to the tabloid presses every single one of those people was probably a paedophile.
I should point at at this point that I loathe children. I can't communicate with them on any level. They terrify me because if they decided to pelt me with rocks like everyone else does, then I know that I'd have no possible defense. It's a primal thing with me - I want to spend as little time with kids as possible.
That being said, I still looked around to see if there were any adults watching (but not watching too closely) and sure enough there was an elderly couple nearby. You can trust the elderly, and even if you can't, it was an elderly couple I'm talking about here. The least threatening thing you can ever encounter in a public setting that doesn't need a forklift to support it's own weight.
The old man in the couple looked like a kindly grandpa figure. The kind of person who would look comfortable in a tweed jacket and farmer's cap no matter the weather. The sort of person who carried Wether's Originals and let you stay up past your bedtime. His wife (because I refuse to use the word girlfriend to describe part of a couple that was probably alive when Hiroshima was known for it's football team) fit the image of a grandmotherly type. She looked like she baked cookies as a sole means of recreation. She was holding a camera and filming the child with a look of pride on her face. It was a totally innocent picture of grandparents watching their grandchild at play.
I say play - because by now the child was doing a hula dance sans hoop in front of the jets of water for the amusement of the octogenarian film crew. It was like he'd just been released from Gary Glitter's basement. It was about as obscene as an upside down Christian cross in the middle of the cemetary. Writing about it makes me feel dirty.
Then grandma turned the camera off, looked to her husband and the two of them shared an intimate, but toothless (literarlly) smile. I don't know if I imagined the specks of drool dangling from grandpa's gaping mouth, but for the sake of dramatic effect let's say that I didn't. If the couple had been any younger I'd swear that they looked like one of them just mentioned 'handcuffs and whipped cream.'
Then the woman slipped the camera into an inside pocket of her cardigan, linked arms with her husband and with one last lingering glance at the crowd around her dissapeared like an elderly, cookie baking ninja.
Meanwhile, the kid kept dancing like Ian Huntley had a fresh bucket of lollipops. I got away from the whole scene as fast I could and vomitted in a nearby bin. Not entirely unusual for me since it was late afternoon and by that time I'm usually drunk anyway.
I don't know; this probably isn't right is it? I'm pretty sure I witnessed something that if it isn't immoral must certainly be illegal. Any thoughts? Should I have reported this is a crime? Should I maybe not be writing about it on the internet? Are the police and The Sun newspaper already on their way over here?
Thursday 2 September 2010
Wednesday 1 September 2010
Just a quick one
Just so you know that I haven't given up on this whole journal idea.
Here's what happened; I'm working on a post about how to write a good main character. When I'm starting a new story the characters are usually the first thing I come up with, it makes sense that I start my writing journal off by talking about character development.
Ideas? I've got plenty of the bastards - far too many for just one post. You see, it's not enough to just talk about my opinions, I have to explain them, give plausible examples, trample any potential arguments and stick a few stupid jokes in there for good measure. Like a fat man on a cinema seat; it takes up a fair bit of room.
So I did three little ideas - three is, as I'll get to at some point, a magic number in writing. I expanded these three and then started work on the main body of the post, and I've been there for the past couple of days. I'm not one of those guys that can conceive, plot, draft and produce a new idea every day, I'm just not that good. My first drafts usually come out like sandpaper and I need to smooth down all the rough edges before I'll even consider letting anybody read them.
Things were going well - I looked set to finish it off tonight. I spent an hour and a half plugging away in this blogger window until I had the entire article written out sans jokes.
I tend to write the main body of this stuff and then add the jokes in later. It's easier for me to be funny if I'm reacting to something and I don't feel as if I'm being entertaining if I'm not being funny. So the joke writing stage takes a fair bit of time (which is why this entry has had no jokes in it so far - this is just stream of consciousness stuff).
I thought I'd be prudent and copy and paste the entry into a word document. I use a dinosaur of a laptop that tends to stutter worse than me on a date. When I use hotmail this thing shimmies so much that just picking out one e-mail is like picking out a single vein from a still-beating heart.
I highlighted my whole character article, right-clicked and waited.
I kept on waiting.
Maybe the machine hadn't registered my right-click properly, it's happened before.
So I right clicked again.
And my character article vanished. Two days of work gone and I couldn't get it back.
So I did what I usually do in these situations - namely, I panic, cry, drink half a bottle of mouthwash and then write about my problems. That last bit is what you've just read.
Now I have a back up. It's just that my back up has everything I've written up until today, so all I'm missing is the hour and a half that I put into it today - and most of the jokes.
So I just thought I'd drop by real quick to let you know why there hasn't been anything new here, even though I promised you all (Hi Mum!) that there would be. I'm not one of those weekend writer types that I'm going to be moaning about a lot in the future, no sir! I take all my writing very seriously. Perhaps too seriously.
There'll be something new here tomorrow - either I'll get the character article done or I'll post the other entry I've been working on (one that I had originally planned to be third up, since it's shorter than my other two). Either way drop back tomorrow around this time and see what's here.
Update on what I've been doing: P.I story that I'm working on is crawling along. At the moment my main character is getting his arse thoroughly kicked by life and some of the other characters. It's great fun to write something like this - it's totally different to anything I've written up until this point.
I also discovered a website that pays for decent short stories. My only problem is that there's a word limit of 1,500 words, and most of my shorts are way over the 4,000 word mark (they're short by comparison to the bible). So I need to work on something new, been plucking away at an idea which might fill their needs.
I got a rejection letter from another agent. This one didn't even take the time to send me a form rejection notice, apparently all they've done is scrawl 'No Thanks!' at the bottom of the letter that I sent them. All my writing stuff gets sent to my parents house, along with my bank statements and wage slips (it's the only address I've ever really learned) so I'll need to go visiting before I can see which agent it was. Suffice it to say it doesn't look like this agency can act like proffesionals, so I don't think I want to deal with them. It's like asking out a pretty girl and discovering that she's a horrible person - it's more of a relief than anything else.
I also don't have a day job anymore. This is a shame, but it's also an opportunity to try out something new so I'm not complaining (much). I just hope I get another job soon. Until I start making money from writing (which might take a long time) then I'll need a day job to pay my rent and fund my myriad addictions.
I've also been killing some time here http://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/creepy-pasta it's a little collection of short horror fiction. A lot of it is well-written, some if it is quite light in tone and there's quite a few stories here that are unsettling. It's great. Fair warning though, if you don't like those chainmails that threaten you with ghosts if you don't send them to a million people - you'll hate the stories 'WITNESS' and 'I used to be fearless.' By reading them you apparently invite the ghost into your home. So far I'm relatively ghost free, but just thought I should warn you if you're one of them nervous temprament types.
Other people collect stamps, I collect ghosts that are trying to kill me. Maybe I can get these ghosts, Bloody Mary and that TV chick from 'The Ring' to battle each other for the right to kill me. They might all do it at once. I'll keep you posted in any case. It might make an interesting youtube video.
On that note, I'm off to sleep. I have to be up fairly early in the morning to go canvass the city centre with my CV. I plan to fling copies from the rooftops and see what happens.
Peas!
- Writerman
Here's what happened; I'm working on a post about how to write a good main character. When I'm starting a new story the characters are usually the first thing I come up with, it makes sense that I start my writing journal off by talking about character development.
Ideas? I've got plenty of the bastards - far too many for just one post. You see, it's not enough to just talk about my opinions, I have to explain them, give plausible examples, trample any potential arguments and stick a few stupid jokes in there for good measure. Like a fat man on a cinema seat; it takes up a fair bit of room.
So I did three little ideas - three is, as I'll get to at some point, a magic number in writing. I expanded these three and then started work on the main body of the post, and I've been there for the past couple of days. I'm not one of those guys that can conceive, plot, draft and produce a new idea every day, I'm just not that good. My first drafts usually come out like sandpaper and I need to smooth down all the rough edges before I'll even consider letting anybody read them.
Things were going well - I looked set to finish it off tonight. I spent an hour and a half plugging away in this blogger window until I had the entire article written out sans jokes.
I tend to write the main body of this stuff and then add the jokes in later. It's easier for me to be funny if I'm reacting to something and I don't feel as if I'm being entertaining if I'm not being funny. So the joke writing stage takes a fair bit of time (which is why this entry has had no jokes in it so far - this is just stream of consciousness stuff).
I thought I'd be prudent and copy and paste the entry into a word document. I use a dinosaur of a laptop that tends to stutter worse than me on a date. When I use hotmail this thing shimmies so much that just picking out one e-mail is like picking out a single vein from a still-beating heart.
I highlighted my whole character article, right-clicked and waited.
I kept on waiting.
Maybe the machine hadn't registered my right-click properly, it's happened before.
So I right clicked again.
And my character article vanished. Two days of work gone and I couldn't get it back.
So I did what I usually do in these situations - namely, I panic, cry, drink half a bottle of mouthwash and then write about my problems. That last bit is what you've just read.
Now I have a back up. It's just that my back up has everything I've written up until today, so all I'm missing is the hour and a half that I put into it today - and most of the jokes.
So I just thought I'd drop by real quick to let you know why there hasn't been anything new here, even though I promised you all (Hi Mum!) that there would be. I'm not one of those weekend writer types that I'm going to be moaning about a lot in the future, no sir! I take all my writing very seriously. Perhaps too seriously.
There'll be something new here tomorrow - either I'll get the character article done or I'll post the other entry I've been working on (one that I had originally planned to be third up, since it's shorter than my other two). Either way drop back tomorrow around this time and see what's here.
Update on what I've been doing: P.I story that I'm working on is crawling along. At the moment my main character is getting his arse thoroughly kicked by life and some of the other characters. It's great fun to write something like this - it's totally different to anything I've written up until this point.
I also discovered a website that pays for decent short stories. My only problem is that there's a word limit of 1,500 words, and most of my shorts are way over the 4,000 word mark (they're short by comparison to the bible). So I need to work on something new, been plucking away at an idea which might fill their needs.
I got a rejection letter from another agent. This one didn't even take the time to send me a form rejection notice, apparently all they've done is scrawl 'No Thanks!' at the bottom of the letter that I sent them. All my writing stuff gets sent to my parents house, along with my bank statements and wage slips (it's the only address I've ever really learned) so I'll need to go visiting before I can see which agent it was. Suffice it to say it doesn't look like this agency can act like proffesionals, so I don't think I want to deal with them. It's like asking out a pretty girl and discovering that she's a horrible person - it's more of a relief than anything else.
I also don't have a day job anymore. This is a shame, but it's also an opportunity to try out something new so I'm not complaining (much). I just hope I get another job soon. Until I start making money from writing (which might take a long time) then I'll need a day job to pay my rent and fund my myriad addictions.
I've also been killing some time here http://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/creepy-pasta it's a little collection of short horror fiction. A lot of it is well-written, some if it is quite light in tone and there's quite a few stories here that are unsettling. It's great. Fair warning though, if you don't like those chainmails that threaten you with ghosts if you don't send them to a million people - you'll hate the stories 'WITNESS' and 'I used to be fearless.' By reading them you apparently invite the ghost into your home. So far I'm relatively ghost free, but just thought I should warn you if you're one of them nervous temprament types.
Other people collect stamps, I collect ghosts that are trying to kill me. Maybe I can get these ghosts, Bloody Mary and that TV chick from 'The Ring' to battle each other for the right to kill me. They might all do it at once. I'll keep you posted in any case. It might make an interesting youtube video.
On that note, I'm off to sleep. I have to be up fairly early in the morning to go canvass the city centre with my CV. I plan to fling copies from the rooftops and see what happens.
Peas!
- Writerman
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