April 2006

Errors and omissions excepted

by Suw on April 23, 2006

Due to technical difficulties, such as the shops being shut on Monday morning when T'Other and I had a scrap of time to go shopping for my birthday present, I didn't get my Moleskine until yesterday, but to make up for the delay, T'Other bought me a nice (and reasonably priced) Lamy pen. We can't afford the really expensive Lamy pens just yet, but this one writes nicely and will do me for now. I'll buy a posh one with the advance from this novel…
Har har har.
Anyway, I've just written the opening chapter. It'll be a very short chapter, I suspect, but it's written. Shite, but written. Nearly illegible in places, but written. I don't know how many words it is, because I can't be arsed to count, but maybe that's a good thing. The word count is an ongoing obsession whenever I am writing, and I'm really not convinced that that's healthy. I should be obsessing about telling the story I want to tell, not about how many words it's taking me to tell it.
For better or for worse, I am basing this novel on the script I wrote a couple of years back, and my aim is to rewrite a page of script per day. I'm finding that I am erring towards writing in the present tense, and I'm really not sure if that's going to work or not, long term, but it's hard to read something in the present and then write the same thing in the past. The couple of pages in my notebook seem to swing between tenses, which makes for uncomfortable reading (well, no more so than my hammy, crappy style), but then, this is a first draft: eaoe.
I haven't written anything long-hand like this for years. I think the last time I did it was in 97-ish, when I was working on a really crappy vampire novel. I would write on the tube, in mirror-writing because I didn't want anyone reading over my shoulder. Of course, I can't easily read my own mirror-writing now, so in order to read it I'd have to scan and flip each page. I am pretty damn sure it wouldn't be worth it, though.
Anyway, if I can manage to rewrite a page of script per day, then I'll be done in 109 days, so some time in August.
I repeat: Har har har.

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Do you ever get mornings

by Suw on April 21, 2006

Where you wake up late, (due to being woken up by chavtastic neighbour's daughter's ex ringing all the bells available and bellowing to be let in), look at the huge pile of unread email that's come in and just think, “Eww, do I have do?”.
The sun's starting to come out, it's Friday, I had a really long day yesterday teaching PR types about blogs, scaring the daylights out of a bunch of health industry types, and being inspired and delighted by ORG volunteer types (who are, I have to say, a lovely bunch). Why isn't it Saturday today?
Ah, at least I get crepes for breakfast this morning. Can't be all bad.

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Tortured canary in my washing machine

by Suw on April 18, 2006

I think the fanbelt is going. It squeaks like a canary with its tail feathers caught in a cat's teeth.
I also am starting to realise that working from home seems to correlate very strongly with quantity of blogging. Whether it's because I feel more like I can blog, or whether it's a time thing, or a need for communication thing, I'm not really sure, yet suddenly I have the urge to share every last little thought with you. Hmm. I'm not sure if that's a good thing or a bad thing.

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Pass the Darwin Award

by Suw on April 18, 2006

It's generally a bad idea, if one is covered in a flammable gel as part of a medical treatment, to then light up a ciggie – the resulting flames are usually bad for one's health.
Update: And indeed, a Darwin Award is now under consideration.

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Learning to be happy

by Suw on April 18, 2006

Article on teaching teenagers to be happy, from the Guardian.
I wish adults would spend more time learning how to be happy, and that more bosses would decide that happy employees were important. Instead, we have this mad mindset that says happiness in the work place is obviously a sign of skiving, and should be stomped on at every opportunity. Commingle that with the desire to exert your alpha-(fe)male status by acting like a twat and ensuring that everyone around you gets a piece of the shit you're spreading and you have the modern working environment.
Bollocks to that. I'm staying self-employed.

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Office policy

by Suw on April 17, 2006

Not really all that work safe at all, I'm afraid, but very funny. (Thanks KM.)

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Bank holidays

by Suw on April 14, 2006

The weather forecast said there would be sunshine from 10am this morning. The weather forecast was four hours out, but finally, the cloud has cleared and the warm rays of the sun are making the new Arsenal stadium glint like a, er, big new stadium in the distance.
It's Good Friday today. Most normal people have today off, however, in this household, bank holidays are more of an aspiration than a reality. If T'Other didn't work on a daily radio show, and if I wasn't horribly late with a few deadlines (whoooosh!) then today would have been a nice day to pop out of the city for a nice lunch somewhere nice and picturesque.
Instead, he's doing an 11 – 7pm shift, and I'm sitting here staring at my screen, trying to get one article worked into some semblance of shape whilst simultaneously trying to plan the next one in the back of my head. (If you want to know: 3000 words on collaboration and copyright, and 800 words on the government's unhealthy love of databases. I should also have submitted a paper for a conference I'm speaking at, but I've not even thought about starting that one yet. It's going to be late. Oh well.)
I'm aspiring to have both articles done by 5pm, so I can spent a couple of hours cleaning the flat before my Mum turns up tomorrow. I never seem to do anything but clean this place. Wooden floors are heaven for dustbunnies and if there's something in life I can't abide it's a dustbunny. A pox upon the creatures.
But once that's all done, it's three full days of not doing any work at all. Apart from, possibly, some proof reading.
I swear, the next bank holiday is going to be taken, by force if necessary.

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Auctorial aspirations

by Suw on April 13, 2006

So, if you're a long-time reader of this blog, you'll already know about my writerly leanings. You'll have seen me talk about my scriptwriting; you'll have seen me writing about learning languages (still not finished); you'll have heard about my acquiring a literary agent (whom I still have, by the way, and who is still helping me out with one thing and another). You'll also have heard me gush about Neil Gaiman and what a spiffingly lovely/talented/generous/friendly guy he is.
Forgive my name-dropping, but I've been thinking a lot about Neil lately. Actually, I've had three dreams about him in the last week. The first two dreams were about me staying in a big house that was a bit like something out of MirrorMask which then turned out to be Neil's house. The third dream was me having a coffee with Neil and telling him that I'd had these dreams about staying in his house. That one was really confusing to wake up from, I can tell you.
Anyway… a few splinters have stuck in my mind, and they have reached a point of irritation so great that I have to do something about them. Due to the timely reduction in my consulting workload, I now have both the will and the time to do what needs to be done.
The first splinter was unknowingly embedded by Neil. When I met him to talk about the Open Rights Group (of which he is kindly Patron, and which I would be grateful if you could support so that we can afford to hire talent to help expand the group, thus providing me with more time to write this blog), I ended up going to dinner with Neil and some of his friends. I did one of those things I do sometimes where I mindlessly say something really inane, and then have to rely on everyone around me to either ignore it or be kind. The inane thing I said was that I 'really ought to do something about this whole book reading thing'. The look Neil gave me in response to that I interpreted to mean 'Well, why don't you then?'. Quite right too. Why don't I?
Next splinter. People all around me keep writing books. Bastards. Cory, obviously, all the sodding time. Jeeze… ever been in a room with Cory typing at full speed? It's frightening. Tom. Ben. Half my geek friends have books on the shelf at Waterstones. Where on earth to they find the time? I know how busy Cory and Ben are. And I know Tom doesn't exactly sit on his arse all day. So, being busy is not an excuse.
Final splinter. I met up with Ben Whyte from the British Library a few weeks ago, and before we got down to the nitty gritty of copyright and licensing, he showed me the gallery they have there. You'd never think to go to the British Library, but my god, they have an astonishing collection of manuscripts. The Lindisfarne Gospels, Leonardo da Vinci's notebook, Handel's Messiah… they even have the Magna Carta. Wowser.
But the thing that really struck me was the fact that they have Lewis Carroll's original hand-written Alice's Adventures Under Ground. Eventually, they may carry Neil's original notebooks for Anansi Boys, who knows?
The thing is, it's a physical thing. My first instinct when writing anything is to crack open the iBook and start there, but that instinct is causing me to pause. Is that the right way to go about this?
I used to be on a mailing list of Cory's, where he was writing a novel and sending out to a small group of people about 250 words a day. I don't know what happened to that – he stopped for a while, and I'm not even sure if I'm still on the list, but I thought it was an interesting way to try and keep motivation going. It was exciting for me as a reader, but fascinating for me as a writer to see how things would develop and whether it would work as a tactic for getting oneself to keep writing.
As a blogger, however, I was thinking that maybe I should start a new blog, and publish my 250 words a day on that. Again, having an audience would put a comfortable pressure on me to write regularly. But then again… I have an audience here and we can't exactly say that I've felt any pressure to write here regularly, can we? Besides, I'm not sure I actually feel happy publishing my first drafts. Writing a book is not writing a blog, even if some publishers at the moment are happy to hunt through blogs for stuff that might make a decent book, the two are not interchangeable. Just ask Tom.
Then there's that saying, “If you do what you've always done, you'll get what you've always got.”
If I sit and write on my iBook, maybe, just maybe, it'll go the way of all previous books of mine. It will languish on my hard drive and never actually go anywhere.
So… add up all the pieces. Extract the splinters and try to figure out why they have been bugging me. That's what writing this post is for. If I recognise what's been stopping me, and what motivates me, maybe I can clear whatever mental block has been in the way and stopping me doing what I frequently claim to want to do but never actually seem to get on with doing.
Final piece of the puzzle. It's my birthday on Saturday. I'll be 35. Shit. How did that happen? I mean… where did the years go? I don't feel 35. And I feel a bit like I haven't really fulfilled my potential, and that the only person to blame for that is me.
Walking round Brugge at Christmas, I announced to T'Other that I would damn well write a book this year, or else. Christmas/New Year is a really bad time to make resolutions, but birthdays are much better for it. So I have requested as my present from my beloved a nice Moleskine notebook. In it, I shall carefully write my novel. I shall remove my thumb from my arse, and I shall get on with it. And the next time I see Neil, I shall be hoping to say 'My new novel will be out soon…'

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Posting from an QTEK 9100

by Suw on April 8, 2006

So T`Other`s brother (ooh! that rhymes!) has this really great PDA/phone called a QTEK 9100 or an XDA mini S depending on who`s selling it to you. I've been thinking of getting one of these for a while and now I'm getting to play with one and I have to say that so far I really like it. This blog post is being written using IE and the old fashioned admin pages, and it's working just fine over our wifi network. Nice! I might just have to go get myself one of these.

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On a mission

by Suw on April 7, 2006

Adidas have reissued the Gazelle. I have a pair of Campus which are over a decade old and which were still serving me well until Christmas in Brugge when one started to leak. I loved them, and the Gazelle is a very similar design. I am on a mission to find a pair. Right now.
I'm in my fifth shop. First had them in blue but not my size. Second was 30 quid more expensive than the first. Adidas sent me to Office who don't have them in blue. Now waiting in Foot Locker to see if they have a pair.
…damn. None. The hunt continues…
UPDATE: OK, so we can count this mission as being partially successful. I ended up going to eight stores, none of which had the light blue Gazelles in my size. Eventually, I ended up in a store with black Gazelles in my size, by which time I was starting to feel less like I was on a mission and more like I wanted to poke someone with a sharp stick. Friday night is never the best night to go shopping.
The thing is, I have had only one other pair of trainers* since buying my Campus some 12 or so years ago, when they (and especially the Gazelle) were popularised by Britpop luminary Damon Albarn. Somehow, this style of footwear just taps into something fundamental in my psyche, the same way that For Tomorrow or Entertain Me did. I never looked at any other trainers in the same way, never wanted on my feet the huge, ugly carbuncles that pass for footwear now. All I ever wanted was a replacement for my trusty Campus… but if you wait around long enough, out-of-date eventually becomes retro-cool.
I hadn't realised that Adidas has reissued the Gazelle until I saw one in a shop yesterday, having decided that a weekend showing T'Other's brother and wife around London required comfy trainers of some description and that the need was so great I was willing to entertain all sorts of horribleness on my feet in order to get it. I was utterly delighted to see the understated, subtle form of the Gazelle on the shelves, but from the looks of it, I wasn't the only one to have formed a strong bond to my old pair. From the dreadful scarcity, I'd say that a whole generation of Britpop fans are now walking round in brand-new Gazelles. Light blue, size 6.
* That's 'sneakers' to you Americans

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Dying silk

April 4, 2006

I rather stupidly put 70 quid's worth of silk skirt through the washing machine. It is, to say the least, a shadow of it's previous silky black self. I mean, the dye hasn't washed out completely or anything, but it now has a grey sheen to it that it didn't have before but which makes […]

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Goodbye, Cleo

April 3, 2006

My darling Cleo died on Friday after a short illness. She is already missed.

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