Methods Of Work Avoidance # 2365

In between writing re-drafts (no, really), I have also found the time to create a avatar of myself via the website BitStrips.I'm fully aware I may have created  a generously attractive   version of myself, but screw it, it's my cartoon,and so I'll do what the hell I like.  

Thursday 29th August 2013

At ‘that’ stage with a good few short stories. I’ve been a bit like a magpie with them over the last few months (and by ‘few’, I’ve just realised I mean ‘twelve’), in that as soon as one idea gets a bit too tough to carry on writing, then I’ve flitted to another work in progress, and tinkered with that one. As soon as the tinkering gets a bit too much like hard work, then I’ve gone back to the first WIP (or a completely different one), so that my attention  span doesn’t get too hammered over the head, and I give up on the writing altogether.

Now, depending on who you listen to, this is either a perfectly fine and noble way to stop ideas (stories) getting too saggy and baggy and boring, or it’s the worst idea ever, because you have to stay committed to your ideas, and see them through to the very end, otherwise you’re never actually going to finish the bloody things at all. And, of course, in some cases, both those statements have been made by the same person at different times. Like all pieces of advice, they can be embraced or ignored as you see fit (and as you see that the advice itself fits you).

Right now, however, I feel that I need to go the hard-work route, and commit to the stories, and finish them off. One by one. This will be somewhat tough, because, at the moment, a lot of them are crap. Don’t get me wrong; this isn’t self-loathing, deprecating analysis. Even at their current stage (and I think a good few of them are about three drafts away from the final version), some of them read better than a few of the short stories I’ve bought on the kindle. There’s a reasonable amount of short stories self-published by unknown authors, some of them good, some of them awful (not nearly as many as you might think, however), and the majority of them – uh, average. Now, I’m sticking my neck out here slightly, because of course, I intend to publish my own collection at some point (reasonably) soon. So it’s a bit of a risky job – if not actually arrogant – to compare my unfinished works to those that have actually been uploaded onto a website and people are paying for. But, what the hell. I will claim that in at least a couple of cases, the stories that I’ve got, in their second or third draft, are better than the stories that somebody has deemed fit for public domain, publication, and consumption. And, yes, I am talking about the drafts of my stories that are currently in the ‘crap’ stage.

It’s not as if the stories that I’m talking about are bad, not at all. And I’m aware that I’m certainly setting myself up for a fall when I do publish my own (hey, here’s an idea, maybe I don’t publish them, that’ll keep me safe from public criticism – even better, hell, I won’t actually finish any of the stories ..). The ideas behind the stories (the ones that people have published, not mine) are actually pretty good. But quite often, the story is told in such a brief, perfunctory fashion – in the matter of about three kindle pages – that I wonder, what’s the point? It feels less like a story well told, and more like the synopsis on the back of the DVD cover : ‘Once there was this guy who said that it would be cool if we were all nice to each other but he got nailed to a tree but it was OK because he came back to life the end’ … Now, come on. I’m sure you could’ve stretched that out a bit.

It’s occurred to me recently that short stories don’t always have to be short, and they don’t have to be stories, not in the normal sense of the word. Quite often, I see short stories (very short, around 1,000 words) struggle to keep to the format of a beginning, a middle and an end. I understand the desire to keep things coherent and within a recognisable framework, but I’m not sure it’s always vitally necessary. Some of the best short stories deal with a passing thought or emotion, a reaction to something else (I’ll be honest – some of the very worst short stories do that, too, because the writer is shrinking away from committing to an idea – but that’s a blog for another time).

Anyway, I managed a few thousand words each on two stories this morning. They’re both currently at the stage of ‘terrible’, but they still feel good to write, and I still (just about) remember what I liked about the ideas in the first place, which isn’t always the case. Plus, it’s helped that in the café where I’m writing at the moment, there’s a couple of other people, both working on Important Stuff. There is a distraction here, and it’s name is Free WiFi, but there seems to be a atmosphere in these kind of places; if you’re vaguely aware that the other people are actually furiously working, rather than piddling about on facebook, or tweeting the hilarious ‘other’ dream that Martin Luther King was going to talk about, it ‘shames’ you into doing some work yourself.

Or, as writing avoidances go, writing a blog isn’t exactly the most terrible .. 

Tuesday 27th August 2013

I had intended to go along to Brighton’s SeaLife Centre today. I have an annual pass as a local resident, and it’s nice to pop in there occasionally whenever the mood takes me, without having to fork out any extra cash (the money you pay for the annual pass is roughly the same as two ‘walk-up’ ticket prices, which means that if you’re a local resident, it may well be worth your while just paying the extra for the pass in the first place when you’re buying that ticket).

I love the SeaLife Centre, and love the fact that it’s practically at the end of my road. The curators (or owners, or management team, or whatever they are) have done a really good job of creating a genuinely other-world feeling place, and some of the fish are really jaw-dropping. I’d recommend it to anyone. I do have vague memories of going there as a kid, long before I actually moved to Brighton – long before, in fact, it had ever occurred to me that I might live here – but I’m not sure. The dolphins were moved out in the seventies since it wasn’t exactly humane (humane? Is that the word when you’re talking about animals?) to have performing dolphins in what is essentially a confined space. The sharks are still there, though, although we’re assured that they’re not man-eaters. I don’t know how often they test that theory.

I’m reminded that I set the finale scene of my novel on the rooftop of a fictionalised version of the SealLife Centre in the novel that I wrote last year. Yeah, I know, a novel. A whole one. OK, well, a short one, and it was one that was hacked out in a month, as part of 2012’s Nanowrimo, but still, there was a fair amount of it that I quite liked. Don’t get me wrong, most of it was fairly dreck (it was hacked out in thirty days, after all, and it’s not like I actually wrote for every single one of those thirty days), but there was a reasonable amount that might one day be salvageable for some kind of pulpy kindle-friendly novella. In fact, the only problem I had with it, even more than the admittedly haphazard plotting, was how Mary-Sue the main character was. Added to that, I couldn’t quite decide if my main character being a bit of a Mary-Sue was actually a problem, since this was a deliberately dime-store style pulp novel, and as such, the lead is traditionally all of the above and more: beautiful, intelligent, witty and kick-ass.

Another look at the manuscript would tell me if I’ve just created a wish-fulfilment woman, or if she’s a decent character in her own right. At least, it would if I could find the damn thing. But I can’t. It’s vanished, all fifty thousand (and plus) words of it. I’ve gone through a laptop since then, which simply stopped working, but I don’t think it’s there. What I do have is a couple of external hard drives. Not just USB memory sticks, but heavy, bigger than iphone, external hard drives. These, also, have stopped working altogether. They are now not so much use as somewhere to store works in progress, but reasonably unattractive paperweights. I will need to start emailing myself everything I write (because I don’t do that enough yet) in order to insure myself against any more potential losses.

In the end, I couldn’t get into the SeaLife Centre, because it seems that my annual pass expired. About three weeks ago. I’m not entirely convinced by this, because I’m sure that I renewed the pass in March (‘March this year?’ the otherwise helpful chap at the desk asked. Yes, March this year). It’s going to take me a while to check my bank statements for earlier in the year, but knowing my luck, I’ll have got things wrong, and I’ve somehow managed to black out for eleven months, not realising that time has passed me by.

That kind of thing is always happening to me. 

Sunday 25th August 2013

Right, we’re almost out of time. I go back to work in a few days time, and I haven’t managed to finish the short stories I’m working on, and I haven’t finished a final draft of Four Play, and I haven’t seen any fantastic job in directing, and, most crucially, I haven’t won the lottery.

Actually, that middle one isn’t precisely true – there is a very good looking job at the National Theatre at the moment, for a fringe style director, for a post of six months. It actually really does look like something that I might be capable of, but at least one of the requirements is to have directed a ‘professional’ production. Now, the terms of that are actually looser than you might think – it seemingly just means a production in which people got paid (or, at the very least, were hired with the promise of pay), and that that production lasted at least a week. Strike two for me, right there. There are plenty of people I know who, should they apply, would be much more likely to get the job than I would – even in the unlikely event that I’d actually be better than them – simply because my day-to-day work is a ‘normal’ fulltime job in the ‘real’ world, and that all my creative energies get crushed into the evenings and weekends, entirely unpaid. (sorry, I whine about this a lot).

I am, therefore, mindful of spare time running out. A summer holiday isn’t nearly as much time as you might think to pull things together. Particularly as, in theory, you’d need time and money before the holiday kicked in, so that you could prepare for it. Perhaps I’m just horrifically without ambition and organisational skills. So many people began their writing career while having to commit to a full time job and young family. I guess that’s a major factor, right there – that it’s a writing career, rather than a directing or acting career, which by their very natures, have to operate within certain time frames. At least with writing, you can pretty much whenever and wherever the hell you want, even if it’s just five minutes on your lunchbreak. I mean, OK, I have a problem with that in itself – it’s very difficult to get into the head space required when you’ve got only five minutes to spare – for instance, it’s taken me about a hour to get focussed enough to start writing this, and this is just a meaningless, unplanned blog. It becomes a lot more difficult when you’re attempting to create a tight, focussed story.

Of course I’m moaning. Of course there have been plenty of other writers out there who shut up, and get the damn thing done. I’m not one of those writers just yet. Which – incidentally – is why, despite the fact that I have actually finished a couple of plays, short stories, and a (hack job of a) novel, I still hesitate to call myself a Writer. Well, in polite company, anyway. The word ‘writer’ is there on my website and twitter feed, and if a local college comes up with another ‘writer in residence’ job, then you can be damn sure that’s what I’ll be calling myself.

And I’m aware, of course, that I’m doing what every amateur writer (read: not actually a writer) does – whine, complain, and moan about how hard writing actually is. Rather than getting on and actually writing, which, when you get down to it, isn’t actually that hard. Certainly not as hard as an actual job. And, of course, that’s the point – there’s absolutely no way that I will be able to make writing my day job until I get more of these finished, and get more people to see and read them.

It’s possible.

One day.

Soon. 

Saturday 24th August 2013

Well, the first thing to say about Elysium is that it's pretty good. The second thing is that it's only pretty good up to a point - literally, a point in the narrative, around twenty minutes before the end - at which point I could find myself beginning to shift in my seat, getting bored. I'd been sold on the film before that, and it only took three seconds from me to get to one state to the other. 

This isn't a review of the film, by the way, so here be spoilers. I'm usually pretty dead set against any kind of spoiler whatsoever, having had many good plot reveals destroyed for me by clunky written reviews. I will have a rant about at it here at some point, but now's not the time, particularly as the main discussion point will involve a significant spoiler. I hope I've indicated that enough by now that many people who haven't seen the film yet will have turned away. Either because they don't want the film's end given away, or because of my shoddy writing style. 

Anyway, as I say, the film is pretty good. There are a significant number of plot points that make no sense whatsoever if you look at them too closely, but, like good cinema does when it's doing its job properly, there's enough smoke and mirrors so that you don't concern yourself with mere problems like logic until after you've left the cinema. At one point in the story, this is acheived literally with smoke and mirrors. It's got a great visual style (and as such, has a good deal in common with Neill Blomkamp's other film District 9, and like that film is more potent sci-fi than we've been served in recent years, in that it has something to say about the world we live in.) The Big Bads of the film are - literally - Homeland Security, and for the most part, your life in this world is safe and secure if you're both rich and white. Most of the people living in the gleaming space station above Earth are white, except for those occasions when - in a cute gag - they choose to 'go Asian' because it's fashionable. While the great and not so good get to live and upgrade themselves continuously in a coporate funded shiny afterlife - iHeaven, if you like - everybody else is punished (and dying) for the crime of being poor. 

Matt Damon gives good value in what's a fairly unremarkable role (apart from anything else, he can do Awkward Flirting as well as anyone). The most interesting role by far is that played by Jodie Foster. She's Jessica Delacourt, the Secretary Of Defence, delivered as a Fox News dream of how to protect your assests. She's sneery, absolutely cold-eyed and rational, and remarkably confident in her agenda to keep Elysium free of immigrants. At one point, she manages to deliver a variation on the 'won't somebody think of the children' line that quells her more liberal detractors. She stalks and smirks her way through all of her scenes with the attiude of someone who thinks that all other people are idiots. Somebody paid her a job because they didn't want to get their own hands dirty, and she doesn't have much patience when her bosses start getting queasy at her approach - she's absolutely disinterested in preserving life if the people involved aren't passport-carrying citizens. 

Foster's character is a great foil for Damon's. She's intelligent, focused and ambitious, clear-eyed on what the end game is. Damon's Max De Costa, on the other hand, doesn't know what the hell he's doing. He's basically a good guy who knows far too many bad guys, and very likely can't even spell his own name. As befits a movie like this, he's more able to have a conversation with his fists. The two characters have an entirely different approach, which makes any meeting between them compelling. She's the main bad guy, he's the main good guy, and when they meet face to face, there's nothing for them to get a grip on, no traction. And then, indeed - here's the spoiler - they don't meet - ever - in the film, because she's killed twenty minutes from the end. She has been the catalyst for Max DeCosta's misfortunes throughout the film, and it's unclear that he is ever aware of her existence. 

There is another bad guy - played by Shartlo Copley - who works for Foster's character, and ultimately is the one that kills her. There's absolutely nothing wrong with his character, and in fact it's a great wise-cracking, creepy and slimy villain. But here's the thing, though. We've had plenty of wise-cracking, creepy and slimy villains in films like this. There's been no population control on those characters. But as soon as Copley kills her off, and straps on a exo-suit to do battle with Matt Damon, your mind disengages a notch or two, because we've seen that finale. At least thirty times. Three of them in Transformers films. It's not new, it's not surprising. As soon as Jodie's been dispatched, we know that we're back to a Boys Scrapping With Each Other movie. And so it proves. It's a shame, because the wildly differing politics of the two characters promised a much more interesting end to the film.  

I understand, of course, that Elysium  is a popcorn, tentpole kind of film, and for it to go from guns and explosions to a Mr Smith Goes To Washington style debate would have been testing for the audience - particularly as , realistically, the more intelligent Delacourt would have won any argument against De Costa. But I am suggesting that when you have such an interesting dynamic, perhaps it doesn't always have to end in fisticuffs. I'm not suggesting, by the way, that Jodie is killed off because she can't have a fight at the end - in other words, because her character is female, and a non-superpowered one at that. In fact, everything about the role and the film suggests that the character might have originally written male, and that Jodie Foster simply lobbied for and 'gender-flipped' the role (apparently Foster does that kind of thing a lot), meaning that the character was due to be dispatched in the same way even if it was male. 

Delacourt is a more compelling character because she's female (and, admittedly, played by Foster, which helps) in spite of the fact - indeed, because of the fact that nobody makes any concession or any reference whatsoever - to her gender. It just would have been nice, once Jodie Foster had been cast, and started doing such fascinating things with the character (her fixed rictus grin and careful accent is something that less known actresses wouldn't have been allowed to get away with) that they couldn't have made some changes to the script and let her play with the boys til the end. 

Friday 23rd August 2013

Last night, went to an event called The Space in Brighton. This is a semi-regular event in which various industry types (usually two per evening) have an informal chat in what's usually quite intimate surroundings. It's always a good night, even if (sometimes, especially if) you haven't heard of one of the guests. I try to get along to it whenever I can (and fancy myself as a possible interviewer - not quite as overbearing as James Lipton of Inside The Actors Studio). At previous events, guests have included Mark Gatiss, Frank Skinner and Barry Norman, as well as many more. 

Last night, the first guest was Dennis Kelly, writer of Utopia, Pulling (along with Sharon Horgan) and the musical of Roald Dahl's Matilda (with Tim Minchin). Somehow, I've managed not to see any of his work, despite all things being on my to-see list for quite some time. Because I've never followed him as a writer, it was somewhat startling to see these apparently diverse things being created by the same person. I'm sure there are probably connecting themes if you look hard enough for them (good people can be dicks, for instance), but I imagine that there's not a stand-out text that you could point to and say that's a Dennis Kelly story. This was spoken about in a roundabout way as part of the interview when he spoke about not 'having a voice'. Many writers, at the start of their career, are advised to 'find their voice'. It makes some kind of sense. If nobody knows who you are, then if you want to get your next gig, then there's a certain logic in being easily identifiable to whoever it is that might give you your next pay cheque - 'oh, let's get the guy who does the Richard Curtis style rom coms .. who is that? Oh, it's Richard Curtis,' Kelly rails against that, and quite aggressively so. I can get on board with that idea. A 'voice', surely, runs the risk of being restrictive, of suggesting that you can 'only' write a certain type of story. Stephen King speaks of the warning that his agent delivered to him when he offered up Salems Lot for publication (the second book after Carrie) - the very real danger that with two bloody books in a row, he was going to be forever pigeon-holed as a horror writer. He decided that he was OK with that (and his success has meant that he's managed to smuggle a decent amount of very good books in under the radar that can truly be described as 'horror', even if they are still a bit bloody). I wondered if that's somewhat the case with Kelly. Although what he's written has been very successful (even if hardly anyone actually saw Pulling, it's highly regarded by those that did), his name isn't really on the public's radar yet, which means that he's allowed to follow the story, whatever story interests him, even if it bears no relation to what he's produced before. A certain amount of anonymity can be a blessing. I remember the creators of The Blair Witch Project being asked what their next film was going to be (this at the height of Blair Witch's success). They replied, in all seriousness, a romantic comedy. As far as I'm aware, that film never surfaced. 

The second guest of The Space was Phillip Hinchcliffe, who has had a wide and varied career, bringing many interesting and sometimes even risky projects to the screen ... but will always be remembered as a producer for Doctor Who. It helps that the era that he oversaw was just about the most successful in the show's history. Russell T Davies credits the Hinchcliffe era with igniting his passion for wanting to revive the show, even going so far as to say that the only reason he started writing for television in the first place was so that he could revive Doctor Who- and, in turn, the only reason he wanted to was because of his memory of the stories that were produced by Hinchcliffe. It's true that there's a very impressive wealth of stories under his tenure that are genuine classics that more than stand up today, and would be good gateway drugs for anyone who hasn't yet seen an episode of the original series, among them Genisis Of The Daleks, Terror Of The Zygons, Planet Of Evil, Pyramids Of Mars, Brain Of Morbius, Seeds Of Doom, and The Talons Of Weng-Chiang. 

Hinchcliffe comes across as a gracious and generous person, very often deflecting praise to others, (particularly Robert Holmes, who does indeed deserve much praise), but I get the impression that as a producer he didn't suffer fools gladly, and that he was straight-arrowed and focused. That certainly comes across in the stories of his era. While he didn't write or direct them, and is quick to bestow the praise for the 'Gothic' shades of those years back to Holmes, there's a focus there that is absent in the latter Pertwee years, and wobbles a great deal in the Tom Baker era after Hinchcliffe leaves. Indeed, most of the 'pantomime' criticism that is delivered at classic Doctor Who really begins as soon as he's left. We spoke about this, about the idea that a producer of a show can have 'authorship' on a programme, even more so than the director or even, ironically, the author. In many ways, it's directly opposite to the avoiding 'finding a voice' that Dennis Kelly was speaking about earlier in the evening. 

It's quite clear that, for better or worse, Doctor Who was essentially 'just another job' to Hinchcliffe. That's understandable: with genre TV or film, the story on screen is almost always going to be a helluva lot more important to the viewers than those who made it - they've already made the next three jobs, after all - but it always makes me curious and even uneasy at events like this. I imagine fan conventions are even worse. Exactly how many times can you answer the same question about bubblewrap monsters? Can you really relate to men in their forties who probably have an unhealthy fixation with Sophie Aldred, and are dismayed when you acknowledge that you don't actually know who Sophie Aldred is? Plus, you get people like me who are fans, but try to act casual about it, and absolutely refuse to ask questions about bubble wrap - which, I suspect, is equally annoying. 

Both men were inspiring, full of energy, intelligence and verve (and Kelly said 'fuck' an impressive amount). As a writer, though, it's always worth keeping in mind what other (successful) writers speak about when they are talking about what works, and what doesn't. It's always in slightly different words, it's sometimes eloquent, it's sometimes basic, but it's essentially the same message, a thousand times over. The only way to write is to get your arse on that chair - and write. 

Thursday 22nd August 2013

As a writer, you’re not really meant to go on too much about whatever it is that you’re working on at the moment. There are many reasons for this, the most compelling being that if you’re talking about the writing, then you’re not getting on with the actual business of doing the writing. It’s a form of procrastination: if you can talk about how fantastic the finished product is going to be, it (deceptively) lets you off the hook of actually putting in the work of putting one word after the other on a page. What you talk about will always be better than the dull, flabby story that you finally produce. There’s also the fact that you’re likely to dilute the story. Speak it out loud enough times – and all stories, at their source, come from the oral tradition (oh, stop sniggering at the back) – and the written version becomes a pale tracing.

There is, of course, yet another reason to shut up about your writing, and it’s probably the most simple. Unless you’re already published, unless people are prepared to fork out twenty quid at a book festival and ask some variation of ‘where do you get your ideas’, then, frankly, nobody gives a damn about that thing you’re probably never going to finish. Oh, sure, some of your loved ones will, and the couple of people who earnestly believe that you actually do have some talent – but even those people would rather you shut the hell up, and get on with the writing.

Back when I lived in Croydon, I remember attending a house party, although I don’t clearly remember anyone there, suggesting that the party was of a friend-of-a-friend. Therefore, I found myself wandering aimlessly through the various rooms. I do have one very clear memory of the party, however, and it’s of a writer talking – rather tediously – about this book he was working on. I remember thinking, even then, that this book would never be finished. The woman he was talking to also seemed to have reached this conclusion. He was speaking about how he got his ideas, making him reasonably unique in all of authors in that he actually had an answer to this question, even though it was likely that nobody had asked him it.

He’d written some kind of sci-fi book, which to my eavesdropping ears sounded somewhat like a EE Doc Smith kind of book. He was speaking about how he’d come up with the name for his hero. ‘You know the housing estate by the ABC cinema?’, he asked. It’s genuinely likely that you – yes, you, the one that’s reading this blog – do in fact know what housing estate he was talking about, since it’s the one that Jeremy and Mark live in, in the series Peep Show, and appears in some form in almost every episode. The name of the housing estate was (and may well still be) Zodiac Court. For as long as anyone could remember, however, the ‘O’ in court was missing. And therefore, our writer friend declared in revelatory tones that one normally reserves for penicillin being discovered growing on your lab table, wouldn't it be a great thing if those two words were reversed, and - ? Well, the rest is history. Uh, literally history, it seems, as a perfunctory Google search suggests that that character has not yet reached any kind of saturation point.

As I’ve indicated, though, I felt even then (and I wasn’t particularly doing any regular writing at that point) that his talking about his ideas in such a way seemed to pretty much guarantee  that he’d never finish the book. I’m not a big fan of Family Guy, but I’m fond of the repeated gag where the would-be intellectual Brian is constantly mocked: ‘you’ve been talking about that novel for three years now. How’s that going, anyway?’ Most of us probably know of a writer (read: not actually a writer) like this. I’m very aware of that trap.

However, that hasn't stopped me banging on about my writing on various networking sites. I know it can be tedious and boring to read/hear, and that it can be an excuse – as I’ve mentioned earlier – to not actually put the spadework in. I do it, however, for the same reason, I suspect, most writers do: partially for the affirmation, to get friends and other writers to show interest and support – to cheer me over the finish line – and also (the theory goes), if the declarations of a story are in such a public forum, then the idea is that I’ll be too embarrassed to do anything else but actually finish. However, I’m acutely aware that many other writers do this, and never finish (or even start) the stories that they’re wittering on about.  After all, writers have no excuse not to write, no matter how tired and emotionally drained at the end of a work day they are (which is normally, literally my excuse). The only thing to do is to sit down and write.

I feel a little more relaxed about banging on about what I’m writing (or so I tell myself) because the bulk of what I’m talking about is, for the most part, actually finished, done, completed. In the case of one play, it’s already had a full cast production. What I’m going on about now is the re-writes, the final draft. A few more of those well-wishers are now more vocal about wanting to actually read something I’ve written at some point. And, at some point, I’m going to have to take a deep breath, and let that happen. After all, why the hell else does anyone write?