16th December 2011
Being a shy sort and lacking confidence I rarely do the guest blog thing, but I have taken the plunge and am posting over at Jadette Paige's wonderful blog: My Book, My Journey. I'm talking about 'Moving On' and what it means to me.
http://www.jadettepaige.blogspot.com/
Showing posts with label writing. Show all posts
Showing posts with label writing. Show all posts
Friday, 16 December 2011
Sunday, 23 January 2011
The Cat Ate My Computer...
...well, not quite, but she did chew through the cable so I can't use it. She's a menace for chewing at electrical stuff. She's wrecked two hairdryers and she kept biting at the bulbs on the tree lights at Christmas, fused two sets. It's a wonder she hasn't blown herself up. The trouble is that at this time of year it's cold and she doesn't like to go out at night. She prefers to stay in and prowl around the house causing trouble. I could hear her scuffing around my room in the night, but was too tired to get up and investigate. I found the munched cable when I got up this morning and went to do my usual first act of the day - turning on the computer. I share a house with four people and we each have our own computers, but all are in full use on a Sunday, so I'm reduced to using the 'communal emergency computer.' It's an ancient machine with a bubble screen and a kranking handle to start it up, but I suppose it's better than nothing. Anyone want to adopt a large tabby cat with an electricity fetish?
Saturday, 23 May 2009
But First A Cup Of Coffee
I had my scan yesterday and felt really washed out and a bit depressed afterwards. It sounds daft, but having to lie perfectly still for a long period of time is really exhausting. I’m tense at the best of times, but lying in what feels like a coffin does nothing to help me relax. I chose pop rock music to listen to during my confinement, not that I heard much of it. Queen was drowned out by what sounded like an orchestra of pneumatic drills. I’m lying there with my eyes closed thinking ‘come on Freddie love, sing up, I can’t here you,’ and then I got to thinking about his life and death and what a horrible thing AIDS is and I nearly cried. He was such a wonderfully flamboyant figure. Surely it’s about time that a film was made about his life, or has it been done and I’ve missed it. Sometimes I think I live in a vacuum, I don’t know half of what goes on in the world. Too much time thinking and writing all things kinky, that’s my trouble.
Youngest son is 14 today. He’s gone off to the pictures with a few mates to watch Wolverine, taking most of my cash with him. It’s so expensive going to the pictures. There’s a lot of talk about people pirating movies, but I think the cinemas selling the tickets do most pirating. And then there’s the cost of popcorn etc, bloody hell, you could rescue a third world country from poverty for what it costs to buy popcorn and a soft drink from a cinema. I bought him an xbox 360 for his birthday. My God, I wish someone had told me how heavy the damn things are. I went into the shop where they sell them and, as instructed, picked a box off the shelf and took it to the till, saying, ‘I’ll have one of these and a selection of your most brutal, gore infested, blood drenched games please, suitable for a 14 year old of course.’ The shop guy duly got everything together and then requested an amount of money that caused my heart to stall and my credit card to break out in a sweat of fear. Anyway, once payment had been extracted, he bagged everything up and handed it over. Believe me, the display boxes bear no relation to the real thing. It weighed a ton. I could barely lift it up. I was shattered by the time I’d lugged it home on the bus.
Well, I promised myself that I was going to act like a pro writer today and do a certain number of words. I read emails from authors who say thing like, “I wrote 6,000 words at four am this morning and then allowed myself a cup of coffee before sitting down to write another 3,000." I do admire their discipline. See, I write about discipline, but I don’t have much self-discipline. I’m more likely to have 6,000 cups of coffee before sitting down to write a couple of words. ;-) I’m still working on Deadlines. The sub plot with Jude, Michael's brother, has become a bit muddled. I think I’m trying to make it more complex than it needs to be, and that’s perhaps why I’m messing around blogging instead of settling myself to writing. I’ve also got another story that I can’t seem to get on top of either, and I think it’s because I’m trying to confine it to being a short story and really it needs to be a bit more. Urgh, some days I think that writing is as much a curse/blessing as kink. I’m determined to write something to day…but first, a cup of coffee. ;-)
Youngest son is 14 today. He’s gone off to the pictures with a few mates to watch Wolverine, taking most of my cash with him. It’s so expensive going to the pictures. There’s a lot of talk about people pirating movies, but I think the cinemas selling the tickets do most pirating. And then there’s the cost of popcorn etc, bloody hell, you could rescue a third world country from poverty for what it costs to buy popcorn and a soft drink from a cinema. I bought him an xbox 360 for his birthday. My God, I wish someone had told me how heavy the damn things are. I went into the shop where they sell them and, as instructed, picked a box off the shelf and took it to the till, saying, ‘I’ll have one of these and a selection of your most brutal, gore infested, blood drenched games please, suitable for a 14 year old of course.’ The shop guy duly got everything together and then requested an amount of money that caused my heart to stall and my credit card to break out in a sweat of fear. Anyway, once payment had been extracted, he bagged everything up and handed it over. Believe me, the display boxes bear no relation to the real thing. It weighed a ton. I could barely lift it up. I was shattered by the time I’d lugged it home on the bus.
Well, I promised myself that I was going to act like a pro writer today and do a certain number of words. I read emails from authors who say thing like, “I wrote 6,000 words at four am this morning and then allowed myself a cup of coffee before sitting down to write another 3,000." I do admire their discipline. See, I write about discipline, but I don’t have much self-discipline. I’m more likely to have 6,000 cups of coffee before sitting down to write a couple of words. ;-) I’m still working on Deadlines. The sub plot with Jude, Michael's brother, has become a bit muddled. I think I’m trying to make it more complex than it needs to be, and that’s perhaps why I’m messing around blogging instead of settling myself to writing. I’ve also got another story that I can’t seem to get on top of either, and I think it’s because I’m trying to confine it to being a short story and really it needs to be a bit more. Urgh, some days I think that writing is as much a curse/blessing as kink. I’m determined to write something to day…but first, a cup of coffee. ;-)
Sunday, 17 May 2009
Stress, Tears, Tarn and Twinks.
I haven’t had the time or inclination for writing of any description lately. I’ve been ill with the sinus infection from hell, so painful.
On the home front exam stress is taking its toll. My eldest son is in the midst of revising for his upcoming ‘A’ levels and is uber sensitive to everything. We’re all afraid to breathe too loudly for fear of incurring an outburst. To make matters worse my youngest son got ruthlessly cast aside by his girlfriend (of three weeks duration) and it was all tears and teenaged trauma for several days. It was his first girlfriend so he’s taken the rejection very hard. I must admit to crying with him, he was SO devastated, it was heartbreaking to witness. He’s only 13, bless him.
On Friday we travelled down to Lancaster to look over the university that my son will be going to in the autumn (all being well with his exam results) it’s a massive campus and he was a bit overwhelmed by it, and by the distance of it away from home. It’s an anxious time for him really. He suffers from episodes of depression and doesn’t adapt easily to change, so there are some tough times ahead for him. I just hope he can keep it all together. We stayed overnight and had a wander around Morecambe next day. There’s a big art deco hotel on the seafront, The Midland, and for years it was all but derelict, but it’s all been done up and looks really beautiful. The weather on the way home was horrific, the heavens just opened and it took us hours to get back. The roads turned into rivers that threatened to sweep us away.
I’ve recently joined an online writing group called writing.com So far it’s been a very worthwhile exercise. I posted a couple of stories and got some feedback that was invaluable to me as a writer who really wants to grow and improve. Constructive criticism is so very difficult to give. Some people think that literary criticism is all about telling an author how much they hated or liked your work, and it isn’t. One guy, a real published author no less, ;-) just about gave me a line-by-line critique of a story and it was great. I was pleased that he thought enough of my story to want to take the time to do that. It was useful not just in the context of that one story, but for my writing in general. I got other useful feedback as well. It’s just putting it all into practice that's the problem. There aren’t enough hours in the day for serious and fun writing.
On the fun writing front, just as I think I’m ready to call time on Tarn and Twinks permanently, I get an email from someione who has found and really enjoyed the diary, so it makes me reluctant to close it down altogether. I started writing their story back in 2004 and that’s a long time, especially in this genre where novelty rules. Taking a year of journal entries and turning them into a book was a fantastic writing exercise for me. The journal was written off the cuff, just like a real diary. I never knew what I was going to produce. I’d sit down at the computer and just write what came into my head, perhaps influenced by some item on the news or something I’d observed during the day, and then of course I had to extend on it, which in itself was a good writing exercise. The part where Twinks goes missing for example, I just about wrote myself into a corner with that storyline. I had no idea where it was going. I wanted to create a cliffhanger situation…in a way I was testing for reader reaction, and I got it, lol. Making him vanish was one thing, bringing him back was quite another. :-D
Going back over the journal entries I was struck by several things, the sheer volume of work, and the number of typos and misplaced commas. I really worked hard to hone and polish it all up. There are over 300 pages in the book; there were almost 500 before I started re-editing. I expanded on some things and shortened others and completely cut some passages. I reckon it could stand another editing, and yet another, but I could go on forever doing it and really there’s no point because I’m more or less serving only myself. I’m pleased with the overall result. Tarn and Twinks as characters are very dear to me; the diary contains a lot of my emotions. It’s a personal thing and it gives me pleasure to see all that work encased in a tangible form. As we all know, websites are not guaranteed to last forever. Geocities is closing and a lot of writing will be lost. It’s sad, so many people put so much work into building personal sites and now yahoo has decided it has the right to just wipe them away. A friend of mine made a very apt analogy. She likened it to a community garden, where people are encouraged to plant and tend things and then the council decides it wants the land for something else and just comes along and tears it all up.
Another fun project I’m currently working on is a story called Deadlines. I began it a few years ago. It was then called Tales From The Stationmaster’s House. My challenge is to resolve the mystery of Jude (the brother of one of the lead characters) I have a scenario all worked out in my head, but the hard part is getting it out of my skull and onto the page, it isn’t as easy as it seems. I also want to work on the characterisation of both Joseph and Michael. By way of incentive I’ve had a book cover designed. You can see it on my website on the Coming Soon page. The lady who did it was the same one who designed the cover for Moving On. I love her work and I find that having a professionally designed cover that incorporates elements of my story actually helps me keep focussed.
On the serious writing front I’m thinking of putting together a collection of poems. I’ve been getting some encouraging reviews for the few I’ve posted on Authors Den. I’ve got hundreds, but most need work, they also need rescuing from the floppies they’re stored on, again, it’s all about time.
On the home front exam stress is taking its toll. My eldest son is in the midst of revising for his upcoming ‘A’ levels and is uber sensitive to everything. We’re all afraid to breathe too loudly for fear of incurring an outburst. To make matters worse my youngest son got ruthlessly cast aside by his girlfriend (of three weeks duration) and it was all tears and teenaged trauma for several days. It was his first girlfriend so he’s taken the rejection very hard. I must admit to crying with him, he was SO devastated, it was heartbreaking to witness. He’s only 13, bless him.
On Friday we travelled down to Lancaster to look over the university that my son will be going to in the autumn (all being well with his exam results) it’s a massive campus and he was a bit overwhelmed by it, and by the distance of it away from home. It’s an anxious time for him really. He suffers from episodes of depression and doesn’t adapt easily to change, so there are some tough times ahead for him. I just hope he can keep it all together. We stayed overnight and had a wander around Morecambe next day. There’s a big art deco hotel on the seafront, The Midland, and for years it was all but derelict, but it’s all been done up and looks really beautiful. The weather on the way home was horrific, the heavens just opened and it took us hours to get back. The roads turned into rivers that threatened to sweep us away.
I’ve recently joined an online writing group called writing.com So far it’s been a very worthwhile exercise. I posted a couple of stories and got some feedback that was invaluable to me as a writer who really wants to grow and improve. Constructive criticism is so very difficult to give. Some people think that literary criticism is all about telling an author how much they hated or liked your work, and it isn’t. One guy, a real published author no less, ;-) just about gave me a line-by-line critique of a story and it was great. I was pleased that he thought enough of my story to want to take the time to do that. It was useful not just in the context of that one story, but for my writing in general. I got other useful feedback as well. It’s just putting it all into practice that's the problem. There aren’t enough hours in the day for serious and fun writing.
On the fun writing front, just as I think I’m ready to call time on Tarn and Twinks permanently, I get an email from someione who has found and really enjoyed the diary, so it makes me reluctant to close it down altogether. I started writing their story back in 2004 and that’s a long time, especially in this genre where novelty rules. Taking a year of journal entries and turning them into a book was a fantastic writing exercise for me. The journal was written off the cuff, just like a real diary. I never knew what I was going to produce. I’d sit down at the computer and just write what came into my head, perhaps influenced by some item on the news or something I’d observed during the day, and then of course I had to extend on it, which in itself was a good writing exercise. The part where Twinks goes missing for example, I just about wrote myself into a corner with that storyline. I had no idea where it was going. I wanted to create a cliffhanger situation…in a way I was testing for reader reaction, and I got it, lol. Making him vanish was one thing, bringing him back was quite another. :-D
Going back over the journal entries I was struck by several things, the sheer volume of work, and the number of typos and misplaced commas. I really worked hard to hone and polish it all up. There are over 300 pages in the book; there were almost 500 before I started re-editing. I expanded on some things and shortened others and completely cut some passages. I reckon it could stand another editing, and yet another, but I could go on forever doing it and really there’s no point because I’m more or less serving only myself. I’m pleased with the overall result. Tarn and Twinks as characters are very dear to me; the diary contains a lot of my emotions. It’s a personal thing and it gives me pleasure to see all that work encased in a tangible form. As we all know, websites are not guaranteed to last forever. Geocities is closing and a lot of writing will be lost. It’s sad, so many people put so much work into building personal sites and now yahoo has decided it has the right to just wipe them away. A friend of mine made a very apt analogy. She likened it to a community garden, where people are encouraged to plant and tend things and then the council decides it wants the land for something else and just comes along and tears it all up.
Another fun project I’m currently working on is a story called Deadlines. I began it a few years ago. It was then called Tales From The Stationmaster’s House. My challenge is to resolve the mystery of Jude (the brother of one of the lead characters) I have a scenario all worked out in my head, but the hard part is getting it out of my skull and onto the page, it isn’t as easy as it seems. I also want to work on the characterisation of both Joseph and Michael. By way of incentive I’ve had a book cover designed. You can see it on my website on the Coming Soon page. The lady who did it was the same one who designed the cover for Moving On. I love her work and I find that having a professionally designed cover that incorporates elements of my story actually helps me keep focussed.
On the serious writing front I’m thinking of putting together a collection of poems. I’ve been getting some encouraging reviews for the few I’ve posted on Authors Den. I’ve got hundreds, but most need work, they also need rescuing from the floppies they’re stored on, again, it’s all about time.
Wednesday, 15 April 2009
Phew...it was all a big mistake...
Or so Amazon is claiming and, as Annie Lennox once said, who am I to disagree.
Personally I think they just underestimated the reaction to their cleansing policy. It's a huge mistake indeed to wipe out ratings for a certain genre of books and to place thinly veiled homophobic texts, offering healing, on GLBT pages. Those are now gone. So much for a new enlightened liberal era being ushered in under the new President. Anyway, enough of politics, of which I know absolutely nowt.
It's cold, grey and wet in Blighty today, at least in my miniscule portion of it. I'm feeling a bit depressed and under the weather, a saying that probably arose under heavy cloud cover. I haven't done a great deal of writing over the last few days. I've been transferring a lot of stuff from floppy disks onto a pen drive in order to preserve it. The disks are beginning to deteriorate. At best my method of cataloguing and organising my work might be referred to as 'disastrous.' I have multiple versions of stories and poems and none of them properly dated and arranged. It's all a mess and really I need to make a serious effort to sort it all out, but I can't be bothered.
I've been trying to put some of my poems (and I use the term loosely) onto a new site. They have a certain emotional power if not actually a form that would pass the scrutiny of the poet purists. http://www.dustandshadow.synthasite.com
I've been pleased and surprised to have some good reviews for my poetry on Authors Den: http://www.authorsden.fabianblack/
Although I do love writing M/M discipline fiction, sometimes I vaguely regret getting into it. I perhaps should have concentrated on developing my writing in a more mainstream direction. A lot of people who read and indeed write 'spanking' fiction of any description, let alone M/M, are a bit embarrassed by their kink and therefore don't afford it any kind of respect. They don't mind taking it for free and anonymously, but few would walk into Borders and buy it off the shelf. Discipline fiction is a kind of underground thing, people gather in shuttered rooms to exchange it, or at least they meet up on Yahoo groups. :-) I used to be involved in a few groups and at the time I loved it, it was a lot of fun and I met some really lovely people, but in the end it all became a bit of a thankless treadmill and I wasn't getting anything out of it. I needed to move in a different direction and that's why I got into self-publishing. It offered me several challenges: to learn the whole process of layout and publishing and to improve my writing. I took a refresher course in creative writing and made a concerted effort to improve my technique without sacrificing my style. I get a real kick out of seeing my work in book form. It makes all the weeks and months of labour worthwhile, and it makes me feel that the time spent writing wasn't wasted and at least it won't just vanish overnight when the web crashes. There's been a certain flow of criticism from some readers regarding the direction I've taken my writing in. I'm truly sad and sorry about that, but I don't regret moving on (to parody one of my own titles) I needed to do it for my own sake and maybe for the sake of other writers in this genre who don't think their work is deserving of respect simply because of its subject matter. I'm hoping to achieve a wider audience for a genre of work that I feel has merit.
Well, that was a longer post than I intended and a bit rambly, but never mind. :)
Personally I think they just underestimated the reaction to their cleansing policy. It's a huge mistake indeed to wipe out ratings for a certain genre of books and to place thinly veiled homophobic texts, offering healing, on GLBT pages. Those are now gone. So much for a new enlightened liberal era being ushered in under the new President. Anyway, enough of politics, of which I know absolutely nowt.
It's cold, grey and wet in Blighty today, at least in my miniscule portion of it. I'm feeling a bit depressed and under the weather, a saying that probably arose under heavy cloud cover. I haven't done a great deal of writing over the last few days. I've been transferring a lot of stuff from floppy disks onto a pen drive in order to preserve it. The disks are beginning to deteriorate. At best my method of cataloguing and organising my work might be referred to as 'disastrous.' I have multiple versions of stories and poems and none of them properly dated and arranged. It's all a mess and really I need to make a serious effort to sort it all out, but I can't be bothered.
I've been trying to put some of my poems (and I use the term loosely) onto a new site. They have a certain emotional power if not actually a form that would pass the scrutiny of the poet purists. http://www.dustandshadow.synthasite.com
I've been pleased and surprised to have some good reviews for my poetry on Authors Den: http://www.authorsden.fabianblack/
Although I do love writing M/M discipline fiction, sometimes I vaguely regret getting into it. I perhaps should have concentrated on developing my writing in a more mainstream direction. A lot of people who read and indeed write 'spanking' fiction of any description, let alone M/M, are a bit embarrassed by their kink and therefore don't afford it any kind of respect. They don't mind taking it for free and anonymously, but few would walk into Borders and buy it off the shelf. Discipline fiction is a kind of underground thing, people gather in shuttered rooms to exchange it, or at least they meet up on Yahoo groups. :-) I used to be involved in a few groups and at the time I loved it, it was a lot of fun and I met some really lovely people, but in the end it all became a bit of a thankless treadmill and I wasn't getting anything out of it. I needed to move in a different direction and that's why I got into self-publishing. It offered me several challenges: to learn the whole process of layout and publishing and to improve my writing. I took a refresher course in creative writing and made a concerted effort to improve my technique without sacrificing my style. I get a real kick out of seeing my work in book form. It makes all the weeks and months of labour worthwhile, and it makes me feel that the time spent writing wasn't wasted and at least it won't just vanish overnight when the web crashes. There's been a certain flow of criticism from some readers regarding the direction I've taken my writing in. I'm truly sad and sorry about that, but I don't regret moving on (to parody one of my own titles) I needed to do it for my own sake and maybe for the sake of other writers in this genre who don't think their work is deserving of respect simply because of its subject matter. I'm hoping to achieve a wider audience for a genre of work that I feel has merit.
Well, that was a longer post than I intended and a bit rambly, but never mind. :)
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