It has been a hectic week filled with some fairly productive writing time, some good bits, the absence of some people of whom I am fond and the half-baked challenges of a couple of folks who wouldn't make sense even if Dali painted them. I haven't had a lot of time to work on the blog, and this should be a fairly short post, but we'll only know how long it really is when we get to the bottom of the thing.
Correct me if I'm wrong...
Earlier in the week I blogged on Ira Levin's 'This Perfect Day' and the impact of social networking. An echo comes back to me from a couple of months ago in a blog post on those
Stories for stories
Thanks to Lisa McCourt-Hollar, we know that Lima's first black policeman has a grave marker now. What about a policeman who continues his duties from beyond the grave? An IO9 article looks at best case scenarios for the future of humanity. Anyone for a benevolent dictatorship?
Reading and writing
Let's start with this. Phantasmagoria's online stories are coming to an end. They had my story 'Oil Can Accordion' lined up. Bugger! A big word of thanks though to their online editor, Edward Morris. He has been very encouraging.
I've been making a foray into what I thought was younger YA, but after purchasing the Dummies Guide to YA, this week, I now understand that it is MG (Middle Grade) stuff. Dummies guides have what I suspect is a poor reputation, but I have found that all but two of the ones I have bought are incredibly helpful getting me up to speed. I suppose that if you are going to brand yourself a guide for dummies, you need to produce a lot of understanding in the reader when he / she hits the index end of the book.
One of the things that jumped out was YA purchasing behaviour by adults. Apparently part of it is great storytelling and some nostalgia. The guide also points out that the stories help young readers define themselves. Put that in the same pot as adult buyers, and it could be that adult readers may be trying to define themselves as well. Food for thought.
The challenge I found in writing the story was in looking at life through the eyes of a younger protagonist, and seeing at least a couple of the frustrations. It also took me back to a number of people I had put behind me. It's been quite a learning curve and experience.
The idea of writing a young female protagonist began to fill me with 'politically correct' unease as I headed towards the end, but then I remembered Neil Gaiman's 'Coraline', and have almost managed to put the unease away. I rewrote the story in my head with a young male protagonist, but the psychodynamics didn't work out. A boy would have tried to take a hockey stick to the main antagonist's head early in the story (at least I would have). This is the first time I have consciously noticed the impact of gender on a story. Sometimes the obvious is an eye-opener.
The big hole that was left in me when the story was finished (for now) seems to point to some kind of cold turkey. It seems that writing must be a kind of drug. If anything, it is a serotonin boost. That's just fine with me. I find myself looking at beer and wine nowadays and counting the cost of alcohol consumption in terms of the time it will take me to get it together in the morning when I sit down to write. The writing wins out.
Reading? Aside from the tome with the cheerful yellow cover (actually gray as it is on the Kindle), I haven't managed to read much at all: snatches here and there. The good news is that there is a new Harry Dresden on its way, so I can safely finish #13. For the record, I'm a sod about series that appeal to me, and once asked my bookseller to take 'Sandman: The Kindly Ones' back because 'the ending was defective'.
Mother Nature and other terrifying things
Oh, f*ck! The deep end begins here...
And finally...
And finally, take a look at the UK's most censored movies, here...
Not very long, was it?
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