But Wait, There Was More

I didn't just go to see Tognetti yesterday, I also went runabout. Because you see, the sun has come to Dublin. Neglected for so long the city opened up like a flower.

I was inspired to go jogging, and so I did. I wandered up to Drumcondra and then did a lap of the canal. It felt like a diferent country. Of course, people were still rushing everywhere, it was still Ireland but at least I found myself able to just sit down on the grass and look up into the blue sky for a while. Then I saw something amazing. Cygnats!



Apologies for the low quality picture, it was my phone camera.

Everybody who was walking by had to stop and watch the swans for a while. They were pulling up some plants from the bottom of the canal for the cygnats to eat. It was cute. The swans kept diving down to the bottom as swans do and then the little duck like cygnats would swarm the goo they pulled up.

So yesterday I got to leave the country without actualy moving, which was handy! Enjoy your stay in Dublin sun, glad to have you.

Richard Tognetti - In Depth and Musically Ignorant Review

Tonight I went to see this guy in the national concert hall. He did some Corelli, Beethoven and then a load of Tchaikovsky. His encore was a little piece called "Eternal Enigma", which was nice.

So, you're asking me, was it good? Should I put down my one hundred year old chablai, have the maid shoot the dogs, liquidate my portfolio and go down to see it. The answer is probably yes, it was good.

Richard is this kind of guy that loves his music, I could tell from my seat in the fifth row. Single notes carried sublime intonations of thorough emotion and he was often playing while on the tips of his toes or jumping into the air. He maintained a great energy throughout and his performance never once lost my interest.

He also showed me what the violin can do in the right hands. A lot of his sustained notes sent shivers up my spine.

I had never actually been to the NCH before but I will definately be returning. I really enjoyed the set and the venue itself is impeccable, having very comfortable seats and friendly staff. I also found it to be of an optimal size. Big enough to house a large crowd of people but still small enough to maintain an intimacy between the performance and the audience.

So go down there and support the arts today!


-Follow Up-

Actually, it looks like Richy might have been the last interesting performance of the Season. If you are reading this and know where I can check out a similar performance in Dublin please let me know. It's a shame there isn't more.

And no, I have no interest in most of the stuff they have on in NCH. More strings please!

Redemption, Finally

Haha, I lied. One more post.

The piece I wrote for my last class: here.

And a little story. So I was on my way home from work and, basicaly it was the end of an absolute monster of a day. Work was stressful, lunch was spent going from place to place only to find they didn't have what I wanted. Nothing was going my way.

Life felt it was out of rhythm, I was growing more and more unhappy. I was looking for things to blame.

On the way home I passed by a trio of little girls. As I passed by one of them just randomly started singing a song to the other two. "Listen to the bloody music." Is that a song somebody has out? I don't know. She started screaming it louder and louder, filling the park. I felt like she was screaming at me.

Listen to the music. I didn't hear any.

I got home and lay on my bed, feeling horrible. I made toast and walked back to my room, spying the violin case in the corner. I had already decided not to practice because I was feeling so messed up. But, I felt like messing around with it.

Well, some Handel and Bach later I felt changed. I felt soothed in a way nothing else had managed. It really is hard to describe (lazy writing!). I was using an external instrument, and somebody elses poetry to describe my mood. To give voice to my soul. It was nice.

I feel better now. Thanks Violin, thanks music!

The rule of Three.

Last post! (No, last post today, let's not be overly dramatic.)

-Rule of Three-

There's a fire in my belly,
A storm in my mind.
Bag of brass handles,
Prickled and filed.

Hammers and tightropes
Poured leaden gaze
Walking to nowhere
Walking through haze.

Burn all the bridges
Hunt all the holes
Bent old and haggard
Shadows and Gold.

Nothing left now
Nothing left at all
Paid all I could handle
Paid all my toll.

No human in humanity,
No love in pain.
Saw her in the sunlight.
Left her in rain.

There's a Storm in my Mind

Quick, one last ditch effort to stop this blog from turning into "MY BASTARD LIFE".

A little follow up to the whole "lazy writing" thing that was uncovered in that class a few weeks ago. I'm seeing it everywhere now, and where I resist it and force something better out I am really feeling the difference.

It's funny, I was so blind to it before. I wonder in how many more facets of my life am I prone to this glaring... Wait a second, I'm starting to talk about my life again.

God damn it. Guess I'm stuck in self obsessed mode for the time being, hopefuly it won't last too much longer.

There's a Fire in my Belly.

There's a fire in my belly and it just won't go out. These rejection letters are firing up something inside me, some base dissatisfaction with life.

Of course it doesn't help that I'm under pressure at work but the net effect is I'm burning inside. My heart is seizing control of everything, and it is not happy.

Age has taught me better how to handle this, but it has not yet become easy. I release it where I can, writing or whatever. I apply it to my life, looking upon with new vigour, with new expectation. I want to destroy the dams, and let this run free. But I also know that dams are necessary, I will need them again, once this time is done.

My unfulfilled dreams and wants are burned into my mind. At times like this the dreams are so vivid they blind you to reality. It seems so real that you have to ask "why can't it be true?" Why can't I have those things, why can't I be that person. Humility is the lesson, I walk a path, just like all my kind. All my doomed brothers and sisters. Why should I expect more.

I look upon the garden of my life, and there is so much death. Even the plants which I was so proud of, that seemed to grow despite everything, have now died. Not to say there is only death, don't try and call me an Emo or anything. I mean, life is death. Things end, I just, can't handle it sometimes.

There is a line in a song, "feelings that matter, never end". I always took that to mean, only the permanent things in life matter. But actualy reading it again, I suppose it could mean that though something lives and dies, if it had it's time, if it really mattered. You have it forever.

I have no heart for these things. All my future flowers will be plastic ones.

What Doesn't Kill Me.

Another rejection letter. Oh god it stings. I haven't had enough sleep to be able to deal with, of all things, more rejection.

So, I joined this website thing and got a lot of new email addresses and agents to send another wave of queries to. It's a healthy reaction in a way I suppose. Every time I am pushed back I just get so angry I have to something, anything.

The website is www.firstwriter.com and I mainly chose it as a cheaper alternative to the literary market place. So far it seems to have a lot of agents that weren't in the writers handbook. So, assuming they are not fictional, it's been worth the spash.

Maybe I will get to the stage where there will be nothing left for me to strike back with. But I am not there yet, so I will continue. Continue to throw myself against this brick wall. Well, it's not like I have a choice. Failure is not an option.

The people out there are being deprived of my writing, who shall step in to set things right?

Why I'll Never Make It as a Philosopher

This morning I was messing around on my computer in Navan and I found a little text file on the desktop. It's a short essay I wrote out of boredom a few months ago. Below is the unedited version (apart from the spelling correction of the word beautiful...)

Reading it, it's clear to me now. Why I'll never make it as a philosopher.

--File Begins--

Let me put pen to paper. Or the latest equivalent anyway. Let me compose for you, a story. Allow me to, paint you a picture.

There are fifteen of them, fifteen intrinsic causes for mans unhappiness. All from the same root, and all to the same net effect.

The first of these is want. Desire is an evil of the mind, I could say it was. The second is hate. See how wide these words are, how meaningless they are. I could arbitrarly pick another 13 and then continue writing until I had filled a 1000 pages and then I could pretend that I have answers. But of course, I'm limited by where I start. I'm picking words and working from them, that's far too limited.

So, what's a better way to proceed. Or to begin rather. I'll start with these net effects and work backwards. That is reasonale I think. So first, I must perceive something, with my eyes, my heart, my soul, whatever. I must make a distinction between what is better and what is worse. But thinking in this way, this is utterly impossible. I can not see the future, I can not say what will have a net positive or a net negative effect on the world, or even the specific parts that I might consider worthy of being protected or destroyed.

There is an extension there that comes into play, I can't see what is right or wrong. Even if through deliberation I could arrive on a decision of what is right and wrong.

I am without ability to discern right and wrong. On no level am I in any way capable of telling it. I am only capable of telling what is beautful. So, is it some kind of universily held belief that beauty is equivalent to what is right. Is that right? How do you approach a problem with no knowledge. Empirical discovery. It is impossible. From my perspective for that to be applied. There is nowhere to begin from, I believe that you always need to begin somewhere. There needs to be some truth, something to care your findings with.


So, there is the intuitive side of stuff. Do we really begin life with knowledge. It seems to me like we do. An almost certainty but of course, I don't know for sure. I feel that I know so much more than I've learned. That this beauty thing extends deeper than my day to day senses. There is an analytical side to me, I can do a technical job.

--End of File--

What's that, didn't make it all the way through? Go back and start again! The abrupt ending is a bit disappointing but it does look like it was transforming into some kind of Platonic argument.

Nietzsche would be disgusted with me.

Good to be Home

I travelled back to Navan for the weekend. It's amazing how different it is back here compared to Dublin. My way back home from the bus stop was surrounded by open blue sky and green fields. The idyllic bliss was interrupted only when another car barged through, forcing me to the side of the road.

I found it really soothing and I felt the stress that had built over up over the weeks wash away gradually, attacking weeds with a stick and waving to random farmers.

So I might make that the subject of a short story or something, if I'm feeling brave. It did seem like an experience worth recording or expressing.

In writing news I received another rejection letter from an agency this week which was a bit of a pain. Though I find I mind less every time I receive a rejection, I suppose it's just part of the game.

It was another pre-printed card (though it did have an apology for it being a pre-printed card printed on it.) The impersonal side of it is kind of unpleasant. Maybe I'll be lucky enough some day to receive an actual personalised rejection.

But it's good to be home and once I've recharged my batteries I'll be back at it harder then ever.

Extreme Compromise

Well, submitted my short story to the class today. Like a pack of hyena they descended on it, eager to rip it to pieces in a frenzy over my disembowelled ego.

You can read the short story here.

Biggest flaw that came out in the session was my use of cliche language. Pretty damning. What was worse was that I couldn't really pick it out as a problem myself, I guess I was caught up in the general clicheness of the story in general that some lazy language use here and there seemed like icing on the cake.

I picked out one line. "Her beautiful, innocent face." I like that description, it brings a radiant picture to my mind. I didn't want to be specific because I didn't want it to be real. However, though these words worked for me, to anybody else it is so general and wishy washy that it's pointless. After staring at those words for a long time I began to understand. It is lazy writing.

It's like an actress covering up her face when she's supposed to be crying. She doesen't want to show the detail of her sorrow because it is easier to cover her face with her hands. I was being lazy. I will return to the story this weekend and see if I can correct it but at least I am aware of this going forward.

So, in summation. It's a tricky thing, but feedback on your work is great.

I Need Something Explained to Me

Alright, for books there are a few different markets. Let's go through a few of them.

We have fiction. Stories about stuff that could possibly have happened. People like mysteries, people like things that could possibly happen to them. I get that.

Fantasy/Science Fiction. Stories which incorporate fantastical elements. People like being exposed to new worlds, challenging their imaginations. People like escaping from reality. I get that.

Skipping non-fiction we go straight to these self help books that seem to be taking over the whole world. There are so many of these things, I remember reading about one particular author who produced ten of these in as many years. Who has that much good advice to give? To me this whole phenomenon is really highly suspect. I've read one or two of these and they all seem to boil down to same few things.

And I have some personal experience in this, so I can tell you, and the world. You can't learn these things from books. But okay, maybe that's not what they are trying to do. They enjoy reading this stuff. The same way we can whip ourselves into a frenzy over a new life that we are suddenly going to live. The same way we can throw ourselves into momentary delusion.

These are the facts. This is not good for you. I'm not saying you can't be that person who you see yourself being. I'm not saying that at all, but it won't come overnight. And it won't come from a book. You have to find your own way. You have to make your own mistakes, and you have to keep trying.

These books are like drugs, they agitate part of our egos. They remind me of those preachers in America who get the wheel chair bound to stand, only causing more damage in the long run. They should be banned.

Or, I could write one. Call it "It doesn't come from a Book." And make a packet. I might have to give that one serious consideration. But I'd be writing for a market I don't believe should exist. That said if you'd be interested in publishing this book let me know. Anyway.

Live in the real world, live in fantasy but for the love of god live. Don't keep telling yourself you should be a different way, you are what you are. Look more where you are going to, less where you are. Because the only person who can look in the mirror and not see something they don't like is blind.

Okay, Let's Take a Step Back

Well, it's Friday night. I'm sitting in bed listening to Bill Hicks feeling exhausted and angsty, lets take a step back from it all shall we.

I want to pick something pleasant to talk about. Something positive. But I can't think of anything like that at the moment.

What I can think about is the world I live in and all the characters in it. The people who I wish I knew better, the people I wish I didn't have to know at all. I am wrapped up in this story and there's nothing I can do about it. I sometimes wonder about the true level of determinism that exists for all of us. How everything is dictated in one way or another, just a formula playing itself out for all eternity.

So, in the face of this, and other countless arguments against caring, how do we keep going. How do we get up in the morning and keep believing, in something.

I certainly don't know what I believe in, probability I suppose. I realised there is a probability that my dreams will be acheived, but is such a slight thing a reason for continueing?

I think the thing that keeps me going is a feeling I experience every so often. The feeling that I have grown, that I have moved closer to the person I want to be. That's what keeps me going. And it's nice in the way that it's not necessarily dependent on anything, life will provide the challenges I need. What's not so nice is that you can go a long time without one.

Well, I reckon I had one this week, so I'm good for another while at least. That was our step back, march on!

Too Many Ideas

Well, I've put off this post long enough. When you continue to think over anything this much there is a danger that you will never get around to actually doing anything.

The writing course brought up a lot of things for me, definitely shook off a few cob-webs and re lit a few old fires and perhaps it even opened up somewhere new. So I was happy with it. Happy I took the plunge.

I'd like to talk about some of things that it brought to my attention. Rather than muddle them all together however I think I'll just pick one for today and run with it. To follow on smoothly from my previous post I'd like to delve into the idea of criticism.

So, I had a few pages of a short story in front of me. The task was to read and give feedback. I instinctively leaped into the text and started rewriting it in my mind. Almost subconsciously, I was changing words and restructuring sentences until by the second page I had to stop. What was I doing? I was treating it like it was my own work, I was trying to reshape it to reflect my message, my style.

This has a deeper meaning for me. For so long I've held very strong, negative feelings for certain authors which I won't go into here. But, I think I understand why now. I was judging them by own standards and my own concept of what writing should be like.

I started reading the story again, from the beginning. And I attempted to take it as it was, with some difficulty. I feel this is some facet of my character, to attempt to force my own templates of perfection upon the world and to despise anything that doesn't fit.

Anyway, to wrap it up. It wasn't appropriate to qualify somebody else's work in that manner and I realised that. Perhaps it is not the right approach in general, it is, however, what I am predisposed to. So, I'll have fun coming more to terms with that side of myself I suppose.

It's Easier than Art

Well, here I am again. I had a few ideas for what to write about today but I think I'd be doing myself a dis-service if I purposely avoided the pertinent issue of the day. Criticism.

This was all brought to a head by my decision to try out a a writing course. Couldn't hurt I thought, do a bit of homework, get pushed out of my comfort zone, try a few new things. Of course everyone I mentioned the idea to had the same response. "I hope you can handle criticism."

And I wondered if I could. I mean, everyone I've shown my book to liked it. But they were all relations, friends. What if a real life, human, stranger, showed a dislike for it. Would I be able to take it? There seems to be some doubt in those around me, and it's contagious.

And from those seeds of doubt eventualy come the big questions. Among them, the ultimate motivation killer, "Am I any good." I ask myself this in a moment of weakness. And for that moment I am without an answer. I feel a pit in my stomach, and I just feel like giving up. I wanted to put down that proverbial pen and embrace a life of consumerism.

Sad eh? But if all that's true why have I just finished printing off my entire manuscript (trees, your sacrifice will not be in vain) and another batch of publishing packs for sending out. It doesen't seem to add up.

Well, here's the thing. I love writing, and I'm my own biggest fan. If I'm not the best, I don't want to BE the best. I'll keep writing, learning and sending letters until I make it. Not because I want to win awards or have people kiss my ass but because I really want to share my stuff with the world, and I won't stop until I'm done. So there.

That kind of sounds like sentimental muck, but it's the truth. I'm looking forward to those writing lessons. Oh, and I'd like to welcome my first follower, the ever lovely but slightly crazy Cbel. (How does she keep finding me?) Hope you enjoy the blog!

Like a Regular Story but Short!

So, what is a short story? How does it work exactly. I've always had some problem with this, I'll just outline why before I continue.

When I pick up a good book it goes through a life cycle. The first step is the phase where I'm still getting used to the characters, the authors style and things like that. This is usualy the make or break phase and if I'm going to give up the book before finishing it, it will be in this phase.

The second phase is the escalation. You are now used to the authors style and the world, you are probably have a good idea of what the book has to offer at this stage. In some books this phase can be huge, in others it can be short or even non existent.

The final stage is the resolution. I find all the work gone into sticking with the book pays off at this point. I'd alike it to a balloon being inflated and then realeased. This is the high point of the book in terms of the enjoyment of reading. Things start resolving, some of the questions are answered, it's essentialy the big pay off.

Now, that's my interpretation of how a novel works anyway. So let's compare that to a short story. Does a short story contain all of these sections as well? Or should it consist of only one or two of them? Can a good short story be an excellent introduction to nothing? I don't see how it works as a medium. I'm sure it does, I just don't know where to start in producing it.

I was reading some Philip K. Dick short stories over the weekend. Some of them were like sections from novels. One in particular "The black box" took the form of an escalation. Not giving much time to exposition and appearing for the most part like an excerpt from a larger novel, not having a beginning or an end. Is that good? I enjoyed reading it, but it didn't really have an ending. It was pretty much as good as I could imagine a short story being, but it just wasn't fulfilling.

Well, I got nine hundred words of my first short story done earlier today. I suppose I'll just have to see how I get along with it.

That Elusive One Percent

So, they say that it's one percent inspiration, ninty-nine percent perspiration. I agree with that, but I also think it can be misleading.

The thing is that writing is not difficult. You can sit at your desk or whatever and crack out a thousand words without too much bother. Sometimes however I don't make it that far and it has nothing to do with lack of perspiration, so to speak. It's because I'm not feeling inspired. Perspiration is this resource that is just there, waiting to be tapped. Inspiration is this elusive one percent, floating in my skyline like a firely. I'm grasping at it one moment, the next I'm trying to lure it down with caffeine or by staring in the blue sky while lying on the balcony. Sometimes it just ignores me. I know it's there, I just can't touch it.

Things appear to me, these ideas that I can build stories around. It was like that for my first novel, not every word was sourced from a vision or insight but I never wrote without feeling that it had a purpose. That it tied into one of the foundations of my vision. Today I got it into my head that I could try writing a short story so I spent this morning under the sun just trying to think up a concept. Nothing came.

I was just waiting to get to work. Waiting for that tiny one percent to turn up, but it never did. I bounced between a number of ideas, but none of them lit me on fire. None of them made me want to actualy write that story.

Well, I'm not complaining, I spent the rest of the day listening to Pink Floyd, playing Demi God and reading Philip K. Dick. Best day of my life. And when of those fireflies gets careless, when that one percent is in reach again I'll know to clamp down that extra hard on it. Treasure your inspiration; it's rarely around when you need it.

A Literary Query

"No science fiction/Fantasy". I see this a lot in some agents descriptions. The only responses I got to my emails so far have only been to tell me "Sorry, we do not do fantasy." Well, for a long time I didn't really consider my book fantasy. However, to the rest of the world it looks like it is.

So, what makes it fantasy. Its fantastic themes, its existence in a world I made up. Well, can you not apply that to any book, really? Any fiction I mean, when does a world start being fantastic. If I wrote a crime thriller that occured involving people that never existed and that was solved in an entirely ludicrous manner could I be accused of having written a fantasy book?

The answer of course is no. Its a genre thing, of course. Its pidgeon holing, sadly. Just because my book has a knight or two in it it is lumped with all the tolkien wannabes. All the psychological development and work on my characters doesen't count. All the locations I described are no longer "real?". The more I think about it the more it all confuses me. Fiction is not real, it is all fantasy. My book has dragons but they are referenced only in the art of the world and in visions of the main character, but you see the word dragon and you instantly think "Fantasy." I'm just as guilty of course, but its not right. The dragon is an instantly recognisable symbol of age, wisdom and power. That's why I chose it. No wizard is riding it around like a giant pony, no knight is setting out to kill it. My book is entirely free of cliche (well, nothing glaring) But it falls into a genre that consists mostly of cliche. Was this a dooming move?

In the book I am currently writing there will be no mentions of dragons or knights. It will be set in an alternate reality of sorts in a contemporary city. Safe so far, let me tell you the rest.

It will chronicle the main characters descension from his "Tower" both physicaly, at first and the mentally. Now, this sounds fine. But, I was compelled to add the "colossus", one of his original works and something he must now undo. This colossus is a giant mechanical construct which will most likely be running amok at some point in the story. So, the question is. Does this cross the line into fantasy? It has just as many fantastic elements as my first novel, kind of. The main diference is the contempory setting compared to the quasi-medievel setting the first. Because I use these things to express my ideas does that somehow put me in the same boat as "The elf wrestles the ork part XXXXXVI".

Anyway, so I guess I'm a fantasy author. Crap.

Another day

Well, yesterday I got the great idea to email as many agents as possible with my patented "publishing pack." There's an easy way to push probability further into my favour, no overhead for emails.

So many publishers and agents even demand that you post them your submission however. Including a holy S.A.E. blessed by your local priest and bound by glue harvested from your families glue mine in the provinces. Why do I consider these S.A.E.s so holy?

I can't make them! There is no easy way to obtain foreign postage here. I've tried a few american websites etc. but they are all designed for internal use, or solely for packages.

Now, to aid my beloved correspondents in their replying by pre printed rejection slips I was able to obtain some English stamps while in Birmingham recently. That was handy, but I'm already all out. This war effort consumes resources as fast as I can make them available!


Anyway, let's get to the point. Why oh why doesen't everywhere accept email? What is with this antiquated predisposement towards the "printed" word. (Don't they own printers?)

In fact, yes. Think of the environment, with email you can read something, get a feel for whether you like it or not and then maybe print it. This way no paper is wasted! You could save millions of trees, preserve the entire human race for another few halcyon years. Enough time for somebody to fall in love, invent a new form of power, publish their book even.


Final point. Let's get onto the reason I know they won't consider this. It's because of all the crap in their inbox isn't it. It's all these happy go lucky guppy faced rubbish faucets that are hounding them night and day with their half baked work. You see, printing something off, mailing it, that requires two things. Time commitment. And leaving the house. These are two things that I know this particular demographic abhor.

Think of the trees you guys, knock it off. Leave those inboxs fresh and roomy for more deserving morsels. Even the mona lisa loses it's grandeur if it's on display in a chemical dump.

Pilot

"Pilot?"
"What?"

The old man turned decrepitly into burning light of the lamp.

"You're a pilot?"
"Yes."
"What did you fly?"
"I flew a top secret intercontinental, space flight capable interceptor with more weapons than you can imagine. I was the brain of a beast that could evaporate the seas, destroy the sun. With a specific flick of wrist, I could have killed god."

The old man sneered and turned back, away from the scalding light.

"It's not true though is it?"
"What isn't true?"
"You're not a pilot. At least not any more."

The old man pushed himself to his feet, giving out a slow moan.

"That is only partialy correct."

The light of the lamp picked out some motion in the old mans wrist. And the world went silent.

And another thing

So, this is addictive. I got this awesome idea for the title bar at the top. Watch that space.

First things first!

So, I read something interesting in the writers handbook yesterday. That huge yellow bound book of disappointment and promise. It told me to start a blog, something only those with stupidly large egos and massive amount of free time should attempt.

At that moment I realised, I have a stupidly large ego, and yes, a huge amount of free time. So let's go, let's do this thing internet. I'm ready.

If you can't tell by now I'm a wannabe writer currently playing the "find a publisher" game and not enjoying it too much, but needs must. This blog shall chronicle my gradual rise to fame or my rapid descent to mediocracy and contentedment. Going to have to be one or the other. I also tend to hate a lot of things so I will list them all in the following posts. Oh, and I could post bits of my books I suppose.

I like this, it's like writing emails to myself.