In the 6th Form of my school I chose to study lots of Maths and some Physics too. Why? I was good at them. I really had no idea what I would do with them, though I had known for 6 years that I liked programming computers, and that's what I wanted to do.
During my mock 'O' Level exams I had written my first novel, excitingly called Genesis. It was a strange synthesis of all the SF/F I had been absorbing for ten years, but mostly combined the Lord of the Rings with E.E. 'Doc' Smith's Lensman series with some "Space:1999" thrown in for good measure.
It was really really bad. I wish I still had a copy of it.
Useful tip: Always keep a copy of everything when you're a creative because sometimes it's important to see how far you've come. This tip was first given to me as a guitar player, when I felt I wasn't really progressing, the book I was following suddenly (very timely-ly) suggested turning the guitar over and trying to play left-handed. That was what I was like when I started.
Proof I had progressed.
The same goes for writing. Somewhere I do have my second novel which I wrote fairly soon afterwards. But already I had progressed, the first was utterly derivative. The second opened with a scene that I developed from my own experience of living in London "high-quality" slums. For the first five years of my life I lived in a two-room flat with the rest of my family (4 others) with no toilet, gas lighting and cold-running water down the hall. Barely half a mile from the Houses of Parliament in London.
This second book was still SF but it was purer, grounded in reality and the characters were real with emotions. It was still rubbish. I still had more nonsense to get out of my system.
But I digress.
Our headmaster in his wisdom decided that all the arty types should have one lesson of science per week and the science/maths lot should have one lesson of English, which actually was a good idea. But I think I was the only person who thought so at the time.
Our teacher for this lesson, bearing in mind this was an all-boys school which had never had a female teacher (I think), was a strikingly attractive young woman, probably only a couple of years older than us. For some reason I always thought of her with the name Shadowfax. (Particularly silly since Shadowfax was a stallion.) It's also possible she wasn't that beautiful, but we were adolescent males.
So she had us study poetry and then hit us with haiku, and our homework was to write a haiku.
I wrote 18 of them. I just couldn't stop. A structured poetry form that encapsulated a visual and emotional image, and they just poured out of me. As if a dam had broken.
I discovered I could write. Something 150,000 words in rubbish novels had not taught me.
So for the next few years poetry became my medium. It wasn't long after this that I went to a big art event and sold poems that I made up on the spot with the subject supplied by the customer. The process is simple: (a) Get the person to describe the subject of the poem from their viewpoint; (b) write the poem expressing the emotions given to you.
And payment? I said "Pay me what you think it's worth." I was very well rewarded.
But even more rewarding was when, 20 years later, a young man came up to me and asked me my name, he pulled out his wallet and extracted a crumpled piece of paper. The poem his father had asked me to write for him when he was a baby. (Time to hand out the Kleenex.)
Must admit I'm almost choking up over it even now. That's real life.
Other inspirations:
What's on the turntable? "Carey" by Joni Mitchell from "Blue"
Tuesday, September 30, 2008
Monday, September 29, 2008
Inspirations #2: "It's a tragedy!"
No, the Bee Gees are not one of my inspirations. Not that I have any animosity towards them.
WARNING: MAJOR SPOILERS ABOUT THE BOOK "ANDRA" by LOUISE LAWRENCE.
As was previously mention (Inspirations #1) I was the Great Devourer of SF/F fiction - and fact, as it happens, my parents still own a copy of the Tomorrow's World annual from 1968, with its flying cars and two-mile high skyscrapers.
Now all those SF/F books tended to be in the heroic vein, a huge variety of heroes it's true, but in the end the protagonist would always win. Which is nice, of course, and very encouraging to a somewhat introverted young lad, a bit of a misfit older than his years.
My school had a decent library and it contained SF books, among all the rest. And there was one book called "Andra" by Louise Lawrence, which I duly checked out and began to devour.
Teenage female protagonist, no problem; dystopian future Earth, lovely; protagonist fails
... and dies. O! M! G!
Yup, a fatal tragedy, and aimed at teenagers too.
I have a copy of this book to this day. I love it. It taught me the power of tragedy. (And how to write a convincing dystopian society.)
(By the way, the first book to make me blub out loud was not Andra, that was just a shock, by "Mr God, This is Anna" by Fynn. A book with phenomenal imagery and a compelling tale. And it wasn't the end that made me cry, but the middle. OK, the end did as well, but not as much. It's a book I've had to keep buying because I give it away and it just gets passed on out of reach.)
Other inspirations
What's on the turntable? "Coyote" by Joni Mitchell from "Hejira"
WARNING: MAJOR SPOILERS ABOUT THE BOOK "ANDRA" by LOUISE LAWRENCE.
As was previously mention (Inspirations #1) I was the Great Devourer of SF/F fiction - and fact, as it happens, my parents still own a copy of the Tomorrow's World annual from 1968, with its flying cars and two-mile high skyscrapers.
Now all those SF/F books tended to be in the heroic vein, a huge variety of heroes it's true, but in the end the protagonist would always win. Which is nice, of course, and very encouraging to a somewhat introverted young lad, a bit of a misfit older than his years.
My school had a decent library and it contained SF books, among all the rest. And there was one book called "Andra" by Louise Lawrence, which I duly checked out and began to devour.
Teenage female protagonist, no problem; dystopian future Earth, lovely; protagonist fails
... and dies. O! M! G!
Yup, a fatal tragedy, and aimed at teenagers too.
I have a copy of this book to this day. I love it. It taught me the power of tragedy. (And how to write a convincing dystopian society.)
(By the way, the first book to make me blub out loud was not Andra, that was just a shock, by "Mr God, This is Anna" by Fynn. A book with phenomenal imagery and a compelling tale. And it wasn't the end that made me cry, but the middle. OK, the end did as well, but not as much. It's a book I've had to keep buying because I give it away and it just gets passed on out of reach.)
Other inspirations
- Art of Words
- It's a tragedy (this one)
- Haiku
- Art of Words addendum
- Perspiration
What's on the turntable? "Coyote" by Joni Mitchell from "Hejira"
Breakfast and bed
It's almost 8:00am, Monday morning, and I've been at work for the last 23 hours ... awake.
I got home half an hour ago, had some breakfast and now I'm going to bed for about 3 hours before going back to work.
Hopefully the dust will have settled, we didn't make the target and we are so close.
What's on the turntable? "Kid Charlemagne" by Steely Dan from "The Royal Scam"
I got home half an hour ago, had some breakfast and now I'm going to bed for about 3 hours before going back to work.
Hopefully the dust will have settled, we didn't make the target and we are so close.
What's on the turntable? "Kid Charlemagne" by Steely Dan from "The Royal Scam"
Friday, September 26, 2008
Inspirations #1: The Art of Words
So Stuart's non-specific meme about inspirations...
When I were a lad, knee-high to a grasshopper, my dear old Dad used to read to me each evening before I went to sleep. I'm not entirely sure but I think he only ever read me "The Lord of the Rings", but that took long enough.
He also possessed copies of the Astounding Science Fiction magazine, from the early 1950s, and he had Asimovs, Heinleins and Clarkes. Pulp paperbacks in profusion.
I gobbled them all up, then I discovered that the publisher Gollancz put their Science Fiction imprint on yellow covers which made them easy to spot in the library, I ate my way through their entire collection. I discovered Andre Norton, and her psionics stories.
There was no stopping me. Any SF and Fantasy, I would just read it all, and I read fast. I lived in this alternate universe and, to some extent, shunned a world that was grey and lacking in any adventure. (Although I did have a few adventures.)
At school one day I sat down in the Maths class next to a window and there was a book on the sill next to me: "Cider with Rosie" by Laurie Lee. I knew the TV adaptation had had naughty bits in it so, hopeful of something naughty in print, I opened it and began to read.
Reader, it changed my life.
It wasn't what he wrote about, it was the words. The poetry of prose. The magic of individual meaning. I won't claim that it drove me to be a writer; it was a couple of years before I started to write poetry and my first novel. But he caught me from the first sentence, almost the first word. And it was autobiography, no action, no heroes, just life.
It was "Cider with Rosie" that taught me how beautiful words can be, and since that time I've have striven to make my imagery as beautiful as his; though I know I fall far short of that ideal.
Other inspirations:
What's on the turntable? "Tales of the Future" by Vangelis from "Bladerunner soundtrack"
When I were a lad, knee-high to a grasshopper, my dear old Dad used to read to me each evening before I went to sleep. I'm not entirely sure but I think he only ever read me "The Lord of the Rings", but that took long enough.
He also possessed copies of the Astounding Science Fiction magazine, from the early 1950s, and he had Asimovs, Heinleins and Clarkes. Pulp paperbacks in profusion.
I gobbled them all up, then I discovered that the publisher Gollancz put their Science Fiction imprint on yellow covers which made them easy to spot in the library, I ate my way through their entire collection. I discovered Andre Norton, and her psionics stories.
There was no stopping me. Any SF and Fantasy, I would just read it all, and I read fast. I lived in this alternate universe and, to some extent, shunned a world that was grey and lacking in any adventure. (Although I did have a few adventures.)
At school one day I sat down in the Maths class next to a window and there was a book on the sill next to me: "Cider with Rosie" by Laurie Lee. I knew the TV adaptation had had naughty bits in it so, hopeful of something naughty in print, I opened it and began to read.
Reader, it changed my life.
It wasn't what he wrote about, it was the words. The poetry of prose. The magic of individual meaning. I won't claim that it drove me to be a writer; it was a couple of years before I started to write poetry and my first novel. But he caught me from the first sentence, almost the first word. And it was autobiography, no action, no heroes, just life.
It was "Cider with Rosie" that taught me how beautiful words can be, and since that time I've have striven to make my imagery as beautiful as his; though I know I fall far short of that ideal.
Other inspirations:
- Art of Words (This one)
- It's a tragedy
- Haiku
- Art of Words addendum
- Perspiration
What's on the turntable? "Tales of the Future" by Vangelis from "Bladerunner soundtrack"
I shouldn't be here...
... but I am.
It's Friday evening and I should be in my real home with my wife, kids and pets. But I'm not. I'm still in Reading because my job demands it. The website navigation that my team works on must be complete and running at a usable speed by Monday 9:00am (and miscellaneous other bugs fixed).
If it's not then 5 months work (mostly mine) gets thrown out the window.
Interesting to be in on this actually as I've never really been in this sort of situation before: I've run businesses, been part of businesses, but nothing bigger than, say, 50 people. And the ones I ran never exceeded 10 employees, usually just 3.
More to the point of writing: Stuart Perry has been blogging about 5 inspirations to who he is as a writer. It wasn't a meme but he suggested that other bloggers might like to take up the baton. As I'm still waiting for feedback on "Une Nuit a Paris" I shall take up this challenge. Starting in the next blog which I will write directly.
What's on the turntable? "One More Kiss, Dear" by Vangelis from "Bladerunner soundtrack"
It's Friday evening and I should be in my real home with my wife, kids and pets. But I'm not. I'm still in Reading because my job demands it. The website navigation that my team works on must be complete and running at a usable speed by Monday 9:00am (and miscellaneous other bugs fixed).
If it's not then 5 months work (mostly mine) gets thrown out the window.
Interesting to be in on this actually as I've never really been in this sort of situation before: I've run businesses, been part of businesses, but nothing bigger than, say, 50 people. And the ones I ran never exceeded 10 employees, usually just 3.
More to the point of writing: Stuart Perry has been blogging about 5 inspirations to who he is as a writer. It wasn't a meme but he suggested that other bloggers might like to take up the baton. As I'm still waiting for feedback on "Une Nuit a Paris" I shall take up this challenge. Starting in the next blog which I will write directly.
What's on the turntable? "One More Kiss, Dear" by Vangelis from "Bladerunner soundtrack"
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