Change my dear, and it seems not a moment too soon

What better way to begin the regeneration of this blog then by using a quote from Doctor Who? The answer is there's no other way (to quote Blur).

I have basically decided that the way I have been blogging up to now is wrong. Not wrong, wrong. Just not my style. That is partly why I didn't blog for so long. What I have decided to do instead is change it.

There will still be the occasional book review. I enjoy reading too much not too. Although for book reviews, I can strongly reccomend Ben's blog, the link to which is somewhere on the right.

I have decided to blog more about two things that are as important to me. They are writing, so I will talk about current writing projects and posting the occasional short story. The other thing I will also be posting are the occasional rant.

Why a rant? well. I like to just go on and on about a particular topic. To be entirely honest, rants is not the right word. To be more accurate, I would say more highly opinionated and possibly humorous reviews. Not of books but of TV shows or films I have recently seen. Hell, I may do the occasional advert. Show those blinking Halifax ads what for.

Sheer ineptness

Right, I have ignored this blog for an age.

This is due to a number of factors. First I am inept. This has been established elsewhere on this blog. Secondly, I have been busy at Edinburgh festival and working. These two take up time.

I shall keep this one simple. I have put the A-Z thing on hold. I got annoyed with Rudyard Kipling. This was enough to make me pause and read some stuff I wanted to. These include, the Great Gatsby, some more Conan Doyle (aided by the brilliant Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss series).

I am also learning the clarinet (this shall be a mid-week blog topic).

I submitted a story to the Oxfam story writing competition, not heard anything yet. Apparently a judge is on holiday.

Not sure what else to say. Like I said, inept.

DAMN!

DAMN! DAMN! DAMN IT TWICE AROUND THE CAR PARK AND BACK IN FOR AN EXTRA PINT OF DAMN!

I am a great pile of idiocy mixed with a sheer ammount of dopiness. Remember the writing competition I was going to enter? I spent the past week or so editing it. Went to email it today, thinking I was well within the deadline. WRONG! UTTERLY WRONG! As wrong as a penguin skateboarding to McDonalds.

I have now got a story that I was moderately happy with and can't send it off. I am an utter foolish fool. However. All is not lost. I shall instead post it on here at a later date.

Coming tomorrow a review of my H book.

The First Cut is The Deepest

OK, RIDICULOUS blogule title I know. Bear with me though. It shall become clear once I explain what it's all about (Willis).

As mentioned in many places on this little page of utter irreverent twaddle, that I inflict on you all (for which I am truly sorry). I want to be a writer. Now I am currently in the midst of entering a short story competition and will be sending off my story by the end of the week. It's already written but, alas, and indeed alack, I have to edit it. I am currently over 200 words over the imposed word limit of 2,000. Those of you who are sure how this mathematics lark works will realise that this is of course, TOO MANY WORDS. Which means I have to do something that I utterly dread, editing.

I utterly hate editing my own work, it means I have to read what I wrote. Now, I know you think, well if you hate reading your stuff, it must be terrible so give up writing. Well I say, SILENCE DETRACTORS! I know what I write is good but what I hate is reading it and realising how stupid some bits now sound.

Basically I am extremely over-active with the old delete key. It is really my friend in these situations. I start deleting loads of bits and soon I'm back within the word limit, by 2000 words. Not good. I am by far and a way my own worst critic. Something that I imagine most writers are.

Anyway, I am going to try and edit this, just removing lines I feel are superfluous and then see where that takes me. Then add info to make the story more cohesive. Then re-edit it.

So, what do I do? Do I just keep on like this until I stop criticising everything I write? Do I just give in? Do I no longer edit myself and hire an imp?

Blogday Friday

Ok, Friday = Hop Time. Terribly sorry I didn't blog last week, error on my part. However I will make up for it this week with slightly more blogs than before.

Upcoming we will have:

Conan Doyle reviews.
A MFWE possibly on Wilde or Pratchett. Heck there may even be two, on on each.
Stuff about sports (mostly fencing and my aims to do more sports)
Writing stuff

Ok, who has become my blog who I am now interested in this week?

Well, I cam across this nice little blog. It really is quite nice to look at and also, they are doing a similar challenge to myself. Re; the whole alphabet.... thing. The only diference is, they are FAR more consistent than myself. They are however taking the rather nice twist of looking at a book where the main character has a name beginning with a letter of the aforementioned letter list.

Writing to Reach You

Err, right so, yeah I haven't blogged for a week. Yes I know, remiss of me. I'm sorry. I have been meaning to do so for the best part of a week but one thing and another has meant I haven't. What a fool I have been.

I have used a Travis song for the title because, they are a little overlooked. Not brilliant but nice inoffensive nicenes. Much like David Gray. Also, that's what these posts are all about, I am writing these little blogules, to reach you, my audience. Not in an dodgy way you understand.

So, right, yes, where was I? Not sure why I'm asking you guys, you don't know what I was doing this for.

AH! Yes! First things first. I didn't win the script competition. Fingers are still crossed for the short story one though.

In writing news, as this is a blogule about writing I have decided. I have decided to write a short story for this competition. My plan is to write two stories, the first I have written and features a haunted bird room in a museum. The other is a sci-fi type one, not sure what it will be about. I'll get back to you on that one. The good news of this is, that whichever I don't submit, I will post here.

In other writing news, I am looking at going back to the novel I wrote last year and slightly altering its feel.

Finally two other orders of business.

1. Later this week, I will post a review of the next author
2. I am adding a new TYSIC aim. "To do more sports"
   

Is it the end? Has the moment been prepared for?

OK, after yesterdays rather maudlin post full of apologies and the like I feel a second post is in order.

First a quick writing update. Long time readers will know that I entered a couple of writing opportunity things for Big Finish a while ago. Well I haven't heard anything yet BUT they are perilously close to announcing the fortunate winners. I'm no kidding when I say that my heart rate has shot up whilst listening to that bit of news I am so nervous about it. Apparently the audio entries are down to 12 finalists who will be sent off to the BBC for approval on the stories, checking they are not going to do anything like it soon. The short stories have been selected and are currently sat in an office somewhere at the BBC awaiting approval. Hopefully I will have some very positive news on all this soon. Fingers crossed!!

Alas the guitar has had to be put on hold for a week as I have sprained my elbow! Yes, slightly foolishly I have injured myself! Rather spectacularly done I may add. Basically I am a fencer and whilst leading a warm-up session at my local club I fell over. Not once but twice! The first time into a wall and the second on the floor. So my playing has to be put on hold whilst I recover.
Now, on with the news. I think WAR may be put on a back burner, too much aggression ain't good for you etc. However I am pleased to offer you a teaser for a new feature set to be announced tomorrow.

Below is a cryptic teaser.

Halfway to OMPADC Success and Writing stuff too

The other day I passed the halfway point in the OMPADC that I set out on 17 days ago. This blog was meant to happen yesterday but unfortunately it didn't. Firstly here is OMPADC thus far. I have yet to take today's photo. Not sure what to do yet.

I did consider blogging about the photos of OMPADC and what it has taught me about photography and the art of finding something to photograph each and every day. This however struck me as an end of project thing. A retrospective.

I think I will instead give a minor blog on the whole writing side of my TYSIC.

I have decided to put my kids book idea on hold as I currently can't get it started to a satisfactory degree. I will return to it eventually, maybe at some point over this ten year period. Instead my focus has shifted to the writing of a series of short stories. I have the title of 'Pink Lemonade & Other Short Stories' in mind for it. The feel is something of a P.G. Wodehouse type story of upper class twits and the amusing scrapes they get into. It will involve me doing some research into the period just to get the language and some basic facts straightened out.

This is something I am rather looking forward to as I rather enjoy researching as it gives my mind some kind of focus. My mind really does lack focus and that has a knock on effect on my writing, leading to many things remaining unfinished.

I'm thinking of making it a series of 4, maybe 5 short stories featuring a number of different twits. Writing this means I get to write to my strenghs too. Writing a number of short things, that are amusing and most importantly light and fluffy. I am by no stretch of the imagination one for writing deep thoughtful pieces. Largely because I am not an especially deep and thoughtful person.

More on this later in the week. TTFN till then.


P.S. In case you don't know, TTFN stands for Ta Ta For Now.

Author! Author! #1 Alan Bennett

Firstly, let's get all the shameless stuff out of the way first. OMPADC is updated. Please check

Now the plug is out of the way. On with the blog. I may have mentioned I want to be a published author. A consequence of this is I read a lot. Can't help it, always have, probably always will. Therefore I have come across a number of writers whose work I always enjoy and often seek out. So, let me introduce you to ANOTHER acronym! That's right, I can't get enough of the little bleeders ( like brackets). This acronym is MFWE. Short for My Favourite Writers Ever. This will be a semi-regular feature where I discuss my favourite writers ever (odd considering the title). This will be a non-chronological run-down of the authors I like enough to place on my list.

"How do I define history? It's just one fuckin' thing after another"

First up, I thought I would go for quintessential northern and all rounder, nice person. Alan Bennett. Now I came to Alan's work quite recently. I was aware of him, his voice being familiar to me through some form of innate cultural awareness. I saw the film version of Alan's play, The History Boys and fell in love with his writing style straight away. It was funny, interesting, the characters all developed, it raised some good points and it was all very entertaining. Now some say that it isn't his best work, calling it tired, dated, cliched and a variety of other phrases. It didn't seem to be any of these things to me. I could quote reams of it here, but that wouldn't be doing the whole thing justice. I have however quoted one line from it at the top of this paragraph.

I went from watching the History Boys, to catching, rather fortunately, the recent BBC Bennett season. This exposed me to more of Bennett's wonderful observations of simple human life. For me, this is what really made me appreciate just how good a writer he is. I always appreciate a writer who makes the minutiae of human life so interesting because I'm rather poor at the whole people thing. I have also recently got a copy of Bennett's play "Lady In the Van" (a play based on the man who lived in a van in his garden for 15 years), from my local library. I have only got a few pages in and really enjoy it. The characters are simple and the use of 2 versions of Bennett on stage to represent aspects of his character is a good touch. It features typical examples of Bennett's wry criticisms of life, his little one liner observations.

Another thing I really love about Bennett is his voice, it is brilliant for audiobooks. I recently got him reading The House At Pooh Corner from iTunes. It's brilliant, his characterisations of the members of the Pooh group are brilliant.

The hardest part

Well, it's been a while since last I blogged. This is because I have been busy and not really had much to say. I did promise that there would be a forthcoming blog on the Indian Premier League. This got cancelled when I watched some of it and it frustrated the life out of me. I love cricket as a sport and really enjoy the T20 version of the sport. However the version presented on ITV4 is so cut up by ad breaks and pointless moments as to make a mockery of the sport.

Rant over.

I have therefore decided to dedicate this blog instead to one of my other Nano aims, namely that of becoming a published author. The key part of becoming a published author is of course having something to write about, one doesn't become a published author by making a candle after all.

I have currently been developing a short story to enter into the opportunity offered by producers of audio adventures of my all time favourite TV show, Doctor Who. The company named Big Finish can be found here. The company have been running a competition to find some short stories for a new range of short story CD's they are looking to produce. I am in the process of writing three separate stories that I am going to then have to choose between to enter.

Now why am I doing this? Well, unseen and non-existent questioner. I am doing it because I simply love to write. I enjoy the idea of creating a world and a series of events. It's the sheer joy of using the language to create this. Part of me also likes the idea of going into a bookshop and seeing my name on a shelf. That is of course the egotistical side of me which is called, for some reason, Kevin.

My ultimate aim really is to get myself published purely for the reasons state above, I don't care much if they become enormous massive Harry Potter style leviathans. It would be nice but I think unlikely. It would be nice to just know that people at least enjoyed reading them, which is I think a much nicer thing to get from reading.