News – Page 5 – Dr Mike Hollows/M.J. Hollows

Defining the Despicable

Well after quite a week it is finally time for me to sit down and to put into words what has happened and to reflect. Those of you that follow me on Twitter, Facebook and down darkened roads might know that I’ve had quite the week. I should probably cut to the chase and cut the hyperbole, which is actually what the majority of this post will be about.

On Wednesday, after delivering a class to around 45 student, I had my laptop stolen. It still hurts. Not only is this a horrible thing to happen, to have your possessions taken from you, but it also could (I stress the possibility, not the accusation.) have been one of the students I have just given my all to teach. That’s too close, too despicable to really describe how I felt. I forced myself to go in the day after and teach them, but the very thought made me sick and I have to say it is one of the worst lectures I have ever given. But despite all that, there is the fact that that laptop was a core of my life, a pillar if you like. It is where I wrote everything. It was full of personal stuff, some of which I’m sure I can’t even remember, but at some point the sickening memory will arise and add to the pain of its loss. Since I started using Scrivener on 1 September, I had written at least 15,000 words, I believe, which I stupidly hadn’t backed up yet. (I wanted to organise the folder and back it up, I hate mess! More fool me) Now, that’s all gone. Unless by some miracle of police work or honesty the laptop works its way back to me.

There is plenty of other things I could talk about the situation of the theft, but I have talked enough and as I say: It still hurts.

I had planned to spend that afternoon, before my MA class, in the library writing and revising some work for that evening. Of course that was all scuppered. I refused to let it affect my uni work, so I went to the class regardless of my emotional state. Everything I wrote that night turned out very angry and I apologise in advance.

Wednesday night was about poetry. I hadn’t written poetry since I was in school, and despite my mother’s insistence to the contrary, I always thought I was pretty bad at it. Never the less, as I said in class when we were asked our opinions on poetry, I was determined to give it a go. I think that learning the pacing and style can help with prose writing. The teacher also managed to dispel the myth that poetry need be overly flowery or pretentious. It is just another style of writing, and can be as simple but as powerful as prose writing.

The first exercise was to write an overly complicated and descriptive piece, then a very basic piece. I wrote prose because I was finding it hard to concentrate and I think I missed the point. But here follows:

Part 1

The boy sat waiting, like a defendant awaiting his time in court. He calculated and planned, a thing so devious it would not be forgotten. When the man would leave, carefully placing his papers like a stack a time, and exit the room. He, the boy, with the whole of his devious experience and cunning would take from atop the desk, the computer of the man. He would never know that it was that boy and not any of the others that snuck away like a ghost in the night, no not he.

Part 2

The boy sat waiting in the classroom, planning the theft. He waited for the teacher to leave, after he stacked his papers. The he stood and quietly placed the teachers laptop in his bag and left. No one would know.

Part 3 (We were then asked to write a combination of both)

The boy sat waiting in the classroom, planning the theft. A thing so devious, so wrong it would not be forgotten. He would wait until the teacher left, stacking the pieces of paper like a timeline of the class edging back into the beginning, and exiting the room. Then he would sneak and place the computer in his bag. Like a ghost in the night. No one would know.

As you can see all three examples were pretty close to home that night. It was indeed the only thing I could think about. I must stress that I have no idea if this is what happened, this is just where my upset and hurt mind went.

After that we talked a lot more about poetry and looked at some good examples, which I will definitely be looking to read more of. We looked at poetry that sought to discuss large, abstract topics, but in a human way. I liked that idea. I’ve always hated overly abstract writing, sometimes you need to get to the point. But it is always about balance. The next exercise that night was to write a poem about an abstract idea, while keeping it balanced and honest. Naturally, I chose ‘Anger.’

Anger

Red is often the colour,

of anger, but

it is so much

more than that and

yet, much simpler.

Not something to

overelaborate.

Something pure, vengeful.

Something plan, an emotion

of our minds

in reaction to something

that upsets, something

wrong.

I must admit I have no idea about the line structure of poetry, but that to me was how it should be laid out. It gives some of the lines other meaning if read in a certain way.

After that we discussed how reported speech/dialogue can also be very powerful in poetry. It doesn’t just have to be flowery description or abstract ideas. So for a final exercise we were asked to write a piece with reported speech at either end, to bookend if you will. I wrote two pieces:

‘Did you see it?’ she said.

From the look that accompanied the question,

he should have.

But he didn’t know what it was.

He had his own questions.

Where should I be looking?

What are you talking about?

What kind of conversation starter is that?

‘See what?’ he said.

‘Today sucked,’ he looked sad

and angry. Gone, the familiar smile, the easy

demeanour. It wasn’t the same.

Today sucked.

‘Tomorrow will be worse,’ he said.

As always thank you for reading. I appreciate any comments you might have about my writing, but go easy on me at the moment!

Mike

Writer?

I have just changed my Twitter profile to read ‘writer’ rather than ‘aspiring writer.’ You may think this is a small, trivial thing and perhaps it is. But to me its a sign of confidence. In the first class of my masters, last week, we talked about finally having the courage to call yourself a writer. Because that’s what we are. By calling yourself a writer it doesn’t have to intrinsically apply that worrying prefix ‘professional-,’ but you are a writer if you write, right? I forgot to change it last week, but I’ve done it now and strangely it feels encouraging. The next step is to add that prefix. ‘Professional-writer’. The dream.

I have just, also, finished the opening for a story I am submitting for an anthology that will hopefully be published next year. It’s a long way to go, but I intend to go the whole way this time. The editor wanted to see my first one and a half pages and that’s fine, I’m happy to provide so that he can check it and so that I can get advice as I carry on the journey of that particular story. I may tell you more about it soon.

This weeks class was firstly about idea generating and then openings.

Ideas aren’t something I really struggle with. In fact I have a notepad full of stories I would like to write and an hourglass lacking in adequate sand…

But this was a nice exercise and I think it was actually very helpful for creating character conflict. We had three bags containing strips of paper with the following printed on them; one containing characters, one places and the last, actions.

The task was to pick two characters, a place and an action and then write a very brief synopsis tying them all together in a story. The other task was not to worry about some of them being terrible stories. Which was great because some of mine were truly terrible (I think I wrote the word ‘Xfactor’ for one of them, eesh!) But I did come up with a couple of potentials.

After that we talked about openings, how to grab your reader’s attention. It’s not something that I have thought about before, so it was nice to take a look at. I think a good way is with a startling revelation, but I would say that that could end up being overused. It needs to fit the story. I usually, I believe, start with character action, or description, which I must admit, isn’t always that grabbing. Something to think about when I write my next story.

The homework was to chose one of the stories from the exercise and think about where you would open that story. When you start, beginning, middle or end determines what scenes and actions take place in that story and also how much the reader knows. We’re expected to write the opening and hand it in next week.

For mine I chose the story where I drew ‘My father’, which I took license with to be ‘the characters father;’ ‘The rival,’ ‘a disused cinema,’ and ‘the hand that feeds.’ With this I have come up with some kind of gangster story, don’t ask me why. I have already started writing it, but I may post what I submit next week.

Thanks for reading.

Write, Write, Right?

So last week was a mad-busy week and this is the first real time I’ve had to sit down at the computer and sum it up. With a new intake at work, which the resultant fresher’s flu I am now harbouring attests to, being absolutely busy. It was the first time I have had to teach more than twentyfour students in one go. I believe I had fortyeight in our new lecture theatre at capacity? That was pretty nerve-wracking to start off with, but I think I’ve got the hang of it now. It’s different, much like the new campus that we have only this week started using. (At points this week, I was finishing a lecture in one building then hot-footing it up to the new building to start another.)

Another new thing this week is that I started my Master’s course in Writing. It’s something that, admittedly, I have only been looking forward to for a short time. When compared to some of the people on the course who applied for it months ago I came across by pure chance in late August, I believe it was. And I lucked out. This was the first postgraduate course that has really caught my eye and inspired me, so I was delighted when I was offered a place.

To be in postgraduate education is really fun. Perhaps studying another course might have been different, but this was incredibly laid back and informative. We started by enrolling and while we waited for our course leader to come over and get us a few of us introduced ourselves. The great thing about the course is that it seems to be a group of like-minded people. While we may not all have the same interests there seems to be something that links us all, even if that is the very art of writing. Once we had gathered (almost) everyone, the course effectively started in the Starbucks on the ground floor of the building. This was a much better icebreaker than the usual, stand up, hi, I’m Mike, I do this and that, introduction that I dread. Even as a lecturer public speaking doesn’t come easily to me. We then moved on to the room in which, I presume, we will be spending the rest of the course. The facilities at LJMU seem fantastic, and much more than we need, with boundary mics on every table and a spectacular view of the city (complete with balcony). Here Jim, the course leader, introduced what we would be doing this semester and with a host of guest speakers and writing workshops, I’m really looking forward to it.

The second half of the class was a writing workshop with Andrew McMillan, and is the main reason I’m writing this blog.

We were given one of a selection of pictures from a magazine as a writing prompt. Then in our own style, be it prose, poetry or screenwriting, we were to write for ten minutes on each of the following:

1. From the viewpoint of the main person in the photo.

2. From the viewpoint of a secondary person in the photo (perhaps someone on the sidelines looking in)

3. From the viewpoint of an inanimate object in the photo.

On the night I didn’t get time to read out one of my stories, partly due to me being too shy and nervous. I think that will improve with time when I have a chance to gauge the level and style of everyone else in the class. Those that did, held up their picture and then read aloud their story. What I wanted to do, ever being a fan of suspense, was to read my story and then hold up the picture. To see if anyone had grasped what it was i was talking about. So here we go (perhaps with slight, typed editing from the written version): Continue reading “Write, Write, Right?”

2012, Twenty-Twelve, Two Thousand Twelve.

I don’t normally do an end of year report, or I have never done one before. But they seem to be the trend of today. It’s early in the morning and I have already come across several people’s thoughts of the year.So, this year, I’ve decided to do one. Last year (2011) was an incredibly emotional year, the Christmas/New Year period was too raw and too many things had changed for me to pluck up the courage to talk about it all. It’s still a sore issue and this year has been equally emotional, but I have a long last found my voice.

2012 has been a year of huge ups and downs. One of the great things about this year is, as I say, I have found my voice. I have finally moved along the road of my great ambition to write. This blog is a part of that, and while I don’t post often I still manage to keep it alive. Meeting some other writers in November, as well as getting advice from the professionals has been brilliant. I have written a lot more this year than I ever have before. I’m very close to finishing one story (that I intend to finish today – it really must be done in 2012 or it’s taken far too long) and with some luck and hard work I may feature in an independent anthology next year. I’m really looking forward to writing that story but there is a way to go before that happens yet. I will try to keep everyone posted.

But despite that, there have been some huge downs this year for me. I’ve been to some very dark places (which I guess has influenced my need to write as well as what I write) because of personal things that have happen. I don’t want to go in to too much detail, and I don’t ever want to place blame. 2011 was a horrible year emotionally and that continued into 2012, where things have not go much better. I’m incredibly happy that I am able to be friends with my ex-girlfriend, and happy that she has moved on. But the fallout from everything that happened, 18 months later, still hurts. Lost friends and broken bridges break my heart. No matter how much I try to do the right thing, someone always ends up getting hurt, and for that I’m sorry, I never want to bring hurt to anyone. There are some people I would like to say sorry to, but have no means. As I say, I don’t want to go in to detail, it’s probably not fair. But if you ask, I will probably wax lyrical.

I know some people will probably say “Oh but you’ve had a great year, what are you moaning about?!”. But to them I say, some things in life are more important than possessions or achievements.

This year, my band played the Download Festival. Yes, it was fucking amazing, yes I’m incredibly lucky to have done it! But you know what the worst thing about it is? It was so incredible, so unexpected that it still feels like a dream. I still don’t believe I actually played, despite being there and seeing photographic evidence. And the further it gets away the more it seems like an illusion, like some fabrication of my fragile mind. Also, Download was a pretty sad time for me (again? yes I know, I moan a lot!) Seeing Metallica for the first time in years without certain company was incredibly heart-wrenching, so much so that I could barely talk to those I was with and had to go to the bar to excuse myself.

I guess I do look forward to 2013. There should be some good things happening, with some luck. But I also dread it. I dread hearing something that I knows is incredibly possible, that may well break me and I hate not knowing. I also hate not knowing if long lost friends are okay and I know that will continue in to 2013. But we will see, tomorrow is a day like any other but it is also the start of a new year and who knows what it will hold?

I suppose I should finish this with an album and film of the year. My album of this year is Dead End Kings by Katatonia and I thoroughly recommend it to anyone. ‘The Longest Year’ from their previous album is still my favourite song and therefore favourite song of this year. It has helped me when I’ve felt down and one of the things I intend to do next year is get the lyrics tattooed on the inside of my left arm (Nothing Else Matters lyrics on the inside of my right arm). I just need to pluck up the courage first! My favourite film by far is the Dark Knight Rises. I absolutely loved the end to a fantastic trilogy of films. The jury is still out on the Hobbit.

Let me give you a sample of the lyrics from three select songs off their new album (but all the songs and lyrics are on the album are beautiful):

The Parting

“In the weak light

I saw you becoming the lie.

Taking it all for granted, like freedom.

It’s something you’ll never have.”

Ambitions

“At night walking on the tracks
Change my perspective
Idle hands with wounds and cracks
Stale
Ineffective
But past the veil
The memories of things
Still so in love with you

So dense this strife
Kicked the life
I feel this weight upon my heart

Indecision
Sow the seed
Aspiration is never within reach
At night there is no other view
Sing a song for the ones who never made it”

Dead Letters

“Dim my lights
Time is frail
You shut my mind
But oh well
Trapped and choked
Erased my trail
Split the chest
My heart couldn’t feel more pale
Only once
Could I see clear

Vexation
Internal void
My dreams are getting darker and darker
And darker”

The following are the lyrics I’m thinking about getting tattooed:

“In the nights of old I always wished
In the longest year that had me down
And I would freeze if you ever asked me
That was my way”

Or at least the first two lines.

Well thank you for reading and I hope I haven’t depressed you too much.

Happy New Year and good luck for 2013!

The Hobbit: An Unexpected Blog

Greetings my dear fellow! It has been an age since we have been on an adventure together! Now I should warn you now, there may be some talk in the form of *Spoilers* in this prosaic discussion of the new Hobbit film. Though how you can really spoil a film based on a book published in the 1930’s is another discussion all together!

I should also point out, before I start, that I did actually enjoy the film. It was in all a well produced film that was pretty epic. There were just a few decisions in the process that I didn’t understand. I will be going back to see it again, and see if I fall in love with it like I did the Fellowship, but at the moment I’m not 100% convinced.

The first thing I don’t understand is how some of the people I know can be so sycophantic about it. Yes it’s a great film, I really liked it, but it’s not perfect. I’m probably going to get lynched by a few people for saying this, but they could have done better. The Hobbit was the first book I read as a child and I adore it, I was a little disappointed with a few things they did that changed the feel of it for me. It okay to like something without going all out to ignore some glaring mistakes and bad decisions. You don’t need to tell me how awesome it is, I know; it’s incredible that this film has even been made, it’s something I’ve waited for for years. But I don’t want to just blindly use superlatives to talk about it, let’s discuss it. Sometimes it seems that just because it’s Tolkien, Peter Jackson, Games Workshop, ADB, etc. (I could co on) that it has to be awesome, there is simply no room for alternative.

(Here be spoilers!)

One of the main things that frustrated me a little bit was the opening. Sufficed to say I think I was fairly underwhelmed by the whole beginning portion of the film and was starting to get worried. (It’s okay the rest more than made up for it!) In the Lord of the Rings, we open with a perfectly epic narration to the history of Middle-Earth explaining why Sauron was bad and what had happened, while still leaving enough room for the imagination. All voiced by Cate Blanchett who has a perfectly suited, haunting voice. In “The Hobbit” they tried the same thing again, this time showing what happened to Erebor and basically giving up all the information about what the company were going to go and do, save Erebor! In the book, you are placed in Bilbo Baggins’ point of view, having no idea why these Dwarves were turning up on your doorstep, but enjoying the confused ride as more slithers of information popped out. In the film, you are then left with all the dialogue of this part of the book chucked all together which actually detracts from the epicness of the opening sequence. It also leaves Bilbo as a bit of a supporting character, stood in the background, rather then the lead which he later becomes. It would have been far better to have choice flashbacks like in the book, revealing secrets and depth as we go. (Now I know that you have to change bits in books for screenplays, but this is one time where the original would have actually been better for a more engrossing film!) This is also done as a rather obvious nod to The Lord of The Rings, as Bilbo is recounting the story to Frodo (set just before his birthday party), which leads me to my next point.

Why tie in the films so blatantly to the Lord of The Rings films, then change bits of filming which make those films now seem ‘wrong’? For example, in the Lord of the Rings, there is a flash back to when Bilbo finds the ring. In that film he is crawling in the dirt and discovers the ring, dusts it off and says ‘What’s this? a ring!’. In the Hobbit, the ring falls out of Gollum’s pocket, lands perfectly on a stone. Shortly later Bilbo walks past, picks it up and quietly puts it in his pocket without a thought. It just seems like an odd thing to chance, now the continuity of four films is called in to question. There are a few other examples like this that I don’t need to go in to, such as the mountain trolls being turned to stone in completely different poses to how Frodo and the Fellowship find them in LOTR.

The main thing that bugged me was that Gandalf did not give Bilbo a shove out of the door! He even mentions that he did in the Fellowship of the Ring! Why was there need to change that?! It has such a small effect on the overall story, but is such a quaint part of Tolkien’s mythology. A shame…

Though it must be said, apart from these things, the casting was brilliant. Martin Freeman plays a perfect Bilbo Baggins and I can’t think of anyone better suited to the role. The Dwarves were all perfectly cast, Thorin dark and brooding and the rest giving the needed comic relief. Howard Shore also produces another great soundtrack, that I am currently sat listening to while I write this.

One final criticism that I must voice is this. 48fps must be avoided at all costs! It seems these days that film directors are constantly seeking the next gimmick rather than focussing on great story telling. 3D has taken over, and it can be used quite well in parts, but 48fps is simply awful and must be stopped. The main problem is that it makes everything look like a documentary (which is in fact where Peter Jackson saw the technology being used and decided to use it for the Hobbit). It completely ruins the cinematic experience and gives too much away. Rather than being sucked in to the screen with previous formats and being immersed in the story, you are instead left feeling like you are watching behind the scenes footage. It also gives far too much away. Okay, the wide angle scenery shots are fantastic. But once example of this technology failing the film is the fight of the giants. When there are wide angle shots of the giants fighting it is very difficult to see what is actually going on, despite the individual detail being brilliant. Then when it zooms in to the Dwarves stood on a giants leg, you can clearly see the difference from the CGI; the shot now clearly looks like the Dwarves are on a set. Simply put it is too real, cinema isn’t about reality, it’s about escaping it and therefore certain detail needs to be hidden from the eye.

Well that’s my thoughts on the film. As I say, I will be going to see it again (probably a few times to be honest). But I will most definitely be seeing it in 24fps and possibly in 2D as well.

Thanks for reading, and I hope I haven’t ruined the film for anyone!

Thoughts

I don’t really know what to write, though I felt like writing a blog. There are so many thoughts and frustrations running around in my head at this present moment in time that I can’t quite put them down to paper.

Firstly, birthdays suck. It’s true that they really do get worse as you get older. I don’t know what I was expecting, that something might give me some brief moment of happiness like ‘hey this isn’t just like any other day’. Today, has been pretty boring and average and now it’s getting dark. A lot of people reading this will think I’m just moaning. You’re probably right. I’m lucky in a lot of ways, yes I know that. I have a home, plenty of things and a job. But there are more important things in life than things. Yeah I know that’s a bit of an oxymoron, but you know what I mean.

I guess I’m mainly pissed off because I thought today would be a nice day, a bit different to a regular day of being at home being down. I even got up early for some reason. Since then I’ve been sat in my living room, the heating on, which is giving me a headache, watching episodes of Big Bang Theory in an effort to make me laugh. My mum came up to spend it with me, but she has spent most of the day in bed. I know it’s not her fault, and really I can’t blame her for being ill. It just sucks. And now I’m mostly pissed off with myself, for caring too much about things and letting stupid little things get me down. Life just feels pretty futile sometimes. I watch people go by without a care in the world, getting on with their lives and all I can ever do is think.

God I sound like an arse. I really don’t know if I should post this. But I felt like doing some writing and this is what came to mind. Or what was on my mine, or whatever. I suppose this is what a blog is for? to update people and get things of your shoulders.

There is one birthday message that is missing. Stupidly it would have made my day. But I suppose it was too much to expect. I hate burnt bridges, I can never hold grudges with people and I can never understand how other people seem so capable of it. The last two years have been pretty crap for that. I fucked up and ruined my relationship, once again by trying to do the right thing, and a really good friendship and I’ve been lonely ever since. Something about this will always seem like this isn’t how it was meant to be. Like I stepped over to some alternate mirror universe where everything is just wrong. Or maybe I just have the inuring ability to ruin everything? Nothing ever does seem to go quite to plan. Ooops I’m moaning again.

I don’t really know where to go from here except to keep surviving and trying to put on a brave face on things. So I’m going to go for a walk, I need to get out of the house and hopefully cure this headache.

Thanks to those of you who did wish me a happy birthday.

Here’s to a better Christmas. Thanks for reading and sorry for sounding like a moaning idiot.

Weekend Writing

Well I’ve finally recovered enough to write a blog about last weekend. It been a while again since I last blogged, mainly on account of still being ill. I can’t seem to shift this thing, no amount of vitamin C seems to be helping. But it does slowly seem to be getting better. Having a week off work has definitely helped.

So on to last weekend: It was the Black Library Weekender in Nottingham, which I have been looking forward to for ages. A couple of days where the authors and fans of the Black Library get together to talk all things tie-in fiction. I luckily managed to get hold of a gold ticket that was put back on sale about a month before the event. The extra money was definitely worth it!

This entitled me to a go to Warhammer World on the Friday and take part in a few extra activities, such as having dinner with the three main authors. The main part of this for me was the opportunity to have a twenty minute chat with an editor about a story you had submitted. So during the week before I put together a synopsis for the story that I have been working on and sent that off with a sample of the text. That’s when the nerves began to kick in. I had never done anything like this before. I had sent off stories, but never had any feedback let alone one to one in-person feedback. I was absolutely terrified that my writing would just be awful and that it would be an incredibly embarrassing experience. I got even more nervous as the day came and I sat in Bugman’s Bar awaiting my allotted time and that time actually passing.

As it turned out, it wasn’t a bad experience at all. Christian came up to me shortly after we were supposed to start and assured me that I would get all of my thirty minutes with him (which brilliantly was ten more minutes than we were expecting!) and that he was just busy trying to organise everyone else at that moment in time. I will still nervous, as anyone that knows me I’m a particularly shy and nervous person, but Christian was actually incredibly friendly and put me at ease. The chat we had about writing was great, my writing style was fine and he likened me to a couple of authors (which I can’t remember the names of now – doh!). Unfortunately though he didn’t want the story I had pitched to him, due to a few factual errors in the plot. But the best thing to come from this is that he invited me to pitch more stories to him in the future, whenever I wanted to. This is great as usually we have to wait for open submissions windows in order to submit story synopses and writing samples. They’re even actually getting rid of these now due to the huge interest for the last one (they had 3,000 submissions, which they are still sifting through). So the fact that we gold ticket holders now have an avenue in to the Black Library is one of the many reasons why the ticket was well worth the price. I also talked to him about getting involved in editing and hopefully I will be able to do some proofreading for them in the future. At the end of the chat he asked me what I had submitted before and from that he suggested to me a story that I might write for my next submission, so that was also helpful.

Something else that I did over the weekend was talk to people. As I’ve previously mentioned I’m a very shy person, but this weekend I decided that I would try my best to be sociable. One of the great things I took away form the weekend was meeting and chatting to fellow writers. Not only did I get a lot of advice, I know know some like-minded people that I can chat to in the future about writing. I’ve also made a couple of friends I think. Who knows we might appear published together in the future.

I spent a bit of time during signings asking each author I met and asked them their tips for aspiring authors. I also asked those I had met before how they went about planning their stories as I think that learning the process of writing is something that people often forget. One of the overall pieces of advice I seem to get from authors is to keep writing. The other thing I took away from the weekend was to just write; ‘writer’s write, authors finish’. I’ve got in to a nasty habit of editing as I go along, as one Gav Thorpe categorically told me ‘No!’ this is not the way to write. that is called overwriting and what I need to do instead is just switch off my internal editor and work towards my word count. Once you’ve got to that point you can go back and analyse what you’ve written and improve it, but you already have your story down. It’s very hard to do, you have to look back at where you left off the last writing session to carry on, but you can’t look at it and say ‘that sentence needs changing’ until you are done.

So this week I have written every day and I managed to finish a full first draft for the short story I submitted for the weekend. I decided that even though they didn’t want to publish the story it would be beneficial for me and my ‘journey’ as a writer to actually finish it. So now I have 9,400 words written, the most words I have ever written for fun. Now I can actually go back and edit it and improve sentences etcetera. I believe that I will also manage to get it to around the 10,000 words mark.

On the Saturday of the event I also started my first original story. I was sitting in the bar waiting for a couple of friends to come out of a talk and I had my iPad. So I decided to start writing for NaNoWriMo and to also try this method of ‘freewriting’ from scratch. I will let you know how that goes, it kinda got pushed to the sidelines by me finishing the other story.

As always, if you want to read the story I have finished, please get in touch and thanks for reading!

Truth’s Herald

I haven’t written one of these blogs in a while. For a start I’ve been very busy again, things haven’t calmed down since I moved house and we started a new intake of students at work. But I’m sat here on a train being rushed from London – my home town – to Liverpool – my home – at speed. I love this journey, I love sitting here watching the the green fields race past. There is something that is so relaxing about it, so peaceful. It’s also, as I’ve mentioned before, a great setting for me to get ideas for my writing. So far since we set off at 11:15 this morning I have already written an entire new scene for the short story I am currently working on called ‘Herald of Truth‘.

I’m sat here writing this on my iPad, which is a brilliant tool for writing. It’s so much easier to sit here and flick through apps and add notes to each. Much easier than carrying round and having to get out a heavy laptop and wait for it to load. I found myself regularly using the notes app on my phone to write down ideas I had just had, but this is more conclusive and concise. I fully intend to use it more, it started off as a fairly gimmicky entertainment device but let’s see how it works for my writing. I still find it easier to compile my documents in word or pages. I’m also getting used to using a touch screen keyboard, so far it’s a very different experience, so bear with me while I weed out the spelling mistakes!

The main reason I haven’t posted a blog in a long time is because I haven’t known what to say. I feel completely burnt out at the moment, still very depressed and down. Work as I’ve said before has been very busy at the moment. We had a new intake in October, which means a host of new students starting their course. I think all in all we have about 80 new students. If you bear in mind that our previous overall student base was around 60 students on all courses, we have over double our students on one new course. While this is a good thing, it has meant a lot of extra work for everyone. I’ve had to teach a lot of things I haven’t taught before. While I enjoy it, I need to make sure I prepare for each lecture properly. Which has worn me out…

I’m also exhausted because a lot of events I booked a while ago – to try and occupy my mind – have come around all at once. As you’ve already read, I’m currently sat on a train from London after seeing Devin Townsend last night. I really feel that I should have stayed at home. In fact I had a really strong urge to stay home, which I can’t quite explain. It might have just been my tiredness or it could have been something else, I’m not quite sure yet.

One of the events I went to was last week, which was Destination Star Trek London. Now I’m a huge Star Trek fan, so I had been looking forward to it for a long time. At first I did have a great time. It was incredible to see all the five captains together on stage interacting. It was also incredible to meet Bill Shatner and Sir Patrick Stewart. But once the parties started, I couldn’t help but feel that something was missing. It brought back memories of previous cons I had been to and enjoyed. So it also brought a lot of stuff up from the last 18 months or so and I got incredibly down and unhappy that night. I should probably hide my phone when I get drunk and depressed…

The day afterwards I was pretty annoyed with myself, so I decided to give myself a self-imposed ban from Facebook, Twitter et al. I thought about deactivating Facebook again but I didn’t want to be accused of attention-seeking.

I also started to write a blog about the last 18 months of my life. About all the things that made me so depressed and desperately down. Why I often feel broken, with little to no motivation for life. But it was too hard to write, the things I wanted to put to paper hurt too much. There are a lot of things I’m sorry about and things that I don’t think are right. But some of the things I wanted to write could potentially hurt a few people and the last thing I ever want to do is hurt people. Even this short paragraph was difficult to write. I don’t think in my frame of mind I can accurately say what I want to say. So I will keep my silence and pray that one day things will sort themselves out. I always do…

My self-imposed silence on social sites lasted pretty well until last night and I wasn’t particularly drunk. Just morose. I had this unbelievable urge to be home that I can’t explain. I hold a lot of belief in instinct and fate etc. Although, those beliefs have been shaken a lot this last year.

Anyway, I decided to write this blog for myself, just to get some things out of my head while I was sat here on this train. I will hopefully be back soon. Thank you for reading…

I Return

Well I guess it’s time I wrote one of these things again. It’s been quite a while since my last blog once again. But I have excuses a plenty! I’ve only just really finished moving house. Monday was the last day on the tenancy of my old flat. Those of you who have moved house will know that it’s not just about moving stuff from one place to another, which is incredibly tiring I might add, it’s also having to sort everything out from utilities to changing addresses with every service you subscribe to. I’m still living out of a few boxes and bags… All in all it’s pretty time consuming and I only finished sorting the most part yesterday. I’ve also got a problem where some quite expensive tickets were dispatched to my old address and the property managers are being as unhelpful as possible at getting back. Trust me there will be more on them in a future blog!

It has also been a busy period at work. The demand has been phenomenal and we have a record number of new students. As great as this is, it made the first week of the new course pretty intensive for everyone. There is still a lot of work to be done but it’s starting to ease off and relax slightly now we are getting in to the swing of things. It didn’t help that towards the end of the week I started to pick up what I can only describe as freshers flu.

Over the weekend I was busy away in London crewing a convention called the Entertainment Media Show. I’ve been to plenty of conventions as a paying attendee, but I have never crewed before so a few months ago I decided that I should give this weekend a go a my first event crewing. I didn’t realise at the time that it would fall right in the middle of this busy work and moving home period, otherwise I might have left it until the start of next year. In hindsight it probably wasn’t the best time to start and I could barely talk to anyone over the weekend due to losing my voice to the flu. So apologies to anyone I spoke to, I’m not normally quite that quiet/rude! That said, I did have a really good time.

I was musing in the week before the event that so many people seem so self-absorbed, so caught up in their own lives. I was even going to write a blog about it but didn’t get time. I constantly found myself getting out of the way of other people without so much as a thank you, especially it seemed, when carrying heavy things. Why should I move out of the way if I’m the one carrying something heavy? Anyway, I didn’t want to go in to that now. What I was going to say was that it was so nice and refreshing to crew at an event and see that for the most part everyone else crewing was very conscientious of what was going on. They seemed to want to help the attendees and make sure everything ran logically and smoothly while making sure everyone, including the other crew, enjoyed themselves.

So I had a really good time. The Saturday was hard work in parts, bag checking for Matt Smith (Doctor Who), Red Dwarf and Mike Tyson photo queues. But it was great fun really, being close to these guests and even getting to chat to them was excellent. Also working with and getting to know some of the other crew was great, it’s always good to make new friends and I hope to make many more. So in short I will definitely be applying to crew again. I’m not someone who goes round and gets loads of autographs and photos and obsesses about guests. So it’s much nicer for me to do something active and be a part of it. These shows are always a nice environment to be in (although the boxing fans pushed it at times! I won’t go in to details, but sheesh, considering it was a family show, some of that language was fairly inappropriate!) so I will be back.

Thankfully I have this weekend free, the first in what seems ages. It will give me time to sort out the flat and do some writing.

On that note, I don’t know if I have mentioned it before but in a few weeks I have the opportunity to chat with an editor from the Black Library about one of my stories. This is obviously a great opportunity and I’m almost finished on a short story, but for previously mentioned reasons I haven’t done any writing in a couple of weeks. I will be from now on spending as much spare time as possible on finishing the draft of this story. I’ve got till the start of November so it should give me enough time to draft and hopefully edit. Wish me luck… Once again I will be calling on my test readers for their feelings on the work. If you feel like getting involved, feel free to comment or message me!

Once again thanks for reading and hopefully it won’t be so long before my next blog.

Mike

I Disappear

I disappeared, some of you may not have noticed, but I did. ‘Why?’ I hear you say…well, many reasons. The first being I rather stupidly went out and got drunk and pissed off with things. Then I had ‘a moment’ where I thought that I would just deactivate my Facebook account and see what happened. It then turned in to a ‘lets see if I can get on with life without going on Facebook for an entire week’. Which actually turned out to be pretty productive. I managed to get a lot of writing done, even in the evening, which had previously been reserved for ‘relaxing’. (read: sitting in front of the computer staring at Facebook and chatting to friends). I won’t lie, it was pretty difficult. Trying to manage band stuff without the use of Facebook pages proved fairly difficult too. That was one of the main reasons I eventually reactivated it. Interestingly, while it was deactivated, someone actually searched for my bloke by putting my name in Google. Which was very much the desired effect. The only problem with that was that there was unfortunately nothing to read. So they searched again.

I tried to write this blog then, but then one of the other reasons for my quietness came up…I moved home. As some of you will know, this is possibly one of the most time consuming and tiring things that an adult human can do. In fact I’m currently physically and mentally exhausted and I still have a lot of stuff left to move from the old place, as well as various address changes, etcetera, to sort out. While this has been going on, I have been preparing for taking up more lecturing responsibilities at work, which starts as of Monday. As part of this, I’ve given up my Supervisor role, as I simply won’t have time when teaching to fulfil those two roles. Both this transition periods have been the main reason I’ve barely managed to get any writing done the last week. This is also the first blog I’ve written in…two weeks?

Up to that point writing had been going pretty well. During my moment writing pretty much helped me escape, in fact it’s often about escapism for me. Plus the fact that I love telling stories. I’m still pretty ‘pissed off’ with things, but I love my new home and the writing thing is going well (when I have time for it). I managed to fully outline and plot my first full short story. Most of the prose is written, I just need to fill in some gaps and edit. Then I will be looking for some test readers (rather than posting it on here!) If you’re interested then please get in contact.

I also managed to get hold of a Gold ticket (which was either an extra release or put back on sale) for the Black Library weekender. As part of that, I will get to have dinner with the authors attending, which will be great for getting advice, although I am going to be incredibly nervous! I will also get to have a chat with one of their editors as well as show them one of my stories for them to give me feedback and advice on. All in all a pretty amazing opportunity which I could not resist and could not waste. I don’t know what will come of it, but it will be useful in some way, shape or form.

Tonight, I also met the great British Science Fiction author Peter F. Hamilton. He was incredibly interesting and told us a great deal about how he got started. Peter didn’t start writing till he was 26 and didn’t get published till he was 29. So I still have a few years on him yet, which as you can imagine is greatly encouraging. I also had the opportunity to ask him for any advice he had for aspiring writers, which once again was a great opportunity.

Well I hope you are all well, especially those of you searching for me.

I may not have time to write another blog for a few days, but I will try my best and once again, thanks for reading!