This is a post I’ve been planning to write for a few weeks, and, as the previous blog post probably makes clear, my intent was to write it before that post went up. (A brief bit of advice from experience, saving a post as a draft makes more sense than scheduling it in that situation.)
I only wrote 3 blog posts in October, the lowest total since July 2012, and didn’t write a Lower League Week for I think around 7 weeks. There’ve also been a series of other things I’ve been planning to write for the blog that have been delayed.
Category: Egotism
IWSG: Pushing Uphill
This is my entry for this month’s Insecure Writer’s Support Group – a group for insecure writers to support each other. Sometimes straightforwardness is what you want in a name.
Will anyone ever like anything I have to say, any of the words I pour down on paper?
IWSG: Scheduled Writing
The Insecure Writers’ Support Group, set up by Alex Cavanaugh, is a monthly chance for those of us who describe ourselves as writers to put our insecurities out in the open, and see that others feel the same.
IWSG: Spinning Plates
It’s the first Wednesday of the month, which means it’s time to have a whinge at myself in the name of the Insecure Writers’ Support Group.
I’ve been writing a fair bit over recent months, trying to keep a variety of plates spinning, writing for different sites on varied subjects.
There are many writers who are much more prolific than me, but I’ve been stepping up the amount of writing I’ve done – most of it web-based, as well as writing a few bits of fiction.
I have let down a few people, unfortunately – for instance I discussed writing something topical as a guest author, but because of being busy/having less than ideal time management, I let it slip away. I’ve got a similar backlog of what I think are decent ideas tucked away in the back of my head or in a Word file somewhere or other.
I’ve also found that working on so many things at once can lead to making daft mistakes.
For instance, in recent months I’ve been writing about football statistics for Squawka.com.
One of the problems with writing on a statistical basis about players I’ve only watched irregularly is that I feel that people who watch the players on a regular basis, who’ve seen every game that player has been involved in, will know things about the player’s performances that I’ve not seen.
I made one particularly amateurish mistake – in a piece talking about Manchester United midfielder Nani, I mentioned in passing that his midfield rival Antonio Valencia was in his second season at the club – it was actually his fourth.
Obviously this kind of thing isn’t all that important, and didn’t affect the broad strokes of what I was arguing… but it’s still annoying to let that kind of mistake slip by.
I’m a fiction writer by instinct, and find research a bit stressful.
As much as I enjoying expanding my knowledge, learning more about the subjects that interest me, I find myself thinking about the information I’m not seeing as much as what I am. I’ve been writing a ‘Lower League Week’ for a year and a half now, and it can be a bit difficult to get my hands on information for some of the less well covered teams in England’s professional leagues. Coverage of what’s going on inside the clubs can be hard to come by, and there’s always the worry of local media glossing over the complications to keep their contacts inside the club, and fans reactions being clouded by emotion, often over-reacting one way or the other.
Personally, I prefer to get the foundations right, and then go off on tangents, inventing my own stuff. Unfortunately, I think this tends to be frowned on in factual writing.
Stieg Larrson, a very influential journalist in his field, reportedly wrote the ‘Girl with a Dragon Tattoo’ books in the evenings, as a way of unwinding. Previously I hadn’t been able to understand that – I’m generally the kind of writer to plan things out in massive detail in advance, before getting started. I take story structure and character development very seriously, it winds me up enormously when a character behaves in a way that I feel clashes with their previously established behaviour, or a twist comes along that feels forced and artificial.
But I’ve been finding in recent months that, when I’ve got so many ideas going round in my head, there’s some that excite me more than others, and it’s useful to think of those as a kind of treat – things I can let loose and be more natural when writing, without worrying quite so much.
It might not be the ideal way to accomplish it, but one of my key aims when setting up this blog was to get myself writing more quickly and on a regular basis, rather than trying to make everything perfect, moving at a snail’s pace, and finishing nothing.
I’m currently trying to reach a pace of writing that I find difficult, but it’s better than the alternative.
As with actual spinning plates there are techniques to make the trick easier.
Just this past week I’ve gotten half a story written on Sunday night, 2 and a half thousand words written in a few hours. Not only was this a decent achievement by my standards, it left me feeling refreshed, and more energised for the factual work I had in my ‘to do’ list. I’ve also enjoyed collaborating on what could be a rare case of football-themed comedy that actually ends up being funny.
Really, I need to be better at both de-stressing and forcing myself to sit down to get first drafts of things completed. I’ve still got a lot to learn, but I feel as if I’m moving in the right direction.
The Mess Inside A Writer’s Mind
I’m sat here writing on Tuesday evening, a mess of more or less unrelated ideas flying around my head.
I’ve been thinking about statistics – how numbers are absolute, but the meaning is flexible. I’ve been wondering how exactly a character gets a cult following. I’ve received a blank envelope recently, which I know is the result of an administrative error, but I’m unsure what type of error – and I’ve been wondering if there’s the potential for a story growing out of it.
I’ve had two different pieces of writing published by two different sites today, and I’ve currently got two more longish things half-written. On top of all that, I’ve only just realised in the last ten minutes that, with today being Tuesday and the last day of the month (two things I realised separately) that makes tomorrow the first Wednesday of the month, and therefore Insecure Writers’ Support Group Day.
I’m Creating my own Universe
This is going to be just about the geekiest post I’ve written on the blog, so feel free to mock me in the comments. I won’t be offended if you do.
Despite the majority of my writing in the last year and a half being on other subjects (football, television, film and book reviews, analysis and rants mainly) my ultimate aim as a writer is to be a professional writer of fiction.
I prefer the blank canvas, the ability to create my own characters and tell my own stories, to the non-fiction writing I’ve mainly wrote and linked to in the year and a half writing this blog.
I’ve mentioned previously that I’ve got a lot of half-started fiction, things I started with a huge sense of ambition, excited about what I could do, and then more or less gave up, convinced that my story, for whatever reason, didn’t work.
It’s for that reason that I’ve started writing fan-fiction, using characters taken fro the Marvel Comics universe. (Though my interpretations of the characters are mainly based on those that have appeared in the recent films and 1990s cartoons.) Essentially, the idea is that, by using characters and scenarios created by others, I’ll have guidelines of sorts.
For instance, in the early chapters of what I’ve been writing, I felt like I wasn’t quite capturing the personality of Peter Parker the way I wanted. I was able to look up some old episodes online, to have a definite idea of how I wanted the character to speak – the sense of both humility and sarcasm. (My favourite version of the character is the one in the 90s cartoon series. While Toby McGuire and Andrew Garfield’s performances are decent, both are a little too geeky for me.)
Nothing is created in a vacuum – every writer who’s ever lifted a pen has been inspired by something. There’s a space opera short story concept I’ve picked up and abandoned many times over the years. Essentially what I thought for this would be the moral metaphors of Star Trek, in a darker and grimier world, more like Alien or Battlestar Galactica.
I’ve a hero that I wanted to be similar but different to common ideas of how a dynamic leader should behave… and it’s difficult working out the precise characterisation.
But with fanfiction, there’s something to consult, something solid that’s been made, to look at as an example of how a particular character should behave, what their home should look like, the kind of stories that work with that character.
My first plan was an episode by episode rewrite of Star Trek Voyager, which seems to have been a slightly ambitious idea.
My second project, which I think is more sensible, is to write a series of 500 – 1000 word chapters telling stories of Marvel Comics superheroes. (Spiderman, the X-Men and The Avengers are some of Marvel’s more popular characters, if you’re not aware which is which.)
I’m not a big comic reader – in fact the only Marvel comic I think I’ve ever bought was a Spiderman comic where he fought a guy on gigantic stripey stilts. For some reason I fail to comprehend, that villain hasn’t made it into the movies yet.
But I’m a fan of the movies, and grew up watching the 90s Spiderman, X-Men and Fantastic Four cartoon series.
What’s more, looking around various wikipedias – the Marvel Wiki, and of course, Wikipedia itself – it’s fascinating to see different incarnations of the same characters, the different ways the same stories have been told. Thousands of years ago, people will have gathered around campfires, reinterpretting and reimagining cool stories they’ve heard before, and I think comic stories are the modern equivalent of this.
I’ve started adding my own contributions to this continual reimagining.
Early chapters of The Marvel Universe are now up at Fanfiction.net, where I’ve been telling three stories across different time periods – the stories of Spiderman and The Hulk’s origins, and Nick Fury’s early days in SHIELD.
I’m using the fanfiction essentially as a way of getting myself into motion, getting myself to write, to stay in motion and keep my instincts sharp. I’ve written recently about a story I’ve submitted for publication, and I don’t think I’d have written that if it weren’t for the fanfiction.
As I said, I’ve started putting chapters up at Fanfiction.net. I’ve enjoyed writing it, and you may enjoy reading it. Stranger things have happened…
Click here to read The Marvel Universe: Phase One: Standing Alone
A Story I’ve Submitted
I’m going to write about a short story I’ve just submitted for consideration for publication.
It’s set in a supernatural world, with the ‘creatures’ in that world being fairly classical ones.
There’s always the chance people will think I’ve jumped on the bandwagon merely because the genre is popular, but I promise I’ve not just seen a crowded market place, and decided to yell out “Me too!”
Although I much prefer science fiction to either fantasy or supernatural as a default, there is a lot of fiction that’s well written in both of those genres.They all tend to be grouped together, as they tend to be stories of larger than life adventures, and each tends to deal with fears and moral issues in an abstract way.
I spent a large amount of my youth watching the Buffy and the X-Files (which is generally more supernatural than sci-fi, despite the presence of the over-arching alien plotline) love Being Human, Dracula (the novel rather than any adaptation) and enjoy what I’ve seen of Supernatural.
Though the ‘supernatural’ genre isn’t my favourite, I have a relatively strong familiarity with it.
A Writing Lesson Learned From A Shark
This is my April entry for the Insecure Writers’ Support Group.
Supposedly, if a shark stops swimming, it’ll die.
I’m not totally clear on the practicalities of this – does it drown? Does it sink to the bottom of the ocean, to the dark places where weird creatures with luminescent glowy bits live?
But, in cultural terms at least, the shark’s position as a creature that must continue moving or else is second only to it’s position as an evil killer, and devourer of boats that aren’t as big as needed.
Though it can be annoying, I think the same applies to writers.
Writing is a habit, one that needs to be developed into an instinct. The idea of a writer with intense writer’s block is one that’s been done to death in fiction – the writer has six hours before a 50,000 word novel is due in, and is sat in front of a blank Word document.
But just because something’s a cliche doesn’t make it untrue, as much as the desire for freshness may make us wish it does.
I’ve Been Writing!
It’s been a while since I last wrote a proper blog post, rather than just link to posts on Bornoffside. I have been writing though, as well as looking into other writing opportunities. I’ll use this blog post to go through some of the things I’ve been doing, on the off chance anyone’s interested.
Unfreezing the Writers Muscle
This is my submission for the Insecure Writers’ Support Group for February. There’ve been a few blogs I’ve came across through IWSG in the last two months that I’ve not kept up with, so if I gave the impression I’d be reading your blog regularly but haven’t, it’s a matter of bad time management, not me trying to manipulate you!
SciFiFootball 