Love Fail: Fantasy v Reality
In which I fall in love with a jacket, or possibly a man, and then certainly a fantasy of the man, which despite his being a pretty decent prospect, usurps any possible reality. In short, why I am fast approaching my 10 year anniversary of undisturbed spinsterhood.
I’m in the tube station leaving Oxford Circus and I see this amazing tan leather jacket ahead of me. It’s battered and faded, it has tabs and twists and buckles and it tapers at the waist with fancy stitching and I think: that is a hell of a jacket.
It’s a man’s jacket, and if I had a man, I would totally dress him in a jacket like that, and then I would have to fight every other woman off him. With a katana. It would be like Kill Bill, every day, only this Bride would be fighting for her man.
Behold, the blood of mine enemies (Photo: Victor Kurzweil)
It’s that sort of jacket.
The jacket is keeping pace with me through the ticket barriers, and is right ahead of me going down the escalator. Time to look beyond the tan leather: who could possibly be wearing this divine article? Turns out it’s not a bad profile. Not bad at all. Crafted. Stylishly styled medium length hair. Designer stubble.
No, I hadn't met Jake again, but you get the idea.
This is all fine, but what I really need is to tell him how amazing his jacket is. It’s a compulsion – admiration for an article of clothing this special must be articulated publicly. The words desperately need to leave my lips. But this may come across stalkerish, no? Or like a really, really bad chat-up.
Dilemma.
I stand on the escalator, quite paralysed. Fortunately, it’s a long escalator. I have time to notice the folder in his hands. Fancier than your lowly ring binder, and just about as battered as the jacket, which I have managed to look away from. Artist then? Attractive prospect. Under his grip, I can just make out the words ‘Milan – Paris – New York’.
Ah, not an artist, but a designer instead? Fashion. Probably gay. My gaydar is either broken or was never installed and there isn’t anyone around I feel it would be socially acceptable to nudge and do a ‘pssst! Dude in the jacket. Gay?’ to. Where is Trudi when you need her?
So we get to the bottom of the escalator, and he’s hovering at the turn to the central line. He glances my way – MOMENT! – but I brick it, drop the ball, epic fail. The usual sunny smiles refuses to appear. Suddenly – and it’s taken six years – I am a Londoner. I do not make eye contact or speak.
I am an idiot.
I could have stopped, helped him out, since he’s clearly clueless of his route, and then told him how amazing his jacket is. But the opportunity is lost. Alas.
For the first time in a very long time, I do not read The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes on my iphone kindle as I follow the maze of tunnels to the Central Line. Instead, I dally. I look closely at film posters I’ve analysed dozens of time. Viggo Mortensen is still in A Dangerous Method, and the picture of Kiera Knightly looks like it was lifted straight from The Duchess. Amanda Hocking – queen of the self-publishing revolution – finally has a commercially published book advertised on the underground. It looks like any number of other supernatural romance novels, but it’s there and I’m so pleased for her. I am less pleased for me though, because the jacket has not yet appeared on the stairs. Perhaps he did not need the central line, after all.
Travelling westbound on the central line, I always walk to the end of the platform, in the company of Mr Holmes, because the Queensway exit is to the rear of the train. Today though, I linger by the platform entry. My behaviour has been completely changed by the jacket.
Or so it seems.
An idea forms.
I am currently writing about two dysfunctional characters who express their emotions through displacement activities instead of traditional forms of emoting.
It occurs to me that the immediate attraction I felt for the jacket might be a defensive displacement for the attraction I feel for the man. They say attraction is an innate thing. I have very little experience on which to comment, but it seems possible I am, in fact, attracted to this man, and the jacket is just a maguffin.
I am still just hanging out by the station entry, bunched in with all the other idiots who can’t be assed to spread out down the platform, Just In Case He Comes. But since that’s looking increasingly unlikely, I allow myself the liberty of fantasy.
Who is he, my mystery jacket man?
I first try to place him in the context of one of my worlds. He’s a little too pretty for Vandal, and a little too old for Life In Me, but there’s a sort of Chris-Pine-as-Kirk edge about him. You know, the bar scene, when he’s got that slightly wild look about him and then a whole lot of FO attitude. So he fits Lien best – a knight, obviously. Probably freelance, couldn’t hold the discipline of the Order of the Coeur.
Obviously there was less blood involved at the time
What about his love life? Man like that, there’s got to be some action to note, although obviously I require him to currently be single. He left her? Maybe he has commitment issues. Not good. She left him? No, what is she, insane? Perhaps she was being bothered by her ex and he beat the tar out of the tool in a bar fight. Defending her honour and all that, but alas, she had not been so honourable in the first place, and deeply betrayed, he left her clutching the broken wreck of her ex and has been tragically yet defiantly alone since.
Which, admittedly, still leaves him with commitment issues. But hey – pot, kettle, black and so forth.
The train is pulling up. The jacket, plus wearer, enters the platform. This is destiny.
It’s the matter of a short shove through the crowd to enter at the same door. He’s taken the end seat, I’m standing next to him. I have the sunny smile on standby, and this time it’s ready when he glances up. He doesn’t offer me his seat, which is potentially a dash against my chivalrous theories – but then, this is a man who now lacks trust and possibly interest in women. Clearly what he needs is a woman who, like my good self, doesn’t really know how to be one.
Although what if I look something like his ex? Is that why he occasionally glances my way? He’s studying the tube map now. I casually reposition myself adjacent to him, under the map. I slightly hate myself for this. I wonder what kind of woman is attractive to a man who has been a knight and tasted blood and felt the bite of cold steel and been betrayed by the one he loves. I suspect she may not have a Tardis sticker on the back of her phone, would never dream of wearing an oversized cheap Italian bomber jacket which is frankly as far from his in awesomeness as is possible and probably doesn’t have a line of coffee running down her jeans. I try to read Sherlock, because staring is rude.
I decide that this is not meant to be, after all.
At Lancaster Gate, he gets up and stands by me. Asks: Is the next station Queensway? He’s getting off at my station.
This is definitely mean to be.
We are being thrown together by fate, destiny, chaos, god, the devil, whoever. He will show me a more dangerous side of life than I could ever imagine. He lives the lives of characters I can dream only to create. He has fought for his life, for his love, for the freedom of others. He has the kind of hair that would fall attractively half way across his eyes when he’s sweating in the heat of battle, from under which he would fix all of his enemies with a stony gaze that freezes the blood in their veins and looks particularly good on action film stills.
Just like this. Oh yes.
After all of these thoughts have sped through my head, I realise he’s Italian. That’s cool, Ezio Auditore da Firenze is Italian as well and he’s the bomb.
Also a deadly assassin with the blood of many enemies on his hands, but the man can DRESS
Finally, I tell him he has an amazing jacket.
It is done. It is said. I feel relief. Now I can relax, for the jacket has been revered. And everything starts to go wrong from there.
He seems genuinely surprised – and not overly concerned – by my comment. He bought the article of my affection in Texas. Then he starts complaining about how expensive the underground is. Not an unreasonable subject by any means, but not what I expected from a disgraced Knight-cum-Assassin. Now we’re heading down the platform (does he think I’m stalking him by getting off at the same stop?) and it turns out that he’s frightened of London. Frightened by what everything costs.
The man I have imagined does not get frightened by the prospect of violent and bloody death. He certainly does not get frightened by the price of underground tickets (although, again, I admit this is not an unreasonable fear for your average Londoner).
I need him to stop talking. It was all going so well to this point.
I ask why he’s in London. He is an Italian fashion model. He travels all around the world, but London, it is so expensive. It is no good. I break a little inside. Not an artist. Not a designer. On the up side, probably also not gay. Clearly he has not smashed a wine bottle over the head of an ex in a bar brawl defending the dubious honour of his love, and therefore may not be as emotionally scarred as I had envisaged. This is surely good.
But a fashion model. Of course. He is not a prodigal son, he is no Sergei Polunin, abandoning an exceptional career in his chosen field of chivalry. He does what I do on weekends, only he makes money out of it. He does make believe. Photographs lie – believe the model in me, because I know.
He continues to talk about how hard London is as we wait for the lift, and ride to the top. He loses me at the gates – or maybe I lose him. I catch his eye once more, as we leave the station in separate directions. I wave, and grin, and it is genuine. He is indeed absolutely beautiful, my Italian fashion model, and probably quite interesting once he’s got over how frighteningly expensive London is. But he has nothing on the man I have imagined.
I walk away, bemused by the whole experience. And a couple of hundred yards up Queensway, I suddenly realise that this says a lot about why I am single. I realise also that I simply do not know how to be any other way.
Notes to self for LSF
So it’s here, the London Screenwriters Festival has arrived and let’s be fair, based on the experiences of the pre-pitching day, there are a few things that I need to remember:
1. leave the cloppy heels at home if I’m going to continue to be unable to sit for more than 40 mins at a stretch. It’s a challenge, people. 4 days without exercise and there may in fact be casualties. Cloppy heels, meanwhile, really ruin the ninja-ness of my exits (in aide of a brisk walk around the quad to not kill people), and I’m concerned that, in noticing said exits, other delegates may come to believe I suffer an unfortunate degree of incontinence. Or that I have a really awesome secret fourth life that requires constant attention to my mobile. I might pitch more in that direction.
2. quit swearing like a sailor, or
2a. develop a broader vocab for said swearing so that at least it’s entertaining if not educational for other non-mariner folk
3. not PO anyone else. Not that I knowingly PO’d anyone at the LSF today, but I may just additionally italicise knowingly here as a thinly veiled reference to this week’s amazing aptitude, on a number of fronts, for putting foot in mouth or, worse, foot in other people’s mouths or, worse still, inadvertently causing friends to be kicked in the teeth by other people’s feet and all with the best of intentions.
That's me on the left: more wisdom from Neil Gaiman's Sandman
5. stop being so massively insecure about EVERYTHING EVER
6. remember names. Any names. A name. A name a day and that’s a whole four new names. Why can’t everyone put their photos on their damn business cards? Oh wait, is that just me… and speaking of which…
7. pluck up the courage to actually conduct the Great Business Card Experiment. Because yes, after Moo bollocked up my business card order – and after all that trauma – I redesigned, reprinted, felt smug, and yet after one day in a room of strangers who don’t understand my predisposition to dressing up and waving weaponry around on the weekends, find myself quite paralysed at the idea of handing any of them around.
This could be a whole new Ninja Fail blog in the making, my friends. Even if I do actually offer or get asked for any cards, will I actually produce them?
Would you?
Not a risky PR strategy AT ALL
Business Card Aaaargh
The London Screenwriters Festival is almost upon us, which is an occasion on which forcing your business card upon people politely offering your business card to every moving body is deemed socially acceptable, if not mandatory. Packs of writers will rally one another to bouts networking courage through little competitions, like who can give out or acquire the most cards.
Admittedly this usually results in the majority of card exchanges happening between fellow writerly aspirants, which is often less productive than slipping your card into the hand of say an executive, director or producer – who many of us are catastrophically incapable of speaking to in a manner that sells us as intelligent, interesting or even human. But look, we’re a shy bunch, by and large. Baby steps.
The point of course is that for any exchange of cards to occur, said cards must first exist. Which leads rather neatly to the Aaaaargh at hand.
Put yourself in the place of a Person of Power attending the Festival (and by this I mean anything from a potential fellow collaborator to an agent who might just think you’re the bomb). You’re going to spend three days being politely harangued by gangs of quietly terrified writers, desperate to network and be noticed. You’re going to end up with a hand (briefcase and every available pocket) full of business cards and a brain rammed with new names and faces, most of which will remain in a defiant state of disconnect. Or possibly that’s just me. But while first impressions and snatched conversations can be fleeting, those cards will be reliably real and present.
Photographers, artists, actors and models and their ilk are the lucky ones – they get great cards. You have to be a right muppet to fail on making striking cards for the likes of those professions. But writers? I’m sifting through my collection from a few years back and while some are quirky and cute and occasionally clever, there’s not a whole lot a business card can say about the writer, beyond them being one – contactable by phone, email, website, blog, Facebook, Twitter, Google Plus and hell, here’s even a mail address, cos you’re sure to want that.
So what do you put on the damn thing?
Exercise for Writers – part 2
Writer?
Finding it hard to exercise?
Check out Part 1 of Exercise for Writers, and then do continue…
Number 3
Appreciating exercise as a way of exercising the imagination.
So with No1 and 2, you’re multi-tasking to maximise efficiency of a passive exercise (watching/listening) with an active exercise. But there’s definitely a split in concentration there. Exercise on its own can be exercise for both body and imagination – but that’s when Time (as in ‘I don’t have enough’) and Motivation (as in ‘I don’t have any’) raise their baleful gaze and send many writers slinking back to their desk, and probably their fifth coffee of the day which may very well require the dippage of cookies or complimentary crisps.
I know the equation. Coffee goes in, writing comes out.
Now we’ve all experienced the way familiar activities kind of disengage the conscious brain, often leading to unexpected spurts of creativity – who hasn’t had some astounding flash of genius while doing very rote tasks like the dishes, driving or going to the bathroom? So how about we substitute those things, just for instance, with activities like going for a walk, a run, a swim, a cycle? These are just the sorts of tasks that seem to allow the right side of the brain to take a break from thinking about annoying daily bollocks, disengage a bit and deal with important things. Creative things. And if you want to pimp your creative self to awesomeness, try using thematic music selections or just lightly focusing on a particular plot, character, problem etc, because these are times where you can make surprising leaps of creativity and logic that simply wouldn’t happen sitting at a desk bashing your head against the keyboard.
So this isn’t exercising while media consuming – it’s using exercise as part of your media creation. It’s about not looking at exercise as an annoying thing you Should Do But Is Really A Big Distraction but looking at exercise as an opportunity to walk around your current project from different angles. To hold the story and characters lightly and allow your mind to play with them while you’re gallivanting around/lapping the pool.
But: TIME IS THE ENEMY, right? Ok, are there ways to try to built this into your current schedule? Instead of driving or training/tubing to work, can you cycle instead? Lose the aaaargh of transport and get your exercise and mind-space doing something that has to be done anyway (although detaching the mind and cycling in, say, London, can have some serious OH&S implications – said from experience, although that doesn’t stop me). It’s that time where you get to disengage your brain and let Stuff float up. The problems you’re grappling with sometimes solve themselves. Sometimes you discover problems you weren’t even aware of. That might not seem a win at the time, but better sooner than later, eh? And sometimes, as a bonus win, you discover solutions (ok, and problems) via realising the solution to something you didn’t even know was a problem in the first place. Get in.
And finally, more Technical Blah to consider when re-wiring your attitude towards exercise, to see it as a benefit, not a chore:
- exercise helps you live longer, strengthens your immune system, improves blood pressure, bone density, metabolic rate and blah blah blah blah blah…
Yeah, I get it. Long term stuff can be hard to prioritise in the ever present here and now. So prioritise this: right here, right now, it helps sharpen concentration and means you can sit and throw shit at that computer screen for longer. It’s probably going to be less shitty shit too if you’ve broken up your day-job-desk-sitting and your writer-desk-sitting.
It will almost certainly look less like this.
- you spend your time creating interesting, dynamic, kick ass and inspirational characters, right? So why the hell do you get to be a sedentary slob then? Be a superhero (after all, all superheroes are just normal dudes pretending to be superheroes, whether writing, drawing, acting, reading or watching them). Pimp yourself out. Why do your characters have to do all the work? Pump some iron. Lose some weight. Eat better. Look better. Feel better. Live it. Your job is to imagine you’re other people – it’s not being crazy, it’s being good at what you do. Some days I’m Vandal, some days I’m Sienna, some days I’m Rael, some days I’m Buffy, and occasionally I get a bit carried away and dress up as Xena. Doesn’t hurt anyone and believe me, I feel fiiiiine.
I do get some odd looks on the train though.
The ‘E’ word (for writers) – part 1
Oh yes, today’s subject is… exercise.
Yes, for writers.
Though I’m a fitness professional, I hardly ever talk about the E word by choice – mostly because people seem to want to talk to me about it all the time, generally hoping for magic fixes.
Go away, there are none.
Unless you’re Steve Rogers.
Lucky sod
But when David Melkevik* asked me for a blog about exercise for writers, I thought: what the hell. Why not? I’m a card-carrying member of that rare and fortunate strain of humans genetically wired view endorphins as the greatest (not to mention cheapest) drug on the market. However after a couple of years of inflicting acts of exercise on people for a living, it has come to my attention that not everyone thinks Exercise Is Fun. But do not despair, my friends, because even if the E word doesn’t rock your day, it can rock your writing.
(*I met David at the Screen Writers Festival two years ago. We conducted a friendly competition throughout the four days to see who could produce the geekiest t-shirts. In the end, he won both the competition and therefore my continued admiration).
I understand how exercise becomes either a particularly dirty word or unachievable holy grail for writers who go from a day desk-job to a home desk-job. Where to fit it in? It can be a battle just to find the time to write, much less exercise and write. But consider that not all writing takes place at the desk. If Time is the most commonly cited Enemy of Excercise (politely skirting various versions of the other biggie, ‘I’m a lazy pillock’), how about shifting it from being a competing time pressure to being a complimentary part of the creative process?
I’ll throw out three ideas to start from. The first is how to slot exercise into your current schedule through multi-tasking. The second is how to slot exercise into your current schedule by advantageous multi-tasking which permits you to be expanding yourself as a writer at the same time. And the third is to simply be determined to slot it in, come hell and high water – and if you’re going to do it that way, the best thing is to at least be aware that there are ways you can still be using that time to aid your writing.
NUMBER 1.
Slot exercise into your current schedule through multi-tasking.
DON’T PANIC! Now I realise the dreaded ‘m-t’ word might strike fear into the heart of the men amongst us, but bear with me.
Is that ACTUALLY Matt Smith? Too much squeeee.
Say Yes
So last Monday, I go to Starbucks to write as usual before work. The usual folk don’t bat an eyelid, but irregular early morning coffee folk keep kind of skirting around me.
Just speculating, but this might be why...
Later, whizzing past cars stopped at a red outside Notting Hill Police Station, I was blinded up a huge pollen-laden blast on wind and rammed into some poor sod’s wing mirror. Appropriately mortified, I fell off the side of my bike stammering my apologies.
Turns out I needn’t have worried; he was so amused by the sword sticking out from my day-glo hump he either didn’t notice or care about the mirror. Pedestrians, street cleaners, drivers and policemen – complete strangers, the lot of them – grinned at (not necessarily with me, but near enough) all the way to Brentford. It was completely brilliant.
Moral of the story: be an idiot. Run around with a sword sticking out your bag, and even London, a city often vilified for the coldness of its population, will love you.
But it wasn’t just a sword in my bag. Oh no, I had a full warrior outfit in there, complete with (admittedly not very warriorly) 9 inch stiletto ‘Athena Goddess’ sandals (also known in student house as ‘Adele’s Stripper Sandals’. Can’t for the life of me see why… 
). And I wore that costume around the Sky TV site. Why? Because we have the Iron Throne of Westeros from Game of Thrones there, and I have work-mate who is a fantastic photographer.
And I have a warrior outfit.
Who the hell wouldn’t say yes to the chance to dress up for awesome pics on that?
….
…
..
.
Apparently, quite a lot of people.
Schedule of Awesome (and the C word)
Let’s be honest about this: I am hardly the most qualified person to manage my own life. I’m overly curious, endlessly interested, easily excitable, more easily distractible. Is ‘distractible’ a word? ‘Distractable?’ Whatever. You know what I mean. Attention span of a -
- where was I?
Oh, life management. Fortunately, while we may not always have what we want (ie the unflagging ability to self-manage), life does often seem to make sure we have what we need.
For the Doctor Who fans amongst us... Doctor vs Tardis, Neil Gaiman-style
Like friends who will wade in when required, roll up sleeves and call us to task. I am blessed with a few of these. They are like a living arsenal to which I can turn when in need, and right now, my secret weapon is The Mann. Hollie Mann.
Thus far, 2011 has been a perfect example of the old adage it never rains, but dammit it can pour – it’s been the Year of Open Doors. And I’m the first to be grateful. But you must bear in mind that I run to an open door like the Doctor to a terrified scream and so have merrily charged through so many – without thinking to leave myself a trail of string or crumbs by which to find my way home – that I found myself well and truly lost.
And right there and then is where you need a Hollie to say: “You’re not coping, are you?”
Adele (thumbing through an ink-black diary, while on mobile, while on facebook, while answering an email, while listening to new choreo): “Whatever gave it away?”
And that’s where you need a Hollie to say: “Ok. So let’s do something about it.”
Now in my (admittedly inadequate) defence, I was trying to be awesome. We always try to do as we know best for any given situation, right? Who ever sets out to make a mess of life, the universe and everything? But if we’re trying… and we’re failing… there’s only thing left for it.
That’s right. It’s the big C word. Run for the hills, while you still can.
For creatures who are so adaptable, it’s amazing what we humans will do not to change. There’s another wise saying that goes something along the lines of ‘The difference between real people people and fictional characters is that characters change.’ It’s true, right? Great story telling is always abut transformation. Or, in rare and priceless cases, like Neil Gaiman’s Sandman comic, about characters who refuse to change, and these are inevitably tragic figures.
Sandman: "The King of Dreams learns that he must change or die, and makes his choice."
Hope vs Optimism
Some years ago, philosopher writer Alain de Botton decided that London needed a new school. A school for adults, a school about living well – something grievously neglected in mainstream education – and he called it the School of Life. I first heard about it at the 2010 Hay Festival; it took me until yesterday to make it there. That’s partly because my life is generally living a life of its own (and is therefore in urgent need of schooling) and mostly because, like similar institution Millers Academy (now defunct, I believe) the School leans towards providing its most excellent education to the noticeably solvent.
[NB: little local advertising: Notting Hill now has a replacement to Miller's in the form of new cafe/academy The Idler Academy (of Philosophy, Husbandry and Merriment), which offers evening sessions from £15-25 pounds. Pity is mostly happens in the evenings - when yours truly is working-working-working...]
School of Life does however offer the monthly Sunday Sermon, which when priced at £12 does not cause my Finance Minster to require a quick lie down and pinch of snuff the way the bulk of their schedule does. Curiously set up as a sort of Humanist alternative to church, the Sermons take place on a Sunday morning complete with ‘Parish newsletter’ and ‘hymns’ (relevant mainstream songs) performed by the Choir With No Name (comprised of singers with no homes). As with traditional church you are invited to stand to sing, and arm actions apparently are included.
So this last Sunday I gathered my girls Hols and Jenna to trot along for a sermon by ‘aggressively hopeful’ writer and activist Rebecca Solnit, sermonising (not entirely comfortably) about Hope + Despair. The full sermon will turn up online on the School Of Life site at some point if you’re interested, and several of its key points will turn up at in my various fictions at some point as well, albeit at some point much further away from now. What I want to share in the here and how though is Rebecca’s differentiation between Hope and Optimism.
You see, I myself have been accused of being aggressively optimistic, and this is true, but I now wish to trade that badge of honour in for a more hope-inclined version. And this is why:
OPTIMISM – certainty – it will all work out – PASSIVE
DESPAIR – certainty – nothing can be done – PASSIVE
HOPE – uncertainty – therefore we can do something – ACTIVE
And there’s the difference. Optimism is in fact a passive position: an act of faith, if you like. A religion all of its own, or a bonus feature of a mainstream religion (God will make sure things work out. Even if they look bloody awful at the time, He knows what’s going on, the Man has a Plan and it will all work out in the end. Not necessarily for you, but for someone. Probably). According to Rebecca’s proposition, Hope is an active concept. It’s an empowering principle where you acknowledge that things may not work out – that disaster is an option – but choose to take an active role to forcibly determine the outcome of the situation.
We can’t always act. But I’ll bet – in small personal moments and global arenas alike – we typically surrender our own power to affect change way more often than we search for and find ways to exert it. Refuse to passively accept that something will/will not work itself out for the best/worst, but instead to take the power of hope and transform it into the power of action; to instigate change in your life, the lives of others and even the state of the world.
As Rebecca invited us, so I invite you to surpass optimism; to defy despair.
NINJA FAIL: Adele vs the Starbucks Hustlers
So this is how it should have been:
Settled into my ‘office’ (read: basement of my local Starbucks) and working away like a determined genius on my utterly brilliant novel, I took a break to engage in a witty exchange with the congenial young nerdy dude sharing my table.
It was getting intense
Mid-repartee we were interrupted by two hustlers yabbering at the top of their voices: ‘One pound! One pound! One pound, internet, please!’
With one of them pressing in on either side of me, waving Starbucks internet service brochures in my face, I knew exactly what they were after. Feeling the need for a feisty tango, I allowed the idiot on my right to take my phone under the cover of the brochure, before I snatched the paper from him.
Yes, exactly like this
For a heart beat we all froze, the two hustlers, now exposed, my congenial young nerdy companion and I. Then before the thieves could run, I grabbed that man’s wrist and smashed it hard down on the table. As he shouted in pain and lunged at me, I caught him with a vicious elbow to the face, took him by the hair on the back of his head and hissed ‘Don’t you touch my phone you miserable bastard,’ into his ear.
The man’s friend leapt forward at me; I let his mate sag over the table and turned to accept his challenge but my companion surprised us all by jumping him behind and grappling him to the ground.
‘I wouldn’t take the lady on if I were you,’ he said. ‘You’re safer in professional hands.’ He rapped the hustler’s head sharply on the tiles, stood up, nonchalantly dusted his hands off on the back of his trousers before fishing his [insert Secret Service of your choice] badge from his back pocket.
‘Agent Carmichael at your service,’ he nodded to me.
‘I like your style,’ I breathed.
‘Bit aggressive for a citizen’s arrest, but I like your moves,’ he smoothly replied with that damn congenial smile.
Leaving our prisoners groaning on the table and ground we stepped towards one another –
It was a beautiful moment
– only, of course, very little of that actually happened.
Not quite like that, anyway…
You see, I was in Starbucks, albeit about an hour later than intended, and I was talking to a man – who was not young or nerdy but certainly congenial – because that seemed easier than picking away at the mess that is my novel. Needless to say he was no more a secret agent, Chuck Bartowski or ninja than I, and was no more clued into what was going when the hustlers came over and started making a racket.
Far from calm, I was alarmed at the fuss and so distracted by the part of brain wondering ‘well maybe they do need the money, maybe they are desperate….’ to consider that perhaps they were just a pair of professional bastards who’d identified me as a soft (read: stupid) target. The smug pillocks escaped perfectly unharmed, with my iphone folded in their brochure.
Next time though, my friends… next time I’m going to get my ninja on…
Results may vary in real world
…well, that or you’ll just get another Ninja Fail blog…
Writing without a recipe
Recipe? Moi?
Amongst those many people I have lived with, my cooking habits approach the notorious. Alarmingly, these habits have changed very little; Poppy, my best friend through my early teens, once fell victim to my favourite culinary past-time of throwing everything to hand in a blender, a habit I still carry out to this day, the only difference being that I now control what’s in the cupboard and because I dislike shopping even more than I dislike cooking, there are less things to hand to poison oneself and ones friends with.
It’s a method of cooking I blame my father for. He never followed a recipe if didn’t have to, or even when he did, he considered it a loose guide, like a series of suggestions just waiting to be improved upon. Why make the same boring thing as everyone else when you could make something UNIQUE?!
What happens when people meet my cooking
Consequently my attitude towards the kitchen tends to turn out things accurately described as ‘slop’, of which I make and freeze a weekly batch because the idea of preparing food every day literally reduces me to tears. Consequently, the kinds of slop I produce involve a lot of the right ingredients, but combined with no art, no care, no regard for valid rules of culinary practice and so are palatable to myself (with my extremely low standards) only.
Now thanks to last week’s re-education by Kristen Lamb I spent yesterday under the tuition of Messieurs Gladwin, Snyder and Vogel, taking their respective story beats and laying them down in the context of my book. What I was relieved to discover what that I had most of the right ingredients, just not in the right order and often in flagrant disregard to the valid rules of dramatic practice.
What I was embarrassed entertained to later realise, determinedly pushing pedals up the royal road with knackered legs that protested every revolution, was that I wrote the first draft of The Sinless Sword with exactly the same technique I approach cooking: taking all the ingredients to hand, throwing them together, and hoping for the best. This yielded the same result as my infamous slop: something made of all the right ingredients, yet palatable only to myself. And right now, that is so freaking obvious.
Laying out the beats of the book is like running a MOT on the story: checking all the elements are present, accounted for and doing the right thing at the right time, which is where I’ve been failing before. Previous versions of chapters thrust upon helpful friends have come back with comments generally praising the writing, but absolutely baffled about the story itself. This week, I’ve had two readers actually ‘get’ the book.
Progress!
Structure is now officially my bitch. Not my prison, not a generic cookie-cutter that’s going to give me an unoriginal book you’ve read a thousand times before, but a framework that’s going to strengthen my story and allow it to fulfil its promise. If you think I’m slavishly converted here, read this from Kristen about why you are wrong. There are exceptions to all rules, but know the rules first.
And please don’t think I’ve never looked at it before now with my scripts – I’ve long been a convert to the basic elements. But between the work of Phil Gladwin, Blake Snyder and Christopher Vogler’s translation of Joseph Campbell’s monomyth, I now have 10 pages of outline beaten out with logic, pace and most importantly (at least, I sincerely hope…) resonance. My idea for the end of the book wasn’t translating through my first draft; like the magical taste that makes a dish, it was lost in clumsy, unbalanced chaos of the other ingredients. I have so much work to do from this point, but I am unbelievably excited about doing it because now I’m pretty damn sure the book will work. There are still numerous ways I can screw it up, but it’s now shaping up an awful lot closer to something people will want to read than it was last week.
[however for my nearest and dearest who might hope this means a transformation in my culinary arts, I’ll just point out that writing to structure is hugely time consuming and I am still the laziest person on the planet when it comes to meals, therefore I fully intend to devote all available time to the book and allow shortcuts to remain in the kitchen…!]
Awesome references:
Kristen Lamb’s Warrior Writers Blog
Phil Gladwin’s Screenwriting Goldmine (available hard copy or electronically incl audio)
Blake Snyder’s Save the Cat! and Save the Cat! Strikes Back
Chris Vogler’s The Writer’s Journey: Mythic Structure for Writers