Current Projects

My current To-Do list is the same as my previous To Do list, which isn't great, but I am at least making some progress.

A quick run down:

• Fairy Story
• Doctor Who Fic
• porting things over to Wordpress
• Fiction as a controlled substance
• SciFi noir story

But also, an idea occurred to me.

I'm spending a little time each week talking about, reading and voting on stuff that happens at The Writers Arena.

Why?  Simple.  The thing that writers need, that they need over and above everything else, is an audience.  We need readers, and it's not easy to get them.  The other writers who appear on that site are contributing to the creation of a community, drawing in readers to see the work of struggling amateurs.  That's worthwhile doing.  It's an all win proposition for readers: you get new stories each week, each one easily got through in a lunchtime at work, and you get to leave feedback, and you get to make a writer feel better about his efforts.

So go, read, vote.

I've contributed once, and hope to do so again.  

It's not an easy thing, writing for that competition.  Ten days to do four thousand words on a prompt that you don't select yourself (well, around 4k words anyway) is a tough gig, and that - from my point of view - makes every story that gets written a bit of a triumph.  Think about it like this: given the time constraints and the deadline, what you're seeing is a second or third draft.  It's possible the writers could polish more, but you get what you get.  It's pretty close to a live gig with writers.

I've decided to practice.  I'm going to go back through their previous prompts and produce my take on each one, which I'll park over on Wordpress if the result is any good.  I need the practice, I like the prompts and it'll push me to work more in long form because as fun as Reddit writing prompts are, they're flash fiction really.

And we'll see how I do.

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...and so I went home wearing the wrong head!

BOOKS!

The Rhesus Chart by Charles Stross.  I was not ready for the feels.  I was definitely ready for a Laundry novel, which are to me as crack is to people who smoke crack.  I could tell Mr. Stross this, I could find him on Twitter and tell him that I think his books are marvellous, but mostly what I want is for him to write another book.  Lots of other books.  It's only been a day and the cravings have started already.

TELEVISION!

I've sort of drifted into watching Arrow this week.  It's basically Batman.  You can tell they wanted to tell the Year One story but then along came Mr. Nolan and his trilogy.  For all that, it's good stuff so far.  More on the Batman stuff later.

I've also been watching Penny Dreadful and holy *&£$ it's fun.  Fun in a gory, dirty, unpleasant and metaphysical way that I can't quite stop watching.  I love the performances.  When I've seen the whole thing, I might write more about it.

Hannibal is the best thing on TV at the moment.  It's beautiful, and that makes it haunting and strange.  The writing is...

...I think this is the closest I'll get to understanding Jazz.  The writing allows a lot of space for the actors to showcase their art and there are several very different styles of performance going on which don't slot together so much as harmonise.  The images are complemented by the music, which is harsh and difficult and entirely appropriate.  This is TV being art while still reaching out to the audience, and I have no doubt that people find it difficult and unsettling, but I love it.

Gotham is the Batman story, it's going to be a slicker, darker Smallville in which we see the events that shape the city and the people who will eventually form the Rogues Gallery for Batman.  One of the production team said "How bad does a city have to be that it sees a vigilante who dresses as a bat as a viable alternative?  How did it get this bad?"  I'm very much looking forward to finding out.  We already kind of know the ending, because eventually Bruce Wayne is going to decide that criminals are a cowardly and superstitious lot and the best way to avenge his parents is...well, I think everyone knows that by now. 

I'd like to see them pick up on Bruce learning to be a detective, as well as picking up all the other skills it took him a lifetime to acquire.  It takes Arrow five years on an island, but Bruce Wayne is supposed to educate himself thoroughly in all the arts he feels he needs in order to fight crime.  In many ways, actually...in practically every way, Bruce's education is the same as that of Sherlock Holmes.  I wonder if it has the same odd gaps?

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