My cousin Emma... Long time, no see

Well I've just had a couple of wonderful hours catching up with my cousin Emma. She has come down to St Agnes with her husband Malcolm (sorry for not recognising you straight away) for her son Joshua's rugby tour. Emma looked fabulous and hasn't changed a dot since I last saw her getting close to eight years ago, Malcolm was on top form and Joshua has grown right up.

It's sad to think that I spent so much time with my cousins Sally, Emma and Mary when we were kids, and now we let many years pass us by before seeing each other now that we're adults... a cycle I would love to change from now on. I have been invited up to theirs for dinner next time I'm passing by Putney, and will definitely take them up on their offer.

We chatted about my Nana (where we all stayed for sleepovers god knows how many times), people that we've never spoken about before on my family tree, and how the world has rotated in different ways through different lives... I really could have carried on chatting for hours!

It was lovely seeing you again Emma, I had a lovely evening, lots of laughs. Have a great day tomorrow and let's catch up some more soon x

How do I come up with new stories?

I am often asked how I come up with new stories and how I think of the ideas that I do; I would guess all writer’s are asked the same questions many times. In fact I have myself wondered how certain authors have come up with ideas that I would never have considered. On the other end of the scale, there are stories like William P. Kennedy’s Toy Soldiers, a story that I could kick myself for not coming up with myself, even though I hadn’t started writing when he jotted that one down! As with all budding writer’s, there will be people around that will always come up with a great idea before yours has sprung into your brain, or worse that you find after you’ve written something, that it’s similar to.

It is even true that my first novel ‘Something Brand New’ bares a resemblance to the first J K Rowlings Harry Potter novel. When I wrote it I had not even heard of Harry Potter, let alone read it. Don’t get me wrong there are no wizards, no flying games or castles in my manuscript, but there is a young ten year old soul looking for his future parents in a world only a breath away from our own. Combined with that is a style, not too dissimilar from the one she uses, I will confess. Actually when rewriting the novel some ten years later, there was one paragraph that sounded so similar to her words I decided to completely rewrite it.

I have also found this Christmas just gone that there is a story about Santa crashing his sleigh. For those of my readers who have seen the film ‘The Santa Incident’, in my opinion a rather poor effort in comparison to some great festive movies, there could be an idea that one of us writers had got the idea from the other. Now I am unpublished and only came up with my first idea for ‘The Late Christmas’ in 2006 so the writer of that couldn’t have got his idea from me, and yet the film I watched a couple of months ago couldn’t be more different, and yet somehow similar.

Luckily, my baby, who is right now being rewritten for the umpteenth time ‘Mother Nature’, doesn’t as yet have anything that I can compare it to. I think the day that I find something similar will be a sad one for me.

Anyways, what was I saying? Oh yes, as some of you know I am a fan of some of Stephen King’s work, most notably The Stand. Mr. King has said in public that it take two totally separate ideas brought together to make a good story. It sounds a strange thing to say, but the more I thought about it, the more that he makes quite a bit of sense. Lets take the above story Toy Soldiers as an example. Basically the story revolves around an all boys school for troubled teenagers – there’s a story right there that many of us could write, but then the author added a completely unrelated story into the mix. While we learnt the characters and the rules of how the school was run, another story about a terrorist group who are trying to force the release of the founder-member, who is incarcerated. The terrorists make their way to the school and take the pupils hostage as a lever to getting their member freed. This is a classic example of how two separate ideas can indeed be bonded together to make one quite enjoyable read.

When Stephen King was asked how he writes a book, he came back with ‘One word at a time.’ This of course is exactly how you actually write a book, but certainly this was not what the person asking the query was meaning. In literal terms, an author will start with a blank sheet of paper, or a blank document on a computer, and start typing. However, it is entirely formulary, with the author working from models or ideas in his mind, the idea of writing one word at a time before coming up with the next word is ludicrous. Moreover, when I go over what I have written on a first draft, I will often find that I have missed out words, phrases or sometimes even half a sentence because I am desperate to get the words down in the way I have them in my mind as quickly as possible, before the synaptic patterns change or completely degrade.

However, let’s go back to Stephen’s ‘One word at a time’ because there is some truth in that, although not for a first, second or even third draft of a manuscript, but for the editing. When editing a piece of work, every word in their singularity as well as within the context of the sentence is looked at very carefully. One slight change of a word can completely change the meaning of the sentence, and placing that same word in a different place within the sentence can not only do the same, but can enhance even the shortest of notations.

In the past couple of weeks I have come up with two fairly good ideas, which if I had more time I would like to pursue. Both these ideas came to me during that half awake, half asleep state before dozing off for the night, and both times I woke up and started writing my ideas down – which tends to mess up my sleep patterns quite well. As it happens, for both of these possible stories, I have a completely different idea that I’ve already started to merge into the first ideas, one at the very end of a story, the other as a parallel plot.

Now don’t ask me how I came up with these ideas because I really couldn’t tell you, they just popped up in my head. Also, when thinking about them I suddenly popped up and thought of a completely different story that could be squished into them… maybe it’s just an active imagination, that’s all I can put it down to. Now there are times that other things around me have influenced my train of thought about stories. For instance, I had on the back-burner a few years ago the idea of Santa crashing his Sleigh, as I’ve already said, but it was only when I was listening to a track from Moby did it come alive.

It was the day I was moving into the Farm down on the Lizard. I had asked for a few people to help with the move, and sprucing up the place so that it was liveable. We were all in different rooms painting everything that didn’t move, and many of us that were moving, if truth be told! In the background I had my jukebox on random and ‘Everlovin’ by Moby came on. I was happily painting away and in my mind I imagined large American eighteen wheeled trucks in a convoy, rolling across the American desert… listen to it and I bet you’ll know why I had that image. Well then I added to the images in my mind, the trucks filled to the brim of Christmas presents, then a large teddy bear symbol on the front of each truck, then helicopters with the same symbol on them flying above the trucks with large sacks dangling from them. Lastly, I had crowds of people cheering as each of the thousand trucks passed them because their presents were being distributed to all the homes… all within one sitting of the Moby track. The Late Christmas, the story I had on the backburner for three years previous to that day had taken a completely different route all within about a foot square of paint… It was within the month that I started to write the full manuscript, and if I don’t say so myself, it turned out cherry :)

So lets recap on my ideas and how I get them down. Often I will come up with an idea and that idea will sit on the backburner for a while; maybe get written down as notes or on a corkboard. When another idea comes up that can be linked into it, I will add it to the first. Only then will it start to show it’s colours and whether there is something to continue with. At that point I will often write a chapter or two, quickly and in draft to see whether I can put down on paper in a way that resembles what I have in my mind; not one word at a time but in a flurry of finger presses on the keyboard, or scribblings on paper that are hardly legible. If I find there is something meaty in the idea then I consider writing a full manuscript… and that is about it.

I have often been told that I’m eccentric and that my mind works in mysterious ways, but I can’t help that. I’m sure if you ask other writers how they come up with their ideas, they will give you a different story, but that’s what makes us all unique. Happy writing all of you.

Better late than never!

My apologies to everybody who has been waiting patiently for me to write my post, but it has been a very hectic couple of months... I can hardly believe that it's the end of February already! Basically, work has taken over recently, so much so that I've even found that a lot of my weekends are now getting clogged up with it. However I see that while I've been gone the world has still moved on around me. Today was the last day of the Pope's duties before another one is elected, we've had the horse-meat scandal, snow and of course close encounters with asteroids (or if in Russia, even closer!) We've had the passing of Mr. Good Life himself, the Oscars and even more austerity... some things change, some never do.

It hasn't been all bad though, I did take a trip up to Scotland to see one of our customers. I drove up to Manchester in the van, and then Martin and I carried on the journey in his hire car. We drove through the snow, which was coming down quite heavily at the time, but I was more concerned with how pretty everything looked than concerned we might get snowed in - we didn't!

On the journey in the van I dictated a chapter of one of my books, just to see if I could act out the scenes while driving, rather than listening to the radio, which is usually my only company. It was a fifteen hour journey in the van, and I dictated over 8,000 words - I'll have to try that during NanoWriMo! Talking of writing, I did go to the Creative Writing Group again at Waterstones. It was held on Valentines evening, so you can imagine what we all had to write about!

I have started to write a few things for this blog, which I haven't finished yet, so there really is more to come soon... I think on one of them I get on my soapbox a bit, but then if these posts were boring then you wouldn't be reading them :)

Well, I am working for some of this weekend and I've got a get-together with a load of other nerds (sorry, writers) on Saturday, but will make a concerted effort to add to this - I just wanted to say that I haven't forgotten you lot.

Oh yes, just before I go... As with many of you, I have felt over the past few weeks that I would freeze in this cold weather; however, I have just heard that Sir Ranulph Fiennes (one of my heroes) has just been evacuated from his latest expedition because of frostbite... Apparently, he just removed one of his gloves to adjust a strap on his ski binding, and ended up with four poorly fingers! And we complain about the cold? I think I'm going to have to harden up.

Can I just say in here that I wish him and his fingers well, and a damn good try Ranulph - Get well soon.

Okay that's it for now, speak to you soon.

Waterstones Creative Writing Group

I went to a new creative writing group that was held in Truro's Waterstones store last night.

I didn't know what to expect, although I was sure there would be a few people that were part of the NanoWriMo competition there, and I was right. It was great to see some of the old faces again, and even better to see that they were a lot more relaxed than during the relentless task of writing 50,000 words each!

The last time I went to a writing group, it was one held in Helston Library a few years ago. It was at the time when I had first come up with the idea of my Mother Nature story. I wanted my new story to have a Hollywood kind of feel to it, but as my luck would have it, I was set upon by an old Pagan who wanted to try and change my mind in the way I was going to write it - needless to say she didn't have any influence and I only went to that group a couple of times.

Sarah, the ML for the NanoWriMo and one other ran the group last night. It was good fun, they gave us silly tasks, like we've got ten minutes to write something about 'Inspiration' and then read it out to the rest of the class. There was a good sixteen people there and a couple I'm looking forward to chatting to if I go again.

I'm not totally sure if it's my cup of tea. I spend hours thinking of what I am going to write and when it gets put down, it'll get edited, rewritten, edited again, re-read and spell checked, then given to someone else to read, re-edit depending on what they say, then think damn-it I'm bored with this story and file it.

To think up something in a couple of seconds and then write something that's good enough to read out aloud is a different matter. I held my own, and even got a few giggles from the things I wrote, but all the time I was thinking that I'm wasting valuable writing time at home - you can tell I live in the middle of no-where and don't socialise much :)

To top it off they gave me homework! I've never been one for doing homework, my teachers at school never got any out of me when they told me I had to do it.

Sarah cleverly said that no-one was forcing me to do homework and I didn't have to do it if I didn't want to... bugger, now I have to do it. Actually, I stayed up last night after getting home and did it then!

I think it's quite nice to see faces, and great for people who are either unsure about their writing or need that push to actually put that book on to paper that they've always wanted to write - but I'm not really in either of those groups any more... we'll see in a month when the next one is planned, I'll keep you posted.

Fish!

Well, my fish tank has had it's weekly clean and I've decided to add a couple of additions to it - so now you'll see theres some more Zebra Danios and Tetras. I'm pleased as punch and have already wasted an hour this morning watching them all swimming about :)

Upstairs Downstairs Cafe

Last time I spoke about food on here, I wasn't best pleased by what was dished up - and if you read it then you'll know that I refused my portion. Today I want to swap the cards completely and tell you about a fantastic little eatery in Truro for that occasional treat.

I have always thought there has been a place in this country for a good old-fashioned American diner. You know the type, self-coloured metal caravans where half the electricity supply is used on the jukebox and if you play the tune of the day, the cooks come out to the tables and do a bit of line-dancing! There are a couple around but they are few and far between, the best I think are on the cruise ships.

However, down Cathedral Lane in Truro there is a little gem of a place that brings the feel of Tennessee Diner to my back door, relatively. Upstairs-Downstairs Cafe has been around for quite a long time, but last year they decided to change their decor, add in a jukebox and start serving the typical american cafe food - without the enormous American size servings, oh thank the Lord (Alright, I know we're in mid-Cornwall and not mid-America, just trying to get into character!)

Seriously though, I went in there yesterday for breakfast. I have been in there a couple of times and have always felt as though it was a treat, and yesterday was no exception. I ordered a typical US breakfast: Bacon, Sausage, Egg and two pancakes with Maple syrup. It was divine! In fact, writing this now is making me feel like getting in the car and going there again. The bacon was cooked to perfection, and didn't have those bits on from someone elses food because the pan wasn't cleaned out. The egg was sunny-side up, perfectly runny and yet cooked properly and best of all there was an individual pot of Maple syrup so I could pour it exactly where I wanted on the plate.

The people who work there are friendly and are very pleased to chat and the prices are very reasonable. If you want a Fred recommendation and a treat then next time you go shopping in Truro, do check it out; especially if you have teenagers, they will love it.

Happy New Year

Well, it's a little bit late, but give me a break, like many of you out there I've been suffering from a mild headache - we call it hangover in the industry.

It been a nice break from work over the Christmas period, although I haven't got half as much done as I would like to do - again! I have been very busy on the family tree, which to be honest has put my writing back these two weeks. However, tomorrow is the first day back at work, and as tradition follows, I will be up at 4:30am to my writing.

I much prefer writing on dark January, February and March mornings. I really can't seem to get half as much done when the dawn's get lighter. I've prepared the files and notes on my desk and set my alarm.

To everybody out there I wish a Happy New Year, and lets all hope that 2013 is the year that we all hoped 2012 was supposed to be.