I cannot remember exactly what last year’s resolutions were. They were, as usual, forgotten by the second week of January. However I can pretty much guess what they would have contained as my list doesn’t change much from year to year. This is amazingly frustrating but I really only feel the full weight of its force when I come to make another list. Like now. It creates such a feeling of stagnancy and self loathing.

One of my biggest subconscious fears, is being stupid, or appearing stupid. Having to write another list, and to see the same items appear each time brings my fear closer into being.

You would think if something is important enough to write in the list each year then eventually something would be done.

I guess its more laziness. Or stupid for being lazy :).

Through writing this post, I want to dwell a little on this disappointment. I want to remember its bitter taste. I want to fear tasting this bitter pill the same time next year. It would be so easy to carry on after today, forget this disappointment and continue this tiresome loop.

I need to make a change, but it will be hard. If I have learned anything in the last 6 or 7 years, it is that some of my failings are so set, as to seem well and truly hard wired. Over the course of a year I will flit from one thing to another almost constantly. Always - my latest obsession feels like it will be ‘the one’. The one I will stick to; the one my passion drive on and on.

It is always a mirage, and although a small part of me knows this from experience, it doesn’t taint the mirage.

Left unhindered, I will quite easily go through Golf, Tennis, Writing computer games, becoming a writer, learning the piano or guitar, learning a new language, taking up dancing, developing a new website or 5, starting a new blog, learn to cook etc etc. The fad will last for a week or 2, I will order the latest 5 best amazon books on the subject and then move onto the next one.

At least I have a great library of books

Anyway, midnight is fast approaching and I need to get down my resolutions.

• Learn to write properly/better
• Write in my log/diary more frequently
• Write a few technical articles
• Ring my family more
• Eat more healthily
• Reduce world my debt by about a third
• Become more organised (have just started ‘Getting things done’)
• Learn a musical instrument (Piano/Guitar) - my learning to play the Cello or Irish Pipes has been vetoed by g/f ( for understandable reasons)
• Learn to communicate better. This was partly why I did the creative writing course last year, and I still have a way to go - still a bit of a geek and slightly anti-social.
• Read more.
• Go to more concerts
• Play chess (instead of sudoku)
• Learn to cook
• Write things down more in my notebook (One of the golden rules of being a write: carry a notebook everywhere)
• Learn to drive
• Make time to be more creative
• Maybe do NanoWrimo in November

The ones that nearly made it:-

• Learn to dance
• Develop a Rugby League Management Simulation
• Walk the Coast to Coast path
• Grow a full beard and become a hermit

Journal | 7 Comments »

Here is my desk, all tidy for 2007. This is probably the only time in the year it will be so organised and clean.

Here is Raffy testing the efficiency.

Raffy gives it his seal of approval

Journal | No Comments »

During my trawl through last years journals I also came across this blueprint work of genius?

As you can probably guess from the diagram - it is a unique shed design designed specifically for writers. It features many innovations, including an underground tunnel to a neighbouring “dog shed”.

NOTE: To prevent any sort of smell transfer it also features an EVS (Exhaust Vacuum System) - its task being to prevent dog smells from entering the main shed unit. I think I am onto something here….

Whilst studying the A215 Creative Writing course there was a section that coverered where to write. It suggested everybody had their own preference and recommended that you have a play around to find your preference. There were a few examples of famous writers and where they write and I must admit that I found the idea of a shed to be by far the greatest.

I can just imagine walking down to the end of the garden to do a bit of writing. Away from TV’s, dirty dishes and everyday duties.

Wouldn’t that be great?

Journal, A215 - Writing Course | No Comments »

I am just flicking through some of my notebooks at what I have written in the past year. It almost feels like reading a strangers writing, it feels slightly voyeuristic.

Here is an example:-

I am sitting here with pen in hand staring vacantly at the page. I am empty. I have nothing to write about. I relax and nothing comes. Now anxiety is slowly taking hold. I am too tired to bid it goodbye.

SCREAM

I have nothing new to write. My pen touches the paper and the same words come out in the same order. I cannot bear the repetition. The words hitting the page repulse me. I have NOTHING NEW TO SAY.

I have never truly given in before but now I am weary and resistant. The failure makes me feel terrible.

I do not even have the cathartic rage that explodes onto the page. I am nothing without it; vacant and worthless. Staring on with an empty gaze. Move along, nothing to see here.

Journal | No Comments »

Posession - Sarah McLachlan

Ribbons - Carina Round

Walk away - Franz Ferdinand

You had time - Ani Difranco

Love at the five and dime - Nanci Griffith

The Blowers Daughter - Damien Rice

The Maid of Culmore - Cara Dillon

Sonata for violin & piano No. 21 in E minor, K. 304 (K. 300c): Tempo di Menuetto

… a bonus track

Martha’s Harbour - All about eve

Journal | 2 Comments »

Contrived Unbalanced Poorly-written Boring Attention-seeking Laboured Awkward Stilted Tainted Strained Extrinsic Shallow Lame Vain Futile

Journal | 1 Comment »

I don’t know what happened this morning. And to be honest, I am not sure I should confess. It is another embarrasing tale regarding taking up commuting by bike. I have only being doing it a fews weeks, so its all relatively new. I did a bit of reading up before I started, I didnt want to make an idiot out of myself by being unprepared. I learned quite a few things from the experts, but a word of warning, take some advice with a pinch of salt. For example, the book said it maybe polite to nod, or gesure to a fellow cyclist as you pass them going the other way. This advice is slightly misleading.

I am going through town, and give a fellow cyclist a nod and all I got back was a look of bewilderment! Looking back at me as if I was just another stranger or worse, a psychopath.

Andrew’s RULE NO.1

• Only nod or gesture at fellow cyclists when you too are actually on a bike (if you are walking   and they are on a bike, they may not know that you are a cyclist).

Anyway I wake up this morning, and for the the first time this year it is pitch black. Alas the days are getting shorter, how depressing. It would only get worse.

I clamber onto my bike and begin my 3 mile trek to the station. A heavy morning darkness covers the village like a blanket. I am as usual barely awake, which partly explains my meandering all over the road. Anyway, my impression was that my brain was in shutdown - I wish now that was the case for that very second…. a joseph and the technicolour dreamcoat song from the musical pops into my head!

And well. I am in a sparsely populated village, there is nobody awake, and surely it would do no harm.

Reader, I sang it out loud.

I know I shouldn’t have. What has become of me? I promise it is only the dark bleakness of a Monday morning and a lack of conciousness.

So, I stopped as soon as I realised, as soon as I began to wake. Then it got worse.

My brain was aking alsorts of probing questions. Why? Why? Why? (okay, not exactly probing). It was at this time, as I passed through the village that the second song of the journey (performance) popped up out of nowhere.

I want to ride my bicycle
I want to ride my bike

Queen

I know!

Journal, Freewriting, Writing Scraps | 3 Comments »

A215 - Writing Course | No Comments »

Raffy’s Tail

I don’t know when I cruised past my snapping point but I sit here now knowing instinctively that I have. What ever happens after today, I will never bounce back to the same shape again. The signature of who I am has been irreversibly modified. In a science fiction story this modification could have been for the best. I could have been given some super human properties; like no need for sleep, or the strength of ten tigers. As it is I have none of these - the creator’s hand has well and truly had to scrape the bottom of the barrel of superpowers.

How did it happen? In comparison to other super heroes it was the most innocuous of triggers. Nothing like the majestic tale of Spider-man, who was created through a freak incident involving a radioactive spider biting Peter Parkers hand. In my case there was no biological freak-ness (I think) that went to causing my unfortunate change. In short, I was changed forever by mixing up a cocktail of seemingly normal things, yet brewing a recipe for disaster. Who would have thought that drinking coffee, vodka and seeking help from Open University peers could have resulted in the creation of a modern day Frankenstein? Me.

But what is this superpower I hear you cry…? I turn to my dog, Raffy, and for some reason know what he is thinking. He barks, and I know what he is saying. I have somehow gained the power to be able to understand dogs.

This my friends is not normal, it shocks me to my very core. It is bad enough that I can somehow communicate with dogs, but being able to understand Raffy is an even greater shock. For Raffy is a german shepherd and I cannot even speak German.

…

Writing Scraps | No Comments »

So here I am redrafting a short story. I am trying to find a subtle balance between the emotional and passionate elements of the story without hacking it in to something contrived or sentimental. I am finding it quite tough and feel I need a break - some distance. I decide to take a break, and leave the redrafting to spend some time tidying up the spelling and grammar.

It must be said I would be lost without the inbuilt spell checker. They really are a god send, I cannot be the only one who solely relies on their all-seeing-spelling-mistake-finding-eyes. Yet, with great power, comes great responsibility.

Yet, sometimes, I do wonder whether they always get it right.

My story is quite heavy, it features allsorts of miserable and gut wrenching elements. It is quite serious, but I would like to think it carries a serious message - dealing with emotive topics, like war, poverty, terrorism and fatherhood. Yet Microsoft Word apparently thought this wasn’t enough, and who was I to argue. If I could spell with any sort of accuracy, I wouldn’t have so many words underlined in red.

I guess at some point, it just became bored. I mean, why else would it recommend I replace an inanimate object with a ‘pet radish’? It wasn’t as if my inanimate object was even pivotal to the plot - it was just mentioned in passing.

A pet radish?

I am no fiction writing expert, but my gut feeling tells me that as soon as I add a pet radish to my story, that it will become the focal point. It will take over, and consume the story. Who will empathise with my protagonist’s plight….when they find out he has a pet radish. I would say, almost no-one!

It was with a heavy heart that I decided against including the pet radish, and instead opted with the more sensible “Petri dish”.

Why does my story suddenly seem like its missing something vital, some sort of page turning element.

A pet radish for example?

Oh dear!

Journal, Writing, Writing Scraps, A215 - Writing Course | No Comments »