The King on writing

I’ve just finished reading Stephen King’s book about writing, appropriate for Halloween me thinks. I loved his books as a teenager, and I love this one just as much.

Five reasons why?
1. I loved the fact that he gives a mixture of practical advice and glimpses into his own life. We get a peek into what it was like for him before his big break, what it was like to write while being a druggy and an alcoholic, what it was like to survive a being almost smashed to bits by a truck and what it is like to WRITE for a living.

2. I loved his view that at times the story takes over, like it has a life of its own and we as writers have to just go with it. I’ve heard this before and felt it myself, but he makes it scary and sinister.

3. I loved the fact that it is a wake up call to aspiring writers. It is clear that he loves writing and that it is not a painful struggle for him (most of the time). He asks the reader to consider, if they are always saying ‘I’d love to be a writer, but I don’t have the time,’ if what they really want is the lifestyle, more specifically his lifestyle.

4. I loved the fact it made me laugh, hard. At one point he considers the merits of ‘being taught’ to write, describing a writers’ retreat where someone silently deposits your lunch tray outside your room, so that your writerly efforts are not disturbed. But he makes the point that it’s not always advisable to shut out all distractions, as distractions equal real life, the grit in the oyster that starts the pearl.

He likens going to writing classes to attending pearl making seminars with all the other oysters. I’ve been to PLENTY pearl making seminars in my ten years in the voluntary section.

5. I loved it most of all because it was inspiring, made me want to write, write and write some more. But also made me want to read some of his books again. V clever Stevie.

Any book, any time

I've tried it and it works. All you do is type the name of the book you want, into the library request section of the intranet and if our library doesn't have it, they will arrange a loan from the British Library.
So added to the bliss of being here, in Cornwall, and doing this, learning about writing, I now have access to EVERY SINGLE book ever written.
EVER
Which book would you want to read, given the British Library to plunder?
I am working my way through a long list of books that I have always wanted to read (or felt I should). This list grows by the day, as almost every lecturer we have, recommends some book or other as a good example of this or that.
And what's best is that reading is actually part of my course. Spending a lazy Sunday in the pub reading a novel is WORK. Granted I now have to read “critically” but Ha ha ha I'm in heaven.
Within a week my book request set off a domino of events. I imagined a pale librarian deep in the filing system at the BL, shelves deep underground receiving my request. He would then push a ladder on wheels along the endless shelves until he gets to On Black Hill.
It is a recommended read from Rule of Thumb as an example of the successful use of omniscience. I have been asked by the book to read it and feel “the lively, even colloquial presence of the story teller.”
I'll have a read and let you know.

Five Things I've noticed about Cornwall

1. The road planners are very fond of the double roundabout, a totally confusing piece of two circled road trickery. There is this one near campus that they've put on a fairly steep hill so that you really can't see what you are supposed to be giving way to.

2. There are a lot of steep hills here. I've just brought my cycle down from London and I am going to try a cycle in the next few days. The journey into campus will be tiring, due to hills, steep hills, almost the whole way. But I am more scared of going home, especially in the rain.

3. It rains a lot here. Big, heavy, drain blocking downpours. Which means I may regard my cycling commitment as folly. I got SO wet yesterday just going to the corner shop to buy some milk. My shoes are still not totally dry.

4. It takes ages for things to dry here. It is really humid and damp, much more so than London. I'm thinking of getting a dehumidifier for my room. I think it's due to the weather. There is a lot of it see above) and here in Cornwall, we are almost totally surrounded by a sea that pounds rather than laps, causing little bits of sea (i.e. water molecules) to fly up into the air – thus my towels wont dry.

5. But the sea is utterly fantastic, 3 mins walk from my house. I've been surfing a few times, once on the beach that is overlooked by the amazing hotel used in Roald Dahl's 'The Witches' and another on the next beach along. I can now control the board a bit, did a turn a couple of times and am getting ready to go “out back” where the big waves are. Am scared of that but will do it when I'm ready.

Extra Mature

On Friday morning at Truro Station, at the grand old age of 31, I bought a young person's rail card. As a mature student, I am eligible, but it did seem to make the railway ticket person's day.
'Mature student,' he quipped, 'isn't that a bit of a contradiction?'
I stood with my rucksack and my hangover and tried to think of a suitably mature response. None came.

'Ha ha ha' I laughed as I handed over my money.

Stranger than fiction

So why is it non-fiction rather than fact? I wouldn't call myself a non-man?

I suppose calling your book a fact book might not be accurate. Your view on the healing power of apple peal and comfrey in an alternative health book, might not be viewed by everybody as fact.
Or a GCSC science book discussing evolution, may not be considered fact by the folk that believe our planet was creatively designed.

I wonder what might be a better word?

It's all in the name

The whole Normal thing (see previous blog) reminds me of two sisters at my primary school, lets call them Jewel and Beauty. Jewel was in the year above us and she was, as far as I can remember, a nice enough girl.

Beauty was in my year, in my class actually. She was about a foot taller than most of the boys, with broad shoulders and strong hands. When she looked at you, one eye would peer into yours, while the other looked over your left shoulder.

She was a bruiser of a girl, with a lumpy face which seemed to loom out of her sizeable head. She wasnt fat, just big, and her parents seemed the most appropriate thing for her to wear was ill fitting frilly pastel dresses. I suppose it should not be that much of a surprise when you consider they named their poor daughters, Jewel and Beauty. These are parents who just don’t get it.

The rest of us were a bit scared of her. She was not malicious, more relentlessly and constantly careless. She'd always be banging into you or holding your hand too tightly or tearing pages out of your favourite book. Once she had you in her sights she would bear down on you like a train and you would not have much choice about who you played with for the rest of the morning. Looking back on it now, I see that she probably had learning difficulties and life must have been pretty hard for her anyway. But I wonder how much worse it made things being named Beauty.

It just aint Normal

I’m reading this great book called, “Rules of Thumb”. It contains 73 short pieces from successful writers on habits they've developed that help them write. At the end of each piece there is some blurb about the author. When I read that one grew up in a town called Normal, Illinois, I closed the book and stared into the middle distance, pondering a life living in Normal.

Does everybody leaving Normal to move elsewhere have to endure endless hilarious jokes on their lack of normalness? It does make you wonder why a group of people, back in the eighteen hundreds, would have saddled themselves and their future generations with such a name.

But would it be any better to grow up in a town called Unique? Oh, it doesn't bear thinking about.

It’s the Real thing - the bottle that is.

Today I’ve been pondering the new Coke ad, you know the one where a bloke puts a coin into a vending machine and we follow the coin into a magical world of wonder, animated fun and sparkles. A cartoon vision of what has to happen to make a bottle of coke the magnificent drink it is. Birds whiz overhead, trains rattle along and all is busy, like a springtime version of Father Christmas’s workshop.

Just over half way through the ad, a small but noteworthy event occurs. In the far distance a squat and insignificant bottle appears containing some unappealing brown liquid. It is held aloft over a gleaming Coca Cola bottle. Empty, the bottle dominates all, like a statuesque glass goddess. The brown liquid is squirted into this magnificent vessel, somehow defiling it. It is then whisked off to undergo further sprinkling with fairy dust and blastings of trumpets, before clunking into the draw of the vending machine.

So that’s barely a second of a thirty second advert on the actual product, the stuff we buy to drink because we are thirsty or tired. The rest of the ad focuses on the bottle, the bit we recycle or throw away.

I wonder if this reflects the thinking at Coke HQ, that the brand and the packaging are far more important than the sugary drink the world loves. It seems that the marketing department, or the creative team they use, have lost sight of something. Even though they know people buy the stuff because of the power of the Coke brand, most people think they buy it because they like the drink.

As instructed by those that know, I am starting a blog. I'll be recording my thoughts, feelings and opinions and presenting them to a world, which is I'm sure, waiting with baited breath to hear what I've got to say for myself.

Why "stick it in your own eye?"? Well, according to my boyfriend I said this to him in the moments before sleep, soon after we had moved in together. He had just rolled over and pulled some of the duvet with him. It must have somehow got in my eye, as apparently I grabbed some of the duvet and shook it at him, saying, with some venom, "stick it in your own eye."

It is now one of those code phrases couples have and we use it whenever it is needed, to defuse a row or to cheer one or other of us up after a tough day at work.

Having it as the title of my blog reminds me that I can say what ever I like, which is what I intend to do.