All posts by Martyn K Jones

Have been a writer of stories of science fiction and the paranormal for quite some time. From a first article published in 1978, and despite getting enough rejection slips to wallpaper an entire twenty bedroom country mansion, still writing. Six books so far, with more to come. Lives in western Ireland. Keeps bees. Likes dogs.
Cerberus

Work in progress; excerpts posted


In the Cerberus Conspiracy pages, I’ve decided to post the first two chapters from my work in progress ‘A falling of Angels’. I’m fairly happy with the chapters as they stand and the word pictures they paint. Paul Calvin, Ben Wallace, Fat Mary and Jed Carter feel right as characters living in a crumbling society, riding the razors edge between anarchy and stability. Link is here.

As matters stand I’m still only about a third of the way through the story, with a lot of ground to cover. Gang wars, the role of a shadowy corporate in societal breakdown, more on the Freemen, blackmail, and pleasure seekers made into techno zombies. Plenty of juicy filling and not too much in the way of bread for padding. So far so good. Well, I like it even if no one else does.

I’ve also added the first chapter from the ‘Shifting States’ MSS on a sub page of the Cerberus Conspiracy tab, which has been work in progress for just under ten years.

Observations

Reasons not to like Apple


Last weekend I agreed that yes, we should have some extra entertainment in the house. I won’t pay for cable TV, as so much television is simply not worth the subscription. So we went to Future shop and bought an Apple TV. We asked about not installing the dreaded iTunes on our business PC’s and were informed that no, we wouldn’t have to do that, we could set up the Apple TV over the phone. Fine said I, and stumped up the cash.

Minor issues with the Apple TV box not liking the first HDMI cable it was plugged in with, but once I’d swapped it for a non-ethernet HDMI cable, no problem. We switched on the TV, reading the instructions, following the steps and the Apple box fired up nicely. The screensaver looked very nice, and we were looking forward to buying and viewing premium content from the iTunes store. All well and good.

Today Angie asked me to get her an account set up to buy some movies. Apple ID created, great. The Apple TV box itself working, wonderful. Went to buy some content and……..ah. Despite having a verified Apple ID, credit card registered with Apple and everything else, we were unable to purchase a movie or TV series. After two and a half frustrating hours I gave up and called Apple support. After ten minutes the operator told me that I had to have iTunes loaded on my PC to register and connect via the iTunes store. There were no workarounds, no buy by phone, it was iTunes or nothing.

I’ll confess a prejudice here; I don’t like having Apple software on Windows machines, and won’t have it anywhere near a business machine for one simple reason, it’s bloatware. I’ve had Apple software like Safari and iTunes on PC’s before, without registering for the iTunes store. These have been the source of many system slowdowns and even the occasional crash. I’ve also spent too much time rootling around in registries getting rid of all the little surprise packages left behind by iTunes to trip up the unwary. Ergo, that application is forbidden on any system I administer. To me it is a timewaster. An unnecessary complication. If you can’t do it via web browser SSL, there’s something amiss. Amazon and eBay manage nicely, so why not Apple?

So today I have wasted over three working hours on a product that won’t let me use it. Tomorrow I will waste an hour and a half getting the guy at the store to help me verify my Apple store ID, but there is no way on Gods green Earth that I am allowing iTunes on a business PC. It may be just me, but thinking about it there’s also something rather posey about Apple Macs and sometimes their owners that just put me off. Something to do with the implied exclusivity of Apple products I don’t much care for. It’s a computer, not a religion for goodness sake. Full blown Apple Macs are great for DTP, animation and a whole bunch of other things, but overall I feel they’re rather over priced for what they are.

Funny thing; I was actually contemplating buying a Mac until this morning. Now I won’t. Not ever. Because of over four working hours lost unnecessarily. Four hours wasted, all because I couldn’t verify an iTunes store ID without clogging up my system with iTunes.

Observations

Publishing and distribution headaches #SelfPublishing

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I’ve been following a highly contentious thread on LinkedIn for the past few days. One which posed the question; “Is self publishing such an evil?” If you were to read the views on some of the contributors, the answer was a simple no. The alternative views were being expressed in a manner so poisonous and ill informed that I had to stop reading. Broad brushstroke comments condemning all self published works as poorly spelt and formatted for example. Which I thought was unfair. Publishers used to send out lists of ‘errata’ after first editions had been printed, highlighting errors which would be corrected in later editions. Nowadays they get sent to the ‘remaindered’ book store or pulped. So the Nyer ner ne nyer ner type comments to the effect that “You self publish, therefore everything you say and do is crap”. don’t really stand up to close examination. Those are the kind of comments written by people who ‘correct’ library books. Small minded and cheap. We all make mistakes and it should be the story not counts. Not minor spelling and grammatical errors from which mainstream publishers are not immune. Build yourself a bridge and get over it for crying out loud.

Although I’m told that a traditional publishing deal is no longer (and perhaps never was) the easy route. It means you still have to market your own books. The funding mainstream publishing companies used to pay to market an authors work, and the access to the big book distributors is often no longer so readily available to the first timer. From observation I’d go so far as to say the age of the big publishers advance is mostly (Except for a few key instances) history. When all’s said and done this is no surprise; publishers take a financial risk every time they put a book out in the marketplace, and if it all falls over massively they’re history. Their game, their rules. Although I’m moved to observe that since they are not immune from the laws of cockup, slagging off self publishers is not a wonderful business strategy. A lot of writers are avid readers too.

The big self publishing problem is not, as some would contend merely in the spelling or grammar of a particular work, it’s actually in the distribution; getting a book, or more easily an eBook listed. Even then the market is fragmented, and while Smashwords and Lulu.com can get you listed across most distribution platforms, there are some quite large marketplaces, like the growing Kobo eReader which require independents and small scale publishers to go through Kobo’s ‘writinglife’ process. Which, if you’ve already got an edition you’ve spent time getting listed on Amazon, iBookstore and Barnes and Noble, feels like having to do the same job twice. It’s enough to give you migraines. Never mind the promotion, marketing and all the other things a writer has to do to get their work out and noticed in a crowded marketplace.

There is still, at the moment of writing, no single low cost route which will transmit from keyboard to bookshelf over the broadest range of popular platforms. Lulu, Smashwords and Kobo are all good, but none of these provides a single, end to end process for an author to get their work out into the broadest of public domains. Never mind the holy grail of going from those points of publishing entry into the big book distributors lists. This issue is proving a major headache, but one that is not incurable. It’s had me contemplating creating my own on line publishing and distribution company, just to see if I can fix it.

Still scratching along with ‘A falling of Angels’. A sentence here, a word there. Progress is slow, but sure. I’d get a life, but what with the job and publishing issues, on top of looking at boats, new cameras, and the odd bit of extra technology Angie wants installed, trying to squeeze a third one in might prove one too many.

Memories

The problem with writing horror #WritersBlock


Literary horror is dramatic. It makes for good copy. I often watch the close ups on shows like CSI and think; “Oo, that’s good make-up, almost like the real thing.” or “No, eyes should be dilated at this point.” For extra material I watch programmes like the video below, attending lectures when and where possible, and read pathology texts, as well as relying on my own observations taken from real life. The section on ice weapons came as a surprise. I too thought that was simply an urban legend.

My only problem with writing such sequences is this; sometimes the nightmares pay me a return visit. Not that often, but commonly enough to occasionally rob me of sleep and good temper. I’ve been like this for the past week or so while writing the refugee camp sequence for ‘A falling of Angels’. My over active imagination has overflowed into night time unpleasantness with serious 3D realism and smellyvision. You’d think that the act of writing everything down would purge the anxieties, lay the ghosts. In practice this is not entirely true. It just triggers other responses. Almost as if my glib subconscious is cheerfully waving from the background of psyche, saying; “You missed a bit!” and helpfully pointing out the more unpleasant gaps I’d rather have avoided.

Angie’s vaguely annoyed at me because I’ve been waking up and performing my usual trick of going from sound asleep to fully alert in the early hours. As the dream hits crisis, I’m out of bed and on my feet, looking for trouble in half a second. It’s an old reflex, and one that hasn’t dulled with age. Not entirely sure where it comes from. That said I can sleep through most things. Storms, roadworks outside the house, marching bands, noisy teenagers. Yet if someone tries to be stealthy anywhere close to, I’m instantly up and alert. Whether I want to be or not. All on the back of a bad dream.

Observations

Blog customisation


While editing and proofing the last few days output, I took a break to clear out the blogs Askimet comments spam box, and in among the attempted SEO spamming, Ads for Chinese prostitutes (Go figure), incomprehensible malware links, and one string of obscenities (Why? What was the point of that? Apart from a classic demonstration of the posters sub literacy.) I found one sensible comment about the look of the blog so I approved it. ‘Space it out better’ I think was the request. It’s here, go look for yourself.

Now I’ve looked at changing the blogs appearance before, and quite frankly this is one of those “Could you be a bit more specific” moments. This blog isn’t perfect, because when all’s said and done it is what it is. I could spend thousands of dollars and it would still be imperfect in the eyes of any given beholder. Why? Because we’re all different and hear what we want to hear and see what we want to see.

It’s all part of the human experience. Still wouldn’t get me any more traffic, because while the end result of any given story may well be dramatic, sexy, violent and all that jazz, the process of writing is only exciting to the actual writer. A person with their head down, emptying the contents of their head into a word processor isn’t dramatic to watch, is very unsexy, and about as non-violent a pursuit as it comes. Dull, dullness without anything to relieve the watchers’ tedium. Short of giving away every story development, quirk of character or plot twist. Just dust the cobwebs off me as you pass. The lights are palpably on, someone’s definitely home, but you can bang as hard as you like on the door because we’re not taking visitors today. Ignore the dog barking. Just make an appointment for next week please. I’m having far too much fun writing about refugee camp cannibal gangs, blackmailers and genetic manipulation. Not forgetting the DarkNet (The Internet’s ‘evil’ twin) and similarly linked themes.

Anyway, the blog isn’t a priority. What with various narratives and shift work, it tends to take a back seat. I just don’t have time (or the graphic talent) to fuss with it. For the moment I’m going with the cheap ‘n cheerful free WordPress template I’ve selected. Unless anyone else has a sensible suggestion. Otherwise I’ll be back here on Wednesday evening, maybe even Friday. TTFN.

Cerberus

Progress happens in the oddest places #WritersBlock


Day off from the day job yesterday, and for a change took my laptop with me on our tour around town to the Museum, Angie’s Pilates class and the best coffee shop in town. Putting the earbuds in and playing some of my favourite tunes meant I could pound the keypad to my hearts content undisturbed, managing to almost crack the 2000 word mark in the latest Cerberus story “A falling of Angels”.

The current storyline has my mind reading hero hunting down a child molester in the middle of a massive refugee camp on the site of Bristols old Avonmouth docks. He is also looking for a lead to a cold blooded murder and the source of a menace which could bring mayhem to the streets. It’s coming along nicely.

One of the themes I constantly find myself returning to within the Cerberus series is exploring the nature of human consciousness, and putting forward the postulation that our minds have a Quantum level effect upon our surroundings. Not physically, but at the level of phantasms, shadows on the background of space / time. Back in 1972 there was an early TV play written by Nigel Neale called ‘The Stone tape‘ which was generated on the premise of strong emotional events imprinting themselves upon physical objects, like stone. My take on the theme is this; in the process of existence we imprint our minds / memories / desires upon the very fabric of the universe, which is where my notion of the supernatural comes from. Strong baseline emotional events, fear, love etc leave the longest lasting impressions, like the victims of nuclear explosions leaving shadows on walls and ground. Even certain strong personality types leave a mark. Some are merely images, others like GIFs, some like computer games. All depend upon how driven the individual was who left the marks.

Is this concept true or false? Some say that because stories of the psychic world are purely subjective, the answer has to be a firm and unequivocal no. For myself I have no idea, but that doesn’t stop me exploring the concepts and mud wrestling with them. If nothing else it’s provided me with much good material.

Cerberus

Writing well, but very slowly #WritersBlock


Work proceeds on the next of the Cerberus series of stories; ‘A Falling of Angels’. It’s also going very slowly. The story is at an interesting point; in the middle of a refugee camp down at the old Avonmouth docks in Bristol, England. I’ve successfully introduced the ‘Freemen’, a cult of surprisingly orderly anarchist-like monk characters very loosely based on the ‘Freemen on the land’ ideology. As far as the story goes, they work beautifully. Quality is high. The trouble is, writing is such an effort at the moment. Finding the time to relax into the tale is proving difficult.

Paid work is currently more full than part time. Angie, having taken over my office, is now sitting in front of me in the kitchen working leaving me no place to settle and buckle down to some good old fashioned keyboard pounding. The baking is therapeutic, but when you’re deep in the throes of narrative, the last thing you want is someone (no matter how much you love them) asking questions about what your tax position is, or a hundred different non writing related queries.

Writing is nothing unless it can be done, and if it is not being done then all the mental effort behind it gets wasted. I need to concentrate in order to work, but I’m finding it difficult to do so,and I don’t want to make an issue of my objections and thus provoke domestic discord. Which would bring all writing activity to a dead stop for months.

What is a man to do? No wonder it drives so many to drink.

Observations

What is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life? #WritersLife

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Picked up poet Mary Oliver‘s question via LinkedIn this morning, and it very much resonates with what’s going on in my life at the moment. Well, not just mine but Angie’s as well. We’ve been pottering around looking at lots to build a house on, and finding that everything eventually devolves to suburbia. The whole work-eat-sleep-mortgage thing, which we’ve already done. So why on earth are we planning to anchor ourselves down to a plot of land for the rest of our useful lives? Nail ourselves to one location? Chain our souls to real estate? Go down the suburban road once more? Do the networking thing? Cultivate contacts to further our ‘careers’? Sell our souls to the machine again? We’re both over fifty and pretty active, I don’t see the point.

Would we do it for Laura and Jo? Not really, they’re all grown up and making their own lives half way around the world. As for me, to paraphrase Groucho Marx, if there were a club especially for people like me, I wouldn’t let me in. I’m not a social animal. The Bear is my totem.

So after drifting around plots and lots with various enchanting views, we ended up in the Genoa Bay Marina Espresso Bar down past Duncan. Down at the end of one floating jetty was a 60′ Gin Palace, registered in Edmonton, Alberta of all places. A gleaming monstrosity of fibreglass and stainless steel. Very palatial. A million bucks worth straight out of the yards. Beautiful lines. It looked fast and graceful, even just moored at the floating dock gathering algae next to all the houseboats.

All of a sudden, Angie gets all upset, which bothered me as it was a gorgeous day and we hadn’t a care, apart from looking at various interminable building sites. She confessed to me that this whole looking for houses process was making her unhappy, and she didn’t want to do it any more. She expressed a wish to live on a boat and cruise the coast and gulf islands for the next ten or twenty years. So as we wound through endless Canadian suburbia, we talked it over. I expressed surprise as Angie tends to suffer from motion sickness, and her on a boat? To be honest I never even thought about it as a life option. She said no, she was willing to give it a try. Life on the water. We joked about her having a ‘mid-life crisis’, well why not? Without crisis and adventure, life is dull, dull, mind strangling routine. The morass of souls, the slough of despond, a round of endless quiet desperation.

I reflected that some of my early years were spent playing around on British canals on cabin cruisers. This brought up memories like being at the wheel of a fishing boat following a gyrocompass bearing back into Looe after a days deep sea fishing out near Eddystone. Force four south westerly freshening to six. Dirty green sea under grey skies, bucking the restless horse of a Lochin 38 Hulled fishing boat at fourteen knots. Five foot swells slamming at the bows. Slewed at twenty degrees from the line of travel in the cross wind.

I have my BC pleasure craft license, know the basics about R/T drills and have a modest understanding of basic seamanship. Angie is a quick learner, and both sides of the family have more than a little salt water in their veins, so why not? We don’t really ‘belong’ anywhere, and would only be stifled by life in one place, regardless of how nice the views or people are.

The sheer chutzpah appeals. The thought of Island hopping, following the weather around the world while working online has a certain appeal. Phoning the kids from Southampton or some other locale. “Hi love, fancy a weekend off?” Hire cars when need arises, not buy them. Move our money around the globe, spread the risk, take a chance. I have more than a couple of ideas about that. Yes, so we’re having a radical rethink about how we live our lives, and today we are going to talk to boat brokers.

Observations

Leaving well enough alone. #BlogOff


This morning I was over at Guido Fawkes via Pat Nurse and came across this little campaign for a free and unregulated blogosphere. In the opposing corner, there are a bunch of over-hyped luvvies lobbying for regulation and censorship. So long as it isn’t their views being censored of course. Privacy, and the right of voicing opinion is something only they can have, and not for the hoi polloi. So long as it is an opinion they agree with, by their own slippery and shifting standards. These are the people laying foundations for the dystopias I write about. The “Do as I say – not as I do.” pundits. The people who wear their hypocrisies like a second skin, so much so that perhaps they may not realise what they are doing. Or perhaps they do. I can only guess.

Censorship stifles the voices of the many and puts too much power into the hands of a self-selected few. It disenfranchises and opens the way for gross evils that have dumped their ugly ink splodges on the narrative of history. Indeed, history is all the poorer for this. Like the angry Roman Soldier who murdered Archimedes in Syracuse, a voice stifled because “You can’t say that” is a conversation stillborn. Information lost until another mind dares to walk an untrodden path. Culturally, suppression impoverishes. Spam filters notwithstanding.

Free speech may mean the tinfoil hat brigade are let loose, barging into civilised discourse like an infinite number of hypothetical Bulls in an infinite number of Porcelain emporia, spraying virtual spittle on all and sundry, but for all that, they’re mostly harmless. Pat them on the head, smile politely and move on. Conversation is like mining, you have to shift a lot of overburden to get to the real ore. Process tons of Pitchblende to extract an ounce of Radium. So it is with communication. Stifling it serves no purpose apart from protecting the thin skinned and pompous. The least harm would be done if they left well enough alone. Not that my opinion counts, I’m just another voice in the crowd trying to make sense of it all.

For my own part I’ve been busy of late, breaking all my own rules about creative writing; haven’t penned a word in weeks. Mainly because domesticity has been raising its ever present head and saying things like “What about doing your taxes?”, “What about getting a new job?”, “What about buying a plot of land and building?”, “What about booking our trip to England this year?” and “You’re spending too much time researching – it’s time we went out.” What with a shifting shift pattern and everything else, I’ve dried up completely.

Language

Ten steps to a more businesslike approach to writing #WritersBlock


Have been thinking about this a lot recently, and have come up with a simple ten step businesslike approach to writing;

1. Plan the narrative, set and use timelines
2. Write to the plan unless there’s a bloody sound reason
3. Set a schedule, hours, dates, times, which are given solely to producing ‘product’
4. Set hours, dates, times for getting the message ‘out there’
5. Set up a web linking strategy. Follow it.
6. Create useful resources for readers
7. Create interesting forums with anti-troll and spam defences. Be ruthless.
8. Stick with what you’re writing, don’t get distracted.
9. Don’t listen to too much advice
10. Proof read, spell check daily.

This is more for myself than for anyone else, as I tend to let myself get distracted and do anything but get on with it because I get stuck. I intend to set myself a target of 10,000 words per week minimum, with a set maximum of 3,000 words per day. If I’m going to try and make a success of something, the least I can do is do it in a disciplined, focused manner.

General musings

Happy Birthday #WritersBlock


It’s almost my birthday, which I always find mildly depressing.  Yeah, yeah, another year, another milepost, another reminder that Tempus is well and truly Fugiting.  Meh

I take heart that I share my natal day with a number of more luminescent luminaries.  Walter Schirra, Astronaut.  Liza Minelli, Actress and Dancer. Jack Kerouac, Writer.  Marlon Jackson of the Jackson 5, Singer.

One thing I’d forgotten was that I almost share a birthday with the late, great Douglas Adams, creator of the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy.  By one day.  Which makes me want to go all Marvin the Paranoid Android. 

“Birthdays.  Don’t talk to me about Birthdays.”

“I hope you know I’m feeling very depressed.”

“Not getting you down am I?”

Happy Birthday and RIP Douglas Adams, whose original radio show lightened many a dull college revision session.

Cerberus

Inspiration comes from odd times and places #WritersBlock


What do you call it when you know where a story has to go, but aren’t quite sure how to get there? My Timelines are great at framing the content of a narrative, but quite often I get stuck on the details.

For example; in ‘A falling of Angels’ my lead character gets tied up rescuing a couple of half wild children while trying to solve a gangland crime no one else seems bothered about. Evidence is in short supply, and even his special abilities are no help. To simply dismiss it and move on leaves a stray storyline. I hate unresolved plot details, and couldn’t leave the loose end hanging. Loose ends annoy me.

Unfortunately at these times, inspiration is so often in short supply, and I end up mooning about trying to prise the narrative loose by force, which rarely works. Nothing shifts the logjam. Weeks go by without significant progress. I find myself rewriting whole sections prior to the story blockage, tidying up sentences, chopping paragraphs and doing general housekeeping on the narrative. It’s like a wall you can peer over and see the end of your tale, but can’t see the vital literary devices in between. The angles are all wrong. Like a map of your destination which doesn’t include directions from the town you’re starting at, it frustrates.

Books on writing style don’t help; they’re too general. Research and experience can only take you so far. The song has stopped, the choir has faltered to an embarrassed silence, and no-one seems sure where to pick up the chorus.

At times like these I usually dig out the cook books, do the chores, walk the dog, stare at the horizon, bake bread (Always a good one), but this time round the break came on Monday when Angie was reading me a piece on story telling and the importance of narrative from one of Daniel H Pinks self help series “Why Right Brainers Will Rule the Future”. I don’t generally read self help books myself, they’re too full of stuff I already seem to know. However, Angie likes them. So for the sake of a quiet life I do the old nod and smile. She even let me stop her and illustrate the technique she was telling me about, and how widespread its use is in advertising and marketing. While I was doing this, a stray thought kicked off about how to bodge two plot lines into a seamless whole. Completely out of context, off the wall, but I suddenly had a vision of how difficult it would be to beat up someone who knows exactly where the punch is coming from, and is quick enough to dodge. From there the idea branched back to a couple of other odd story items, and all of a sudden the choir has found the page, and there’s the door in the wall I was looking for. Wide open. Bing! Just like magic.

Now the way is clear, all I have to do is write it.

Observations

Life, the Universe and being opinionated. #WritersLife


Five am in the morning, and sleep is a stranger. There are thoughts buzzing around in my head, and respite will not come until I let them out. An overnight flight has ghost howled overhead. Amos, my dog, lies softly snoring at my blanket coddled feet. A diffuse reflected phantasm of Vancouvers city lights illuminates the Eastern night sky, giving the water between the islands a pale, glossy feel.

Of course that’s how I feel about it, and you have only my opinion for that. However, that’s what is going round and round in my head at the moment, keeping pleasant repose at arms length. Like a maddening earworm of a silly pop tune, it won’t leave me be. Think of this as an exorcism of sorts.

There’s an ironic old adage which goes “I know the truth – but you’re just opinionated.” Yet isn’t having opinions on subjects what makes us human? There is even mental elbow room to say that opinion underpins everything we are and do. Here’s the bare bones dictionary definition;

o·pin·ion

Noun

1. A view or judgment formed about something, not necessarily based on fact or knowledge.

2. The beliefs or views of a large number or majority of people about a particular thing.

Synonyms
view – judgement – judgment – mind – notion – idea

Back when I was but a callow youth, or as Hamlet put it; ‘in my salad days, When I was green in judgment’ I found myself thinking this particular thought. Because it is subjective, the truth can only ever be a matter of opinion. Which is true. For a given value of ‘truth’ that is. There is no absolute value. Because human knowledge is limited, we don’t have all the definitive answers. As that knowledge expands, as we find out more about the universe and our place in it, we plug the gaping abyss of fact with huge wodges of opinion as a kind of stop gap. Or Quantum or String theory. Whatever. Until the next big proof comes around.

For example, there are those who contend a given ‘holy’ book contains the ‘truth’. It’s their opinion. Others insist that Darwins theory of evolution makes all the religious schtick unnecessary. Again, that is another opinion. Bloody wars have been fought, and terrible slaughter made over opinions like these. Millions slaughtered by repressive regimes all because they hold a differing opinion. Which is, if you give it enough thought, a bloody silly way of getting people to change their minds. The threat of violence only suppresses opinions. It cannot change how people think and feel. By way of illustration I was watching a documentary on YouTube last night about Russian aviation development in the mid 20th century, and heard about all the Technicians arrested and executed during the Stalinist era. ‘What a waste of talent’ was the thought that passed through my mind. However, Stalin was obviously of another opinion.

People used to think that Phlogiston was a thing, rather than what we now understand as the process of combustion. All scientific theory is opinion until a body of fact can be garnered to back it up. Theories. being mere matters of opinion, can be overthrown. Science is never settled. Like a river, it is a continual process rather than an absolute. Prevent or suppress the flow of ideas and the river dries up, as do its benefits.

Judges, when passing sentence or judgement are expressing an opinion based on their interpretation of case and accepted law. Politicians express opinions from which those very laws are formed. They in turn are driven by public opinion (Or some would say increasingly focus groups and special advisors). Dependent of course on whether public opinion is in keeping with their own.

The Internet is the great sounding board of our age allowing all to have their say. Yet what most of it drives home one inescapable conclusion; it’s only opinions. Yet how great a part those opinions play. In my opinion, that is.

Language

Confronting the style demon #WritersBlock

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If I have a fault as someone who writes, it’s that I tend to get a bit florid with my prose. My particular demon is complex three adjective and noun descriptions of character, place or time, rather than the more simplistic approach of salting character traits throughout a particular passage. This fault is most prevalent with minor characters. I have a tendency to go right over the top with fixed bayonet, charging into sentences, whooping and spilling gory syllables left right and centre. Often long after a particular paragraph or section has come out with white flag and hands high screaming “Enough, already!”. There’s a lot of fun to be had with conceits and extended metaphors. Especially with the more horrifying details. I have a tendency to be a little too, shall we say; graphic? Especially with murder scenes. Having seen a number of deaths up close and personal, I find this disturbingly a little too easy.

So Angie has to sit me down, pat me on the head, and say something like; “I know you don’t react too well to my criticism, dear, but don’t you think you could have written that better? You’re being a bit too poetic.” Which is true. Too often in my rush to impress, I’ve tried to cover all the bases at once. Reiterating and perhaps labouring points too hard when perhaps I should take them sparingly, one at a time. But I am getting better at it. Not being quite so lavish with my descriptions, and putting more effort into simply getting on with the story. Letting the characters speak their lines and not bog things down with leaden travelogue descriptions.

I blame too much Donne and Shakespeare in my literary upbringing. That and two exceptional English teachers, who were, funnily enough, both Welshmen. Not to mention another college lecturer who introduced my class to reading Chaucer aloud in the original Middle English. Which is still a pleasure after all these years. The cadence and rhythm of the language feels somehow more real when spoken. It has its own sorcery.

However, I am always mindful of this particular edict by Samuel Johnson, father of modern English and Lexicographer is once quoted with saying; “Read over your compositions, and wherever you meet with a passage which you think is particularly fine, strike it out.” Although like a fond parent who dotes on his children, I’m not sure if I can ever be this ruthless, but I am trying to be good. Honestly.