If I Name This Post 'Sextuple Mumbo Jumbo', That'll Increase Traffic To The Blog, Right?

I think it was the late (and in my estimation rather great) Blake Snyder, author of the screenwriting book Save The Cat who came up with the concept of 'Double Mumbo Jumbo', and it's something I've been thinking about a bit recently.

Double Mumbo Jumbo, put simply, is the idea that "as an audience we can only buy one piece of magic per movie" (or, I'd say, book or play or other medium). Where Blake says 'magic', I like to think this equally means coincidence - for my money, Spider-Man 3 suffers from Double Mumbo Jumbo in the plotlines relating to the Venom symbiote (to non-comic geeks, that's the black costume-thing which bonds first with Peter Parker and then with his rival) when it happens to land first near Peter Parker's moped (if memory serves; I've only seen the film once, and don't plan to watch it again, even if it means verifying details for a blog post) and then it's roaming ownerless again when Peter Parker's workplace rival is out and about in the area.

I think the second story in Pulp Fiction suffers from this sort of coincidence problem as well, though I know a lot of people hold that film in much higher regard than I do.

It's not just a problem which you see in films, either (though the example I'm about to give was, I think, adapted to film): the novel Perfume by Patrick Suskind is very well-respected and was given to me with strong recommendations by a friend, but when I read it I couldn't get past the fact that the main character had no personal scent (which struck me as being biologically unlikely) and also had an extrememly sensitive ability to detect odours.

This felt like a cheat to me, as if the author realised that someone with a truly super-powered nose would be unable to smell anything beyond the scent of their own sweat and clothing. I didn't buy it, and as a result the rest of the book felt hard to swallow, built as it was on a foundation that I didn't find particularly sturdy.

This has been on my mind a bit recently, because in the novel I'm currently writing (due for completion about half an hour before the heat-death of the universe, longtime readers might suspect) I have various 'secret' government agencies and bodies, and I don't want to have too much stuff that looks like a fudge - whilst I'm confident that most readers will accept that there are bodies within government and the military which don't appear in annual reports and budget publications, I don't want to make it look as if I've made them 'secret' just so I haven't got to do the research on Home Office heirarchies and departmental responsibilities and the like.

In a strange - though hopefully understandable - tangent, thinking about the concept of Double Mumbo Jumbo has partly explained to me why I find the following advert irks me more than it probably should:

The advert doesn't really make sense to me on any level - and yes, I know it's meant to be a bit out there and surreal, but consider the things that we're supposed to accept:

• He's so fond of sausage rolls he's cloned a miniature dog to say what he can't
• He carries the miniature dog in a jewellery box in his pocket
• He had it in his pocket, but initially wasn't intending to hand it to her (note how he turns away at first)
• The 'garage lady' accepts what appears to be a gift of jewellery from a customer
• The miniature dog speaks english (with, I think, the voice of Mathew Horne)
• The dog knows which button to press on its (also miniaturised) keyboard to start the music (which is either drum and bass or garage, I think - I'm not bothered about either of those choices really, though I hope it's the latter as it would be appropriate given the setting of the advert)

It just feels like the advert-makers have hit the 'random' button in an almost cynical way, as if throwing diverse stuff together like that immediately equates to something surreal and/or clever. The main problem I think I have with it is that for someone who's "just a bloke", and apparently incapable of expressing himself, he's gone to a lot of trouble (and a weird kind of trouble) to express his gratitude.

In fact, within this universe where we can create speaking miniature animals to perform tasks we humans can't, I'm surprised that there are petrol stations at all, as the normal rules don't seem to apply; surely the pumps dispense some kind of liquid boulders, and the 'garage lady' is in fact the reincarnation of Alexander the Great, wearing a human outfit to disguise the fact that he's come back as an oversized moth (I'm aware that many insects' tracheas don't function once they get above a certain size, so this is an inherently unrealistic proposition, but given that the shruken dog apparently suffers no difficulty breathing despite his size and being enclosed in a small box, it seems all bets are off). Actually, it's strange that this bizarre world they inhabit has sausage rolls and money in it at all really. What are the odds of that?

I can live with the odd quirk or wrinkle to things - and as I understand it, much of the 'magic realism' school of writing is based on the world as we know it reacting to strange and unusual things happening - but it needs to be balanced, I think. The Queen in Alice in Wonderland boasts "sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast", but that advert seems, to me, to be a case of Multiple Mumbo Jumbo, and so I can't swallow it (then again, as a vegetarian, I was probably unlikely to swallow anything related to sausage rolls).

Come to think of it, no wonder the chap in the advert accepts the strange world he lives in: it's clearly the early hours, and maybe he needs to believe the six impossible things I list above before he can have the sausage roll - that is, his breakfast.

Short Film: 'Revealing Diary' By The Guerrier Brothers

Videos on Thursday appear to be turning into a habit round here, don't they?

Anyway, this is a cracking short film made by writer Simon Guerrier and his director brother Thomas, and I think it is very classsy - good and unsettling, with a very strong ending.

I heartily recommend you invent the 5mins or so in watching it - seriously, check this out:



Told you it was good. Simon's posted an interesting write-up on the production process here, which provides insight into how it all came together.

Impressive stuff, and very good work, I feel.

Video: An Invocation for Beginnings

Doesn't matter if you apply it to writing or to anything else, I think this video has something to say to all of us who hesitate to begin a project, or procrastinate on continuing, or in any other fashion getting on with it:

Persona Season 3 Starts This Week (And I've Written For It)

The third season of smartphone drama Persona launches this week (the first episode was yesterday, but don't worry, you can catch up), and I'm the writer on one of the stories in it - specifically, this one:


It looks like the cast and crew have done a great job, so I'll be watching eagerly - can I ask you to do the same? Persona is absolutely free of charge for iPhone/iPad and Android users, and you get a new episode every day for no charge too.

Interested? Good-o, here are the relevant links:

On iTunes you can download it here

On Android, you can get it here

Please do give it a look, and let me know what you think. Thanks!

It Doesn't Last That Long, But It Made Me Happy

I'm pleased to be able to report that I've had another joke included in Newsjack, the topical radio comedy on Radio 4 Extra (formerly BBC7). I'm included in the credits which you can see here, and if you'd like to hear the jape itself, the show can be listened to or downloaded as a podcast here, and it's probably available via iTunes too (must admit I haven't checked yet).

It's the gag in the opening monologue, at 0'56" to be precise, about the passing of the NHS Bill. I think the show'll be there to listen to or download for another week or so, which is probably about right as the joke itself'll probably make less sense as time passes.

Anyway, this blog post is a shameless brag really, as I'm pretty chuffed to have a second BBC broadcast credit, even if it has been a couple of years since the first. I shall see if I can narrow down the intervening period between the second and third...

This Looks Classy

Writer and all-round decent chap Jason Arnopp done wrote a film called Stormhouse, and here be the trailer:



Looks good 'n' spooksome, yes?

Do tell your friends about it.

In fact, tell your enemies. Especially if they're 'fraidy cats.

Persona Launches Tomorrow!

I'm very excited to be able to announce that Persona goes live tomorrow.

As you may well remember from my recent posts, Persona is the world's first continuing drama created exclusively for smartphones, giving the viewer a daily 2-3 minute drama series, with new episodes every day of the week.

You can buy the Persona App in the iTunes store (search for 'Persona App Media UK') for £1.19, or you can text PERSONA to 87474, which costs £1.50. A year's worth of episodes for less than a Starbucks coffee.

As I've mentioned before, I'm one of the writers for the first season (starting tomorrow, and running for a month), so if you're interested to see what kind of writing I do when I'm not blogging (and it's part of the reason why my blog entries have been so sporadic recently), I'd really appreciate your support - and of course, I'd be interested to hear what you think of the series (and the work I did on Jane's storyline).

By way of a taster, here's the trailer for Persona, which I hope will intrigue you enough to make you want to see more:

Any questions, please don't hesitate to get in contact (unless you're asking about what happens in the storylines; I'm either sworn to secrecy about the stuff I've been involved in, or appropriately ignorant about the other storylines). Thanks!

A Delay, Not A Denial

Just to update you on Persona : there's been a slight delay in the app being approved by Apple (this sentence may hold the blog record for the most uses of the letters 'app'), so the revised start date is currently 15 January 2011.

I will, of course, keep you fully informed.

In the meantime, though, more pictures from Persona - some from Jane's story - are available to view here.

This is likely to be the final post of 2010, so have yourself a cracking start to 2011, and may the year bring you everything you could hope for, and a few surprises (pleasant ones, of course).

If you're out tonight, here's hoping your evening doesn't lead to you looking or feeling like Lucy, the Persona character pictured here.

See you in 2011.

Persona Update: Teaser Trailer Now Available Online

As I mentioned in this post, I'm one of the writers on the smartphone drama Persona, which is coming in January 2011 - and here's the teaser trailer:


It's the first time I've seen anything I've written being performed, and I can't wait to see Jane's storyline brought to life - I'm super-pleased to see Amanda Sterkenburg in the role, as she has exactly the kind of look I was hoping for in the character.

And is it childish that I'm amused that the Youtube 'freeze screen' shows Jane? Very probably... but it's true.

Not So Much A Forgotten Future, More An Overlooked One, I Like To Think

Recently, New Scientist ran a Flash Fiction Writing competition, which invited entrants to speculate about futures which never were, or could have been.

Well, I entered, but as the shortlisted folks have now been contacted and it doesn't appear that I was one of them, I thought I'd take the opportunity to share my entry with you lovely people. Waste not, want not, as they say, and hopefully it'll amuse you...

I Still Dream Of Orgonon

Deciding that Operation Paperclip had been very successful, in the mid-1940s the US government ran another operation collating scientific knowledge, once again targeting foreign nationals resident in the USA.

An admin error put Albert Einstein and Wilhelm Reich in the same group, but the two had met previously, and got on well. They talked about how Reich had fudged his figures last time, and Einstein candidly admitted that he'd pretty much done the same in introducing the cosmological constant, and they laughed, and set to work.

Within a few months, they announced that Reich had been right about Orgone after all, and whilst the UK set up a Health Service, the USA provided tax incentives for the mass manufacture of Orgone Accumulators. By the early 1960s, there was an accumulator in every home, and the average life expectancy had increased by 23 years.

Other countries followed suit; in 1983, the UK used Reich’s cloudbusting technology to improve their weather, and other countries used the same technology to counteract droughts and turn deserts into meadows.

Global population levels, but most notably those in societies with a strong religious influence, stabilised once it became clear that channelling sexual energy served the common good, and in many countries state-funded single-sex boarding schools for teenagers replaced power plants, boosting power reserves and education levels alike.

Einstein and Reich both lived to be centenarians, though tragically neither saw Project Iapyx, and the launch into space in 1999 of the first Orgone-powered spacecraft towards Barnard’s Star.

Iapyx I is expected to report back in 2012.

Coming Soon To A Phone Near You...

I'm pleased to be able to tell you part of the reason why I've been so absent from blogging recently, and it's legitimate and real and relates to actual writing and everything.

I'm one of the four writers on the daily smartphone drama Persona, which is coming from the lovely folks at App-Media in January 2011. There are three other folks contributing words (Phill, Ronnie, and Adam), and between us we've written the first 'season', which will cover the whole month of January.

It's been genuinely interesting writing my 'slice' of the show (the various strands weave in and out of each other, and new episodes - or, rather Appisodes - will be released on a daily basis. As I understand it, you'll be able to buy the app from the appropriate online place, and then you'll automatically get the new show delivered to you. Sounds a lot like the Cracked Reader for the iPhone which I have, and am very happy with.

As you can see from this set of photos, a rehearsal was held on November 27, though I won't say (or perhaps can't say?) which cast members are involved in the storyline I wrote. But if you want to see the character breakdown, it's here, and those of you who've followed the blog for a while will probably be able to guess which characters are ones I've come up with (clue: look for the usual verbosity)...

Shooting is taking place this week in London, and if you'd like to be an extra, I believe they're still looking for people to do just that. You will, of course, get to feature in a pretty revolutionary bit of drama, but more than that you'll get to meet the nice people involved (I can speak from actual 'IRL' encounters with them, they're lovely), plus you'll receive a credit and get food and travel expenses paid for. If you're available this week in London and interested, the best ways to get in touch with them seem to be either Twitter or Facebook. Tell them I sent you.

Anyway, it's been a genuinely interesting (and hopefully for all involved, productive) time writing the scripts for Season One (or 'January', as it's more commonly known), and I'm looking forward to being involved with Season Two - and, of course, seeing how the cast play the lines I've written. One thing which it's certainly reinforced in my mind is the fact that redrafting is vital for me, and as much as I might like to think it's the case, the first thoughts out of my head onto the page are very rarely the best. Even the brightest jewel, I like to think, needs a bit of polishing to shine (ahem).

I'll tell you more about how to view the show, and where to buy the app, and the like, as soon as I know more. And, of course, if you are an extra, do drop me a line and let me know how it goes, eh?

Canon And Balls

A few years ago, when on holiday in Morocco, I had a stomach upset.

Well, no, that's putting it mildly; on my return to Blighty, it was diagnosed as amoebic dysentery and an infection of the intestine, but what's relevant to this tale (which started charmingly, I think you'll agree) is the fact that it utterly scuppered my holiday and made me have to stay in my hotel room much of the time, visiting the bathroom literally dozens of times per day, and being unable to eat for a couple of days. Over the course of the ten days or so it lasted, I lost a stone and a half (but no, I would not recommend it as an approach to weight loss).

After a week or so of this, I'll cheerfully admit that my mental state was pretty strange; I was dehydrated and lacking in intellectual stimulation (you can only stare at the ceiling for so long before it starts getting boring - for me, about three days is my limit), and the vast majority of my interactions with other people (mainly hotel staff) were being conducted in French, leading to a slightly odd state where my mind was simultaneously translating my thoughts even as I was thinking them. In short, I was not a well chap.

They say that if you don't use it, you lose it, so I decided to stop the mental rot, and do a bit of writing. I started well, coming up with a pretty decent 'Elseworlds' Batman story (that is, a story based in a slightly different version of the Batman set-up), but that was about it for writing, until the wooziness and general illness passed again and I decided to make a deal with the universe.

Yes, you read that correctly. Don't ask me to explain it, just chalk it up to me being profoundly unwell.

So, I made a deal with the universe, which went pretty much like this: if the universe let me live, and get well again, I'd finally get round to reading the key books by all the 'big and important' authors. The ones I'd always pretended to have read, but really I was just bluffing based upon having seen them referred to in other places, or having read the back covers or other synopses. Don't look at me like that, you've done the same sort of thing, whether it was about books, films, music, art or whatever. You don't fool me.

Anyway, I compiled a list of authors, and then against each name, put the most important or famous book they'd written (if you've never made such a list, I recommend it as an intellectual exercise - it'll make you realise just how daunting it is trying to read all the books that are supposed to be classic or important or both). And I made a solemn vow that if I got well again, I'd keep up my end of the bargain.

As you can tell by the fact I'm telling this story in the present day, I didn't get better - I died alone and unmourned in a Morocco hotel room, and my body was shoved into the wardrobe of the room, the better to frighten the next inhabitant of the room. Or, rather: I got better, and returned to Blighty, and there, once I was strang enough to leave the house, and the urge to sleep non-stop, along with the infection, fled my body, I set about buying the books on the list. And then, more importantly, reading them.

I'm not going to name the authors or books involved (well, with one or two minor exceptions; see later), but a lot of the authors were male, a lot of them were reviewed as groundbreaking and important, and a lot of their books were either boring or self-indulgent or pointless or all of the above. Several of the books featured self-absorbed male characters (I won't call them protagonists, for reasons Robert McKee acolytes would understand), wandering from one joyless and cold sexual encounter to another, full of loathing for, and a baseless sense of superiority to, the world around them.

It was hard work reading these books, and whilst with some of them I struggled all the way to the end, it was after about ten such tomes that I developed my reading rule, which I live by to this day, and which I think is worth your considering as well, so I'll put it in bold here and now: If I'm not enjoying a book, I will stop reading it after 100 pages, or one-third of the book's overall length, whichever is the shorter. Obviously, we all define 'not enjoying a book' in differing ways, but I think there are common ways in which the lack of enjoyment manifests: not remembering the character's names, not remembering story details, not caring what's happened or what might happen to the characters, staring into space instead of reading, having to read pages over and over again, looking at the page numbers and figuring out how much further you've got to go... that sort of thing.

I know a lot of people feel that once they've started a book, they have to finish it, and some are even thoughtful enough to say that the author probably worked hard on it, so they feel obliged to do do. I don't feel this way - I think there's an implied agreement that the author will try to hold your interest, and if they fail to do that, you can leave - and anyway, there are so many good books in the world that I'll probably never get round to reading that I really can't afford to spend time on ones I consider to be ... let's say 'not good'.

Interestingly, the male authors tended to be the ones who interested me least, and after feeling things were improving a bit with The Bell Jar, I found that next on my list was To Kill A Mockingbird. And what a relief it was to read: likeable characters, a moral centre to it, a mystery element, courtroom drama, issues of race and prejudice, and an ending which came as a bit of a surprise, despite it being referred to early on (if you've read it, you'll know what - or rather who - I'm referring to). A brilliant book. That's how you do it.

For me, working my way through the list of 'great books' was a bit of a chore, and because of that, a revelation. I remember being told at college* that the 'canon' of good books was heavily influenced by F.R.Leavis (who we all know best from his appearance in the Bridget Jones film), and whether or not this is strictly accurate, I certainly learned that it doesn't always do to take other people's words for it about books.

Bearing in mind that I haven't posted in a while, only to return with what appears to be textual diarrhoea (perhaps appropriately, given the opening paragraphs), I'd like to try and find some message or conclusion to all this, maybe even a lesson or two, so here we go - what I learned:

- If you're unsure about your stomach's resilience, don't have salad in Morocco
- Read books because you want to, not because someone else insists you must (unless you're a student)
- Some classic books may be respected because of the step they made at the time, not how they read now
- The library is your friend (as is Project Gutenberg if you're techno-hip and modern), especially for relation to books you may only read once (if that)
- To Kill A Mockingbird is a fine book, and if you haven't read it, I heartily recommend it.

I hope this has been helpful.

*I was, on the other hand, told this by someone who believed that books were the one and only valid art form (forget about painting, photography, film, or music), so I should perhaps have taken the remark with a kilo or two of sodium chloride.

Canon And Balls

A few years ago, when on holiday in Morocco, I had a stomach upset.

Well, no, that's putting it mildly; on my return to Blighty, it was diagnosed as amoebic dysentery and an infection of the intestine, but what's relevant to this tale (which started charmingly, I think you'll agree) is the fact that it utterly scuppered my holiday and made me have to stay in my hotel room much of the time, visiting the bathroom literally dozens of times per day, and being unable to eat for a couple of days. Over the course of the ten days or so it lasted, I lost a stone and a half (but no, I would not recommend it as an approach to weight loss).

After a week or so of this, I'll cheerfully admit that my mental state was pretty strange; I was dehydrated and lacking in intellectual stimulation (you can only stare at the ceiling for so long before it starts getting boring - for me, about three days is my limit), and the vast majority of my interactions with other people (mainly hotel staff) were being conducted in French, leading to a slightly odd state where my mind was simultaneously translating my thoughts even as I was thinking them. In short, I was not a well chap.

They say that if you don't use it, you lose it, so I decided to stop the mental rot, and do a bit of writing. I started well, coming up with a pretty decent 'Elseworlds' Batman story (that is, a story based in a slightly different version of the Batman set-up), but that was about it for writing, until the wooziness and general illness passed again and I decided to make a deal with the universe.

Yes, you read that correctly. Don't ask me to explain it, just chalk it up to me being profoundly unwell.

So, I made a deal with the universe, which went pretty much like this: if the universe let me live, and get well again, I'd finally get round to reading the key books by all the 'big and important' authors. The ones I'd always pretended to have read, but really I was just bluffing based upon having seen them referred to in other places, or having read the back covers or other synopses. Don't look at me like that, you've done the same sort of thing, whether it was about books, films, music, art or whatever. You don't fool me.

Anyway, I compiled a list of authors, and then against each name, put the most important or famous book they'd written (if you've never made such a list, I recommend it as an intellectual exercise - it'll make you realise just how daunting it is trying to read all the books that are supposed to be classic or important or both). And I made a solemn vow that if I got well again, I'd keep up my end of the bargain.

As you can tell by the fact I'm telling this story in the present day, I didn't get better - I died alone and unmourned in a Morocco hotel room, and my body was shoved into the wardrobe of the room, the better to frighten the next inhabitant of the room. Or, rather: I got better, and returned to Blighty, and there, once I was strang enough to leave the house, and the urge to sleep non-stop, along with the infection, fled my body, I set about buying the books on the list. And then, more importantly, reading them.

I'm not going to name the authors or books involved (well, with one or two minor exceptions; see later), but a lot of the authors were male, a lot of them were reviewed as groundbreaking and important, and a lot of their books were either boring or self-indulgent or pointless or all of the above. Several of the books featured self-absorbed male characters (I won't call them protagonists, for reasons Robert McKee acolytes would understand), wandering from one joyless and cold sexual encounter to another, full of loathing for, and a baseless sense of superiority to, the world around them.

It was hard work reading these books, and whilst with some of them I struggled all the way to the end, it was after about ten such tomes that I developed my reading rule, which I live by to this day, and which I think is worth your considering as well, so I'll put it in bold here and now: If I'm not enjoying a book, I will stop reading it after 100 pages, or one-third of the book's overall length, whichever is the shorter. Obviously, we all define 'not enjoying a book' in differing ways, but I think there are common ways in which the lack of enjoyment manifests: not remembering the character's names, not remembering story details, not caring what's happened or what might happen to the characters, staring into space instead of reading, having to read pages over and over again, looking at the page numbers and figuring out how much further you've got to go... that sort of thing.

I know a lot of people feel that once they've started a book, they have to finish it, and some are even thoughtful enough to say that the author probably worked hard on it, so they feel obliged to do do. I don't feel this way - I think there's an implied agreement that the author will try to hold your interest, and if they fail to do that, you can leave - and anyway, there are so many good books in the world that I'll probably never get round to reading that I really can't afford to spend time on ones I consider to be ... let's say 'not good'.

Interestingly, the male authors tended to be the ones who interested me least, and after feeling things were improving a bit with The Bell Jar, I found that next on my list was To Kill A Mockingbird. And what a relief it was to read: likeable characters, a moral centre to it, a mystery element, courtroom drama, issues of race and prejudice, and an ending which came as a bit of a surprise, despite it being referred to early on (if you've read it, you'll know what - or rather who - I'm referring to). A brilliant book. That's how you do it.

For me, working my way through the list of 'great books' was a bit of a chore, and because of that, a revelation. I remember being told at college* that the 'canon' of good books was heavily influenced by F.R.Leavis (who we all know best from his appearance in the Bridget Jones film), and whether or not this is strictly accurate, I certainly learned that it doesn't always do to take other people's words for it about books.

Bearing in mind that I haven't posted in a while, only to return with what appears to be textual diarrhoea (perhaps appropriately, given the opening paragraphs), I'd like to try and find some message or conclusion to all this, maybe even a lesson or two, so here we go - what I learned:

- If you're unsure about your stomach's resilience, don't have salad in Morocco
- Read books because you want to, not because someone else insists you must (unless you're a student)
- Some classic books may be respected because of the step they made at the time, not how they read now
- The library is your friend (as is Project Gutenberg if you're techno-hip and modern), especially for relation to books you may only read once (if that)
- To Kill A Mockingbird is a fine book, and if you haven't read it, I heartily recommend it.

I hope this has been helpful.

*I was, on the other hand, told this by someone who believed that books were the one and only valid art form (forget about painting, photography, film, or music), so I should perhaps have taken the remark with a kilo or two of sodium chloride.

I Am Not Dead

... and nor is this blog, I assure you.

So, apologies to regular readers for the hiatus in updates - consider this, if you will, my summer holiday - and there will be a return to regular blogging soon.

After all, if I didn't post my idiotic and fleeting notions here, they'd just be lost to time and memory, and that simply would not do.

Thanks to those of you who've been so sweet as to send me a message asking if I'm okay - I assure you I most definitely am - it's just proving difficult to find time to blog in recent weeks. But that may change soon, and who knows what nonsensical thought-posting, its hour come round at last, slouches out of bedlam to be typed?

And That Explains Why Lol Creme (Of Godley and Creme) Never Signs His Text Messages

So, as Mrs S and I returned to the car after a bit of shopping the other day, a chap came up to me in the car park.

"I'd like to congratulate you on your parking."
"Sorry?"
"You scratched my car," he said, and gestured to a car which, I then realised, had been parked next to ours, but which was now slightly further away.
"Well, I'm sorry if I did, but I didn-"
"Just be more careful in future, all right?" he said, and then went away pretty quickly (leaving me to wonder if he was telling the entire truth about the alleged damage).

As Mrs Wife pointed out, it hardly seemed worth sticking around to make the point, and I also had doubts about the claim of damage (it had been close, yes, but when I'd got out of the car, my door had only touched that rubber strip thing which most modern cars have along their sides - for just that reason). But it also made me think about something which is relevant to writing, and certainly to life in general: the need to express yourself clearly.

I'd been thrown off by his opening gambit because it just hadn't made any sense to me, coming as it did from a rather obtuse angle and then suddenly switching to the main point. I mean, I know full well that a great way to throw an argument a bit off track is to shift from discussing the opinions at the heart of it to the method of discussion ("look, you don't have to shout, all right?" etc), but if you're trying to make a point to someone in the first place I think it's probably key to express that pretty clearly.

I think we've probably all had experience of disagreements which begin with you being wrong-footed by a bewildering opening - something like "I think you've got something to tell me, don't you?" - which kind of leaves you feeling a few minutes behind as you try to catch up and figure out what you're supposed to be discussing, or what you've allegedly done; I guess that's partly due to the fact that the person initiating the (ahem) discussion has had more time to mull it over in their mind and try to figure out the sharpest and snarkiest angle of attack - which lets you know that they're not happy, though not necessarily what they're not happy about. Which probably isn't the ideal way to communicate.

In a similar fashion, I often find myself slightly bewildered by slang and text-speak and the like, which is obviously a sign that I'm an old fart, but I think that sometimes it almost seems like the point of the slang is less about getting your point over, and more to be seen to be using zOMG, LOL, dat, 2day, and the like. In this situation, I guess the medium, or at least the method of communication, becomes the message.

You see slang and invented languages used a fair amount of fiction, too; A Clockwork Orange is a pretty good example, though if memory serves that gradually adds more and more of the invented lingo until you suddenly realise, towards the end of the book, that most of it is in Nadsat. Quite a lot of books written in not-quite English (or at least, not quite English as we know it today) are off-putting to the reader, and are often reviewed with comments to the effect that 'persevering pays off', though I think there may be an argument to be made that in the opening stages of a book, care should be taken not to alienate the reader; it's a case of setting out your stall or being on your best behaviour in the early stages of a relationship, to my mind, though of course you don't want to make your beginning so smooth and easy that it misleads about what's to follow (whilst I haven't read beyond the first Harry Potter book, I gather that the series gets darker as time goes on, and deals with far less innocent stuff), or so cautiously tailored to avoid alienating anyone that it ends up appealing to no-one.

I guess the point of all this rumination is that there's some truth to the idea (which I'm not claiming to have originated) that the quality of your communication is the degree to which it's understood; if you want to be understood clearly, so that you can proceed (with your story or argument or whatever), I guess the key thing is to rein in any tendency to elaborate or approach from a clever angle, and just to get to the heart of the matter as directly as possible.

I'm reminded of Samuel Johnson's advice about writing, which I think applies: "Read over your compositions and, when you meet a passage which you think is particularly fine, strike it out."

...Which also goes to explain why so many of my blog posts are published as written. Hmm.

Abnormal Service Will Be Resumed Soon

Apologies for the lack of updates in the last few days, I'm hurrying to get an entry together for this - why not have a go yourself, if you're not already doing so?

Anyway, back soon - in the meantime, nano-blogging takes place on my Twitter account, if you're that keen on seeing what's inside my head at random stages during the day.

Am I Telling You About A Writing Opportunity, Or Just Finding A Way To Justify Using This Picture, Which I Find Aesthetically Pleasing?

The answer is, of course, both.

Anyway, instead of biting your nails with anticipation for the shortlist for the Alibi Crime Writing Competition (you did enter, right?), why not put your fingers to more productive (or, at least, creative) use by entering the Perfectly Formed Short Story Competition, being run by Waterstones, Pan Macmillan and the Arvon Foundation.

Stories can be in any genre as long as they're under 2000 words, though (the opposite to the BBC writing Academy) if you've had fiction professionally published you're not allowed to enter.

The prizes seem pretty good - the winning story'll be published in a forthcoming issue of Books Quarterly, Waterstones's promotional magazine, and you get to go to a lunch with some folks from Pan Macmillan and on a week-long Arvon course (all about writing and the like), as well as winning some Pan Macmillan books. There are a couple of runner-up prizes too.

So, worth a go - nice short wordcount, and with online entry, you don't even have to buy a stamp.

Full details at the link above, or, if you can't be bothered to sweep your mouse up the page a bit, then here it is again, lazybones: tch, you appal me.

EDITED TO ADD: Oops, forgot to say, the closing date is 1 July. I appal me.

I Am Now Max Clifford

One of the problems facing writers is their anonymity; the old joke in Hollywood used to be that an airhead actress was so keen to further her career that she slept with the screenwriter.

And in a way, it remains that way to this day; for every Jo Rowling or Stephen King that you might recognise, there are a hundred writers who you wouldn't recognise if you tripped over them in the street (where, I guess, they'd be lying due to the writerly tendency to seek solace in the bottle, but that's a subject for another time).

And of course there are the Salingers of this world who actively avoid publicity and camera lenses - fine for writers, but not the sort of thing you can really do if you want to be an actor or member of a band (The Residents and The Art Of Noise have dedicated, but let's face it limited, fanbases).

It's an inevitable consequence of being the one who puts the words into the heads or mouths of other people, of course, but in an increasingly personality-driven age, where celebrity (of no matter how nanoscopic a level) is the great leg-up to success, what can a writer do to increase their chances? What, what, what?

I'm glad you asked that question. I've been thinking about this a lot, and in fact I spent the whole of last night looking through my collection of Grazia and love it magazines, and I think I've figured out two of the best ways to get famous quick. They seem to work across a whole bunch of forms of entertainment, so I don't see any good reason why they shouldn't help writers (then again, I am an idiot).

Anyway.

1) Have a tragic story to tell

Maybe it's schadenfreude, or maybe it's schwarzwalder kirschtorte, but people love to hear tales of terrible tragedy. If your parents kept you in a sack in a box in the cellar even though they lived in a bungalow, then you shouldn't shy away from writing or talking about it.

In all honesty, even if you didn't have a tough childhood, you shouldn't be afraid to make it up like James Frey did. Once you've sold millions of books, you might have to apologise, but by then you've banked the money, and apologising on the Oprah show is all the more bearable when you can go home to your gold-plated mansion in the Caribbean.

Be careful not to go too far, though; whilst we all know that the audience for tragic memoirs is always keen to hear more tales of childhood neglect and abuse, know the limits: claiming to have beaten to death by a cruel step-parent might make your offering of a manuscript hard to swallow, as might getting too far into the world of make-believe; only the most gullible of publishers would stick 'Non-Fiction' on the back of the cover of your memoir of how you suffered in Narnia under the Snow Queen, or how your home in Helm's Deep was affected by a nearby battle.

2) Claim there was chemistry between you

This is an old showbiz trick, often used in films - if the film isn't getting very good reviews, a few well-placed leaks about some on-set shenanigans between the leads can help increase press coverage. Obviously, this is rather dependent on the film - Two Weeks [sic] Notice and, more recently, The Bounty Hunter saved a lot of money they'd have had to spend on marketing by pretending the leads had "more than just on-screen chemistry, know what I mean, nudge nudge", but it's less believable when stated of the cast of Monsters Inc, and so blindingly obvious as to not even be worthy of claiming about the cast of Suburban Shagfest 3 - Spank You Very Much.

However, to do this you'll need to have someone to claim to have chemistry with. This is fine if you're married co-writers like Nicci French, very wrong if you write with a family member like PJ Tracy, but as most writers work alone, to avoid accusations of being in love with yourself (an allegation often levelled at more solipsistic writers, who tend to be at the literary end of the scale, or bloggers), it's best to find someone else in the process to pretend to have been having an affair with.

For many writers, this will have to be an agent or editor, though this of course means you have to have been accepted (and not in that way) by them prior to this stage; it's not likely to help your submission very much if the query letter has a PS saying "if you take me on I will do things which are illegal in several EU countries" unless you're very confident both of your manuscript and of your own attractiveness, regardless of whoever opens the submission. And you'd probably need to send a picture to prove your point. A nice one, tastefully lit. With the top button undone, just to make sure. Yeah, you look good like that. Oh yeah baby, you know what I like. Uh-huh.

Um, seem to have strayed from the point a bit there, but if you're going to go down the chemistry route (either real or faked), it's probably best if you, or the person you're working with, is a known quantity to the world at large. In most writing instances, that's not likely, and even if it is the case, it may not work - Marilyn Monroe married Arthur Miller, but if she saw it as a way to get a foot in the door of writing plays, it doesn't seem to have worked.

Anyway, those are my two theories, and if you give either of them a go, do let me know how you get on. You might think I've made a mistake by telling you how to do it, but I've already started to use these approaches as a leg-up into being published, and am hanging round literary agents' offices with my shirt unbuttoned down to the waist. And if that doesn't work, I plan to write a misery memoir about my traumatic years spent trying to make it as a writer.

All the bases covered there, I like to think.

Learn From My (Almost) Mistakes

So, on Tuesday night, the external hard-drive thingy attached to my computer died. It's a cute little thing, about the size of a passport and about 300Gb, and thus the ideal place for me to store all my music and video files and the like (not to mention my writing).

But the computer suddenly stopped acknowledging the drive even existed, and so iTunes and other programmes were looking for information that wasn't there. Yeek.

The fortunate timing for me was that this drive-death had happened within hours of me backing everything up onto another, bigger drive, so after buying another portable drive I was able to get things pretty much back to where they'd been. Okay, time and a bit of money wasted, but a small price to pay in comparison with losing all my tunes and videos. As the Young Ones put it, "Phew! That was close!"

Anyway, I'm telling you this not just because I treat this blog like some kind of online confessional/notebook, but also because the moral of my tale is one which has been said many times before, by better folks than I, time and time again: back up your stuff.

They often say you never know when a drive's going to die, but the chances are that it'll be when it's least convenient for you (not in my case, but I've always been a freak), so save your stories, assignments or whatnot in a good location, and then save them again somewhere else.

If you've got a Mac, there's the Time Machine software; if you're signed up to Windows Live, you can use their 'Skydrive' facility to stash stuff online, or there are other services such as Dropbox which offer free online storage and access (and if you use that link, we both get an extra 250Mb free space), or you could just use plug-in external HDs or memory sticks or whatever you prefer.

But I strongly urge you to back stuff up, and get a routine going to do so, so that you can avoid the possibility that, as mine did the other night, your stomach suddenly goes cold as you realise that you may have lost all your funky music and draft writing...

BBC Writers Academy - 2010 Applications Invited

If you're interested in writing for TV, chances are you've already heard about this, but if not...

The BBC Writers Academy application process for this year opens today, and if you get one of the (up to) eight places, you'll get a pretty cracking grounding in writing for TV, particularly Continuing Drama (which covers programmes such as EastEnders, Holby City and Casualty).

You need to have a drama credit - and that means a paid commission for stage, screen or radio - and to submit a sample script as well as the application form etc, by 5 May 2010. There are, as I say, only a handful of places, but it's a terrific opportunity to learn about writing in a professional environment, and that certainly can't hurt.

Full details are available here, and there's a transcipt of the recent BBC Continuing Drama Q&A session here - wherein I spot that an online drama credit, as long as you've been paid by someone else for it, also makes you eligible to apply. Groovy.

Anyway, as I'm not yet in possession of a drama credit, I can't apply, but if you are and you do, please let me know how you get on, eh ?