Musings from the mind

Changing Times

It’s been a long time since I’ve done anything here. You know how life is sometimes, illness, the daily grind, virus’s and lockdown. I did okay during lockdown, mentally. Being autistic, isolation doesn’t bother me, in fact I prefer it to being with people. It was lovely having legislation telling me that I mustn’t try to ‘get out more’ as people often say to autistic folks like me. I felt vindicated and savoured every moment of it. I’m aware lots of people didn’t do well with the enforced isolation and that’s a shame, but I loved it.

Now we find ourselves facing horrendous fuel price hikes, empty shelves in stores because the lorry drivers are quitting in droves, and hardship looming. I’m already going through the process of working out which appliances I can switch off and do without, what foods I can eat that don’t need cooking, and how to keep warm. My mother would say, “it reminds me of the war.” I’m not quite that old. I was 60 a week ago, but I’m not old enough to remember wartime unless you count the Falklands. I wouldn’t mind betting that all elderly grandma’s and grandpa’s are now finding themselves in demand with the rest of us wanting to learn how to get by on nothing and not go mad.

I’ve written two more books since I was last here, another Sinclair V-Log entitled, The Vazien Paradox, and a paranormal novel called 1438 – diary of a shadow man. I’m a few pages short of finishing another V-Log which has a working title of Glowstone. With the time it takes to edit, format, etc, it should be available late spring.

Over the past six months or so, my presence on social media has drastically reduced. This is not a conscious decision on my part, it just happened naturally. I find it too political, too backstabby, and too woke. There’s no chat anymore, no one says hello like they did on the old Myspace I remember with love. If you comment on something, you lose your kneecaps, and people are still posting the same old conspiracies as ever and I’m left wondering if there’s anyone sane left. The spelling and grammar are worse every day, and everyone has something to sell that’s not worth the price. It’s a big yawn nowadays.

The world is crazier than ever. Russia is invading Ukraine, North Korea still hates everyone, America still loves itself, Trump is still orange, and Boris’s hair would give Giorgio Tsukalos a run for his money. Volcanoes are erupting around the world, we’ve had hurricane force winds here in the south of England (thankfully my little area didn’t get any damage), but a few lives were lost, sadly. We’ve ruined our planet beyond our ability to repair it and now we have no choice but to stare our own extinction in the eyes as it hurtles towards us. Elon won’t get us to Mars in time, NASA don’t give a shit, and any sensible aliens passing by would be well advised to put their foot down hard and get right out of here sharpish.

Every night I try to find one positive thing about the day I’ve just lived and it’s getting harder every day to find anything positive. What have I achieved today? I’ll get back to you on that.

On what to do when I die

It’s been a while since I blogged here. There’s no specific reason for that, other than the fact that I don’t get a lot of readers here. That’s probably my fault for not blogging often enough, not being interesting enough, not being famous or controversial etc. It’s a vicious circle; don’t blog because not many stop by and read, but folks don’t stop by because there’s no new blogs. Chicken and egg. I do often think, “oh I should really do a blog,” but then struggle to think what to blog about. It’s as if I’ve lost some enthusiasm for it over the past months. I’ve lost enthusiasm for quite a lot lately, not just blogging. Maybe it’s the time of year, or my age, or both.

I’ve had some minor but irritating health issues, which are still being a nuisance today and which have sapped my zest a bit. I have another cat who is very high maintenance in all sorts of ways and he takes a lot of my mental energy. I’ve had a period of writer’s block too, which has lasted quite a while and although I’ve made a conscious effort not to worry about it, it’s been niggling at the back of my mind. At least this last problem now seems to  have passed, as I’m once again thundering away at the keys, writing volume five in my Sinclair V-Logs series. One bit of good news amongst the grey fog of daily drudge.

I had a conversation with someone earlier today, about the afterlife and what we think might happen ‘over there.’ I decided some time ago, as a firm believer in reincarnation, that I am fully committed to never coming back again to live another life. This past fifty five years has put me right off ever doing this again, so I shall be fighting tooth and nail to avoid the draft again. We cannot know of course, whether coming back is voluntary or compulsory, but I’m taking no chances on that. Then there is the ‘moving on’ thing people talk about. Those who believe in another form of existence after this physical one, and I admit to being one of those believers, refer to this ‘movin on’ a lot.

Scientifically speaking, consciousness is electrical and electro magnetic energy and is measurable in laboratories. Scanners can show thoughts being formed inside the brain and emotions being felt. If you know anything about the conservation of energy theory, you’ll know that energy can never be destroyed. Since our consciousness is energy it must continue in some form once released from the bonds of the physical vessel in which it currently resides. We can only assume that the energy of our consciousness continues in some other dimensional, non physical plane. The transition from this dense, physical existence, to whatever, purely energy based dimension our surviving energies go to, is what is being referred to when people talk about ‘moving on.’

My dilemma is that, as a believer in reincarnation, I cannot know whether agreeing to ‘move on’ to this other plane is taken as agreement to return to another physical life. The risk of letting myself in for something I can totally do without means the only safe option for me is not to ‘move on’ at all but to hang around the fringes of this physical world and find what positive employment for my time as I’m able. When you think about it, there must be a lot of fun to be had messing with the living. Scaring the shit out of people must be a huge laugh; I can just imagine myself stomping along landings, slamming doors, and blowing in folks’ ears.

I’m a fast learner when I’m enjoying what I do, so if I work hard, I could become a much feared poltergeist and have paranormal teams flocking to catch my image on film. I might finally become famous after all. Shame it’s not for my novels though.

Bystander Syndrome – the modern version

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We’ve all heard about it, people staring at someone in difficulty and not raising a finger to help. When I was a kid it was called Bystander Syndrome and despite everyone agreeing what an awful thing it is, most are guilty of it. I’ve been on the receiving end of it myself. I was attacked in the street when I was sixteen by a stalker and no one helped me. I’ve heard people saying, “oh let’s not get involved, pretend we didn’t notice.”

The modern version of this is Bystander-With-Camera Syndrome. We’ve all seen the videos and photographs on social media. The crimes being committed, the accidents happening, the embarrassing moments, and we all laugh, cry, or are shocked together. Never do I see anyone commenting as to why the person was filming when they could’ve been helping. Now, instead of just pretending you haven’t noticed and slinking away, you get out your smartphone and brazenly film that young girl being beaten to death, or the man being killed, or the dead body of the dog that was hanged by a group of youths.

I wish I knew the reason why people do this. Surely it is better to be regarded as a hero for helping out, rather than the sicko that filmed it and didn’t help, or am I missing a vital point?

The added twist nowadays is the obligatory social media post, which usually goes something like this.

‘This sicko killed this dog. Let’s share this photo all over Facebook so that poor creature can have justice.’

Forgive me for being a tad dense but how the fuck does sharing the photograph over social media bring justice? So you believe the victim deserves justice eh? Then why aren’t you phoning the police instead of filming it or sharing it over social media? Do you really believe that Mark Zuckerberg is going to take all your shares and magically jail the sickos?

I really fail to understand the mentality of the amoeboid sludge that inhabits this planet in the guise of intelligent life.

Mourning the loss of honesty

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It seems that every day I have reason to be a little more dismayed at how rare a thing honesty is. Everyone is out to screw you somehow, to part you from your money without thought to the quality of what they’re offering in return. Be it goods or services, quality is at an all time low today and I am constantly amazed at the generally shoddy quality of everything offered to me by individuals and large conglomerates alike.

Am I the only one left alive who still strives for excellence? Am I the only perfectionist left on planet Earth? Not that anything I create or do is perfect, but I STRIVE for it, I genuinely want it for everything I ‘put out there.’ Everyone else it seems, is either just too lazy to bother doing something well, not good enough at what they’re doing to do it well, or they knowingly don’t give a shit and actively try to get away with the worst possible quality for the highest possible price.

Today’s consumers are not entirely blameless either. They routinely accept shoddy workmanship and are happy to receive bad quality goods or services. Everyone is creating some crap for sale these days and it’s all badly made and over priced. I’ve seen some horrific shit for sale on Facebook, shit I’d be embarrassed to offer for sale. Companies big and small are expecting more from their customers and yet provide less and less themselves. No one seems to take a pride in producing quality goods and offering quality services anymore. We’re dumbing down in all areas of life and I for one do not approve.

I want a tattoo. I want a small design with some writing encircling it. Simple you may say. Yes, but they can’t do it unless I produce a photograph of the design I want for them. I’m not a qualified graphic designer with access to Adobe Photoshop software and I don’t know anyone who is/does. Not only must I produce the full design for them but they still expect me to pay them for doing it? What the actual fuck?

Twenty years ago, ten years ago, this would have not happened. The human race is no longer evolving. It’s going backwards and will soon be climbing right back up into the trees again.

The passing of the pen

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Since man first began recording his language in written form, the pen has been an integral part of life. Whether that pen take the form of stone tools, wooden sticks, paintbrushes, quills or what we recognise as a pen today, man has used an implement for marking down a physical representation of the sounds he makes when he speaks. When I was a girl, there was no way life could continue as normal if pens and pencils suddenly disappeared from the face of the Earth.

When I was at junior school, we were taught to write with pencils, with the promise of graduating to pens when we ‘went up’ to senior school. It was a signal that you’d grown up when you used a pen at school instead of a pencil. The other important right of passage was going from what our teachers called, script, which was non joined up (non cursive) writing, to ‘joined up’ (cursive). I can remember one of my first year senior school teachers commenting to me her surprise that I was not yet writing ‘joined up’ like the other kids, and how embarrassed I was.

Part of our learning was concerned with the physical act of writing. We were taught to write neatly, how to do the little tails on the lower case letter a and how to form a proper lower case s. It was regarded as important back then, when writing and writing implements were an essential part of life. No one ever imagined things would change.

Not so now.

For the first time since man hunkered down in caves and grunted to each other, we live our lives without pens. We have laptops, tablets, ipads, desktops, smartphones but no pens. Thankfully we do still need to understand written language, but we don’t actually write it any more, and that is sad. The standard of written language I see every day on social media is appalling, with text speak making up the majority of it. It seems the vowel is fast becoming extinct as our way of expressing ourselves evolves. Even our kids use keypads at kindergarten.

What’s even sadder is that no one seems to mourn the passing of the pen. Fountain pens are now sought after as collectors items and few shops sell them.  They are thought of as intriguingly retro, humorously victorian, and fascinatingly steampunk, but never useful. No longer will you see a man with a small blue stain on the bottom of the breast pocket of his shirt, nor anyone with a similar blue stain on the inside tip of their middle finger. Most probably won’t even understand what I mean by that last sentence. Those few writers who do still write with pen and paper are thought of as weird. We smile at their funny habit that prevents them from writing as fast as the rest of us. This should not be so. Using a pen takes time. As you write, you think about what you’re writing. That investment of thought means you have a real ‘connection’ with what you’ve written, more so than you ever do with typed words. It’s a subtle thing, but profound.

We can’t move backwards. Nor can we un-invent technology. We can however, make an effort to keep hold of what is important, and the ability to write down your language is more important than you know, especially in this nuclear age. Just think, if they drop the bomb and we lose all our technology, how are you all going to survive if you have no pens and don’t know how to use them?

On becoming a superhero

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Are you a woman under fifty? If so, prepare to receive a surprise gift on your fiftieth birthday. This gift is something you may have spent your younger years wishing for, and believing you could never have. It is however, something you will find out is nowhere near as cool as you think it would be. I love a superhero movie as much as the next person, and have often thought it might be cool to fly like Superman or Ironman, have X-ray eyes, or the power to become invisible. Well you can become invisible, and you won’t have to undergo any horrible painful tests,  there will be no need to drink a nasty tasting concoction, and no scary injections of dreadful chemical mixtures. What must you do, I hear you cry? It’s simple, just be a woman over fifty.

This phenomenon creeps up on you without you realising until it’s too late and then, bam, you’re invisible with no way back. Like a spectre you glide into crowded rooms unseen by those present until you throw a cup across the room and scream. You queue in stores and fast food joints and when finally you get to the front of the line, the sales person looks right through you and serves the guy behind you. Your fifty plus year old joints complain more and more, but you will never get a seat on a bus because no one knows you’re there.

Hoping to get yourself a younger toy boy? Forget it sister. Unless you walk down the street stark naked, singing a falsetto rendition of The Ballad of Bilbo Baggins to get their attention, Most men will cease to notice you. There are some men who will notice you, but that will most likely be for all the wrong reasons. The fat, balding, paunchy, toothless, beer swilling, farting sofas will notice you, but only because they know that the younger and better looking chicks won’t give them the time of day. They’re trying to ‘settle for second best’ by trying it on with the invisible older women, and assume said women will be grateful for the attention.

I turned 53 a couple of weeks ago, and I’ve been aware of my superhero status for a few years now. My 83 year old mother and I have discussed this topic often and she reports to having noticed the same thing happening to her from middle age. She also informs me that this superhero status, once gained, is permanent. Once invisible, you can never hope to be seen again.  You are doomed to wander through your winter years like a ghost wandering a lofty mansion, the occasional grunt or shriek to shock people into wondering what the hell that noise was, and if their house is haunted?

This new found ability does have one or two advantages though, that help to temper the shock and disappointment. No longer must you spend hours wondering what to wear. No longer do you have to spend hours applying layers of make up. You don’t even have to bother shaving your chin or plucking your eyebrows anymore. Your middle aged spread can wobble unashamedly, and you can relax about the diet. After all, you’re now way passed such concerns. No, your priorities now are tracking down cut price life insurance deals, funeral plans, and dealing with bladder problems. The younger generation don’t know how sweet their life is, do they?

But of course, this is what society wants us to believe.

Why should we suddenly become invisible? What is wrong with our society, that a woman who has worked hard bringing up children, working, caring for elderly parents and useless husbands, is rewarded for her efforts with indifference and a yawn? Without us, the younger generation would not exist to enjoy the life they take far too much for granted, so why can’t they be grateful? Because that is the way of life today, that’s why. Old is a dirty word, something to be afraid of and avoided at all costs. In choosing not to notice us, they are admitting their fear of confronting their own mortality and the march of time. We cannot all be Judi Dench and Helen Mirren, with enough money to hire clever people who can help us come out from behind our cloak of invisibility. Most of us just have to accept that we no longer exist, and some of us will end our days alone, not found for weeks. Our mouldering corpses will still be sitting in front of the tv and finally, for a moment, we will no longer be invisible. The younger generation will shake their heads and mutter, “What a shame, how could an old person go unnoticed like that.”

Its seems the only way to stop this unwanted new superhero ability, is to become the neighbourhood weirdo, the crazy cat lady at the end of the street, the old bat who talks to her plants and probably has a body hidden in the cellar, “so the guy in bar told me.” Not all of us fancy any of those roles for ourselves. Most of us would like to be just as visible as we were when we were thirty years younger. We’re not asking for wolf whistles, (although that might be nice once in a while), we don’t want to be thought of as man eating cougars or new age converts embracing veganism. We want to be ordinary women, just like always. We want a smile, a nod, a “good morning.”

Is that really beyond the realms of possibility for a civilised society?

Cyber Abuse – why does it happen and what do we do about it?

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The internet is a wonderful tool in so many ways, and there is no doubt that it largely enhances our lives.  From online shopping which makes daily life for the disabled or isolated, much easier, to educational information available to everyone, to online business opportunities, it opens life up to us in ways we never realised were closed before.

As with most things in life however, there is a darker side to the internet, and it seems to be gaining in strength.  There have been several high profile instances of cyber bullying and general aggressiveness, the latest of which is the abuse suffered by Stan Collymore, the retired English football player.  He has been on the receiving end of racial abuse, mainly via twitter, which has escalated into death threats and all sorts of other horrors.

There are two questions that spring to mind immediately.  Why do people do this and what can we do about it?

The first of these questions is multi-faceted, but simple to answer – because it’s anonymous.  You don’t have to identify yourself truthfully anywhere on the internet, and this allows you the safety to behave in ways you would never dream of otherwise.  You can call yourself any name you can think of, you can put any random photo on your profile, and no one need know who you really are.  This is extremely empowering, especially for those people who are socially introverted, and/or too afraid to take part in what used to be called ‘normal social situations.’

Suddenly, we can now spit forth all of the darkest horrors that dwell deep within the most animalistic region of our minds, and which we tend to keep locked away when we have to physically interact with people.  No one in their right mind would walk down the street, see a black skinned ex footballer, and yell the N word at the top of their voice.  The chances are that the aforementioned would come over and nut you one if you did.  We all know this, and, not wishing to invite fisticuffs with another person who might hurt us far more than we are able to hurt him/her, we keep our mouths shut and our kneecaps intact.

Get on the internet however, and suddenly those risks are not there anymore.  We no longer have to risk getting a black eye or broken nose, we can be as horrible as we like and be totally confident that we will always get away with it.  That gives us all a lot of power, but it is a power that causes nothing but pain.

I think there are several underlying causes of this upswing in anonymous aggression.  Firstly, our societies are terribly over populated and our territorial boundaries are being invaded every day as more and more housing goes up, gardens get smaller and more people are being housed in apartments without even a balcony, let alone a garden.  We now have more neighbours, far more closer to us than ever before and we are forced to live in far too close a proximity to everyone else.  Everyone likes their own space, but when your own space is not much bigger than your own footprint, it has a detrimental psychological effect, so much so that there is now a new educational discipline called Environmental Psychology.  People can now study the effects of overcrowding and the way it affects us.

This enforced crowding, leads me to the second reason.  The closer we are forced to live with our neighbours, and the less personal space we are allowed, makes us withdraw from social interaction more than we would have done fifty years ago, in order to try to get some time away from all these people so close around.  This withdrawal does nothing to enhance or develop our social or interpersonal skills, and subsequent generations are much less effective at what I call, compassionate social interaction than people of my parents’ generation was.

Given our dwindling ability to interact in a compassionate way, the dwindling of our personal space, and the enforced ‘close proximity living’ we are all experiencing, the type of interaction offered us by the internet, with it’s anonymity, makes cyber abuse bound to happen.  We now have a platform on which to vent all of the pent up feelings our lives cause us, and knowing that we can say whatever we want without anyone having to know who we are, the temptation to vent forth with our most vicious feelings is too strong for many to resist.

So what can we do about it?

This is a hard one, and one that does not have a simple answer.  We should encourage our younger generation to interact physically more than they do, limit their time on the internet so that real interaction becomes the norm for them, and give them other opportunities to vent their feelings in a way that does not involve hurting anyone else.  Ideally we would all have the opportunity to live in slightly larger personal spaces than we now do, but unless there happens to be a sudden pandemic anytime soon, we are doomed to live shoulder to shoulder with our neighbours.  Education is very important and often overlooked in this particular arena.  Those who have spent many years being educated to a high standard, have not only showed that they have high self discipline, necessary for study, but they often have life goals that involve getting out into the world and doing something with their time and skills.  Under educated inner city no-go area housing estates are often filled with people who have not had such a good education and who have practically no job prospects.  They have more free time in which to sit around and get bored, due to not having a high standard of living, and the temptation to spend hours daily on the internet, and using it as an outlet for all of their woes, is very high.

We need to be teaching the younger generation how to be a compassionate social person in a high density society.  This is where we can blame the parents – us, for not having done our job properly.  Human nature is naturally compassionate, to a degree, but we are also naturally competitive and want to be better than the next guy.  We are capable of great violence and as kids, we need to be taught how to control our selfish urges and live in harmony with others.  With all the educational, racial, cultural and religious differences between us and our neighbours in our new borderless societies, we need to learn how to live and let live.  It doesn’t come naturally, it needs to be learned and we haven’t taught this to our kids.

When it comes to social media, those in charge of these sites need to jump on any wrong doing quickly and deal with it, and this is where they are falling behind.  In all of the recent high profile cases, the social media site(s) involved have done nothing about the abuse.  This needs to change, especially as there have been several suicides resulting from cyber abuse.  The problem for us as users is that we are almost totally powerless to force their hands.  We can email, tweet, post etc demanding they toughen up, but 99% of people, while agreeing, won’t bother to get involved, (another demonstration of today’s lack of compassion for others).

I’ve had a few nasty comments on facebook over the years I’ve been involved with it, and my response is always to go public with it.  I copy and paste the comment, with the person’s name, and let all my followers see it.  I respond not with aggression, but with honesty and openness and show the world who this person is.  Hopefully the ensuing embarrassment will help them to decide not to do it again.  If I get a reputation for always showing the world what you’ve said to me, the chances are you will try to make sure what you say to me is not abusive.  That’s my opinion anyway, and however flawed it may be, it works for me.

I hope Stan Collymore gets the result he deserves, and I hope the twitter bigwigs get off their fat asses and tighten up their response to such crap.  In an ideal world this shit would not happen, but this is not an ideal world, because people live on it.

4 Simple truths to keep you on track

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Being an author is, in many ways, strange.  You’d think it would simple; you write down what’s in your head, and after tidying it up and obeying all the normal ‘rules of good writing’ you publish it.  Physically that’s all you have to do and it’s easy, but there are all sorts of emotions that go with being a writer, and they often seem to be at opposite ends of the extreme.

On the one hand, you are happy and fulfilled that you have managed to create something tangible from something so abstract.  Thoughts, feelings and ideas have become a physical thing you can hold in your hands, and that’s amazing.  Then you have disappointment that people aren’t falling over themselves to read it, that people aren’t as amazed by it as you are, and that they don’t gush over it all the time.

Sometimes, other emotions come in and mix everything up and you have turmoil for a while.  Sometimes you feel like giving up and never writing again, other times you wonder what planet everyone else is on because they can’t see what a magnificent and world changing creation you’ve just brought into being.  As an author, you will experience them all, you will swing through the whole arc of these emotions, and many others.  The trick is to keep a few basic truths at the forefront of your mind.

Motive Why do you write?  There is only one right answer to this question, and unless you give the right answer, you will never be at peace with your life as an author.  The right answer is, “because I have to.”  If you answer that you want to make money or get famous, impress your friends, or because it’s therapy for you, then my advice is simple; stop writing.  Writing to get rich just will not work.  Yes you may make a little but you won’t make a long lasting income from this type of writing.  There are many of this type of writer out there; just think of those times when famous books have come out, such as 50 shades, Harry Potter etc.  The moment these came out, there were suddenly thousands of people out there suddenly writing erotica or young adult fantasy.  This is bandwagon writing, and any success will be short, sharp and temporary.  Flashes in the pan go out of fashion even quicker than they come into fashion, and when they drop off the radar, you will go with it and believe me, readers have very short memories.  You will be forgotten very quickly when everyone  has jumped  onto the new bandwagon, whatever that may be, and any income will dry up.  Bandwagon writing doesn’t have the staying power necessary to ensure you slowly but surely gain a steady and loyal following for your work, which is solid, dependably good quality, and true  to the genre you were meant to write in, which tends not to be the one that is the latest fad.  If you know in your bones that you need to write historical drama, then don’t write erotica, fantasy or any other of the latest fashion, (unless of course the latest fashion happens to be historical drama).  If you write true to way your brain and soul are wired, your work will have that spark of authenticity that will be missing from anything you churn out just because it’s fashionable at the moment and you want to make a few quid.

Perspective It really doesn’t matter if you don’t get rich or famous.  If you write with the proper motive, then your goal will be to produce an excellent quality work that anyone who reads will enjoy.  Making money or becoming well known, should not be part of your goals, as they detract from producing top quality work.  Those goals produce lower quality work that is churned out quickly, is often much shorter in length, (many bandwagon authors typically write books less than 40k words), their covers are the same as all the others and badly produced, and the work itself is just dead boring and badly edited to boot.  Of course there are good quality books and stories of less than 40k words, in case anyone is thinking of sending me dog turds through the mail, but many of the bandwagon authors write short stuff.  This is because they aren’t writing true to the write genre for them, and therefore they can’t find adequate creativity to make it longer.  Another reason is so they can churn out more stuff, more quickly and keep their name out there.  Once you let go of the desire to get rich and famous, and concentrate all of your focus on just writing top quality stuff in the right genre for you, the quality of your ideas will go up tremendously.  If you want to be sure of making money writing, join a newspaper.

Originality This is really joined at the hip with motive.  Jumping on any bandwagon will not allow you to be original in your creativity, because the need to churn out the same stuff all the time prevents you from being able to let your mind wander where it really wants to.  There are only so many ways to write about vampires, zombies, dragon riding knights of old and cheap sex, and it all  becomes old very quickly.  Be original, write something new that no one has yet thought of and you can be the trendsetter rather than a wagon rider.  It’s much more fun writing something totally new, than churning out the same boring shit everyone else is churning out just because you all want to make some money.  Forget the money and write something that’s in your soul, no matter if it’s fashionable or not.

The Tough Question This one is simple; do you actually have the talent to write?  If the only way you can produce anything at all, is if you follow the crowd and produce the same 20k erotica that everyone else is producing, but the thought of writing a 100k science fiction or historical drama, crime drama, epic fantasy etc horrifies you and makes your mind go blank and flaccid, then you’re probably not cut out to be a writer.  Be truthful when answering the tough question, and if you discover you’ll not likely to make a writer as long as your asshole points downwards, take a deep breath and find something else to do that you are capable of doing well, do it to the best of your ability, and be better than anyone else at it.  There are far too many people trying to be writers, who aren’t writers of quality and who really shouldn’t be doing it.  Don’t be a mediocre flash in the pan who is quickly forgotten when the fashion changes, do what you are good at and excel at it.

These four simple truths, if answered correctly, will help keep you focussed during the down times when your emotions are taking a dip.  When you haven’t made a sale in a few weeks and feel worthless, remember these truths, answer them again and get your focus back on track.  Treat them like a self inflicted kick up the backside when you need it most and they will help you move away from all the wrong mindsets that try to misdirect you on your path, whether that path be as a writer or not.

A few personal updates

Mother has now gone back home to Cornwall after her three week visit, and it’s nice to have a tidy flat once again.  Much as I love her, she’s a messy cow and my home quickly becomes a pigsty with her around.  She’s always been an untidy person, and now she’s getting on in years, she employs a cleaner, so she never has to suffer the consequences of her slovenliness.  She says I’m obsessive but I’m so totally not, I’m  just  much cleaner than she is.  They say two can live as cheaply as one, and that may be true but the rubbish I accumulate when she’s around is way more than twice what I produce alone.  Weird.

My mother has psychopathic personality disorder, which means she feels no emotional bond with anyone and never shows affection.  As a child growing up, I couldn’t understand why she didn’t seem to love me or take pride in me, and although I do understand now, I can’t go back and have happier childhood memories, I’m stuck with them.  She has never fought my corner or stood up for me in any way, and it was only a couple of years ago when she told me about her personality problem, that I was able to realise why.  I have many memories of her not being there when I needed her, and they won’t go away no matter how much I understand why she has always failed to be there emotionally.

What my mother does instead of show love and affection, is help financially.  It’s something she can do without having to open up emotionally, so I allow her to help me out whenever she wants to and I no longer feel guilty at her bailing me out.  I did very well out of her over Christmas, and it’s nice to be able to take her financial help without feeling a failure.  Now I can let her pay out and know it’s her way of being affectionate and the more she does it, the more affectionate she’s being.

Her lack of empathy makes her seem very judgemental sometimes, and she shocks me with her attitudes sometimes.  She can’t understand why people don’t behave like unemotional robots, and although I try to tell her that she’s the one who is different, not them, she just shrugs and changes the subject.  She can be maddeningly irritating and I’m often to be found biting my tongue when she’s around, but she is also funny and down to earth.

They say we’re a product of our upbringing, and I now understand more about why I find it so hard to interact with people.  Being autistic doesn’t help but having my mother as role model, made it even harder to grow up balanced.  I guess I should have become a crazed serial killer or something, I have many of the so-called ‘pointers’ according to all the tv shows.  Maybe we’re not totally a product of nurture after all.  Maybe there’s more to destiny than people like to believe.

Well, I am still battling with Talk Talk over my proposed broadband supplier swap.  The latest is that the problem with the exchange has now been sorted, and some guy is coming over on 16th to get me switched over.  We’ll see how that goes.

I’m still waiting for the new saucepans I bought on 29th Dec.  Having phoned Argos expecting a row, he told me I should receive them within the next 3 working days.  We’ll see about that too.  It’s been a right nuisance having to do all my cooking in the microwave due to no saucepans suitable for my new cooker.

Another funny thing – I was cyber bullied on twitter yesterday by a couple of assholes who did not like my blog about UK gun laws.  Funny how it’s always the aggressive bully types who wants guns to be freely available isn’t it?  Precisely the reason it’s good they’re not.

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As a self published author, one has to constantly run the gauntlet of snobbish opinion as to traditional vs self publishing.  This is a tiresome task and one that never goes away no matter what we do.  No matter how carefully we proof read and edit, no matter how much money we spend on cover art, no matter how many beta readers we send our manuscripts to and no matter how many re-writes we do, our work will always be regarded as shit because it’s not been traditionally published.

This subject came up again on facebook just now, when some knob-head made the following comment,

“Self-published authors are exactly that, self-published.  This is almost like arguing what the difference is between art and garbage.”

We all know there is a glut of badly edited trash out there from self published authors who should never have thought about putting their shit out there, let alone actually doing it, and we all know that the good stuff is buried under this mountain of trash, making it very difficult for our work to be found by readers.  We also know that these trash writers give us good writers a bad name and are responsible for this stigma that plagues us.

The sticking point for me, and the one thing I cannot get past without getting angry, is that my work is judged by those who have never read it.  No one has the ability to know whether my work is shit or solid gold without reading it first, and my opinion is that until they do, they should shut up and keep their asinine opinions to themselves.  When I commented to this effect, on the same thread as the comment above, I was then told, “I’m not risking money and time on something I don’t trust. You have to earn that chance, you aren’t entitled to it. You do this via marketing yourself. (Of note, angry rants do not help your case.)” To anyone who believes that since I self publish my own work, I do not have the right to express my exasperation, I say this,

“Fuck you.”

My ability to express my feelings has no effect whatsoever, either detrimental or otherwise, to my written work and if you think it does, then you’re probably not the kind of person I would wish for as a reader.  You had probably better stay inside and carry on with your knitting and siamese cats, I’ve got gritty novels to write for readers with an educated and open mind.

In my humble opinion, it is people such as those I mentioned above, that are killing writing and not authors self publishing their own work.  Whilst badly edited work does annoy readers, opinions such as those outlined above do much damage to talented authors trying to get their work out there to those minds waiting to receive it and enjoy it.  It is these talentless and blinkered troglodytes who are hindering the evolution of writing/publishing, not authors missing the odd comma or misspelling there/their/they’re.

As those of us with a few brain cells know, there is no benefit to being traditionally published these days.  They may (may) give you a small advance, but they keep 80% of your royalties, they do no marketing for you and you get no say about the cover art.  A traditional publishing house will demand you present them with a fully outlined marketing plan before they consider offering you a contract and you will be expected to do all the leg work in getting your work out there.  Self published authors keep up to 70% of their own royalties and have total control over cover art, and still do their own marketing/promotion etc.  There are many editors out there advertising their services if you don’t have the knowledge or confidence to do it yourself, so self publication need never be the poor relation of the writing family.

Times without number I find spelling errors and other simple mistakes in traditionally published works by well known authors, but never have I seen comments about how bad this is, nor how this should not be tolerated etc.  No, the opinions are always about how self published authors are the street urchins amongst the traditionally published earls and duchesses.  Until this changes, the writing/publishing world will never evolve as we know it is currently trying to do.