Monthly Archives: September 2011

To save a life

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I wrote a post this morning about the neutrino and how it seems to have traveled faster then the speed of light. I was happy with it, and will post it later maybe tomorrow.
The thing is I then received a call from my wife who is in London on business and has been there most of the week. She began the conversation with “you never believe what I have just done” Her voice was shaky and I could hear tears in her voice. “Iv just brought a man back to life”
I said. ” what, I don’t under stand”
“I man collapsed on the tube and died he went blue and everything, then Stopped breathing and stopped moving too”

Me being so supportive normally, I had nothing to say, apart from “well done” I mean come on.
She began CPR and brought him back to life.

She said “It was like on the films when when they take the big breath and suddenly he is alive again”

I am so proud of her, she had the training and many people have, but who would use it. If I’m honest I don’t know if I would have the balls to step up to the mark. And I think until you are in the situation you will never will know.

So Joanne ( my wife ) I’m so proud of you.

NaNoWrimo

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National novel-writing month or as it is so fondly known NaNoWrimo.

One of the hardest obstacles a writer will face is not the spelling or the grammar or even the prose. It’s the ability to finish a lengthy piece of work. To cover an essay or a short story maybe even an article for a local paper Is very admirable and worth praise. The poems and sonnets that are injected to Facebook and poem hunter on a daily basis are beyond me and I hold my hands up and say I’m no poet. But to compleat a hundred thousand plus word novel is like a marathon of the mind. It takes sacrifice and dedication, and a belief in ones self that this story is worth writing down.

NaNoWrimo is a competition that is held every November across the globe. The premise is simple write fifty thousand words with in the month of November. No stopping for spell checking, prose or composition. Just get the story on the page as fast as you can. Then in December, January, February and so on you can fix any issues.
I love this as it tuck me over a year to write my first draft of my first novel purple. In taking so long to write you inherit continuity problems as well as character changes. Basically over a year my ability as a writer improved as did my writing. Sounds good and yes how could that not be. But it also made the rewrite more arduous, it’s hard to rewrite your voice. If I could have written it within says three months then it would have been more stable and I know this from things I have written since. They start and finish with the same voice.
So give it a go, fifty thousand words in one month. It’s great fun and if you sign up to the website there are many other writers willing to push you everyday. I will be there.

Query and submissions

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First of all, hi and thanks for all the emails on the last post, it did seem to get people talking.
I thought it about time I had an update on my novel. At present it’s gone through a number of rewrites, in which I mean I have deleted some stuff and added some stuff. Seriously it seems that each time I go through the manuscript I make more to fix on the next rewrite and how can I keep missing spelling mistakes it’s like someone waits until I have finished and places new spelling mistakes where the old ones were.
Anyway enough of my shortfalls. I finished work on Friday and decided that this would be the weekend that I do my query letter and synopsis. And like a good boy I did. I finished a one page query that can be adapted to most agents, I also completed a 556 word synopsis, including the surprise ending as every help book or web site shouts this at you to do. I even managed to sum up the 103,000 word novel in a 73 word tag line. So haven’t I done well. I do have to say sorry to my wife Joanne as I did keep throwing paper work at her, on her one day off “oops” I have even pre dated the letters to give me a deadline as to when I will have everything ready.

My novel is a science fiction thriller. This is not good in the world of publishing. Of all the agents web sites I checked only a few excepted science fiction and when looking into there recent published books I found very few that were science fiction. So this could be the time when perseverance has to win through. It’s the adversity in life that makes us improve our work.

I’m going to start with a selected 7 agents and wait. Then depending on what happens with them I will move on to the next ones.
I will keep you updated if anything happens. By the way the dead line is the 17th of September. So there you go I have to send these off now. Incedently the 17th is all so my birthday.

Emotions part five ‘Hate’

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I wonder what we mean when we say hate. I think most people can see a person in there minds eye if I ask.

‘who do you hate?’

I have been trying to write this post for months, it seems that I just cannot get a handle on hate. It could be me, maybe I just don’t have the ability to hate.

Is it hate that we feel? or is it another emotion that we are just confusing as hate. Like jealousy or envy.
Hate is what I would call a prime emotion like a prime colour. It’s one of the big ones, we use this in a combination with others to make our mood or feeling at any one time. It wouldn’t suprise me to find that there are specific parts of the brain that directly involves it’s self to making us feel hate. There has been many times in my life when I have felt hateful towards someone or something; it is normally short lived and happened when I was a much younger person.

In the wisdom that comes with thirty eight years (if any) I seem to have mellowed, It takes a lot more to rattle my cage. Maybe having children has taught me to control this destructive emotion.

Our feelings have developed over many thousands of years. We as a species used to use such things as tools. Only now we live so different to our recent ancestors that we can get confused to which emotion we should be using.
It’s not human to hang on to any situation after the outcome is obsolete. So if you feel hate for someone because they have done you wrong then that’s fine but as soon as your hate becomes self destructive then it’s time to let go. Move on and make the best of what’s left. Whether it be love, money or a family feud. Life is to short and to preoccupy our life’s with such futile endeavours if wasteful to say the least. In the end hate is powered by the situation that gave it life. What we have to do is rationalise it as quick as possible to limit the damage it will cause, because if left it will cause damage.

This is when the empathy comes in; to see the situation from the other point of view will give you prospective and know doubt show you how small it was in the first place. In the end maybe it’s our ability to forgive and empathise with others that makes the difference. Writing makes me empathise with others, after all if I could not empathise I would only write a one sided story. I’m only able to give characters there own life by taking that life from everyone round me. I little bit of everyone I know will be in all my story’s

My oldest brother has some great advice, that is “do to others, only what you would have done to yourself’ (Im sure thats out of a very famous book, involved a man who’s name began with a “J” I think)

So hate is useless and a waste of hormones.

Buddha said “Hatred is never ended by hatred but by love” Be it karma or some faith from a corner of the world or a spiritual intervention, but I do believe that we get what we give.

What I tell my two boys when they blur the line between right and wrong is that ‘bad people get bad things and good people get good things’

So give nice and receive nice in return.