Out of ideas

I apologise for this continued interruption of normal service. Reed’s current excuse is that she dropped a box of books on her toes at work today. Though what the hell her feet have to do with her typing abilities I don’t know.

Meanwhile, here are two miniscule fragments of verse to be getting on with:

Mirror

Hymn for a Workday Morning

Dressed, shod, aching with breakfast,
The radio still picking fights in the kitchen,
The kitchen itself reproachful with crumbs,
The rain now lurking outside,
Wrong coat, wrong shoes, to face it,
And no still small voice of calm
To take me back,
Or send me forth.

No, this isn’t Reed. Reed is lying on the bed reading fantasy novels and drinking tea. While she’s safely out of the way and can’t argue, I am announcing that this week, as of today, Monday the 10th of June, Reed will be posting daily. Despite the fact she works in an office three days a week (I am that sick of that excuse…). A lot of it may well be brief. And rubbish. But she will do it anyway. Because it is good for her flabby little untrained writing muscles. And at the end of the week we will stop, and reconsider, and do hugs and chocolate and possibly boxed ears.

I’d be grateful if you helped with the cheering-on even when she is writing pure unadulterated tosh - me, I get exhausted after approximately four-and-a-half encouraging remarks.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, and ignore the screams of rage, I’m just going to go and tell Reed about this. You didn’t really think I’d consult her before, did you? There’s only so much I can take of the view of her heels in a cloud of dust, hillwards.

I’m sorry, but you are going to have to follow the link before any of this makes sense. I am not prepared to spend the afternoon cutting and pasting.

www.scalzi.com/whatever/My 1998 Meandering Essay on Coca-Cola

Done that? Read it all? Cringed a bit, did you? Yep, that’s our Reed, making a jackass of herself all over the comments (and can you see the typos? The grammar mistake in that last post? Oy vey. For this we sent her to school).

Reed is on edge about this. Reed is so on edge that she has locked herself in the bedroom with Handel on at full blast. And why is the idiot woman on edge? Well, it is threefold:

1) Reed actually likes that blog and the guy, John Scalzi, who writes it. It gets lonely, out here in starting-a-writing-blog-land. It’s nice to go chortle with a Real Writer (a published one) and enjoy the reflected glow. He’s witty. He’s intelligent. It’s cool. She is considering whether to buy his novel: She was very happy lurking. And now she can’t decide whether she feels a complete fool or merely half a fool. Because:

2) She really really does have an annoyingly wide ethical streak. All the coffee, I mean ALL the coffee that passes her lips is fairtrade, and if at all possible organic too. So is the chocolate, and most of the tea. Her reasons for buying organic meat are mostly to do with animal welfare. So when she goes blog-surfing on a bad morning after a sleepless night, she has her crap-o-meter on over-sensitive and her loathing of all purveyors of caffeinated shit on extreme. And shoots her mouth off. Because all good people who Reed likes should not drink the nasty C-word without knowing exactly what they are drinking and why.

3) And now she is a little disappointed. She thinks before shooting her mouth off (clearly not carefully, though). She posts what she fondly imagines to be a quiet little post, acknowledging the nastiness of dumping, what was it, turds in the punchbowl? BECAUSE she is aware of the combative and fiery nature of the blog-owner, but nevertheless feels it’d be quite a good thing if some Americans knew this stuff about Coca Cola’s eco-habits. Mr Scalzi nevertheless and probably rightly calls her on it and tells her not to be a chickenshit. So she loses her temper altogether. I don’t think Reed is quite used to the American way with swear-words. Oh, we all know she swears. She swears a lot. But she feels, in her damp British way, that if someone swears AT you, you have every right to give it to them with both barrels. I think this may be a cultural thing, and our trans-Atlantic friends think no more of saying ‘Don’t be a mamby-pamby chickenshit about it, for God’s sake’ to someone than we Brits think of saying ‘Could you explain yourself more clearly please?’. But in Blighty, them’s fightin’ words. So stacks are blown, and it seems now she has gone too far the other way. Reed can’t work out whether she’s annoyed with John Scalzi or herself. No, truthfully, mostly herself. If she were annoyed with Scalzi, she’d be listening to Tom Waits.

Now what? I mean, I know I told her to comment more about the place so she could get some traffic back here. She told me to get stuffed. So I let her off the leash for one, just one, damn morning and there she is giving object lessons in how to Lose Friends and Irritate People. And why? Because when it comes to Moral High-Ground, the bloody woman thinks she bought the entire damn mountain.

Well, ladies and gentlemen, this little venture has been trundling on for over a month now and we even have friends. Time for some back-slapping and general gratulation.

The Good Samaritan Award for First Commentator Ever goes to David B, who proves that if you want a kind act done promptly, you should ask a busy librarian.

The Prolix Shield for Most Prolific Commentator is shared by David B (again) and Ole, who also share the Good Citizen Award for coming back here over several weeks.

Ben and Hyp get a pair of neatly darned socks each, with love and argyll motifs, and will have to put up with Reed hugging them at random intervals for saying such nice encouraging things.

The Fluffy Award for General Cuteness goes to Mv, for giggling.

The Sensibility Cup for Pleasing Similes goes to sunny, because Reed is unnaturally keen on choral music.

And the Editor’s Special Award for Like-Minded Thinkers goes to Kelli. You and me, dearheart. We’ll get her licked into shape yet.

I know we have lurkers. I checked my stats. You have been counted, all 813 of you. I’m sure most of you are merely looking for email to spam (if I need to be any hotter in the bedroom, I will fill a hot-water-bottle, thank you) but I have other evidence to prove that some very genuine people indeed have dropped by. Hello, lurkers! I drink a toast to you, especially those of you that then told me you’d been here. Thank you very much for all supportive remarks, and don’t worry, I wouldn’t dream of pressurizing anyone into commentating publicly on the blog. Oh no. I’m only allowed to bully my own personal writer. You may lurk in peace.

Well, it seems that Reed is not actually blogging very much at the moment. I can assure you she sits down at the computer quite as often as I could desire, but then almost immediately gets back up again to put the kettle on and chew fingernails. Bloody writers. When they are not being neurotic as Milton’s own Satan, they are so laid-back they can’t even hear the sonic boom of deadlines hurtling past thousands of feet above them.

Reed, who is of course leaning over my shoulder as I type, has pointed out that she does actually have a day job, and has, wonder of wonders, been kept busy into the bargain. I am not impressed by this at all. I couldn’t be less impressed by a Eurovision entrant. I am so unimpressed that I will now write an entire blog entry about writing, as originally planned. Even after a day wrestling with spreadsheets. And because I am the Editor, and anal is my ground state of being, I will entertain myself by listing the Uncompleted Works, in order of conception, with progress-so-far, and any sarcastic remarks that occur to me.

1) The Novel About Atlantis Not Having Sunk After All, with intrigue, evil princesses, loyal and frankly quite dishy footmen, political conniving, attempted murder and quite a lot of bodice-ripping. This one can be dated back to Reed’s childhood and games of ‘let’s pretend’ with siblings (I hasten to assure you, the bodice-ripping and poison came into it when Reed was well into her teens). Characters beautifully developed, plot now almost completely, err, plotted. Words written, none. Must try harder.

2) The One About The Identical Twins And All The Wacky Adventurers They Befriend, also a fantasy novel. Good characters that have been haunting Reed since Sixth Form, no damn’ plot at all. Words written - one excellent description of ceremonial dancing and, half a chapter about the lead character ploughing a field. I ask you.

3) The Quest Novel - yes indeedy. A proper one with wronged princesses, monsters, horse-back trips across a continent and a dragon. But damned if I let the princess get her kingdom back. I’m not really a royalist. Has been mulching away since Sixth Form as well.

4) The Space Opera, starring The Mafia and some seriously odd aliens. Stewing since University. Started out as a comedy a la Red Dwarf and seems to be morphing into an eco-fable. Three chapters and a heck of a lot of character sketches.

5) The Play, born of Reed’s depressing desire to get back at an old school friend who played mind-games to Kasparov standard. Guess what, it’s about two friends locked into silly mind-games until one of them makes friends with someone saner and the whole thing goes kablooey. Gets re-written about once every two years and is STILL painfully adolescent. May well improve if Reed can keep her resentment out of it.

6) The First ‘Serious’ (aka Mainstream. Serious being Reed’s father’s name for the genre) Novel - about sibling rivalry and stigmata. Ooh, fun. Incidentally, Reed, when are you going to stop prevaricating and write the bit about going to Lourdes? Contains a character called Joe Wagstaff - how can you deny the public such a treat?

7) The Radio Sit-Com. Will be hilarious. Am considering Rhona Cameron for the starring role, supported by Felicity Kendall, Ricky Gervais and Jo Brand. Must just now get Reed to actually write the blasted thing.

The Second Atlantis Novel. Same characters, more intrigue, plot still sporadic. Shelved until completion of the first one.

9) The Serious Historical Novel bought on by reading Possession by A.S. Byatt once too often while trying to do a PhD about Victorian Theatrical Practice. Probably not a bad piece of work, but now irredeemably tainted with the whole PhD bellyflop and therefore not so much shelved as kicked under the bookcase.

10) The Serious Historical WWII Novel, with absolutely NO Spitfire Pilots in AT ALL. But it does have a vicar’s daughter losing her virginity up against the only wall left standing of her lodgings and enough quality gore to rival CSI. A bit of a contender, this one. Needs more research into underwear fastenings. Oh, and alternatives to Spitfires. The hero has to do SOMETHING heroic when he’s not bonking.

11) Back To The Fantasy World, for a novel about slavery and, believe it or not, knitting. Mess not with those who use the pointy sticks. This one even has file-space in the hard-disk - most of the rest still live on A4.

12) Still In Fantasy World, for nuns mountaineering and then toppling corrupt tyrants as a sideline. Progressing well, huge hole in centre of plot regardless. This one popped up at about the same time as the previous, five years ago now.

13) The Detective Novel. Great screeds of plot and character notes. Actually used the advice in a ‘How to’ book for this one, as to working out the plot before hand. Nearly died of boredom. Started again. The lead alas still showing signs of being stereotypical and dreary, so I shot him in the arse. Not normally to be recommended, but it seems to have worked. May actually finish this one before we all die of old age.

14) Yet Another Damn Fantasy Novel, set in the same damn fantasy world, reprising some of the characters from 2). Yes, really. And it actually has a plot. About political corruption. On which we seem rather keen, as a subject. I put it down to too many Communist rallies in early childhood.

15) Oh, yes, and all that poetry. Used to write it by the ream. Made the mistake of re-reading it. Had seven year poetry drought as a result. Is tentatively attempting the odd haiku these days without actually spontaneously combusting from shame. We await developments.

See, that wasn’t so bad, was it? And not only had we done a full day’s work, but we’d also been crushed to pulp elbowing through the crowds on Oxford Street looking for gifts. Imagine what we could do on a quiet day off. Possibly even work on one of the above. The possibilities. Endless. Really.

Though I think we should stock up on decaff.

My very dear readers, this was supposed to be a warm and elegant welcome to a new venture, complete with mission statement, introductions, and possibly even the very first article on the finickier points of creative writing. But alas the writer has writer’s block. Well, WRITER’S BLOCK, really. Reed apparently absolutely daren’t start posting on this my new blog, get this, for fear that no one will like it. Reed even claims to be paralysed with fright. I have told the silly ass to stop being ridiculous and just go for it. Yes, GO for it. Go on then…. Just GO. For Pete’s sake, Reed, you’ve even written most of the damn post in TextEdit. Post it. Post it. Go on. Click Copy. Yes, now click Paste. I said, click Paste. PASTE! PASTE IT! NO, do NOT go and make tea! Come back here right now and post this thing! Right now! OY! Come back!

Godforsaken wimp.