Writer's block

I would be the first to admit that I am the queen of writer's block. I get it often, and I get it badly. I am also a master (mistress?) of procrastination.

I often need pressure to write. I don't respond at all to cheerleading and 'motivating' comments from others. I don't respond to nagging. I don't respond to all that NaNoWriMo 'hey guys, let's all write together!' crap. But, good press officer / copywriter that I am by day, you can bet your sweet bippy that I respond to a deadline. And it has to be a serious deadline, too. Not an 'entries are due by 31 August' type deadline. More like a 'submit your piece by midnight or you will lose your job / fail your expensive creative writing course / be forced to give your first-born son to Rumpelstiltskin' deadline.

Which means that OneWord, recommended to me by RS Bohn, has been great for me this week while I've had time on my hands. Every day, a different word is generated, and you are given a single minute to write what you can. There's a counter that runs down before your very eyes. When your time's up, a fabulously sonorous death toll sounds.

Well, that's the kind of pressure I need! So far, I've written on 'moon', 'overjoyed', 'rustling' and 'blast', and the feedback (well, people clicking 'like', anyway) has been positive. Great fun and a great way of breaking writer's block, especially if, like me, you enjoy writing ultra-short flash-fiction.

I've also recently discovered Write or Die. It's a little piece of software - you can use it for free online or download an expanded desktop version for about £6.60 (depending on the USD/sterling exchange rate). The principle behind it is simple. You enter in a time limit and a word count target, and you write. Hard. If you don't, it will begin to flash in disturbing, stressful colours. It will make horrible noises at you. And if you select the 'kamikaze' option, if you stop writing for too long, it will start to delete what you have already written. 

I realise this sweat-breakingly stressful mode of writing isn't for everyone, and of course, everything you write with this tool is supposed to be something you'll go back and edit, probably heavily. The idea isn't to encourage a 'quantity over quality' approach at all (quantity over quality is yet another thing I hate about NaNoWriMo). The idea is to force you to get down a first draft, or at least those first few horribly difficult paragraphs. And for me, it really worked.

But then, I'm a bit weird like that. When I was a student, I actively enjoyed my English exams. I did a degree which included 9 modules, and only two of them were assessed on coursework - one of which was a dissertation and the other of which took the form of two extended essays. The other seven were all timed exams, three hours apiece. Actually hearing the clock ticking away the seconds and knowing that each tick was another small step towards me throwing away my future and humiliating myself if I didn't write something pretty damn brilliant RIGHT NOW was easily the best form of motivation I've ever had.

So much so that I took almost the same approach with my dissertation. If I recall correctly, I had two terms to research and write it. Instead, I did the whole thing in, I think, four days. Research, writing, editing, everything. I handed it in five minutes before the deadline with the ink still warm.

If you think this was a foolhardy approach, then yes, it probably was in the sense that it knocked about two years off my life expectancy, but academically it must have been sound, because I got a 1st class degree and won a prize for my dissertation.

I took great pleasure in pointing that out, quite forcefully, to a friend - well, now ex-friend, rather unsurprisingly - who used to lecture me in a patronising manner about time management and pacing oneself and how my approach was all wrong. I asked her how well this approach served her when she did her degree. Turns out she got a 2.2.

HA!

Sometimes, I really do take pleasure in being an immensely horrible person. Although in my defence, this horribleness is at least mostly driven by a fondness for pricking pomposity when I think it's really necessary. There are some people, I think, who genuinely need to be taken down a peg or two to prevent them, for their own good, from becoming utterly insufferable for the rest of their natural lives. The person in this case was undoubtedly one of them. ;-)

***

My favourite question today from the Books & Authors section of Yahoo Answers:

Harlem witchcraft trial books...?
i am very interested in this subject.. i would likee a book not a history book about the harlem witch triels... and it doesnt have to be a triel itself but just the whole time or a person.. thanks




 

The Blue Fox by Sjón

Sjón is an Icelandic writer, and I bought an English translation of this novel while I was on holiday in Iceland last month. Sjón is first and foremost a poet, and this is a very slim little volume - barely more than 100 pages. But those pages are so full of magic and beauty and harshness and such a vivid sense of place that I could barely believe the author managed to say so much in so few words. In that sense, and in some of its themes, this book reminds me of Alan Garner's brilliant Thursbitch - and coming from me, that is not a comparison to be taken lightly.

The Blue Fox is the story of a huntsman-priest in 19th century Iceland, Baldur Skuggason, obsessed with hunting the mysterious 'blue fox' or 'skugga-baldur' that roams the snow-covered mountain landscape in the dark days of midwinter. It's also the story of the herbalist Fridrik Fridjonsson and Abba, the horribly abused young Down's Syndrome woman he has taken in and loves like a daughter, helping her to compile a collection of carefully-identified feathers from Iceland's rich and varied bird life as he gradually learns the strange language she has created for herself during her years of neglect. It's the story of life, death, shamanism, landscape and metamorphosis, as the hunter becomes the hunted, human beings become puzzles, and the landscape and language become one and the same.

The Blue Fox could only ever have been written in Iceland, in that unique landscape, that odd mixture of beauty and harshness. Like a Nordic fairytale, it combines magic and brutality, gentleness and violence, the metaphysical and the mundane. 

As a young man, studying in Denmark, Fridrik tells his opium-smoking companions: "I have seen the universe; it is made of poems." His Danish friends laugh and tell him he is "a true Icelander" - and they are right. I've been to Iceland, and never before have I ever been so convinced that the universe is, without a doubt, made of poems.

Hospitals and Stieg Larsson

So, I find myself at home for a while recovering from surgery. I had to have my gallbladder removed on Wednesday. Now, I should point out that I was able to have to have this operation done by keyhole surgery, and that if I'd had open surgery I would still be lying in a hospital bed requiring the assistance of two nurses just to make it to the loo and back, so things could be worse. But I haven't exactly found keyhole surgery the piece of cake people make it out to be. You would imagine from the way people talk that you could have the surgery and be dancing an eightsome reel the following morning, but it certainly didn't feel like that when I was unable to sit up unaided, hooked up to an IV drip, breathing through an oxygen mask and having liquid morphine syringed into my mouth by concerned nurses.

Fortunately, that stage didn't last too long, and I was able to go home the following day.

Less fortunately, the after-effects of the operation (not, as people have asked, the anaesthetic) meant that I was rather ill for a couple of days and was almost re-admitted to hospital with dehydration, but a delightful locum GP saved the day with rehydration sachets and copious anti-nausea drugs and I recovered somewhat. I also have enormous quantities of painkillers, but the only ones that I find especially effective make me horribly dizzy and give me palpitations and an amusing rash, so I've stopped taking them. This isn't overly problematic, as I'm more than able to cope with being a bit sore, but my partner is unfortunately a very, very funny man and makes me laugh quite regularly. Laughing with multiple stomach wounds and badly strained abdominal muscles is a foolish thing to do. But cannot be helped. Even when it hurts, you still laugh. You'd think the pain would override the urge to keep laughing, but no, it seems that laughter totally trumps pain in the involuntary reflexes stakes.

I have absolutely zero interest in journals in which people witter on non-stop about their multiple ailments in every entry, so here endeth the lesson on my health. Suffice it to say that I'm well on the road to recovery, and that the National Health Service is fantastic. Utterly fantastic. Yes, they inexplicably serve you breakfast at the absurd hour of 6.30am, and yes, you are generally accommodated on a ward with the facility to curtain off your bed, rather than having a private room. I don't fucking care. I was able to have surgery performed by a very skilled surgeon and was cared for by an excellent anaesthetist, a charming team of theatre and ward nurses and lovely helpful auxiliaries. The appropriate drugs were dispensed along with lots of good advice, a sick-note for four weeks so I don't have to worry about going back to work until I'm completely fit. Everyone went to a huge amount of trouble to check that I was comfortable and also, to keep my partner informed on my progress and to let him know what to expect when he picked me up. The ward sister was there at the end of the phone when I experienced complications and as well as telling me exactly what I needed to do, let me know that they would not hesitate to re-admit me if necessary.

And at no point did I have to worry that any of this care, medication and advice would somehow not be covered by insurance. I didn't have to worry about costs at any point. All the choices I had to make - including whether to have the operation in the first place - were entirely my own and were based solely on my health, not on my finances. And that, in any developed country, is entirely as it should be.

***

While I was in hospital, I started The Girl Who Kicked The Hornets' Nest, the final book in Stieg Larsson's Millennium trilogy. I got through about 350 pages (or half) of it, to the amazement of my anaesthetist, while I was waiting to go down to theatre and while I was lurking in my curtained cubicle and avoiding the annoying chit-chat of the nosy woman opposite during my post-op recovery, but I was way too queasy to read anything at all for a couple of days after that. However, I finished the book this morning.

I've enjoyed the trilogy as a whole. The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo can be read in isolation, and The Girl Who Played With Fire does make sense if you haven't read Dragon Tattoo, as Larsson kindly recaps where necessary. However, it ends at a point which leaves a lot of the story untold if you don't go on to read Hornets' Nest, and Hornets' Nest would make no sense at all if you hadn't read Played With Fire.

In many ways, these books remind me of thrillers from the 1950s. They aren't, in many ways, particularly realistic. The hero, Mikael Blomkvist, is apparently irresistible to every woman he meets, regardless of their age. Almost every character has a multitude of quirks and foibles and some of the villains are almost worthy of Ian Fleming. The plots are complicated and crammed with excitement an intrigue - thwarted assassination attempts, last-minute court room revelations which I can't believe would ever be admissible, my lack of knowledge of the Swedish legal system notwithstanding, and some truly gruesome fights. And yet, the trilogy is also ultra-contemporary at the same time. It's almost as if Larsson took classic thrillers of the 50s and dropped them into the socially-liberal, hi-tech world of 21st century Sweden and gave them a social conscience into the bargain. Great stuff, and Lisbeth Salander is a 100 per cent original heroine with a perfect balance of toughness and vulnerability and a whole bucket of flaws.

I've seen some writers claim that there's too much violence against women in Larsson's books. Those people are idiots who are missing the point on such a grand scale that I want to commit some violence of my own. It's blatantly obvious throughout that part of Larsson's objective in writing the books was to openly deplore the inherent misogyny that still lurks in certain sectors of society. Trust me, men who write exploitatively about violence against women really do not create characters like Lisbeth Salander.

oneword

My good friend RS Bohn, an excellent and prolific writer, directed me to oneword recently. You click on a button, they give you a word, and you've got one minute - they time you - to write what you can on it. The word I got was 'eternally'. My submission proved to be rather different from the others on the page. I have been accused, not at all unreasonably, of being sneery before. This was quite a sneery piece. But it was the first thing that sprang to mind, and that's the purpose of the exercise.

"Can I speak about breast growth in my novel?"

Oh, Yahoo Answers. Where would bad writers be without you?

Is this a good idea for a kid to make money?

All right I have a few books written that I have my teachers prove read I wanna sell them around my school or neighborhood, but I wanna really good place to sell them and I live in a smaller area. So I do not know one I would have it publish by selling the rights and getting like 5% of profits, but when I ask how all I get is wait a while to get to know you grammar blah blah blah! For pete sake I know grammar! I am just not very good at typing! So any help with just getting the books published be great every one that reads says they really like them after all, but I can not pay like a lot of money after all how did those kid authors that are younger than me do it! I just wanna publish my work that took me 7 months to write please help me! I have three books tell a publishers that might be interested or contact me through youtube (crislewis122) if you wanna know more I am serious about this I think it would be the best way for me to make money

 Is this name to...weird, for a book?

I'm thinking of a new idea and it is based around a teenage girl called Chlodoswintha. It is a very different from the other names I use and I thought it would be interesting to use.
I have two problems though, how would that be pronounced and what could I shorten it to?

What are some various words to start a sentence with?

What are some strengths you'd give your character?

I'm coming up with nothing really. I can think of her weaknesses, but no strengths.
So if you could:
Give me ideas for some strengths, some dislikes, and some fears a character might have.
I already know my character, but I'm having a hard time coming up with some of these for my character outlines, I know those probably aren't too important to some people, and I may not mention it, but it's nice to have and outline.

I need a title and ur feedback on my idea for my book?

Okay just so no one will steal this idea I am only giving a small description of my plot, okay so there is a small village and every preson (except for the six sisters) think that they are the only humans left, then a young girl is born and she is what u call a destroyer they are the cause for the destruction of humanity so does that sound like a good idea and also what could I name this girl, remember they are reduced to the old stuff no future type stuff just old regular village goat sacrificeing for rain people so I need an old timey name, and what could I name this book thanks alot <3

How long do you think it will take me to write 85,090 words which is roughly 139 pages?

It's sort of a historical novel but not really. Give or take a few pages,depending on if I take anything out or add anything else.

Get Paid To Write Short Stories ?

I Love Writing Short Fiction Stories.
And Writing Poems.
Im Also Really Good At It.
I Would Like To Get Paid To Write Them Online.
Anybody Know Of A Site That Does That ?

Can you get arrested for taking pictures off of google and using them for book covers for your books that you want published one day.

My friend wants to be my agent?

im in the process of writing a book. and yes i KNOW its not easy to get published. publishers get sent tonnes of manuscripts, and many people cant get published without an agent, yet many agents wont bother with you if youve never been published, kinda sucks haha. and you may have to wait months and months for a single reply. anyway i told my friend how hard its going to be, and hes like "ill just be ur agent" and i sed "well you cant can you? ur not qualified or anything" and hes convinced that anyone can be one if they want to.

so how does it work?? is that true?

Is this a good story plot?
I'm writing a story and want to know what you think of the plot?

The story starts off, with a 17-year-old girl, named Jaylinn, running through the woods in the middle of a storm. She comes upon a small cottage and finds a woman murdered inside. Getting scared, she runs away, continuing through the forest until she eventually falls asleep.

When she wakes up, she meets Shayne. Jaylinn tells him that she was abused at home so she ran away. He brings her back to his house where she meets his mom, Kortnee, and his younger twin siblings, Aaryk and Jarynna.

Jaylinn witnesses Kortnee hitting Shayne and then starving him at dinnertime. Jaylinn gets so mad that she accidentally breaks a glass and cuts her hand, getting blood on the floor. When Kortnee makes Jarynna clean it up, Jarynna makes it very clear that she doesn’t like Jaylinn. In fact, when Kortnee leaves the room, Jarynna tries to kill Jaylinn.

That night, Shayne accidentally wakes Jaylinn up in the middle of the night and they decide to go for a walk, where they share their first kiss. They also witness Shayne mother murder a woman.

That night, Jaylinn and Shayne make a plan to visit the place where they witnessed Kortnee hiding the body of the woman she murdered.

The next morning at breakfast, Kortnee gets angry because Jaylinn fell asleep in Shayne’s arms. Jaylinn and Kortnee get into an argument and Kortnee throws a plate at Jaylinn’s head and leaves.

When Kortnee is still not back that night, Jaylinn starts to get worried about how they are going to examine the barn if Kortnee’s still out there. But that’s the least of her worries.

Jarynna again attempts to kill Jaylinn but actually ends up stabbing Shayne in the stomach and nearly killing him. Kortnee finally returns and brutally punishes Jarynna after apologizing to Jaylinn. Jarynna is forced to help Shayne.

In the middle of that night, Jaylinn is woken by a frantic Shayne, only to find out that Aaryk is missing. Shayne and Jaylinn go out and try to find Aaryk. Instead they find a disgusting old man and an eleven-year-old girl, Shelley.

Shelley tells them that Aaryk was murdered by the old man. Kortnee attempts to stay calm, but Shayne is hysterical; so hysterical that Jaylinn decides to leave.

In the woods, Jaylinn finds Aaryk, alive, and Mikah—Aaryk’s best friend—not so alive. When Jaylinn brings Aaryk back, Shayne apologizes and Jaylinn gives him one more chance.

The next morning is Jaylinn’s birthday. Shayne gets her a beautiful necklace, and Kortnee gets her $100 and tells her that she will take her shopping. Jarynna mysteriously whispers something to Kortnee.

Jaylinn goes on the shopping trip with Kortnee and is nearly choked by a scarf. Then they go to get something to eat and Kortnee is unusually persistent about a bowl of soup. Then Kortnee “accidentally” trips Jaylinn into traffic and Jaylinn is nearly hit. Jaylinn tells Shayne and they come to the conclusion that Kortnee is trying to kill Jaylinn. But why?

Kortnee’s attempts to kill Jaylinn grow more frequent and Jaylinn finds out that a man she’d seen at the diner had died from poison and Jarynna breaks the TV.

Jaylinn and Shayne catch Aaryk and Shelley sleeping together, but don’t tell. Jaylinn again catches Jarynna whispering mysteriously to Kortnee and the next morning, Shelley finds Aaryk’s body in the forest, definitely dead this time. Jaylinn finds out that Shelley tried to kill herself and Shayne is taking depression pills.

Jaylinn is nearly kidnapped but Shayne saves her. Later that evening, Shayne, Shelley, and Jaylinn go to the barn where they saw Kortnee hide the body of the lady that she’d killed. They find Mikah’s mom, whom Jaylinn finds out is the lady that she’d found in the cottage; Aaryk; the old man from the second barn; and the woman from the woods among other bodies.

Shelley goes missing the next morning and her body is found three days later in the woods.

That afternoon, Kortnee goes to town and while they are trying to make an escape plan, Shayne and Jaylinn hear a thump and find Jakaylia, Jaylinn’s mom, and Sheyanne, Jaylinn’s sister. Shayne and Jaylinn untie them and try to escape, only to walk straight into Kortnee’s trap.

Kortnee reveals that she was the one who killed everyone, including Aaryk and Jarynna, she’d kidnapped Jaylinn’s family so she wouldn’t run away, and she planned to kill her and Shayne.

There’s a big fight scene and Shayne gets cut and is bleeding to death and Jarynna tries to save him. And Jaylinn. Kortnee stabs Jarynna and Jaylinn is trying to help her.

The cops come as Kortnee’s about to kill them and she stabs the cops and gets away.

Then it skips to a hospital scene and Shayne is taped up and doing fine. They are all in Jarynna’s room and Jarynna apologizes for the way she treated Jaylinn and says that she would have made a great sister, then she dies.

Then it skips ahead again and Jaylinn and Shayne are sittng at the edge of the forest by Jarynna, Aaryk, and (question cuts off here)

Would you reccommend a book for someone who doesn't like reading?

How do you Read a book?
i ned 2 strt rding

I love to read, but I hate to write. Are there any jobs where I can read a lot, but don't have to write?

I wrote a book with a lot of profanity in it. Do you think publishers would deny it because of that?

Should I Write a Foot Fetish Story?

Notice: Only answer this question in a KIND way! Don't slam me for my "choices"

I have been informed that I'm good at writing, but I've never known what I write about. I'm thinking about writing foot fetish stories after being inspired by the Junior in my last period class who has the most beautiful feet and her friend who teases me with hers. Liking girls' feet is also something that I can personally relate to, because its part of my everyday high school life. I'm also curious though, what do you guys think? I'm not even sure what to write about regarding foot fetishes. Can I get some suggestions? Maybe a hypothetical situation for a story/scene? If enough people post, and everything's good, I might write some stories and post the links here so that you guys can rate them! Thanks for helping!

I Dont Know What To Write About!!!?

Ive asked this several times...and people don't EVER answer this...I want to finish a novel by the end of the Summer (school just ended today) and I have writers block...So I wanna start a book, so pleaseeee give me some suggestions...I'm 13 and love to read and write, and I just can't do anything right now cause I have no ideas! Thanks, please answer!!!! oh and it creepy for a 22 yr old girl to date a 29 yr old guy?

Can I speak about breast growth in my novel?

I have a character and I write and as the story progresses her breasts grow quite a lot and I want to describe that to the readers. Is this okay?

How much can I expect my writing to improve during college?

I have the innate ability to write well, but I'd like to improve. How much can I expect my writing to improve during four years of college (at a pretty writing intensive school and as a pretty dedicated-to-writing kid)? I'm concerned that naturally gifted writers have what they have and aren't able to improve much--how true is this? I'm 18, by the way.

Can I do this in a novel.........................…

I know I'm asking too much about the same subject..it's just that I want to start a novel and I want to make sure that I get every single doubt out of me... Is it illegal if I set a character in a specific place? for example one of the characters are going to Moscow, Russia.....is this illegal?

Looking for publisher that pays retainers?

Would it be better to do my script in English or Celtic?

I'm writing a series of sci-fi film scripts only this one is a spin-off of the main story and a lil different, tbh, it's gonna have the least sci-fi of any of my scripts. They'll only be a small bit of sci-fi at the very start.

The spin-off I'm doing is gonna be set in the ancient Celtic tribal territory of Brigante, England between the year 0 to just before Roman invasion of the England. I want my scripts to be as historically accurate as possible though, which has had me questioning whether I should write the scripts in English or Celtic(the language that would have been spoken at the time), not that I know Celtic but I'm willing to learn.

Would you read this if this was on the back of a book?

Shame, Pennsylavania lives up to its name. It literally puts people to shame, in one way or another. And yet, just like opposites attract, the people of this town get the opposite of shame as well. Like Rance Felton, the black haired typical high school student. Or so he thinks. After a fight. his best friend dies, Rance is left with almost nothing. As if losing his best friend, first by cruel words and then a deadly accident wasn't enough of a shock, one year after his friend's horrid fate, he's suddenly seeing things. Things that are supposed to be dead. At least, that is what he thinks until he finds out these people are part of something called The Order Of The Carnation, or as they are more commonly known, Balancers. Just as the name says, these people keep the balance of good and evil in the world.When he realizes that not only is he a part of this Order but his best friend who has been dead a year is also, he wants to join, to help her, and the rest keep the world in balance. And soon enough he is pulled into a world of mystery, death and revenge when his four year old nephew is kidnapped. Can Rance save the little boy in time while learning about this new, strange world? Possibly. The only catch is that he has to die in the real world first...

I'm gonna start writing my first Novel and its a Fiction Type and I have a few questions about it?

1. What perspective is most suitable for this?...because I'm thinking about making it "first-person"

2. Can I switch perspectives in some chapters? ( first person to third person?) because Some of it doesn't revolve on the main character...

3.What is the best way to describe fight scenes? (because I'm planning a lot of fights in this novel)

Should I let my english teacher know that he has an inappropriate book in his classroom?

So this week I finished my english test and took out a book from my teacher's book shelf. I read the first couple of chapters (it's a short novel) and it was so.....and then I skimmed through the book and it was disgusting. Should I let him know?

Are you ever too old to write a book?

I am 14 and my dream is to be a young author, and I feel as if I'm losing touch with my dreams. Are you ever too old to become an author?

Is it important to use advanced vocabulary words when writing a story (Fiction)?

Writting a narrative story?

if your writting a story thats narrative how could you change from one person e.g. first narater is jack then i would want to change it to another one how do you do that help plzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

this is how my story goes from my first narrater:at last! i say to myself as i pulled the trigger towards his head. at last i got him .

"long no see bro" i said in a angry way.

(but what do you have to do i cant start a new paragraph when i have barely wrote anything

as i saw his face, all the memories rushed back in my mind playing games with my hea. within seconds i felt the way i used to. all the laughter, the cry ,the........

Is there a book with the title "book"?

Please Rate my Paragraph of Writing!?

 Let me tell you something.

Every summer, I am sent off to a place where there are people who aren’t like me at all. They don’t know me, or what I like, or how I act. I always try to fit in, though. It never works, but I try.

Every summer I am sent back home.

I go to a school halfway across the world, away from my family, true, but closer to my friends. Closer to my other family. There, I do fit in. I feel good and smart and I do well in school and life, in general, because things are so much easier there. It’s like it’s just me and the world and I’m in charge and I can’t even describe that powerful feeling that swells up inside me every September when I return.

I return to Z-Town School for Extraordinary Girls.

There, we learn weird and new things, strange questions are asked but they receive even stranger answers and that’s okay because they make sense. Everything makes sense there, and nothing makes sense once I’m back home, but it’s that promise of return in September that pushes me through the long summer days with my prestigious family. At that school, all the girls get this sense of empowerment. We get to do things that we’d never be able to do at home. We go bungee jumping and learn how to fly a plane. We are sent to spend a week in the woods with four other girls and no provisions to learn survival skills. We study the stock markets and practice business tactics in the lunchroom. We dissect imaginary creatures after we build them up, using a computer program to design their nervous systems. I’ve personally operated on a pig with a tumor, and everyone knows how to treat a snake bite with nothing but a rubber band and a pen. We are chronicling our lives in huge books with a feather and ink, and exploring underground caverns on Saturdays. It’s all very exciting.

Until about the middle of June, when I go back home.

I live- actually, I should say my family lives in Virginia. We have an estate there. Quail Hollow. It’s very picturesque, all these quaint trees and a small stable, a swimming pool with a little waterfall, some woods in the back with a brook running through it. Not to mention our huge, white house. Southern style, with some European flares inside. Mossy green shudders, and some ivy growing up the extension that is our kitchen wing. A little brick walkway leading to the driveway, which isn’t paved, rather it’s a mass of little white pebbles. I love it very much, and when I was little I had a lot of adventures and made up games going on in the woods by the brook.

My name is Gail.

(Ta-Da!!! It goes on for like 8 pages, but....well, so what do you think? Could these skills write a novel and be published?)

Can an author not like to read?

This is more of a hypothetical question, but if you want an explanation:

I kinda like to write stories. I love writing, and I keep getting told by everyone how good I am at writing, on my blog, Twitter, forums... You name it. So I am kinda playing with the idea of maybe writing book(s). It's nothing serious as by now, but I am playing with the idea. But the thing is - I don't like reading. I don't like books. I HATED having to read books at school, and I think I've only read like one or two books throughout my entire life.

Book plot, PLEASE read?

I'm co-writing a Science fiction novel with a friend of mine and have a few questions, alright the plot is that 8 years in the past there was a coups d'état that started on one star system and ended up on Aura(think kinda the capital) now the head of the government, elected life term ruler was killed in this along with others in the parliament by a suprmeist group who want the goverment to be lead by one of there species the problem is that this can't happen seeing as the old ruler had a daughter (leadership is passed like a monarchy if the votes and the old ruler's daughter only approves of it if not they elect a new female leader) but she was smuggled off planet and because there's no proof this girl, who is co-maincharater with her father is dead a regancry rules and will until she turns 16 which is the limet on how young she can rule, bit of plot spoiler but she has no interest in taking her mother's place and fades away into history working as a blockcade runner, smuggler and racer which is what she wanted to anyway, does this sound marysueish too close to starwars? no she doesn't go all superjedi turn evil or have any abnormal powers the only thing odd about her is that she has gray eyes while most of her race has red and have albinism, the gray eyes just means in the story that she has a different type of albinism

and if it is what can I do to change it?

Cryptonomicon

After what seems like about four years, I have finally finished Neal Stephenson's novel Cryptonomicon.

To be fair to Mr Stephenson, the fact that the book dragged wasn't because it wasn't an engaging read, but simply because it was over 900 pages long. By anyone's standards, that's a long old read. The fact that I was even prepared to invest so many hours in reading the book at all is, in itself, quite a compliment, particularly given that I usually value precise and concise writing above all else.

Cryptonomicon is not, as many people seem to think it is, a sci-fi novel. It's actually a partly historical adventure story involving several plot threads, some set in the Second World War and some in the late 1990s, which are intertwined by various family connections - the grandparents of the present day characters are the principal characters in the WWII storylines - and by the single unifying theme of cryptology. In the 1940s, socially-awkward American mathematician Lawrence Waterhouse works for the Allies as a code-breaker, and in the 1990s, his hacker-geek grandson Randy is one of the founders of a company that seeks to create a 'data haven' for encrypted information in a fictional sultanate near the Phillipines. In the other 40s thread, gung-ho young Marine Bobby Shaftoe, fuelled by morphine and benzedrine, strives to be reunited with Glory, the Filipina mother of his son, while the war against the Japanese rages around him. In the present day, Douglas MacArthur Shaftoe and his daughter Amy become involved with Randy Waterhouse through -

Nope, sorry. It's all just too complicated to explain. But rest assured that this is one of those novels where everyone and everything are interlinked, and the connections just keep suddenly revealing themselves, with more and more parts of the puzzle clicking into place as the novel progresses - rather like the Axis codes being gradually cracked piece by piece by the Bletchley Park code-breakers. This is a novel in which many, many things happen, some of them small, some of them monumentally huge, and only some of them prove to have any significance. Such is Stephenson's writing style that often, the things of no significance are allotted several pages of description. Is this frustrating? Well, yes, sometimes. But I think that the many people who have reviewed this novel on Amazon and complained about the fact that Stephenson devotes pages and pages of this novel to events which prove to have no relevance to the plot are entirely missing the point. This is a book all about information, about cyphers, about the long and painstaking fight to pick out what matters and what doesn't to decipher codes and decrypt data and to crack randomly-generated algorithms. This theme is expressed not just through the story itself, but in the way that Stephenson has chosen to relate it.

Moreover, there is probably no point whatsoever in reading this book if you have no interest at all in maths. Oddly, I do have an interest in maths, despite having little aptitude for it. I got a B in my maths GCSE, which was my worst exam result, and I never studied another page of maths again. But that doesn't mean that it doesn't fascinate me. I like maths in the same way that I like music - I appreciate its brilliance, but am well aware that fundamentally, I lack any innate ability to create it or even to understand why it produces the results it does. Consequently, I was quite happy to read many, many pages of Stuff About Maths and Stuff About Codes. Plenty of readers wouldn't be, though, and it was a bold move to include that amount of detail in the novel.

Other flaws... well, for me, I spent a large part of the book not giving a damn about Randy and his colleagues and their business venture, even when their situation became life-threatening. I don't like techno-thrillers, and I didn't like Randy much, either. Moreover, Randy's romance with Amy Shaftoe, a marine technician whose family business is employed to lay submarine cables for Randy's employer, is possibly the least convincing love story I've ever read in my life, albeit a charitable piece of wish-fulfilment fantasy for every male reader who is a fat geek (and my guess is fat male geeks make up a large percentage of this novel's readership. By reading this book, I probably cranked up its female readership to, oh, about eight? And of those eight, I'd be willing to bet that I'm the only one who wears make-up, likes clothes and has a decent haircut).

However, both the WWII plot threads were extremely gripping and full of all the warmth and humanity that was lacking for much of the 1990s thread - particularly the Lawrence Waterhouse storyline, which was by far my favourite of the three.. Waterhouse, a gentle, kind but close-to-autistic genius, is a brilliant creation and his was the story that interested me the most (although possibly, I'm biased, because Waterhouse's story thread features the real-life character of Alan Turing, the brilliant mathematician who cracked the Enigma code at Bletchley, without which we'd never have won the war, and was one of the fathers of modern computing. Turing is a huge hero of mine. Huge. One day I will post an entry here expounding his brilliance and lamenting the tragedy of his death by suicide at great length, but not today).

Overall, Cryptonomicon was packed with adventure, humour (I laughed out loud in several places - there's a Catch-22 feel to a lot of the war-time aspects of the story), tension, dizzying mathematical theory, fascinating insights, rambling digressions, oddball characters and occasionally, harrowing horrors. There was still a lot wrong with it, and yes, even taking into account my defence of the red herrings, it's undoubtedly too long and the modern-day plot dragged considerably at the start. But I don't feel that I wasted my time, and, while the chances of me reading Stephenson's sci-fi novels are slim, I will definitely be starting Quicksilver, the first novel in his historical Baroque trilogy*, which is apparently a prequel in some ways to Cryptonomicon.

*According to Wikipedia, the Baroque trilogy has now been published in the US as eight separate books instead of three. Here in the UK, though, it still appears to be three. I don't see why British readers would be any more willing to read three 900 page novels than American ones, but never mind.

 

Fact: This is the American cover of the book, because Blogger won't let me post from the UK site. The UK cover is a million times nicer. If it had had this rotten cover in the UK, I'd probably never have picked it up. Because no matter how much people convince themselves that they don't, they ALL do judge a book by its cover.

I have fallen in love. Not with a person - that was taken care of long ago - but with a country.

I've just returned from ten days in Iceland, and I already feel as if I want to return. Iceland was a beautiful, inspiring, magical place, full of contrasts that seem to work together to form a strange, mysterious harmony. This is a place where volcanic lava bubbles beneath glaciers, and where eight out of ten of the charming, well-educated, rational, pragmatic population believe in the possible existence of the 'huldufólk', or 'hidden people'. I adored Iceland, and I can honestly say that it would be my first choice of place to live if I had to emigrate.