I Spelt 'Embodiment' Wrong

If I plan to make something of myself as a writer I should perhaps start getting into the habit of re-reading things before I unleash them upon the big wide world. I apologise to anybody who spotted that glaring error and I endeavour to ensure that such a travesty shall never occur henceforth.

You may notice that I'm being hyperbolic. This is, fortunately, a conscious effort and, even more fortunately, in jest and merely to bring me to the main point of this post. Unfortunately (oh it was going so well with two 'fortunately's'), I have found my prosaic style often veers toward mannerisms best suited to the the early Eighteen-Forties, by which I mean that I have developed (or perhaps always possessed) a tendency to over-describe and over-emote the somewhat mundane, in ways befitting (but, you must understand, not reaching the calibre of) George Elliot or Wilkie Collins. I have suspected it is an inclination stemming from a possible sub-conscious aspiration to Charles Dickens, which, if so, can be forgiven. However it may also be due to my having recently watched Withnail and I for the ninetieth time, and being infected by Richard Griffiths' character Monty's insistence on striving to verbalise to the highest possible degree the English language will allow ('as a youth I used to weep in butcher's shops'). Given the nature of his character (an overbearing, over-reacting sexual harrasser, for those who don't know), this can not be forgiven.

The optimist in me insists on telling me that said inclination is simply the manifestation of me finding my preferred writing style, that of a somewhat ironic harking back to a now virtually alien society. I can only think of the positives in attributing such profundity of language to a story largely set in the grey, WKD-fuelled environments of Uxbridge and Harrow. If nothing else the linguistic tone will prevent the story from being taken more seriously than it intends to be. What on Earth could be wrong with a story that includes the following paragraph

Jet Tea awoke with an erection. It wasn't a problem, for he often

awoke in such a state of arousal, particularly of late, and particularly

on days Jet Tea knew he would be receiving a visit from Vicky.

I'm fairly certain that a key element of successful comedy is the pairing of levels of culture that shouldn't be paired. Remember the episode of The Office (the proper one, not the American one) in which David Brent and another colleague spend a large portion of the working day discussing Fyodor Dostoyevsky? Had that exchange taken place at 9pm in a dimly lit BBC4 studio between two academics, it wouldn't have been the least bit humourous. As it is, it occurs in a Slough paper office, between an idiot boss and a postgraduate temp, and as a result is hilarious, because the setting doesn't match the content.

So, if I may slightly tweak the elements of setting and content into scenario and tone, therein lies what I hope may be the greatest strength of my novel, alongside the characterisation of which I discussed in my previous blog. I could perhaps further my attempts to emulate Dickens and spend an entire chapter detailing the sublime, archaic architecture of NatWest bank or wax lyrical upon the plight of the heretics in that park down Windsor Street, to add an environment to the comedy. Or it could be completely shambolic, misinterpreted (I must remember that Jet Tea pronounces that word 'misinterpretated') and see me come off as a pompous purveyor of sub-Victorian dross, the kind that has no place on our Twenty-First Century highstreet bookshelves.

Speaking of highstreet bookshelves, I feel it is of some interest (if only to my future, memory-numbed-by-alcoholism self) to report that I experienced my first contact with the world of professional literature yesterday, in the form of an email from a publishing company (that I shan't name) telling me that I am on their contact list. This may be, I am fully aware, the literary equivalent of adding Rough Trade Records on MySpace, but it is still exciting to me. For, being predominantly concerned with making it as a musician for the last seven years, and understandably having gathered a modest supply of knowledge of how that would work, beginning a career as a writer is the first completely brand new, uncharted territory, terra-incognita experience I have gone through in some time. I should print that email and have it framed. In terms of relevence to my success it predates even a rejection letter, but its still the first email I have received that is remotely of that kind. Perhaps in twenty years time I can remove it from the loft (or my sleeping bag, fortunes pending) and show it to people as a letter from when I tried to be an author. Or perhaps, if I may allow myself a little optimism, it will be the first of many. Watch this space.

P.S. You'll be pleased to know I spell checked at least seven words this time round.

Arachno-Nostalgia

I planned to, in this blog, paste a funny mock-biography about William the Spider, a cartoon I made once. The biog was written in the form of a Dickensian memoir, and the humour lay in applying hyperbole, fond recollection and an ambitious lifespan to a spider that was prone to being stepped on.

But to my horror I find that blogspot doesn't allow material to be pasted into the blog, everything has to be typed from scratch (and no way am I typing that out again). The motivation and necessity for this absurd form of techno-prejudice is beyond me, so instead I'll use this intended spider-time to reflect on a new sub-theme I'm going to be applying to my novel.

Just to let you catch up, I'm partway through writing a novel about my friend, Jet Tea, with particular focus on his tendency to fall in love with every girl he meets. Within the realms of the novel, the tendency is manifest as a curse imposed on him by a magician, but as a means to satirise that way of behaving in the real world. The male tendency to over-exaggerate feelings of interest toward the opposite sex into neo-Keatsian poetic agonising has not been sufficiently covered as of late. The overall tone of the novel is that Jet Tea is the modern-day imbodiment of an angst-ridden romantic poet from the Regency era, albeit one who finds himself isolated in an environment where this sort of behaviour has no place. Surrounding characters are largely matter of fact about their feelings; not unemotive but honest with themselves. Jet Tea's expressions of feeling are melodramatic and hyperbolic, laced with overstretched metaphors and similes to put how he feels into words. With nobody to sufficiently counter-remark him, Jet Tea's main goal becomes to leave (nicely aligning the fictional Jet Tea with the real one, who has moved to New Zealand and achieved almost immediately what he was striving to do since I've known him; find love. Congratulations Mr. Tea).

But on a walk to clear my head and get some fresh air yesterday, I found myself listening to The Magnetic Fields' 'You Must Be Out of Your Mind' on my iPod. The song, in particular its lyrics, for some reason left me with feelings of nostalgia and lament for bygone days. I say 'for some reason' because the song itself is about a falling out of some kind, but the lyric 'you think you can leave the past behind / you must be out of your mind' fits my scenario just as sufficiently. The early parts of the novel see a regular scenario in which the three best friends (Jet Tea, and fictional characters based partially on myself and Glen Strachan), living in close proximity to one another, regularly meet at the pub for a drink and a debate. This was something I, at least, now think we took for granted. Jet Tea is now on the other side of the planet, Glen is out in the countryside and I 'm unemployed skulking around a flat in North London. The likelihood of meeting up at the local nowadays is slim, and unlikely to ever happen casually ever again. Such meetings now will be reunion-based, with conversation probably of the reminiscent variety. Its a shame, but its life, and it isn't like we don't communicate any more, only last week Jet Tea phoned me up drunk to tell me he'd refused a lift home on the basis that he didn't like the designated driver's taste in music, and I've seen Glen regularly as well.

But that brought me to thinking I should layer the narrative with a second tone, one of the fear of change. I thought about having this emit from my character, but that would contradict the largely unpoetic world in which Jet Tea lives, so its going to be a second hardship Jet Tea has to contend with, probably ultimately accepting it and deciding that the only way to numb the sadness of the end of the status quo is to begin again in a completely alien environment. That's where New Zealand comes into play.

Forgive me if I've ruined the ending of the unwritten novel for you (if that's the case then thank you for even considering reading it), but this story isn't really about the plot, its about the characters. There are plenty of biopics and biographies where the reader knows full well how it will end. Hey, Titanic and the Star Wars prequels wouldn't have been so successful if the audiences had such a huge problem with knowing how things turn out. The bottom line is, The Life and Loves of Jet Tea (working title) may be a fictional story, but its eponymous hero is very much real, and in real life Jet Tea buggered off to New Zealand with no intention of returning, so that's where my Jet Tea will go, so that the two parallel timelines can converge and the Jet Tea of the future is both the Jet Tea of the past and the Jet Tea of fiction.

Oh, and if you want to see that spider cartoon, its here.

Big Audio Dynamite

I'm writing a Doctor Who short story for a Big Finish competition. Big Finish is the company that produces most of the Doctor Who audio dramas, and also a series of short stories. Haing read a fair few of the short stories and liking them a lot, and with little to fill the Who-shaped whole that last year's lack of a proper series has left me with, I've found myself getting into the audio dramas.

They're mostly great, but that's unsurprising. They don't have the cautions and restrictions of a special effects budget there to stop the story from being as ambitious as they want it to be like the classic TV series, they're not producing episodes for the whole country and thus having to make sure the lowest common denomenator is always kept in mind like the new TV series, and they have a plethora of lifelong Doctor Who fans who happen to have become superb sci fi and fantasy writers at the helm, all of whom are given mostly free reign over what they write and how far they play with the formula. So its easy to understand why the stories are so good.

They've also provided an invaluable way to do greater justice to the ill-treated Eighth Doctor, having only one TV appearance (he should have been invited to do that short Children In Need special instead of Peter Davison) despite his energy and ability but instead due to low ratings in the US for said story's airing. The Big Finish Audios have given him plenty of stories and even the opportunity to spar with a great companion in Sheridan Smith's (the blonde from 2 Pints of Lager) Lucie Miller (gone now sadly).

So having become an even bigger Doctor Who geek this way (there are whole spinoff series set on Gallifrey but I wont go into that) I have begun trying to get myself into this environment. Steven Moffat's Who career began, as I understand, with a short story. Now he's in charge of Doctor Who! He gets to decide who the Doctor is, what he does and what villains he bumps into. Imagine having that job. The first opportunity I went for was the chance to write one of four 25 minute audio plays featuring the Fifth Doctor (Peter Davison) and Nyssa. Although this is my least favourite Doctor and companion, I went for it and wrote a story where the two of them are effectively out of space Lenny Henrys, turning up on a devastated planet and appealing to its government to allow aid workers to land. Big Finish reported that around 1,200 people entered this, which put my likelihood of getting the job close to slipping in the shower on an airplane while putting my socks on. But they're still reading them as I type this so I haven't given up hope yet.

The next one was, to my delight, a short story competition (though to be released as an audiobook rather than a hardback), this time allowing me to write for any of the first eight Doctors (their liscence doesn't cover the new series) and any companion. Instinct led me to assume I'd either automatically opt for Tom Baker's Doctor, or spend ages mulling over who I should write for instead. To my surprise, however, I found myself immediately picking the Sixth Doctor, Colin Baker, and Peri. For those who don't know the Sixth Doctor is largely considered fandom's least favourite. I myself am not a fan of his 'era', but, while writing dialogue for him and enjoying doing so a great deal, I realised that it can't really be the Doctor himself people don't like.

On paper, Colin Baker has everything a successful Doctor needs. He can act, to get that issue out of the way, he has a commanding presence; whatever's going on in the scene, its always him you're drawn to (and not just because of his ridiculous clown coat) and he's got a big alien-looking face that's capable of displaying a thousand emotions. Add to that his curly hair and surname and there's very little about him that's different to everyone's favourite Doctor (pre Tennant anyway), Tom Baker.

So why is he often so neglected in polls? Simple. Everything else about Doctor Who was shoddy at that time and, as previous showrunner Russel T Davies has said, actors are the front line. When you see any film that you find dreadful, you always remember it as 'that shitty film with so-and-so in it.' Its not Colin Baker's fault that the props, writing and supporting cast were at their weakest, and its not Colin Baker's fault that the producer at the time insisted on dressing him in a horrendous multi-coloured clown costume when, as one of the darkest Doctors thus far, he should have been wearing something subtle and sinister (I've seen fanmade mockups of him in a black suit and he looks superb). Put Colin in the 'golden age' of the mid seventies instead of Tom and he might today be regarded as the best Doctor ever.

Which brings me back to Big Finish audios. Despite his misguided reputation and his abrupt sacking from Doctor Who by Michael Grade, Colin has had good grace enough to lend his services to Big Finish as the Doctor for many audio plays. Listen to him, if you're partial to a bit of Doctor Who and not too worried about not having anything to look at while the story is taking place. He's been in many brilliant audios but at gunpoint I'd recommend Jubilee or Medicinal Purposes (the latter of which also features David Tennant as a madman, before he received the part of the Doctor himself). Listen to one, close your eyes and imagine Colin Baker away from bad actors, papier mache walls, tin foil hats and a stupid costume, and just allowing himself to be the Doctor as best as anyone ever could, acting out a proper script that every Doctor Who story should have. Because let's be honest, there are thousands of people itching to be able to write for Doctor Who (myself very much included), and now the TV programme has the budget to do almost any script justice, so there's no excuse why it shouldn't be top notch all the time.

Retroactive Present Tense?

Once, in a small but pleasant flat somewhere in the London borough of Barnet, there lived a twenty-something male named Joe Gardner. Joe was, though not through lack of trying, unemployed and living off of a mistakenly allocated credit card and the leftovers of a graduate overdraft.
Joe's goal in life was to be a writer. So he would often sit, day in, day out, at his laptop, writing short stories, lyrics and general plotless ramblings, whilst simultaneously working on the novel he was writing about his best friend.
One day, Joe decided to open an internet blog to store thoughts, ideas and the opportunity to look back at his progress on the path to recognition for his supposed creativity. If nothing else, the blog would be a good place to direct his frustrations and restlessness with the world of literature. Nonetheless, Joe was determined to one day have published something other than two mediocre poems in a little-known anthology when he was eighteen. So he sat down, armed with a coffee and a list of publishing companies, and a head full of ideas (some of them contrived), to make something of himself.

Unfortunately, no more of this story can be related to you, as it is still being written.