Simon M Garrett

How to Talk to Any Number of People Without Being Afraid

Tue, 07 May 2013 20:06:00 +0100

(slight change of direction c.f. recent posts. found this on my ancient, expiring Hubpages account and thought it might help someone. it got me a score of 71, which sounds like it was reasonably useful…)

Why Can Public Speaking Scare Us?

Why should we be afraid of talking to group of people?

Can you talk to one person without being nervous? What about three people? Say the four of you are chatting away; are you able to join in? How about ten people? What if those ten are sitting down and you’re standing up in front of them? What about larger groups? You’re at the front and there are three hundred people looking at you, waiting for you to start your talk. Or a stadium full of people, studying your every movement, every sound, every pore?

Most people get a bit scared at some point on this scale, the questions are (i) why? and (ii) what can we do about it?

From Where Comes the Fear?

So at what point did you feel fear? A surprising number of us have some fear even when talking to just one person! But as soon as the number of people increases, and their attention on us becomes more direct, almost all of us feel some nerves.

Why?

One reason might be that we think they’re waiting for us to ‘perform’. They’re waiting for something special, and it’s our job to give it to them. If we fail, will think we’ll look stupid, or laughable, or pathetic, or any number of other words that make us feel fear and rejection.

So What’s Really Happening?

It’s important to really think what’s happening here. We are afraid of becoming less in people’s eyes than we were just before we began our talk.

But the question is not ”why do we feel like that?”, or “how can we avoid the fear?”, because that focuses on the fears, which is, in fact, the source of the problem:

We go into the room thinking about ourselves and our fears

The question real question we should be asking ourselves is, “How can we make sure we give something to those people — something they value?” As soon as we do that, our whole attitude changes.

We’re not doing a talk to avoid humiliation (or whatever you fear will happen during/after your talk), we’re doing a talk to give to other people. Doing a talk is a gift from you to them. And everyone likes gifts, so you’ll be fine.

Who’s Receiving the Gift?

Who are your audience? Do you know them all individually? If so, go through the stuff you’re considering sharing with them and imagine whether it’s something that they’ll find useful - even if they don’t know it yet.

If you don’t (or can’t possibly) know everyone in the audience, ask yourself what ‘kind’ of people will be out there? Are they opera-attending, PhD-wielding, rich people? (Don’t worry, you still have stuff they need to hear.) Or maybe they’re more into country music and horses, or inner-city hip-hop and edgy fashion, or maybe they have harsh life stories and little money? Or maybe… well, you get the idea.

Either way, you’ll have some idea who they are, and you can tailor your message - your gift - accordingly. Think who they are, think to what they’ll respond, and imagine what kind of information gift they might like from you.

Creating the Gift

Once you see a talk as a sort of gift to people, it becomes a lot clearer what your job really is. You need to do the following things:

Find a topic to talk about that they: (a) want to hear, or (b) need to hear.
Gather material about that topic that you understand. Ideas that matter to you. Things you already know to some extent. Learn new stuff as you put the talk together, sure, but don’t go outside your comfort zone - if you talk about things you don’t really understand, it will show, and you’re not trying to impress them, you’re giving them a gift - information you know that they want/need.
Arrange the material in a way that you can hold in your head. If you can’t hold it in your head, and you know this stuff, they haven’t got a chance!
For a half hour talk, have three or four main points at most. And if you’re doing a PowerPoint or Keynote presentation have no more than one slide for every three minutes. For a half-hour presentation, that’s ten slides. Even then, no one will remember them anyway - including you.
Don’t be afraid to tell stories. People remember stories, and they like them when they have an important message.

Wrapping the Gift

So, you’ve got your topic, developed your ideas, made sure they’re short and sweet. Great! But there’s still one more thing. You need to present it as nicely as possible.

All gifts should look good. I’m not saying the way a talk looks gives it value (it’s the content that gives it value) but making a talk look and sound good signals that you have taken care over your gift. What does that mean for a presentation?

Make sure they can read the text: no ‘clever’ photo backgrounds that swamp the text (perhaps no backgrounds at all); use clean fonts that can be read at a glance, so nothing curly or decorated. Start with Arial and stay in the whole region of “sans-serif” fonts. If you don’t know what that means that use Arial, Cambria or Gill Sans.
Keep everything consistent: if you’ve used 40pt fonts for your heading on slide one, and it looked good, make sure you use the same font and size and colour on all your slides (unless there’s a good reason not to do so). Keep everything consistent over the whole presentation.
Craft your words: use positive words, with good connotations (unless you’re trying to make a negative point, in which case do the reverse!). Example? Say, “Speak Powerfully!” rather than “Don’t Speak Weakly”. See the difference?
Make sure things are placed precisely: ‘almost’ isn’t good enough. get it pixel-perfect. It’s worth it. On a subliminal level we detect sloppiness. Many people care if they think you couldn’t be bothered to make it look good. Almost everyone responds to something that well-presented, and they’ll appreciate the effort.

But remember, you’re not doing this to make them like you, you’re doing it to give them something meaningful, valuable and well-presented, because you value your audience. You’re going to give them something you know they want or need. You can’t go wrong.

Open Letter

Mon, 29 Apr 2013 22:54:05 +0100

Soon, I really will try to post something that ISN’T to do with the Aberystwyth Arts Centre!

However, this is an open letter, written by Stephen West to Prof. April McMahon that makes some powerful points. (Stephen West organised the petition that was handed to Prof. April McMahon last weekend.)

—-begins—-

Dear April McMahon

Thank you for agreeing to our meeting to hand in the petition and to discuss, briefly, the new strategic plan with yourself and Professor Aled Jones. I would like to respond to your statements on tv and in the Cambrian News, particularly as you have repeated that we, the petitioners, have ‘manufactured the threat‘ and are ‘scaremongering’.

I think you have answered some questions that we didn’t ask and avoided the questions that we did ask. You claim ‘we have no intention of closing the Arts Centre’ and that ‘we will not exclude any members of the community’. Well I should hope not, that is not what we have put to you. The petition, far from being ‘scaremongering’ is a genuine response to the fear and upset caused to employees of the university, particularly the Arts Centre, by the current trend of using ‘suspensions’ as a means of implementing university policies. I have not accepted your claim that the suspensions were ‘co-incidence’, because we learn that these high-profile cases that sparked the petition are far from the only recent cases, as confirmed by the recent resolutions of the ULU. I am sure you can see that, leaving aside for the moment your prepared statements and official position, it is almost impossible for us to believe that there is no point at which you can step in to immediately improve a desperate situation and begin to restore some of the trust between the university and its valuable staff.

Note that the 1800 petitioners are not employed by, even have no contractual links to, the university, for the simple reason that if they are not specifically gagged they are sufficiently afraid for their jobs or their business should they be seen to oppose an action of the Vice Chancellor. I have even heard from senior managers working in universities 100s of miles from Aberystwyth afraid to displease their own Vice-Chancellors by signing. This university (and some other British universities) seem to manage staff by fear and bullying. I am sure that you cannot be proud of this impression.

You are concerned some comments seem unpleasant and personal - I think there are a tiny number of comments like that, for which I apologise - I have done no editing. However there is nothing so unpleasant and personal than being excluded from your workplace and suspended pending a genuinely Kafkaesque investigation - you remember poor Joseph K (The Trial, Franz Kafka) being told his case ‘was progressing’ without knowing what he is accused of or whether there is any end to the investigation by nameless bureaucrats. I also do not think you can claim we have used ‘emotional language’. The emotion button is turned up to about 1.5 at the moment - could go higher.

You refer to our wonderful Arts Centre when you seems to mean my wonderful Arts Centre, since we hear you are offering space in the Arts Centre to other Aberystwyth institutions without consulting the proper staff at the Arts Centre. I repeat what I urged you to accept in our meeting, and I am afraid you may not have considered this seriously enough, that the running of a top-flight arts venue is so different to running an academic department, or, say, a local authority department, that an arts venue within the aegis of an academic or government institution has to be managed with great flexibility and tact and extra care.

This brings me to the secondary concern of the petition; the Arts Centre is indeed our Arts Centre, built and set up with an unprecedented grant from Arts Council of Great Britain, the Theatr y Werin funded by the public of Mid Wales, the expansions of galleries, dance studios and educational facilities and studios by grants from Arts Lottery and Royal Institute of British Architects among many others including a funding agreement with the Arts Council of Wales and the vital support of Ceredigion Council. As I said when we delivered the petition, the university is one of the stakeholders in the Arts Centre, not the sole owner and certainly not the controlling interest. Therefore the intention set out in the Strategic Plan to use the Arts Centre for more academic and research purposes (while desirable in a venue in trusting and open relationship to the executive) may in the current situation contravene the rules of Arts Lottery funding leading to a fear of the university having to pay back grants which have been awarded on the basis of the Arts Centre’s artistic independence. Your reassurance that there are no plans to radically restructure the Arts Centre begs the question ‘how much restructure do you think, and more importantly do we think, is not radical? The centre is an ‘asset’ built up over many years by public money and the creative efforts of its staff - to offer space in the Arts Centre for purposes for which it has not been designed or funded, without the full involvement of the director and other relevant staff, would indeed be ‘asset-stripping’.

Thank you for your attention and

Yours sincerely

Stephen West, artist, petition organiser, Llangadfan

cc. Professor Aled Jones

—-ends—-

A clip of National Poet of Wales, Gillian Clarke, sharing her...

Sun, 28 Apr 2013 21:55:00 +0100

A clip of National Poet of Wales, Gillian Clarke, sharing her pain at the sacking/suspension of the two Arts Centre heads in Aberystwyth.

She challenges the people who made the decision to talk about it, at the very least in private, and to remember Alan’s and Auriel’s many years of outstanding service to the Arts Centre and the wider community.

Reportedly, this statement received a standing ovation for several minutes.

If you’re looking for my other articles on this theme, they are:

- FakeAprilMcMcMahon and Real Human Pain
- ~~You Won’t Need a Microscope~~ (deleted)

(I also want to mention, because it would be a crime not to, that I’ve recently been reading Gillian’s collection of poetry entitled “Ice”, and it is wonderful.)

FakeAprilMcMahon and Real Human Pain

Tue, 23 Apr 2013 20:48:40 +0100

Over the past year, I’ve had to watch people I know (and know of) being damaged and demoted and sacked (put on ‘gardening leave’), all because of the apparently thoughtless, heartless implementation of a plan that is cleverly presented as something to which we tacitly agreed.

I’m talking about the restructuring work that’s been happening in my local university here in Aberystwyth.

Throughout the UK there are many similar plans being put into place using many similar techniques. I’m not saying there’s anything particularly special about what’s happening here — unfortunately — but it is happening, and it is here, and I seem to be able to help publicly disagree with it.

So about a month ago I decided to do something that may seem a little silly. Now, I’m not someone who stands on a street corner shouting about things; nor am I someone who writes snarky letters to the editor of a paper that might be ignored as ranting; nor am I well-connected or influential. I can’t do any of those things. All I can think to do is use the great British institution known as satire.

At my core, I’m a writer. It’s not what I do, it’s who I am, and it’s all I have to offer. So I set up @FakeAprilMcM on Twitter. To my amazement, three weeks later it had gone viral in the university and beyond.

It’s been seen as an attack on the real Prof. McMahon, but it actually isn’t. If anything it’s more of a gift to her: it shows her a side of her employees that they can never show her to her face, because they’ve seen what happens to people when they do that. People are relieved of their jobs and they can’t say why; no one knows what’s happening for sure; it’s all dark and hushed.

So I’m not bubbling and fermenting opinion here; I’m just highlighting the way people already feel. In fact, I believe this is why there are printed copies of FakeAprilMcM being shown and shared in private, hidden in filing cabinets around the university: FakeApril was/is a lightning rod for people’s frustration and anger and fear.

If Prof. McMahon likes, she can reflect on the strength of this frustration and fear, and she could use it to help her choose a kinder, more democratic way of implementing her plans, instead of slapping down disagree-ers with disciplinary procedures that were designed to protect fellow workers. Instead, we hear tales that the VC of the university censors and gags those who oppose her; if true, presumably it is because she doesn’t have the confidence to convince people with reasonable arguments.

Obviously I don’t know where things will go from here, though I doubt Prof. McMahon will take FakeApril very seriously — yes, she may get annoyed with me but that’s not what I mean by ‘seriously’ — I mean I doubt it will alter the way she does business with other human beings, because she seems to have determined that the health and well-being of her fellow human beings is less important than her plans, for a smallish university, on the west coast of Wales.

I’m not trying to diminish Aber. I love this place: I’ve lived here half my life. My children have lived all their lives here. The fact we all know each other, the fact there are no strangers because we all share common friends, the fact that we can’t walk down Great Darkgate St. without seeing someone we know, I would suggest these are reasons to be repelled by any suggestion of someone trying to force their own agenda on our community.

Of course, we can’t see Prof. McMahon’s thoughts, but if we look at her actions then I would argue it’s a reasonable conclusion that she’s not very bothered about ‘collateral damage’, or some other euphemism that refers to real people’s broken lives, mental suffering and loss of earnings. I think it very likely that some people will never recover from what’s happened to them, and that their only crime was to be in the way of someone’s plan.

So, today I am sticking my head above the parapet. I might need to ask for your support over the next few months, or I might be ignored, but either way I’m going to continue to write about this.

If you want to help, promote this page in whatever way you can.

Me at the 2012 Aber Book Festival

Sun, 09 Dec 2012 00:06:28 +0000

I’m talking at the 2012 Aberystwyth Book Festival on Monday.

Details are here:

https://www.facebook.com/events/307846082664014/?context=create

It’ll be brilliant. And you can support local authors and publishers.

Tell the world.

Teddy Book as a Prize!

Fri, 16 Nov 2012 16:12:49 +0000

A copy of my book “Hordesmen’s Master” has been requested by the annual Aberystwyth Book Festival as a prize for a competition they are running!

I don’t know whether to laugh or cheer :) Either way, I’m happy.

I’ll be doing a talk at the Festival, and will be selling books.

Hope to see you there, December 10th, venue to be confirmed, but somewhere in Aberystwyth Arts Centre or Library I would imagine.

"Hordesmen's Master" Off to the Printers This Week ...

Tue, 13 Nov 2012 20:18:00 +0000

I’ve been getting a *lot* of good comments about “Hordesmen’s Master” from test readers, copyeditors and other writers :) I was really concerned about this book, so I have been making some careful changes over the last few weeks — it seems they’ve been effective.

The print manuscript is almost finalised and should go off to the printers this week! I’ll let you all know when it’s available on grŵpgwyn.com and Amazon :)

Those of you who have bought an eBook version can get a FREE updated copy once the print version is finalised; just email me c/o grŵpgwyn.

Real Life and Writing

Thu, 08 Nov 2012 22:16:08 +0000

Every now and then (more often than I would like) real life takes over and makes it impossible for me to write — at least I can’t write anything that’s good enough to end up in a book.

I’m just coming out of one of those times.

I’ve been doing two full-time jobs for the last couple of months, and as time went by the amount of work has become more and more intense until last week I was doing crazy hours.

Often when I’m working hard I actually find it relaxing at the end of the day to write a short piece about something, just to do something creative. But recently I’ve got the end of the day and simply collapsed, until it was time to get up in the morning and do it all again.

Hopefully, I can get back to writing “A False Sense of Comfort” now (see my the link for the blog about that book’s development), and I’ve got another secret project that’s tangentially related that I’ve recently started up.

More excitingly, “Hordesmen’s Master” has finally been published in eBook form at grwpgwyn, and will soon be available in printed and Kindle form at Amazon.

Still, I guess we need real life to make itself known like this — if we only lived in our own constructed worlds all the time (okay, we do exactly that, all the time) then we wouldn’t have anything to write about. We write about life, so we need to live it.

On my way back ...

Tue, 06 Nov 2012 15:19:58 +0000

Ugh. The last few weeks have been all work work work. Looking forward to some writing time soon.

Tossing Car Keys to Writers

Sun, 16 Sep 2012 01:36:56 +0100

For the past week, I’ve been trying to think of something to write about the Writer’s Workshop Festival I was at in York last weekend, and I’ve failed.

I wanted to capture something of the collective commitment to writing; the open, caring attitude of the organisers and speakers; the gorgeous venue that sets you apart from every day life, and the friendships that have been forged. And that’s without all the new knowledge and tips and inspiration from the many sessions and workshops. But I can’t find a way to put things that doesn’t sound like that list I just gave, nor a way of expressing it that will mean anything to the rest of the human race who wasn’t there.

Then it struck me, that’s what was special about it. It’s a place and a time in which you share something with others, and you’re changed, and you leave different because of your unsharable experience there, in York. You’re affected by the things people have said, their wisdom, and their gestures of kindness; not to mention the large quantities of alcohol consumed. Well, by some of us. It marks you, almost ritualistically, as someone who’s serious about becoming a writer, not least because you have to take a risk and pay quite a lot of money to people you’ve never met, and travel to a place you may never have been before, to spend a weekend with people you don’t know.

However, after last weekend I would happily toss my car keys to any of them (70s middle-class partying references not included) in complete trust. They’re an amazing group of people who have changed a lot of lives for the better. Not just the people who got agents and/or publishers interested, also the people like me who were encouraged by conversations with hardened industry people, who told us we had what it takes, given a few minor changes.

If you’re a writer, and you can get to York for the middle of September next year, I promise you it will be worth it.

"We didn't have that green thing back then..." (fwd)

Fri, 14 Sep 2012 21:01:36 +0100

Awake & Aging

Like This Page · Yesterday

Being Green

Checking out at the store, the young cashier suggested to the older woman, that she should bring her own grocery bags because plastic bags weren’t good for the environment.

The woman apologized and explained, “We didn’t have

this green thing back in my earlier days.”

The young clerk responded, “That’s our problem today. Your generation did not care enough to save our environment f
or future generations.”

She was right — our generation didn’t have the green thing in its day.

Back then, we returned milk bottles, soda bottles and beer bottles to the store. The store sent them back to the plant to be washed and sterilized and refilled, so it could use the same bottles over and over. So they really were truely recycled.

But we didn’t have the green thing back in our day.

Grocery stores bagged our groceries in brown paper bags, that we reused for numerous things, most memorable besides household garbage bags, was the use of brown paper bags as book covers for our schoolbooks. This was to ensure that public property, (the books provided for our use by the school) was not defaced by our scribblings. Then we were able to personalize our books on the brown paper bags.

But too bad we didn’t do the green thing back then.

We walked up stairs, because we didn’t have an escalator in every store and office building. We walked to the grocery store and didn’t climb into a 300-horsepower machine every time we had to go two blocks.

But she was right. We didn’t have the green thing in our day.

Back then, we washed the baby’s diapers because we didn’t have the throwaway kind. We dried clothes on a line, not in an energy-gobbling machine burning up 220 volts — wind and solar power really did dry our clothes back in our early days. Kids got hand-me-down clothes from their brothers or sisters, not always brand-new clothing.

But that young lady is right; we didn’t have the green thing back in our day.

Back then, we had one TV, or radio, in the house — not a TV in every room. And the TV had a small screen the size of a handkerchief (remember them?), not a screen the size of the state of Montana. In the kitchen, we blended and stirred by hand because we didn’t have electric machines to do everything for us. When we packaged a fragile item to send in the mail, we used wadded up old newspapers to cushion it, not Styrofoam or plastic bubble wrap. Back then, we didn’t fire up an engine and burn gasoline just to cut the lawn. We used a push mower that ran on human power. We exercised by working so we didn’t need to go to a health club to run on treadmills that operate on electricity.

But she’s right; we didn’t have the green thing back then.

We drank from a fountain when we were thirsty instead of using a cup or a plastic bottle every time we had a drink of water. We refilled writing pens with ink instead of buying a new pen, and we replaced the razor blades in a razor instead of throwing away the whole razor just because the blade got dull.

But we didn’t have the green thing back then.

Back then, people took the streetcar or a bus and kids rode their bikes to school or walked instead of turning their moms into a 24-hour taxi service. We had one electrical outlet in a room, not an entire bank of sockets to power a dozen appliances. And we didn’t need a computerized gadget to receive a signal beamed from satellites 23,000 miles out in space in order to find the nearest burger joint.

But isn’t it sad the current generation laments how wasteful we old folks were just because we didn’t have the green thing back then?

Please forward this on to another selfish old person who needs a lesson in conservation from a smartass young person.

We don’t like being old in the first place, so it doesn’t take much to piss us off.

(taken from a post I saw on Facebook)

Always Pointing Up

Thu, 13 Sep 2012 20:32:00 +0100

Neil Gaiman once said that every job he considered — in fact every choice he made of any sort — he would ask, “Will this help to make me a good writer?”

That’s some pretty single-minded thinking, but what *is* the alternative? What I’m doing at the moment is spending a huge portion of my waking time doing a job that in NO WAY helps me to become a good writer. It’s not a bad job, but even if I were still in academia, it is a big step down from where I was, with no way back up. It’s a money job. I’ll do it well, but it’s not a job for love.

There’s other stuff too of course. There’s family: a wife and two gorgeous boys (4) and (7) in the same house here, and I want to give my time to them. And there’s the HOUSE VAMPIRE in which we live that sucks even more time (and money)

So I can only write in the time that’s left, and that’s assuming I’m not too tired. This is NOT a good way to become a skilful, published writer. In fact, at the moment, I’m lucky if I do more than write or revise a poem every other day, and re-writing a chapter or two seems like a huge undertaking.

I have told my boss I’m going to work 30hrs a week (at a pay cut) so I can spend more day-time with the boys, and then I can spend more evening-time with Joanne, and with a glass of wine writing. Well, in principle — I can’t drink wine at the moment because the sight of it still makes me queasy after last weekend’s shenanigans. (Still, it was a goooood weekend…)

Anyway, I’m cutting my hours. I hope I won’t be chasing my tail so much, and we should still have just about enough money. In any case, I still have a couple of clients from my business, and I can earn some extra money from them.

I think this is a good choice. I think I’m going to be pointing up again.

Missing

Thu, 06 Sep 2012 23:25:15 +0100

A gothic silliness perhaps, but a genuine attempt nonetheless to capture the hollow feeling of a reluctant ending:

Lungs fill with cool dawn air
In the hope that it will wake me fully from my dreams
so I can set loose and master the day.

Legs move feet, to crunch where they will,
up and through the snargle grass and
grasping bramble finger-thorns

till I notice the tall stones,
dark in the low sun’s cold light.
Feet stop. Eyes hunt.

There is the strangest sound
of nothing.
I move forward towards the circle

and lay my hand upon the first stone, as I pass.
It is not dead. It has a heart.
I move on towards the middle and

it fills me. There is someone missing.
In the circle centre, at the very focal point,
I reach for an old mercy and close my eyes.

But the gnawing remains.

Festival of Writing, York, 2012

Sun, 02 Sep 2012 15:39:00 +0100

I’m off to the Festival of Writing in York next week — in fact, this time next week it will just about be over, and I’ll getting ready for the four-hour drive back to West Wales.

I’ve been starting to get to know people (in the internet sense of that concept) on the Festival’s forum, and obviously I haven’t been totally successful yet — after all, they’re are a lot of people on there who have known each other for ages. I suppose they see newbies like me come and go; I probably I need to prove I’ll be sticking around. In any case, they seem friendly with each other: generous, caring, interested. If I can get to know people at the festival/conference itself then I think I’ll be fine.

It raises a question: why am I going to the Festival? I think, a week ago, I would have said purely to try to find an agent to represent me and my work, and to get feedback from the agents who I approach. However, now I think it’s more than that — I want to become part of a community; I want to give and have access to support; I want to share what I’m doing and see what others are doing so we can gain from each other.

Although, I’ve always seen writing as a lone effort — sitting in a garret (pun) looking out of the window, chewing on the end of a pencil — now I see the need for feedback and input from others. I’m not at all saying the process of writing a book should be collaborative, but I think it does need to rub up against other people at times, because it’s ‘other people’ who will be reading it in the end. It’s not just about me making something for myself.

So, I’m really looking forward to next weekend. Getting an agent would be great, but making friends I can chat with about our mutual work would be a prize for life.

Tourettes and Bipolar Disorder and Scary Monsters

Wed, 22 Aug 2012 11:43:00 +0100

What’s your reaction to the following: “My son has Tourettes”? Or, “I have Type II Bipolar Disorder”? Do you get an image of my son and me in your head? Do we seem odd and maybe a little scary? Perhaps you think my son swears a lot and twists his head oddly? Something like that? Perhaps you think I’m emotionally all over the place, a caveman with no self-control or self-awareness?

Of course, it’s possible you’re a healthcare professional and you know both of these images are exagerations of the truth.

My son never swears: he just makes a noise every few seconds (a ‘vocal tic’) that is a sharp intake of breath, which makes a ‘huhhh’ sound, plus some occassional hand and foot actions (motor tics) every minute or so. Every now and then his tics change to something else. Otherwise he’s a perfectly ordinary, rather clever boy.

And I have learned, over the years, to be aware of my mood swings, which vary over several weeks and can be modulated by external events. I can usually tell when I’m hyper (when I tend to believe I can do anything I set my mind to, and everything is simple and wonderful, and everything will work out well) or depressed (when the whole world seems pointless, and I’m obviously just a piece of shit on the bottom of someone’s shoe, and there’s no point in continuing) — and, by being aware of the mood swings, I can step back and re-gain some control and carry on in a more measured way.

Why do I bring all this up? Because it’s to do with creativity (the main point of this blog). It forces my son and I to consider what we look like through the eyes of others, and our place among the people around us. And that is helpful for creativity. You learn to question ordinary things, you feel on the outside looking in, you feel the need to express your feelings in some way because you of the analysis you’ve done. It’s kind of like how many people feel during their teenage years, except it lasts your whole life.

Now, that’s not a bad thing — we’re not on this earth very long, so it’s good to look around, and record what you see. It’s like being on a train: we don’t just chat and eat and drink, we look out of the window and think and record it all. My son draws everything that matters to him, whereas I write it all down. No one else may ever see what we’ve done, but the creative act itself is wonderfully validating because it’s an individual looking at something, interacting with it, and responding to it in a way that could share and express the experience.

Of course it’s not easy sometimes, but I wouldn’t change the way my son and I are for the world.

UPDATE:
Someone has challenged me to say it seems I am trying to excuse my behaviour with what I say above. That was not my intention, and I am certainly not doing that. My actions are my responsibility, as is true for most people, and I apologise when they are not helpful.

Sadomasochistic Teen Vampires

Fri, 17 Aug 2012 23:44:00 +0100

I’ve been book writing! It’s like coming home to a comfy chair and a big cup of tea.

The pressures of the last month or two have kind of pushed all prose writing out of the window, though I have managed to keep writing poetry (well, it’s good therapy.) In fact, some of it could go in my to-be-published collection with a little more work. But I started writing prose again a couple of days ago.

This has been possible because work is getting easier. There are ups and downs, but overall the vector is slowly up, and I’m confident enough with most aspects of the job. Similarly, friendships are getting sorted out one way or another (some up, some down), and I’m more at peace about the losses. Finally, a long-term underlying issue is gradually improving (again with ups and downs).

All good stuff, but another help for my peace-of-mind was a really good chat I had with someone this week who helped me see that I was being black and white about … well, a lot of things in my perception of life. There’s a good reason for that but I’ve still found it quite levelling to practice taking the ‘middle road’ between extremes.

So, I’ve got a stable job I can do; I have friends who care about me, and my family love me — I’ve been able to return my focus to novel writing.

I’ve re-drafted and sent the first 3,000 words of “Hordesmen’s Master” to a couple of literary agents, and I’m meeting them sometime around the beginning of September at a writer’s conference. Realistically, there’s not a lot of chance of them picking up my work, simply because they see about 2,000 books a year and pick only a handful. What I’m really hoping to get is full-on professional feedback; that way I’ll know at what height the bar is set, and ideally how far short of it I am and why.

Once I know that, I can work at tightening text and improving structure, then maybe I’ve got a real chance of getting properly published — meaning I get an agent and they find me a publisher who gives me a four- or five-figure advance. That’s the goal, and it’s potentially attainable, but it’s going to be achieved in little steps, day by day.

Hmm … I suppose there is a quick way to get published, and that’s to write a graphically detailed book about sadomasochistic teen vampires, but I can’t quite bring myself to do that.

Rolling the Boulder Back Up the Hill

Sat, 11 Aug 2012 00:30:00 +0100

What an unpleasant last ten days. On top of two relationship losses (one particularly sad), and a big health scare with my eldest son, digging into this job that I’ve just begun is one of the toughest things I’ve ever had to do — but I’m getting there: I’ve learned to have a new peace with ‘stuff that happens’, and I can fix non-trivial problems with a large web app that uses esoteric frameworks and plug-ins, even though the whole thing was an mystery to me eleven days ago.

Since I’m feeling a little more at ease, I’ve been thinking about what I said in my last post: that I’m going to get my company back somehow. To that end, I’ve been developing a business idea, and it’s exciting. I’m not sure about the size of the market, but I think it will be big enough, and there’s no one else doing even a tenth of what I plan to do. The good thing is that the stuff I’ve just been learning on my current job is going to help. I’m going to plan, and think, and sketch, and prototype whenever I get some free time…

The other thing I said in my last post was that I am going to finish “Hordesmen’s Master”, despite the problems people had with the draft. In fact, I’m going to get some momentum on that one because I’m off to a writer’s conference near the beginning of September, (The Writer’s Workshop). Now, I’ll be honest: my spidey-sense is tingling a warning on this one, and I’m finding it hard to believe these people are going to be as good as they claim to be, but I’m willing to give them a fair try.

The point is, I have to submit my work to them in advance (3,000 words plus a covering page) so I can have two one-to-one sessions with agents. We’ll see. I’m not holding my breath, but I might get some useful comments that will help me re-structure “Hordesmen’s Master” and I have to do some work on the book in the next few days.

I also mentioned I’m going to put together a poetry collection. I’ve been making progress on that too. I’ve been organising my work and I was amazed how much I’ve written. Obviously, I can’t use most of it, but already there are enough poems for a slim collection. And since I can’t help but write poems, I will have a collection one day.

So things are moving forward, and I’m making progress on my written promises to myself … now, if only I didn’t continually mess things up with the people I care about :(

Stages

Tue, 31 Jul 2012 22:07:19 +0100

I was recently followed by someone, so I scanned through her Tumblr.

She’s got that youthful spark about her and is trying stuff out and is crashing into stuff and getting up and still having fun. I was totally envious. I remember being like that; I remember realising I could do new things; I remember planning to do those things; I remember actually doing them, and the thrill it gave me to be in control of myself and my destiny.

And I realised that I’m not like that any more. Now, I have to do things that I don’t want to do. I have to do things simply because I need the money. I have to ‘quit’ my own company tomorrow, Aug 1st, to go back to work for someone else, because I can’t get enough clients to pay the bills, which must be paid or else I lose my house, and my children and wife suffer.

Some people criticise young people for the way they live, but which way would you rather live?

Somehow, I’m going to get my company back, and make it work, and live on my terms again. And I’m going to finish “Hordesmen’s Master”, and the third Teddy book, and put together a poetry collection, and write “London Heat”. And I’m going to get known as an author. This is not just a collection of words; I am going to do all this. Watch.

Thanks to my follower for unintentionally inspiring me — may your life always be on your terms.

POEM - “Home” - 30/7/12

Mon, 30 Jul 2012 10:29:00 +0100

This comes from two conversations I’ve had recently: one with my poetry mentor about a train journey she took, and one with a dear friend about where we each reside in our body. As a result, it’s written in a female voice.

-begin-

I live in the beat of my heart;
each pump and rush proves the lush
existence that I have from day to day.
And when it stops then so do I.

But you live in your head:
wired synapses silently effervesce data above the neck;
your heart only is where you feel
the hot blast and cold loneliness of your days.

Are we un-alike and separate?
Or just centred on a different home?

The train jolts and I notice two glib girls, small-talking —
word-wodding the gaps through which
the gorgeous green and blue
and heart-bursting beauty of daily life could have spilled.

They are blocked and stuck
in a grey metal box that clatters
on its wheels to a destination
they can’t control.

I am answered and smile.
One day, I may happen upon someone,
bright with life, who lives in his toes,
almost as similar as you and me.

-end-

Middle-aged angst

Tue, 17 Jul 2012 17:45:24 +0100

If I say I went for two job interviews and I got one, you’d probably think something like, “Hey! Not bad!” But that’s not how I’m feeling at all.

The job I didn’t get was part-time and a perfect match for my little web business. The job I got is full-time and will be quite demanding. As a result, I will have to give up my business and my day-time contact with my boys. My creative time will be pushed to the weekends, in competition with family stuff, and I will spend most of my working hours under someone else’s control.

I will be doing an important job, which could have significant benefit for all of us in our daily lives (I can’t be more specific), but I will no longer be my own boss, setting my own agenda, and living like a mini hunter-gatherer. I’ll be an employee, with a number that identifies me.

I shouldn’t complain. So many people - especially at the moment - would love a job like the one I’m going to be doing, yet I can’t help but feel the losses, and fear the changes I’ll have to make to fit in. It’s more than fear of the unknown, it’s fear of losing part of me.