Tea and geraniums

MoP 18: First they came...

2012-01-18T21:42:00.004+10:00

Today's poem comes to you in honour of most of my favourite sites being blacked out at the moment.

First they came

with apologies to Martin Neimoller

First they came for Wikipedia

But I didn't speak up because I'm not a Wikipedian

Then they came for Reddit

But I didn't speak up because I don't use Reddit

Then they came for Wordpress

But I didn't speak up because I use Blogger

Then they came for the Cheezburger network

But I didn't speak up because that would involve writing a misspelled caption for a photo of a cat

Then they came for Regretsy and Cakewrecks

and I wrote a poem.

MoP 14: The nonsense sonnet

2012-01-14T20:39:00.003+10:00

I've let the month of poetry slip for a few days - I was busy at work, then I was tired, then I'd got into a habit of not doing it and thought another day wouldn't hurt...

Now, however, I am back, and I'm going to attempt to tackle something I never got around to last year. A sonnet.

Sonnets are serious business. They have very strict format requirements, and also a long and illustrious history of being written by the masters, so I feel like if I make a balls of it it's a much bigger deal than sneezing out a dodgy haiku.

There are a few different formats to choose from, but here's Wikipedia's explanation of the English sonnet (as Shakespeare wrote), partially for interest's sake, and partially because that's the one I've chosen and I need to remind myself how it goes...

"A Shakespearean, or English, sonnet consists of 14 lines, each line containing ten syllables and written in iambic pentameter, in which a pattern of an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable is repeated five times. The rhyme scheme in a Shakespearean sonnet is a-b-a-b, c-d-c-d, e-f-e-f, g-g; the last two lines are a rhyming couplet."

Right. Well, abab I've done plenty of times before, and how hard can a couplet be? The five beats per line thing is a bit tricky, since a diet of pop songs and bush ballads have ingrained four beats per line into our heads for most of our lives.

Kat Apel, co-ordinator of the Month of Poetry turnout, has been turning her hand to sonnets this year and although I think it's developing magnificently her plaintive sonnet-related tweets suggest it hasn't come without a fight.

I've decided to make life a bit easier by foregoing the whole coherence part of the poem, and just concentrating on getting the rhythm and rhyme pattern right. It's a big ask to worry about plot and theme while you still have to check your notes every two minutes to remind yourself how the format works...

So, without further ado:

The Nonsense Sonnet

I went down to the creek in heels today

To see what kind of library they had.

I saw a shark as I went on my way,

and that's when I knew things were really bad.

My camera's old and has a lot of rust

The shark was shiny, new and very green

and he did swim so nicely in the dust

He had the nicest curls I'd ever seen.

This poem goes on for longer than I thought

so long in fact the shark has swam away

and taken all the sausages I bought

that I was saving for a special day.

I never did get to the creek it seems,

But poems? My dear I've written reams and reams.

MoP 8: A clutter of thoughts

2012-01-08T17:40:00.002+10:00

Today's poem is a verbal defrag. It's not very pretty and doesn't make a lot of sense if you don't hang out in my head. Sorry about that.

The sink is dirty.

The laundry needs folding.

My laptop is randomly BSODing.

There are claw-holes in the screen door.

The cats aren't eating. Why aren't the cats eating?

Does anyone ever actually sell anything on Madeit?

I cut out a dress a week ago, but haven't sewn it yet.

The dishwasher's taking up too much space, but I can't sell it.

Someone bought something off me for 99 cents on Ebay and won't pay.

The bottle of juice won't fit in the fridge now that I've put the milk away.

At least I've blocked Youtube so I can't blow any more data watching ponies.

Is this misprinted CD that says I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue but is actually Hancock's Half Hour rare and valuable, or just a piece of crap?

Am I lazy?

Am I taking on too much?

Should I be more organised?

Or is this level of chaos normal?

MoP 7: Slippery things

2012-01-07T20:55:00.003+10:00

Eels

and snakes

and slowcoach snails

and other

slippery things with tails

Oil

and sand

and slimy goo

powder,

dust, and jelly too

These

are things

that slip away

like every

tick of every day

Spring

Summer

a sunny day

a puppy,

or a child at play

Your

twenties

your teenage years

squandered on

wasted time and fears

Gone

before

you know it

just one chance

so don't you blow it.

Put

away

your phones and screens

and grasp

for all those slippery things.

MoP 6: Haiku

2012-01-06T17:16:00.002+10:00

Thanks to a bloody-minded computer eating a very, very long article I was writing for work, I'm well behind schedule today.

So, in place of the usual doggerel, here's a haiku for your reading pleasure.

Except.... haiku are supposed to be about a moment of time with a focus on nature. This one's more a moment in time with a focus on K-Mart. Sorry about that.

Sparkly plastic things

Endless rows of samey pink

Toy aisles make me sick.

MoP 5: When I Was Young

2012-01-05T16:51:00.002+10:00

Free verse (AKA 'not really poetry') today - I have an idea I want to exorcise, but don't have time to turn it into a proper rhyming rhythm-having poem. So here it is as a slab of oddly phrased prose with line breaks in random places:

When I Was Young

When I was young

I had a rag doll called Jemima

I loved her like a sister

took her everywhere

When I was young

I had a blue My Little Pony

I really wanted a pink one

but loved her anyway

When I was young

I didn't have a lot of friends

But it didn't really matter

I had my things

When I was older

I moved out of home

and left my beloved things

under the bed

The box was shifted

forgotten

ignored

tripped over

dragged out

ignited

ashes

gone.

Now I am older

I have more friends, but not many

but I don't fill the gaps

with my things.

MoP 4: The love of a cat

2012-01-04T14:49:00.002+10:00

I have two cats, a senior citizen called Brando and a juvenile delinquent named Fry. I love them both to bits, and since I can't get away with making every single poem a whinge about not having time to write poems, I thought today's effort could be an ode to their loveliness:

The love of a cat

He sits on the top step every morning

waiting for me to open the door

purrs as he creaks down six green steps

and grunts as he hits the concrete floor.

He rubs and loves and purrs aplenty

as I fumble sleepily with his bowl

He breakfasts like a starving beast

then gazes up with eyes of gold.

He isn't always a perfect housemate

there are accidents, hisses and growls

He only eats the expensive brand

and there's soft black hair on all my towels.

But I wouldn't swap him for a fortune

for all the wonders under the sun

I wouldn't swap him for a baby

Because with him, I already have one.

MoP 3: quick and dirty

2012-01-03T21:59:00.002+10:00

There was a young lady from Bluff

who Ebayed some mirrors and stuff

but if you have a good look

at the photos she took

you can see that she works in the buff.

MoP Day 2: Procrastination

2012-01-02T21:08:00.002+10:00

Yeep, it's another frantic late night doggerel writing session from Artsie HQ.

This is something I really need to work on this year. Procrastination. Time management. I've really done very little today - did a little mending and cut out a dress, not exactly a full day's productive labour - yet somehow the whole day's gone by and I'm throwing this together at bedtime.

It's ridiculous, because I do genuinely enjoy writing and have been looking forward to the month of poetry. So why am I treating this like some sort of nasty chore to put off?

Partially, because it involves using my brain, and it's much easier to just flake out in front of a screen and not have to think so hard.

Also, because unpleasant inner truths have a horrible habit of bubbling up when I write poetry, things I'm not ready to face yet. Or just don't want to face - because it involves thinking!

Haven't got time

Dirty dishes in the kitchen

grotty teabags in the sink

a pile of unread papers

and I just don't want to think.

There's dust on my guitar

and my novel is unwritten

and I need to fix a broken chair

but these thoughts swill back unbidden.

I'm so sick of being useless,

Always struggling, always late

never up to standard

feeling like I've let down fate

Like I could have been so awesome

but no potential's realised

because the pressure to be perfect

has left my paralysed

I'd rather just do nothing

than try, and get it wrong

it's why I never worked with oils,

wrote a book, composed a song.

If another person wrote this

I'd tell them just to let it be,

to have fun and not to worry....

but it's different when it's me.

Month of Poetry: This Year

2012-01-01T20:54:00.005+10:00

The Month of Poetry is on again. Like last year, it's sneaked up on me - why do they put January 1 so close to December 31? - but here I am, posting my first poem for the month with minutes to spare.

In the time I should have been writing this, I've cleaned out my inbox, done an irrelevant Creative Commons image search, written a post for my other blog, and demolished two cups of tea and a packet of chocolate biscuits.

So I'd better crack on, hadn't I?

This year

This year I pledge

to do more good than harm

to be productive

not destructive

to be alert, yet calm.

This year I pledge

to take good care of me

coz I can't cover

the care of others

if I'm not as fit as can be.

This year I pledge

to sort my money out

right now it's a mess

I'm living on less

and this has to be fixed, no doubt!

This year I pledge

to let my child-self play

to draw and strum

dream in the sun

and to live fully every day.

Petrichor

2011-05-28T12:22:00.002+10:00

A few posts - and about a thousand years - ago, I was bleating about how we don't have a word for a shaft of light reflected on water.

Well, we may not but we do have some other beautiful and very specific words.

Take petrichor, the word for 'the scent of rain falling on dry earth'.

OMG in the OED? O RLY

2011-04-20T20:24:00.000+10:00

picture by PlayStar Rocker

OMG, and its friends FYI and LOL, have made it into the next edition of the Oxford English Dictionary - appropriate, perhaps, since that edition may be the first to be only available online.

O RLY?

YA RLY.

NO WAI.

With fronds like these...

2011-04-15T19:53:00.002+10:00

Who needs anemones?

I know this blog's supposed to be about writing, but every so often I wander off course into various other random things of a bookish nature, like these magnificent vintage illustrations:

This comes from the strikingly marvellous Bibliodyssey, where you can fulfil all your ancient illustrative needs.

Cross posted to ArtsieAspie, my arting and crafting blog.

Beg pardon?

2011-04-08T21:28:00.002+10:00

Here's something that may appeal if you like playing with language, and have geeky leanings:

The World’s First Internet Special-Characters Poem, which dates from 1990 and is the work of Fred Bremmer and Steve Kroese.

It goes like this:

<>!*""#

^"`$$-

!*=@$_

%*<>~#4

&{}../

|{,,SYSTEMHALTED

And no, the 'system halted' isn't the result of your poor confused computer having a freak out about the gibberish beforehand, it's the end of the poem.

If you're completely mystified - and I was, because I don't pronounce things in my head as I read, so I'd never thought about how some of these symbols actually sounded - here's a translation into spoken english:

Waka waka bang splat tick tick hash,
Caret quote back-tick dollar dollar dash,
Bang splat equal at dollar under-score,
Percent splat waka waka tilde number four,
Ampersand bracket bracket dot dot slash,
Vertical-bar curly-bracket comma comma CRASH.

Why don't we have a word for this?

2011-04-03T12:17:00.000+10:00

This question on Quora sees a person looking for an English word for a ray of light across water. Apparently the Turkish word yakamoz means the path of moonlight across water, and the querent was surprised there wasn't an English equivalent.

Come to think of it, so am I.

I mean, seriously, we have a word to describe the seal on the end of a shoelace but don't have one to describe a natural phenomenon which has struck our ancestors with its beauty for thousands of years? This seems remiss.

The asker has coined "shimmerlane", which sounds a bit Tolkein for my liking but does the job much better than anything I can think of right now.

So, over to you - what should we call the moon's silvery ribbon laid soft upon the velvet waves?

And what else should we have a word for, but don't?

How to not get published

2011-03-31T18:32:00.002+10:00

So, you want to be an author. You want to see your name on the front of dust-jacketed hardbound tomes, being clutched to the chests of the eager crowd queuing up for a glimpse of your writerly profile and the swirl of your moniker inside the front cover.

Here's how to make sure that doesn't happen.

Photo by Shutterhacks

Would you send off your manuscript to the printers - not a prospective publisher but the actual place that's going to turn your MS into a real bona fide book - without getting a second set of eyes to proofread it?

Would you then pick a fight on the internet with a reviewer who praised your ability to craft a plot, because they also pointed out that the many errors spoil the reading experience?

Would you allow your contributions to the ensuing online stoush to themselves be riddled with grammatical errors?

One writer would.

For the record, here's one sentence from the book. I hope you can work out what it means, because I genuinely have no idea:

"Don and Katy watched hypnotically Gino place more coffees out at another table with supreme balance."

How to organise a bookcase

2011-03-29T21:10:00.001+10:00

There's an obvious link between loving to read, loving to write, and loving the physical presence of books.

In that spirit, and because I've done absolutely diddly writing of my own, I give you:

Not mine. Click 'view on YouTube' to visit the original and tell the creator their work is awesome.

Write some words, win some money

2011-03-27T12:09:00.003+10:00

BPay is running a competition, which could see you three grand richer by writing a short story, a love poem, a film synopsis or a recipe.

There's just one catch - there's a 120 character limit, and if you're used to waxing lyrical for page upon page, the discipline can be quite a challenge.

Get thyself over to Short and Sweet and try your luck. The more you whore your entry around on Facebook, the better your chances of being shortlisted, so let me know if you enter and I'll "like" yours if you "like" mine.

How do you use words when you tag things?

2011-02-25T20:45:00.003+10:00

How creative are writers - and should writers be - when it comes to putting tags on their work?

Take this photo:

When I posted it over on Flickr, I tagged it with "sand", "beach" and "ocean".

This is, I fully accept, not terribly creative. It ignores a great many synonyms for a start - coast, sea, seaside, ocean, waves, water. And is it a bay, or is the sticky-out bit in the distance a headland? Or both? If the vegetation doesn't rate a mention because it takes up so little of the frame, how about the sky? The clouds? The footprints?

But really, I'm wondering about the less tangible descriptors. Summer. Fun. Paradise. Heat. Sunlit. Idyllic. Tropical. Relaxing. Peaceful. Tranquil.

Just to check, I bashed "tranquil" into a Creative Commons Flickr search, and came up with a weird array of stuff from temples and beaches to a pair of earrings and SecondLife screen captures.

It's all terribly subjective, too. Beaches aren't necessarily fun or peaceful. It isn't necessarily summer or hot. That particular beach is technically subtropical.

So, what do you reckon? Should we be using those less tangible tags to make our material easier to find? Or does it just clog the system up with chaos, and we should stick to the bare essentials?

Cross posted to My Open Source Life.

Brumbies

2011-02-04T23:06:00.000+10:00

Due to the Queensland floods, I will be very busy at work for quite some time. So this blog doesn't go completely to pot, I'm scheduling a series of my own poems. If you leave a comment, I may not get back to you for some time.

The pound of ancient thunder

in the horses' drumming hooves

a steady throbbing heartbeat

through the gully

down the valley

across the stony plain.

Long chestnut necks are plunging

rushing through the foamy spray

creek water churned with hoofbeats

through the gulley

down the valley

across the stony plain.

Chocolate clouds of dust

the wild horses' route describe

to the clear, all seeing sky

Above the gulley

and the valley

across the stony plain.

Dancing in circles

2011-01-31T23:12:00.000+10:00

Due to the Queensland floods, I will be very busy at work for quite some time. So this blog doesn't go completely to pot, I'm scheduling some of my old (very old, in this case) poems to keep things ticking over. If you leave a comment, I may not get back to you for some time.

This was apparently written as lyrics to a song, hence the rather strange rhythm and endless repetition. Other than a vague snatch of Celtic-ish melody for the 'dancing in circles at the end of the day' line, I cannot remember at all how it's supposed to go.

I miss you

I need you

You're breaking my heart

It's been so many years since I've seen you

Do you ever

remember

before you went away

We were dancing in circles

at the end of the day.

Five years now

and counting

and dreading the same

and imagining you'll be returning

I wait like a puppy for your step on the stair

We'll be dancing in circles

at the end of the day.

I need you

I miss you

You've broken my heart.

I know that you'll not be returning.

I'll be waiting forever for you to come home

No more dancing in circles

at the end of the day.

Smoke

2011-01-27T23:01:00.000+10:00

Due to the Queensland floods, I will be very busy at work for quite some time. So this blog doesn't go completely to pot, I am scheduling a series of my old poems to post automatically over the next few weeks to keep things ticking along. If you leave a comment, I may not get back to you for some time.

Your letters, cards and promises
postcards from Fiji
words and sketches, photographs
your honeyed lies to me.

Diaries full of fantasies
planning for forever
pictures cut from magazines
I glued my life together

A dozen years
of hopes and fears

Two minutes and a match.

Two inches of ash in the laundry sink,
all that's left of every word you spoke.

And if I cried, it was only from the smoke.

Poetry: Square peg

2011-01-24T20:34:00.000+10:00

Due to the flooding in Queensland, I'm going to be very, very busy at work for quite some time. So my blogs aren't entirely neglected in that time, I'm going to dust off and post some of my old poetry. If you leave a comment, I may not get back to you for a while.

Square peg

round hole

My peg

no hole.

Not square

star shaped

rhomboid

wrong.

A piece

of a puzzle

where pices

don't fit.

Trying to find a pattern

where my piece will fit

without sanding

grinding

cutting

polishing

finishing

without it being the end of me.

Cross posted to Letters from Aspergia.

I got rhythm

2011-01-21T22:59:00.000+10:00

I wrote this as part of the 'anti-realism' section of my poetry unit at Uni, when I was a fresh faced and not at all cynical literature student. The really sad thing is I'm fairly sure when I wrote this a bakers' dozen years ago I wasn't taking the piss out of the postmodernist movement. Ooooooh dear....

da da DA da da DA

Why I can't complete the Month of Poetry challenge

2011-01-16T16:36:00.003+10:00

As you can probably tell from the void where this week's posts should be, I've fallen off the Month of Poetry wagon quite badly.

The flooding has gone from mildly inconvenient to disastrous to catastrophic, and it's only now beginning to dawn on me how long the clean up will take, and how much it will cost. And how much work it will be.

I had big plans for this year. It was going to be a year of easing back on the throttle at work and concentrating on my writing, my health and my social life. It was going to be a year for building on what I've already achieved and taking it in amazing new directions.

It's now looking like a year for surviving, rather than flourishing; for recovering and regrouping rather than forging new paths.

This year has already thrown monstrous challenges at us, and for many the hardest part is just coming, or is still to come - going through ruined belongings, homes and businesses, mourning the terrible losses, deciding what to replace and what to walk away from and start again.

I don't like describing myself as a journalist, because it doesn't adequately cover what I really do. It's why I usually describe myself as a "storyteller" - yes it's flippant, but I also think it's closer to the truth than "journalist" with all the things, good and bad, that implies. I tell stories, and I help others tell their own.

There are many stories which need to be told now. Important stories. Stories of survivial, stories of loss, stories of hopelessness and stories of hope. I may not be much use as part of the physical clean up effort - with my motor skills problems I'd be more likely to injure myself than be any actual help - but where I can help is making sure those stories are told.

Any artificial responsibilities I've taken on, like craft swapping and the Month of Poetry, will have to slide. I have to scale down and possibly abandon my own plans for this year, because the universe obviously has other ideas and has thrown other responsibilities at me.

Month of Poetry #7

2011-01-07T20:16:00.005+10:00

Brando is a beautiful black and white tom cat, a former stray who decided to move in with me and is more housemate than pet. He is the gentlest cat I've ever met, and has never laid a claw on me, even when I've had to do stuff like cut out matted bits and burrs from his long, long fur. He purrs long and loud, and is always up for a cuddle. He's very, very old, with silver hairs streaking his muzzle and back and some obvious stiffness on cold mornings. But he's never voluntarily come inside. He'll lie quietly in my arms if I carry him in and sit him on the couch for a cuddle, but won't come in of his own accord.

Maybe you're thinking such a gentle old soldier deserves a quiet life inside on a cushion, and I agree, but Brando won't be in it. And, for reasons about to be revealed, I've given up encouraging him.

He's a beautiful cat in every way. Except one. Which brings me to today's poem, a limerick:

There's a cat sitting by my back door

He's lived here eighteen months or more

All his ways are delightful

save one, which is frightful:

He shits on the living room floor.

Month of Poetry #6

2011-01-06T19:27:00.004+10:00

Air thick and heavy, raindrops dancing over roads. Summer thunderstorms.

Month of Poetry #5

2011-01-05T10:07:00.004+10:00

Dear sweet mother of frogs. I've been working through this list, and it's all been pretty easy so far. But I've skipped "free verse", because that's basically a licence to do whatever, and I've been doing that for years. So I'm up to form number six, and all a sudden it's got complicated:

"Ghazal: Based on Urdu poetry and originating in the 6th century, the ghazal consists of five to fifteen couplets (usually seven) with a refrain of one or a few words repeated at the end of each of the first two lines and the second line of each subsequent couplet. Additionally, the words before each refrain are usually rhymes or partial rhymes, and each line should be roughly the same length or meter. While the couplets develop a common theme, each one should read like a poem or unit in itself."

More fool me, I toddled off to Wikipedia for more information, only to find they're usually about pain, loss, unrequited love and separation.

Thinking this might all make more sense if I had something to copy off, I went and found an example. Here's part of a ghazal (pronounced 'guzzle' apparently) by Agha Shahid Ali

The hunt is over, and I hear the Call to Prayer
fade into that of the wounded gazelle tonight.

My rivals for your love– you’ve invited them all?
This is mere insult, this is no farewell tonight.

And I, Shahid, only am escaped to tell thee–
God sobs in my arms. Call me Ishmael tonight.

At this point, I'm a little sorry I started all this. But I will not - not, d'you hear me?! - be beaten by an obscure poetic form.

So, here goes:

I was just a kid of seventeen

and you were thirty-two, dear

I thought I knew what life had planned

and so, I'm sure, did you, dear

Change comes quickly when you're young

when all the world is new, dear

You've no idea how hard I tried

to come back home to you, dear

This was my one chance I craved

surely that you knew, dear

I could not stop to be your wife

I needed more than you, dear

A dozen years of joy and tears,

yet I remember you, dear.

Month of Poetry #4

2011-01-05T10:00:00.002+10:00

Sleepy

Early morning

Papers, tea and biscuits

Kitten rumbling as it dozes

Purring

Month of Poetry #3

2011-01-05T09:54:00.002+10:00

I refuse to write a "concrete" poem

I'm a rubbish poet

for all my big ideas

I'm somewhat lacking talent

and I'm wet behind the ears.

I may be fairly rubbish

I may be wont to moan

But I still have my pride, so I

won't write a "concrete" poem.

Month of Poetry #2

2011-01-05T09:44:00.004+10:00

I'm working through this list, by the way.

All letters spiral down

Crumbled word meaningless

Ripped into component parts

Or looked at another way it's

Strips of neon lettering

Trailling down a theatre wall

Is this fact or fantasy?

Can't call it poetry.

Month of Poetry #1

2011-01-05T09:33:00.002+10:00

I am a few days behind with the Month of Poetry challenge due to unforeseen circumstances. So please excuse the spammage of short poems, but I have a backlog to clear...

Rain crash, water rise

Cover the land, scour our souls

time to start again.

Waxing poetical

2010-12-28T13:47:00.002+10:00

Yikes, the new year is just a few days away. That means it's nearly time for the Month of Poetry challenge.

I find proper poetry - as in decent poems which actually rhyme and scan, and follow some sort of accepted definition of 'poetry' - rather difficult. It's laziness, essentially - it's easier to cobble together six lines of blah than to actually sit down, work out what the hell a sonnet actually is, and create one.

But any fool can produce six lines of blah (and, to repurpose a gag from an old Goodies episode, most fools do). So, I'm going to try to actually do this properly.

It starts with some research, the sort of things I should have learnt while I was studying literature at uni but was too busy wanting to make a move on the cute boy in the back row (I never did) and working Doctor Who references into my film studies essays.

So, thanks to the wonders of the internet, here's a list of some of the major forms.

It starts with things like acrostic poems - which fall solidly into the 'lazy poet' category, for me - to something which is apparently

"a nineteen-line poem divided into five tercets (three lines each) and a closing quatrain (four lines). The poem consists of two main rhymes (AB) which repeat throughout. The main rhyme is produced by the first and third lines of the first stanza, which then alternate as the third line of each subsequent stanza, and form a rhyming couplet to end the quatrain and thus the poem."

I have no idea what that means. Mainly because I'm too lazy to think about it. But if I work through that list, producing one of each sort of poem, I'll have a pretty good start on this Month of Poetry malarkey.

Jan 2011: month of poetry

2010-12-18T11:34:00.003+10:00

Writers from across the interwebs are signing up to make January 2011 the Month Of Poetry.

I really shouldn't sign up. I signed up for Nanowrimo and, despite having an almost decent premise for my novel, didn't write a single lone motherless word. Diddly. Not a sausage. Sweet Fanny Adams. Bugger all.

I also work full time, live alone, have a disability, and have dedicated 2011 to sorting out my health and my (lack of) a social life. I'm also very, very very late with a story I've promised someone and just can't deliver. The last thing I have time for is more writing.

But recently I rediscovered just how much I love poetry. I did a round of the local op-shops on the first day of my holidays, to remind myself just how much I don't like poking through other people's grubby secondhand detritus looking for 'bargains'.

There were some great books on offer, though - Harry Potters for $2 a pop, old craft books that will bring hours of laughter for just $1 investment, and best of all the complete poetical works of Byron For 50c.

I'd never really read Byron. He was a bit like Will Ferrel - I'm vaguely aware he exists and what he does, but if you asked me to name a film he's been in (or a poem he wrote) I couldn't. Now I have met his writing, though, I love it and am slightly addicted, reading when I should be eating or sleeping or getting the house clean for Christmas.

Yet why should I mingle in fashion's full herd?

Why crouch to her leaders, or cringe to her rules?

Why bend to the proud, or applaud the absurd?

Why search for delight in the friendship of fools?

What's not to love? I adore the rhythm of his works, even if some of the rhyme seems a little dodgy by 21st century standards - did 'grove' really rhyme with 'love' when spoken with a 19th century tongue?

So, anyway. Month of Poetry. I'm more likely to bash out 31 unsteady haiku than anything remotely akin to the contents of this lovely old blue book, but I'm in.

Twelve days of nonsense

2010-12-18T11:25:00.003+10:00

On the twelfth day of Christmas, my true love gave to me:

Twelve poets poeming

Eleven scribes a-scribing

Ten hacks a-hacking

Nine scribblers scribbling

Eight critics slagging

Seven wordsmiths wording

Six authors aut-ing

Five writers' blocks

Four pens out of ink

Three unread novels

Two moldy books

and a writer with nothing sensible to put on her blog.

Writing exercise: Just a minute

2010-09-04T13:06:00.003+10:00

You've heard of Just a Minute - a parlor game come radio challenge where the victim has to speak, without deviation or hesitation, for 60 seconds on a set topic.

It sounds like a good idea for a writing challenge, so hang on a sec' while I get a fresh cuppa and find something to time myself with... Ah, here's just the thing: an online stopwatch, complete with jangly noise when you reach 00:00:00 so you don't have to keep tabbing back to check.

Now, for a real challenge I'd find a topic by going to Wikipedia and hitting 'random article'. But I'm not going to try to write about an injectable first-generation antibiotic or the Liverpool canal link, so instead I'll cast around and see what's in front of me. Other than the computer, of course.

Unfortunately, what's in front of me is the latest Top Gear Australia magazine, which I bought for an article by one of the few men worth being straight for, James May. He was driving a black and orange thing which wasn't a jaffa, but the fastest car in the world.

Time starts... NOW:

The Bugatti Super Sport is the fastest car in the world, and will happily zoom along on the wrong side of 400km per hour.

Maybe you're one of the camp that asks "why make a car that does 400k/hr when the speed limit's 110?" Well... a car that goes that

Time's up.

Hmmm... First point, you don't have time in 60 seconds to make much of a point, especially the complicated point I was going for about how making faster cars means making better brakes which means ultimately things like racing cars and hyperdrive Bugattis are making my dinky little Micra safer. Second, don't start deleting things and worrying about rewriting bits. No time for that.

Now, another go, and since I happen to have the magazine handy, and there's a piece in it on art cars, I'll have a bash at that:

Who said cars just have to be one colour? Black, red, white or silver on the outside, some variation on grey within? Weird things in cars, like thousands of stuffed toys piled up on the dashboard, are annoying because they reflect in the windscreen and make visibility difficult, but there must be more room for some sort of interior design in cars.

This writing exercise has merit. It's a lot of fun, if nothing else, and I suppose you could write a lot of nonsense if you did want to go down the 'random Wiipedia article' route.

Busting through writer's block

2010-09-03T15:33:00.004+10:00

Does writing about writer's block count as having overcome my own writer's block?

I haven't written properly for ages, for a variety of reasons. I like to say it's because "I'm busy", but I'm no busier than anyone else who works full time, and other people somehow manage to hammer out a few words on the side.

So here, borrowed and expanded from About.com's article on writer's block, are some tips as much for my benefit as yours. Tips to get writing again.

1. Have a schedule

It's easier to stick to a diet if you have set mealtimes, and exercise is easier if you carve out a routine of hitting the gym at the same time every day. Similarly, try getting up fifteen minutes earlier and writing something, anything, just to get into the habit of doing it. We're all in a rut - it's just that some ruts are healthier than others.

2. Stop beating yourself up

It can be hard to move onto the second chapter if the first is a shambles. The second verse won't come if the first still doesn't scan, the second sentence is dependant on the first and the first is just. Not. Right. Yet...

Stop it.

The point of the first draft is to get words on paper (or zeroes and ones on the hard drive). They don't have to be great words, even good words, but they do have to be words. You can't improve what doesn't exist. Ego - the need to create something you'd be proud to show someone else - really shouldn't be sitting in on the first draft. I tend to produce first drafts which are also final drafts, which is a bad habit going back to primary school. But I got over other bad primary school habits (like crying in public and tucking my t-shirt into my undies) so it's time to pony up and get over this one too.

3. Treat writing as a job, not a dalliance

Part of the joy of pursuing writing - or painting or dance or music - as a hobby is that wonderful romantic image of the Artist as a wistful, otherworldly figure drifting blissfully across the Arcadian fields, a lily held in their delicate hand, great works wafting from their pen as effortlessly as a summer breeze.

Bad news, sunshine. You're not Oscar Wilde. You're not even Stephen Fry (except in the unlikely event that you are, in which case hello Mr Fry, love your work.)

The same way accomplished dancers and musicians make it look effortless when it's actually a bloody hard slog, accomplished writers only got that way through hard work and practice. Damn.

4. Don't force it - take a breather between projects

If you've just finished something (or, heartbreakingly, decided something you've started is a Lost Cause and binned it) take a break and recharge before you launch straight into the next Big Thing. In The Artist's Way (a book I simultaneously love and loathe) Julia Cameron describes our inspiration as a well, which should not be drained to the last drop but gently maintained and tended, restocked as well as drawn upon. Go easy on your well.

4a. Skip between projects

On the other hand, if you're working on the next Lord of the Rings, it might pay to have a break and write some silly limericks or a bit of mindless fanfic. Do something to get your mind off the big, main project, exercise different parts of your brain and help your mind stretch bits that aren't getting used in the course of the epic trek to Mordor. In other news, if you're working on the next Lord of the Rings, bad news. It's been done.

5. Deadlines

A journalist friend of mine can successfully set her own deadlines - tell herself all her calls have to be made by 3pm so she can have interviews done and be home by 5pm. But I personally can't keep deadlines if it's only myself I'm letting down. I can barely even stick to deadlines imposed externally - more than once I've exploited time zone differences to get stories in to The Doctor Who Project at the last possible moment. So maybe I need to recruit a friend to be my deadline-keeper.

6. Contemplate your navel

Is there some bigger reason your writing's ground to a halt? Are you writing about something that's personally difficult? Writing's good therapy, but if you're spinning your wheels maybe it's time to back off and take a different tack.

Or maybe you genuinely are busy with work, small children, ill parents, divorce, neighbourhood disputes and a cat that craps on the carpet. In that case, you can be excused for writing nothing but hit lists.

7. Suss out your writing space

If your writing place is a physically unconfortable place to be, you're not going to want to be there. Invest in a new lamp, a better chair, shift the furniture around, clean the crap off the desk so you have room for your teacup. There's a reason Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone was written in cosy cafes rather than JK Rowling's lonely flat.

8. Try some writing exercises

Everything you write sound the same? Get out of your rut. Write a sonnet. Write in second person. Write fan fiction. Write from the perspective of a person of a different sex, ethnicity, nationality, political persuasion. Try some of these.

9. Why am I doing this again?

Remind yourself why you love to write. Reread the books that moved you as a child - The Secret Garden and the Chronicles of Narnia first demonstrated to me how words are keys to other worlds. Don't get too hung up on getting a positive note from the judgesof the local writing club's competition. It is, after all, judged by the sort of people who volunteer to judge writing competitions and are therefore either retired English teachers only interested in formal tense agreement or old men who write longwinded Letters to the Editor.

Forget about that crowd. Forget about pleasing the committee or your Mum or the inner critic in your head. Just write.

Pick of the Litter

2010-07-16T17:30:00.006+10:00

Life is never simple. Just when I think I have my head together and am, after 30 years, turning into a normal person, weird fanfic ideas start crawling out of the dark recesses of my mind.

A few months ago I fell in love with Top Gear, which is notable for being the first time, ever, I have been a fan of a show which is actually mainstream and popular. Top Gear has a massive and very active fanbase, including a forum with an excellent demotivators thread which runs to several hundred pages. It's also the most prolific producers of fiction of any fandom I've been involved with since the Doctor Who community of the early '90s.

A lot of the fic is, to put it gently, a bit weird. I fit right in.

Disclaimer: Top Gear belongs to the BBC (mostly) and Jeremy, Richard and James belong to themselves. I own nothing but a fevered imagination, but the bits that ARE mine are yours under the Creative Commons share alike licence.

The fresh spring air was crisp, the sun was out, the roads were nearly deserted and Oliver's restored engine was running like a dream. Richard was a happy man.

Mere 'happy' turned to 'mischievous' when he saw Jeremy's ridiculous GT in the car park. So, he'd managed to get the useless thing all the way down from Man without it breaking down, running out of fuel, getting stuck on a narrow bridge or reporting itself stolen. First time for everything.

Richard parked neatly beside Jeremy's car. Not so close that he couldn't get his own door open easily but close enough that getting into the GT, with its idiotic lidded doors, would mean crawling along the ground.v He'd like to see that. vWith a spring in his step and a smile on his lips, he walked through the portacabin door and collided with James, wearing yesterday's jumper and the air of a man at the end of his tether.

"Morning Hammond. Don't park there - that thing will infect your car with wretchedness." James stormed off towards the workshop. vRichard watched him go, bewildered.

"What was all that about?" Richard watched Jeremy tipping far too much sugar into his coffee.
"I parked beside James' silly little Panda yesterday, and now it won't start. He's been tooling around with it all night, and can't find the problem." Jeremy glanced around, then leaned in for a conspiratorial whisper.
"I think he seriously blames the Ford. He's losing it, Hammond."

Richard was about to reply when there was an almighty crash from outside.

"Oliver!"

Oliver had moved. Skid marks across the pale cement of the car park showed where he - it, Richard corrected himself - had been pushed sideways until he - it - was jammed between the high chain link fence and the back wall of the workshop, radiator pressed against the fence as if pining for freedom. The GT was parked against it, back bumpers touching, pinning the smaller car in place.

Richard collided with a colleague for the second time in five minutes, as Jeremy barreled through the door at full volume while he was still rooted to the spot, trying to work out what was happening.

"May? May! What the fuck is going on here, man?"
James was watching from the workshop door, with an odd, stunned look on his face.
"That... thing..." James pointed shakily at the GT, "...should be kept on a lead, Clarkson."

Six months later

"Sweeeet!"
"Don't say 'sweet', Clarkson. It's not sweet. It's the devil's work."

They were standing in the doorway of James' garage. The usual random assortment of wellies, old paint tins and gutted motorcycles had been swept up and piled into the corners of the room, as though a small, highly localised hurricane had torn through. The Panda was parked on an odd angle, jammed half-sideways in the narrow space. There were tyre marks on the floor and scratches down the little black car's panels, as though it had been thrown around.

As though it had been thrashing around.

Jeremy looked back at the four little pedalcars milling around the Panda's wheels, mottled blue and black and one with a little white Ford racing stripe.

"Don't care. It's sweeeeet."

Becoming

2010-02-08T15:47:00.000+10:00

Another of my rather odd uni literature papers was all about Becoming – with a capital B to show that it was a terribly clever literary term rather than just a word. Becoming is all about starting off as one thing and finishing as another.

Take Thelma and Louise for example, who start off as a ditzy and rather impractical stay at home wifey and her friend, the worldly and sensible working woman, but who Become (there's that capital again) a wisecracking thief and her murderess accomplice. There's Becoming in a nutshell.

It's a fairly easy thing to study, because any decent story has some sort of Becoming in it, since one of the things that makes a story a story is the central character undergoing some sort of change.

I chose a selection of films in which female characters go through blokey Becomings – GI Jane, Thelma and Louise, stuff like that. But then, just to make life interesting, I chose to argue that those Becomings weren't about swapping gender roles at all. I don't know why, in hindsight, but I think it was something to do with wanting to do a feminist re-interpretation of the whole thing, so that women could be strong and macho and arse-kicking without necessarily Becoming male. It was the convoluted sort of postmodern gender studies argument that my lecturers at the time would have loved.

Hannibal the Cannibal

2010-02-04T15:45:00.000+10:00

A dozen years ago at university, I wrote a literature paper arguing that there was an “expansion of the Gothic” in Thomas Harris' Hannibal Lecter series, starting fairly mildly in Red Dragon, building through Silence of the Lambs, and reaching its peak in Hannibal. Hannibal Rising hadn't been written at this stage, but if it had it would have tied into my thesis beautifully.

It was cobblers, of course, but it got me a good mark. More importantly, it gave me a chance to write about a series of books which I love, rather than the usual musty old rubbish which our lecturers foistered upon us. ( I also managed to work the then-current Paul McGann Doctor Who movie into another paper, but that's a confession for another time.)

There is something to be said for trying to relate what you're studying to something you're actually interested in, rather than some hoary set text. I wonder how much more popular poetry would be at school if all that tedious working out of rhyming patterns and metre was done with pop song lyrics rather than There Is a Garden In Her Face. (Because so many 14 year old boys will relate to that, won't they?)

Similarly, I think I learnt more about Gothic, as a literary genre, from the Lecter books than from the peculiar old texts I read during that particular semester at uni. It's not just about vampires or wizards, any more than you can graft a few spaceships into a Mills and Boon and call it science fiction. Many of the deeper themes which make up the Gothic genre – distorted and pluralised identities, otherness, damnation and redemption - are present in Harris' books, even when the outer trappings are clinical and 20th century. In the newest book, Lecter's ambiguous relationship with his adoptive mother is pure Gothic, as is his... becoming.

And Another Thing...

2010-01-31T16:26:00.001+10:00

I'm torn at the moment. Do I want to read the latest Hitchhikers book, Eoin Colfer's And Another Thing, or not?

There are quite compelling reasons to track down a copy - The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy is one of the most original and wittiest pieces of writing around. I'm particularly fond of Douglas Adams' last Hitchhikers book, Mostly Harmless. I confess I didn't actually 'get' it properly the first time I read it. I was used to the earlier books, where the plot meandered wherever it fancied going, down all sorts of interesting detours and via a vast array of herring in stunning shades of red. By contrast, Mostly Harmless is really quite a tightly focussed piece of writing. All the silly 'historical asides' which pepper the Hitchhikers books are meaningful here rather than simply humourous, and they earn their keep through progressing the plot or exposition, as well as sometimes tying into the existing Hitchhikers canon - insofar as anything with so many different, contradictory versions can be said to have a canon!

Unlike earlier books, which come with decorative fringes of loose ends and busloads of one-page characters who pop up from nowhere, do something funny and leave again, this book not only wraps itself up neatly but quite a bit of the previous books as well.

Which brings me to the compelling reason to not read And Another Thing. Now that the play is over, the curtain's down, and Arthur and company are apparently dealt with rather terminally by the close of Mostly Harmless, what more is there to say? Can another book really follow that?

And can another author really follow Douglas Adams?

The fast-paced comedy style isn't unique to Adams, but there's something about that breathless, slightly stream-of-consciousness pace that brings through the author's own voice particularly clearly. So, a Hitchhikers book by someone else would have to have a different feel to it, because it's come from a different mind.

The 'hearing a cover of a song you like' analogy doesn't really work, because And Another Thing is an original work, not a cover. And if other classic canon can have writers other than the creator involved (I'm pretty sure Arthur Conan Doyle didn't write the screenplay for the new Sherlock Holmes film, after all) then Hitchhikers can too.

Now, excuse me, I need to run an errand. To the library.

My Nine Lives

2010-01-28T23:15:00.000+10:00

Ostensibly a children's book, I acquired this picture book as an adult and love it to bits – it's very cleverly put together and visually delightful. It's the diary of Clio, a nondescript moggy rescued from an animal shelter. But Clio has a secret – she's on her ninth life, and this diary outlines her eight previous existences, from prehistoric Mesopotamia to contemporary USA, via China, Viking ships and roaring 20s jazz ensembles. Each 'life' is illustrated in the style of the time being depicted, which makes it a great read for anyone with an artistic or historical bent – the speech bubble in the 13th century illuminated manuscript is a particularly nice touch.

Like Doctor Who, Clio has a knack of being where the action is wherever she lands – to hear her tell it, she was acquainted with Leonard da Vinci, set the course for a historically significant Viking expedition, oversaw the creation of the first fork and parachute, and perhaps even inspired a whole musical genre. In short, she thinks she's pretty special – which is exactly the kind of mindset one would expect from a cat!

Black Dog

2010-01-17T15:40:00.002+10:00

I've been carting this book around for about a quarter of a century, since I won it in a disability awareness poster competition. I was about six at the time, and my “entry” consisted of a painting of a person in a wheelchair out visiting friends, bearing a bunch of flowers bigger than their head. They were coming up the path towards their friends' house, and in what was probably interpreted as a deep social commentary rather than just a few random daubs of paint, the house had steps.

The painting was more what you'd expect from a toddler than a six year old, thanks to my slow development and motor skills issues – at the time, nobody had a clue I had a disability of my own. I'm autistic.

In hindsight, the clues were all there. I didn't catch a ball or tie my shoelaces until I was about seven, or ride a bike 'til 10 or 11. My stories and drawings were strange in comparison to those of other kids, I misinterpreted the simplest instructions despite a deep desire to follow the rules and do the right thing, and normal playground interaction defeated me. I never had any friends at all. Yet nobody picked up on it – in fact, because like many autistic girls I am quite gifted linguistically and reasonably able to mimic what I see others do, even if I don't understand exactly what we're doing let alone why we're doing it, it was generally assumed that I consciously chose to be different and difficult.

Once we had to draw a picture of a face depicting an emotion. Most of the other kids' were easy enough to work out – grotesquely huge grins for happy, enormous furrowed eyebrows for angry. Mine didn't even look like a face. I think there might have been a moustache above, instead of below, the nose. The components were there, but in no recognisable order and certainly with no recognisable emotion. Mrs Blackman, if you're reading, that's a pretty obvious sign of something more serious than just a kid who delights in being silly.

There's something slightly ironic about both my entry and the prize. Both deal with friends, yet interpersonal relationships are my downfall. My social skills are now on the introverted end of normal, thanks to years of painful experience and determined self-training, but right up into my early twenties I had serious, serious problems which were completely misunderstood. Those problems created a barrier just as tangible and insurmountable as that posed to the wheelchair user by the steps on my painted house.

I've often used vision impairment as an analogy to describe my childhood. Imagine a blind child who nobody realised was blind, struggling to cope, bumping into things and obviously completely unable to read, or write, or paint – that was me. Except the bumps were my failed attempts at interacting with other people, and the apparently simple tasks which eluded me were eye contact, having a coherent conversation, sharing, and making friends. And my mistakes, disasters and failures were often seen as deliberate – just like those teaching our hypothetical blind child took sight for granted and couldn't understand that he can't see the pen and paper, nobody grasped that I couldn't perform the simple interpersonal acts which others took for granted.

The prize was Black Dog by Christobel Mattingley. Nothing to do with depression, it's a children's book about a girl's first day at a new school. She loses herself metaphorically in the school library, when familiar characters offer a respite from a strange, unfamiliar place. But she also literally loses herself when the teacher apparently doesn't do a head-count before herding the kids back to class. I suppose it's a bit of bibliotherapy – a book to give kids who have changed schools, or are going to, to show that while it might be scary there will be a happy ending involving a friendly dog and a game on the oval with your new friends. The very last illustration in the book depicts that game, showing an assortment of children playing some hybrid of cowboys and indians, leapfrog and cricket. There's one kid sitting in the background, facing away from the rest of the crowd at an odd angle. He's not looking at the other children or at anything else in particular, just sitting, staring. He looks out of place. The rest of the kids ignore him completely.

That kid is me.

Nights at the Circus

2010-01-17T15:39:00.000+10:00

Angela Carter's work is facinating. They're the kind of books you can read over and over again, every time picking up extra layers and little bits you missed before. I wish I'd realised that earlier, because I used to have a copy of her Black Venus, but I've lost it somewhere in the last ten years, four cities and seven changes of address. I wish I still had it.

I do still have Nights at the Circus, another of her books I acquired about the same time. It's a clever, Baroque tale of sex, passion, and abnormality. As with Black Venus, the central character is a woman, a unique woman who goes through quite a few different personae. In this case, the heroine is Fevvers, a big rough cockney girl with pound signs in her eyes. She's an orphan, dumped in the door of a whorehouse in Victorian England. She's an abducted sex slave in a unique and perverse brothel. She's the loving auntie to a household of sweet little children, and their ice cream selling parents. She's the adopted daughter of a seditious feminist spy. She has wings.

Fevvers' wings might be genuine, or might be a big sham to fool the circus going public. Certainly Walser, an American journalist invited into her boudoir for an after-show interview, is intriqued enough to sign up for the circus himself to keep an eye on the world's only 'fully feathered intacta'.

Walser's new career as a clown is determined by an oracular pig, which makes perfect sense when you realise Angela Carter's universe runs along quite different rails from the one we inhabit.

It's a dream world, where it's quite possible for mirrors to absorb tigers and musical conservatories to exist deep in the Siberian wilderness. It's a world which runs on symbolic, rather than logical lines, a world in which animals often have greater humanity than humans, and the lines between human and animal blur.

As a pagan myself, I found the hints of witchcraft and supernatural powers fascinating. Carter argues that if you don't know the scientific explanation behind using peroxide to lighten hair, it'd look like magic. So why shouldn't apparently otherworldly powers like pausing time equally be explained by some mundane law of physics, albeit one you and I don't necessarily know.

It's a book which encourages the suspension of disbelief – don't expect any biological explanation of Fevvers' condition, or a plot which would stand up in court. Do expect a thrilling train ride through the heart of a surreal and wonderful wilderness.

That time of year

2010-01-15T18:04:00.002+10:00

Bare limbs
sharp against the cruel, endless blue

Dry dam
cracks so wide they swallow the lambs

Sunlight
Not a candle, but a blowtorch

One cloud
Tiny, a speck, a promise, a tease

Building
Sky black with a hot blanket of cloud

Crack
Lightning
Thunder
One moment a patter
Next moment a roar

The rain is here.

Friarbird

2009-12-26T11:42:00.003+10:00

Back to poetry at long last, albeit a fairly loose and prosey free verse :)

Flash of black
bald head among leaves.

Nible bird dangles
upside down,
sideways
feeding?
Or playing?

Good natured complaint
in rough, coarse voice
A flowing stream
of almost-language

Surely more than song?
More than random chatter?

Have a Goody Christmas

2009-12-24T11:14:00.002+10:00

Yes, it's yet another old fanfic of mine - partially because I'm lazy and haven't written anything new, and partially because it's Christmas themed, so this is a good time to recycle it.

Disclaimer: The Goodies belongs to the BBC (mostly) and Tim, Bill and Graeme belong to themselves. I own nothing but a fevered imagination, but the bits that ARE mine are yours under the Creative Commons share alike licence.

Once upon a time, and underneath the couch, there was a beautiful girl called Cinderella. She had flowing blonde hair and eyes as blue and deep as the Pacific, and the fact that she needed a shave and her real name was Timothy is neither here nor there. Cinderella lived deep in the woods in the shadow of the Manchester bypass with two evil stepsisters, and you could tell they were evil because they were very, very ugly. They were so ugly the American economy kept a picture of them under its pillow, and looked at them whenever it wanted some reason to feel good about itself.

Cinderella was very hard working. One day she was washing the floor while her evil stepsister Graerella painted her toenails.

“Where’s Billerella?” asked Tim. (If I have to keep typing out “Cinderella” every time, I’m not going to get this bloody thing done by Christmas.)

“She’s gone into the village to get some little bits and pieces to make her more beautiful,” replied Graeme, leaning back from his easel and sticking a paintbrush behind his ear.

“What on earth for?” asked Tim, getting the floor out of the washing machine.

“The prince is having a Christmas Eve ball, and we all have to look our best.”

“Oi! I’m home! Go and put the kettle on, Tim.” Bill burst in with a frock over the top of his camo gear, carrying a huge box that looked suspiciously like it contained a series of sight gags.

“Put the kettle on what?”

“Cor, you’re not half being difficult today, are you?” Bill turned away from the confused Tim, and started showing his loot to Graeme.

“Now look at this lot, Graybags, this’ll impress him no end. First we have… Fishnets!” Bill hauled the fishnets out of the box, about eighty feet of the stuff.

“Ah, Bill, you do realise there’s a difference between fishnets and fishing nets?”

“What? Oh. Never mind, it’ll come in handy for something. Next, nail polish!’ He hauled out a large bottle of Silvo, “And to go with it…” the bottom of the brown paper bag Bill was holding gave way, showering him with a pointy hail of three-inch flat ended nails. “Not sure what we’re supposed to do with those, but he’s an unusual chap, I‘ve heard. And, because it’s a special occasion, I’ve dyed my hair red.” Bill pulled the scarlet hare out of the box. It hopped off the table as though this sort of thing happened to it all the time, and tripped Tim who was coming back to report that he had put the kettle on. His evil stepgoodies looked him up and down.

“I’m surprised it fits, actually,” Bill said at last.

The night of the ball had arrived. Graeme and Bill tottered out of their little house in the woods, resplendent in such finery as cannot be conveyed in the written word, and saddled up the trandem. They still hadn’t caught whoever kept sneaking into the shed and removing the saddles, despite Graeme’s sophisticated listening equipment. They climbed aboard, and Bill steadied himself against one of the giant ears jutting from the wall. They set off down the motorway towards the palace, stopping only to change places when Graeme figured out that the trip would be smoother if one of them sat in Tim’s usual spot. It was somewhat difficult to steer with the front seat empty, as the lorry driver agreed. Tim wasn’t available to sit there, as he was tied upside down in the chimney by his stepsisters, to stop him getting to the ball.

“Oh, why does this sort of rotten thing always happen to me?” moaned Tim as a load of soot fell up his nose. “I wish I wasn’t in this horrid chimney.”

Tim disappeared, and reappeared three nanoseconds later tied upside down in the septic tank.

“I wish I was back in the chimney! I wish I was back in the chimney!”

Three more nanoseconds later he was back in the chimney. The rope holding him conveniently let go and he landed with a soot-cushioned thud in the fireplace. Someone was watching him.

“Uh, Bill?”

“Nope, I’m your Fairy Billmother, and the wire holding this tinsel halo up is digging into my shoulder, so hurry up and make a decent bloody wish so I can go and get changed again.”

“I wish for world peace.”

“Come off it!”

“OK, I wish for a commercially available series-by-series set of DVDs covering every Goodies episode, remastered with commentaries and special features. And a new CD of previously unreleased Goodies songs, to go with it.”

Bill and Tim looked at each other awkwardly.

“So, this world peace you’re after…”

They met halfway and settled on Tim wishing to go to the Christmas Eve ball, which is just as well for this fairytale. Bill sent Tim off to find six mice, a pumpkin and a big black rat. Tim came back with three dead cockroaches, a root vegetable and a wind-up alarm clock, but it was near enough. The fairy Billmother waved his magic wand over them so hard the batteries fell out the end and the star stopped flashing, but then there was a puff of smoke and the collection of cockies, carrot and clock had been transformed as by magic or trick camerawork into Graeme astride a motorbike with a sidecar. His pirate captain’s hat sat on a jaunty angle.

“Graeme! What are you doing here?”

“Look, you two have had a big long bit on your own. It’s about time I got to do something.” Tim clambered into the sidecar and Graeme revved the engine. They were about to leave when Bill yelled “Oi! Hold it - what about me?

“I give up, what about you?”

Bill huffed and waved his dead wand at the motorcycle. Another sidecar appeared on the other side, and he climbed in.

“To the palace, Greybags! The prince is holding a Christmas Eve ball!”

Graeme adjusted his eye patch, and they drove off through the fourth wall to the palace.

The trio crept quietly into the ballroom. The place was silent, but not deserted. The artist formerly known as Prince was sitting on a beanbag in the middle of the room, meditating deeply on a crystal sphere with “Christmas Eve” engraved on it, which he held reverently.

“Well, that’s a funny sort of ending, isn’t it?” asked Bill.

“Let’s hope so,” replied Graeme.

Peeking

2009-12-20T10:36:00.002+10:00

Another in the same series - and I use the term loosely - as the previous fanfic. I'm on a roll here!

The usual disclaimer: Cosgrove Hall owns Dangermouse, Penfold, Stilleto and the whole general idea.

"The thing you have to ask yourself is, has he really lost his eye? If he lifts that patch up, is there something else underneath?” - Brian Cosgrove, DVD interview, 2007.

“Now, senor Penfold, you tella me where’sa the medallion, anda the alligator, he’sa stay down ina his pond.”

“I don’t know!” Penfold kicked helplessly at the crow, the shackles on his wrists holding him about two feet from the floor. “I dropped it! It’s out on that ‘orrible planet somewhere with all those creepy crawly things.”

“So! Is-a dinner time for you!” The crow moved over to the lever that would open the cover on the alligator pond.

“Oh crumbs! Oh ‘eck!” Penfold looked up at Dangermouse, but the world’s greatest secret agent was still out cold from the bump of the head he’d sustained in the crash. Just then the mouse shook himself and mumbled something about chocolate digestives.

“Chief! You’re awake!”

Dangermouse looked around, confused, trying to get his bearings. They were somewhere deep in Greenback’s dungeons, chained to the wall and being gloated over by one of the sharpest heels in the business - Stiletto.

“Penfold! Are you alright?”

“Well, chief, that depends on whether the alligator in that pit’s had his breakfast.”

“What charming company. Now look here, you feathered fiend-”

“You have-a the medallion?” Stiletto moved in on the mouse, until his sharp beak was inches from his prisoner’s face.

“You’re never getting your hands on it, Stiletto. Greenback might think he knows what he’s doing, but he couldn't control it. It’s too powerful-

The mouse broke off as Stiletto slapped him in the face. Not hard, just firmly enough to remind him who was in charge.

Good Stiletto, thought the mouse. Concentrate on me, and forget about Penfold. Out of the corner of his good eye, Dangermouse could see the hamster wriggling and kicking, trying to get free. Then he caught a flash of gold in Penfold’s breast pocket. The medallion. Good lad. It would be absorbing the warmth Penfold was generating with all that carrying on, and soon it would be fully charged. Then that avian fiend would be laughing out the other side of his beak.

Dangermouse looked to Stiletto. The bird reached out and touched the black patch covering the mouse’s left eye.

“Actually, I’d rather prefer you didn’t do that, if you don’t mind.”

The crow slipped a feathered finger under the patch and lifted it.

Penfold craned his neck to look up. From his vantage point, he couldn’t see much past the underside of his chief’s white chin, but he caught a brief glimpse of... something. Something metallic. Must have just been a reflection off the wall.

“Santa Maria Cabonara!” The bird made the Sign of the Cross as he backed away.

“I did warn you.” Dangermouse looked at the floor and bit his lip, stung by the look on Stiletto's face. Revulsion. Pity.

Stiletto slammed the door, and his hurried footsteps quickly faded down the corridor.

“What was all that about?”

“It’s nothing, Penfold. Nothing at all.”

The Assistant

2009-12-18T17:13:00.002+10:00

Speaking of fan fiction, here's one of mine. It's not necessarily good, and isn't here as some sort of "this is how it's done" example. It's just here for the laughs, and because I have no new writing to post, but I did have this kicking around on my hard drive.

The usual disclaimer: Cosgrove Hall owns Dangermouse, Penfold, Colonel K, and the whole general idea. I own nothing but a fevered imagination.

“No!”

“But K-” hissed the voice over the viewscreen

“No! I am not working with a mouse! When you said you were sending me an assistant, I assumed you meant someone with some inherent capacity to, as the term would suggest, assist!”

Mouse stared at the floor and chewed the end of his tie, trying to wish himself invisible. He dimly heard Agent K making some comment about the likelihood of an assignment in a cheese factory.

“Look here, K,” boomed the Colonel through the two-way screen, shaking his mane, “Mouse is a good lad. Promising young agent. Did very well on the coursework, now we want to see how he shapes up in the practical.”

“You’ve drafted a MOUSE into Her Majesty’s Secret Service!”

“Yes, we had noticed that, K. Colonel out.”

Special Agent K spun away from the now-dead screen, and surveyed his new ‘assistant’. Little more than a child, he was small even for a mouse, and his thick glasses did nothing to hide the fact that his yellow eyes were permanently fixed on a spot near the end of his nose. His rumpled blue suit was too big and the tip of his striped tie looked suspiciously nibbled.

“So, you’re Mouse.”

“Y-y-yes, Sir.” Mouse hugged his training manual tighter against his chest, as if hoping the words would protect him from the wrath of his new commanding officer. He had thought it would get easier away from the training compound, free of three years sharing barracks with two Persian cats, a terrier and a bald eagle. Now he wasn’t so sure.

“Wouldn’t have happened in our day. Rodent-liberationist claptrap. Once they picked agents by their ability - Retrievers, Panthers, Owls - people with potential.” K turned his back on the trembling mouse and gazed out of the pillarbox slot, across London. “Now there are voles in Defence, rabbits in the Ministry and even a ferret running for office in Weston-Super-Mare! They’ll be putting bally hampsters in the Service next thing you know.”

“Y-y-yes, Sir.” Mouse looked up at K. He could see the agent’s fangs glinting beneath his black moustache, muscles rippling beneath the white suit. He wondered if K was going to eat him up and spit out his spectacles. With fifteen littermates, one insignificant little white mouse wouldn’t even be missed.

The viewscreen hissed back into life. Mouse squeaked in alarm and jumped a foot in the air, dropping the manual. He landed in a heap and awkwardly picked up both his book and himself.

“S-s-sorry, Sir.”

“Mouse - shush!” K turned to the Colonel’s leonine face coming into focus on the viewscreen.

“Ah, K - another spot of bother with Greenback, I’m afraid. We need you to to save the world again, old boy.”

“Wilco, Sir.” K lifted an eyebrow at his dishevelled assistant. “Come on then, Mouse, let’s see what you can do.”

Later. Doesn’t matter how much later, time is but an illusion

“Dashed big class this year, DM,” proclaimed Colonel K through his white moustache. “Hundred and seventeen of ‘em. All excellent agent material, trained up and ready to go.”

“We’ll need them, Colonel. Greenback’s schemes are getting more and more devious.”

“Just as well we have the world’s best agent hot on his stumpy tail, then, eh what?”

“Maybe, Colonel, but I’m not sure how much longer even I’m going to be able to keep up with him alone.”

“Yes, well that’s one reason-” they were interrupted by a squeal of laughter from the ranks of newly-graduated agents spilling out of the hall into the grounds. A red fox and a polar bear jostled each other good naturedly down the steps before collapsing into a playful wrestle on the lawn, a blue-suited crowd gathering around them. The Colonel cleared his throat loudly and the gaggle of young agents looked up sheepishly, except the sheep who wore her characteristic dogged expression.

“Hey, that isn’t-

“Colonel K?

“No, the chap he’s talking to-

“White suit? Eyepatch? You don’t think it’s-

“Dangermouse!

“Can’t be!

“Cor, they reckon he’s the best agent in the world -

“Anyway DM, as I was saying, that’s one reason I’ve invited you along to the graduation today.” The Colonel took a swig on his punch. “How do you fancy having an assistant?”

“Well,” the mouse looked across the crowd of young hopefuls. “Have you anyone in mind?”

“Young Renard’s good in a scrap,” the Colonel nodded to the fox, now trying to dust grass stains from his suit. “There’s a Cougar lass we’re expecting great things from, and Ping-Cho has an excellent analytical mind - you know what these Siamese are like.”

“Would you excuse me for a moment, Colonel?” Dangermouse flashed one of his rare, charming grins. “Just popping off for a quick mingle.”

The mouse made his way across the marquee, the crowd shuffling respectfully aside to give him room. What it was to have a reputation, Dangermouse reflected. He still hadn’t entirely forgiven 47 for ‘accidentally’ treading on him during rugger practice all those years ago - surely being an elephant should be all the more reason to watch where one puts one’s feet?

Then, through the sea of people, Dangermouse spotted a small figure looking out of place. His rumpled blue suit was too big and his collar and cuffs stuck out untidily. His naturally wide-eyed, bewildered look was magnified by his thick spectacles. The mouse made his way over to the Hamster’s side.

“Hello, little chap. What’s your name?”

“Ooh ‘eck. Err. Penfold, Sir. Ernest Penfold.”

Postmodernism made easy

2009-12-14T10:43:00.001+10:00

"In the works of Smith, a predominant concept is the concept of dialectic art. If semioticist postcapitalist theory holds, we have to choose between Lacanist obscurity and subcapitalist feminism.

Therefore, the primary theme of Long’s[1] critique of precultural dialectic theory is not, in fact, discourse, but subdiscourse. A number of narratives concerning a self-supporting whole may be revealed.

However, Sartre uses the term ’semioticist postcapitalist theory’ to denote not deappropriation, as Derrida would have it, but predeappropriation. Any number of discourses concerning the neotextual paradigm of expression exist.

Therefore, Reicher[2] holds that we have to choose between precultural dialectic theory and capitalist objectivism. Foucault uses the term ‘Lacanist obscurity’ to denote the stasis, and subsequent absurdity, of subdialectic sexual identity.

I'm sure if I'd handed that in at uni, I'd have got a better mark than I earned through actually writing something. It's entirely computer generated, and you'll find the ever so snazzy widget that makes it possible here.

Five tips for better fan fiction

2009-12-13T19:53:00.005+10:00

I do love a good bit of fan fiction, and one of the biggest and most diverse fanfic libraries on the net is this one.

While there's some absolutely brilliant works of fan fiction around, there are also some absolute dogs, so here are my own tips for writing the best fanfic you can, based only on my having read thousands of the things and noticing what grates on my nerves...

1. Proofread and spell check. People read fanfic for fun (I can't think of anyone who'd do it for a living, except copyright lawyers!) But it's not going to be fun if the reader has to navigate bad spelling, words missing, dodgy sentence construction and bastardised grammer to work out what you're trying to say.

2. Write about what you know. It's fair to assume the people reading fanfic are already familiar with the series/book/movie in question... so if you get something so horrendously wrong that it's obvious you've never actually read/seen the franchise you're ripping off, you bet it'll be noticed. (Yes, the person who referred to Colonel K's "flippers" in a Dangermouse fanfic, I am looking at you.)

3. Canon schmanon. Personally, when I write fanfic it doesn't always stick tightly to the official story of the original. I really think there's a place for out-there fan ideas - one of the best fan pieces I've ever read is The Night They Raided Sesame Street. Here's the authors own description of how it came about:

"Believe it or not, this disturbing little vignette began innocently enough. I was babysitting my two year old nephew. He was watching Shrek and playing with some of his Sesame Street toys, tossing them into the back of a large plastic dump truck. Just as the knight on the tv says “designated resettlement facility” I drew a brief parallel in my mind between what I was seeing now and what happened in the concentration camps."

4. Know your characters. Having said that you can take your fanfic anywhere, it works best if the actual characters don't deviate too radically from what we know and love. In the story I've linked to above there are obviously things going on which would never happen in the real Sesame Street, but the characters' reactions are believable, and in character. If Telly busted out of Hoopers' store with an Ouzi screaming "Yiff in hell, muthafuckas!" the story wouldn't work. Either the situation or the characters can be fiddled with, but not both. If you're going to do that, just write original fiction and be done with it.

5. Have some kind of disclaimer at the start. This can be as straightlaced or as jokey as you like, but put something there. Sometimes people wander into fanfic not knowing where they are - maybe they googled an obscure TV show, and one of the first results was an active blog full of fanfic for it. So, just to stop any confusion (and, depending on whose work you're ripping off, to prevent yourself getting nicked for copyright infringement) put a disclaimer on it and be done with it.

I personally find it rather funny when fanfic authors get hyperprotective of their work. There's nothing funnier than a disclaimer that reads "Characters X, Z, Y and the TV series Blah de blah all belong to Whoever Studios are are used without permission. The minor character which appears on the bottom of page three is MINE and MINE ALONE and MAY NOT BE USED WITHOUT PERMISSION BY ANYONE FOR ANYTHING1!!!111". Leaving alone the awkward truth that you might be flattering yourself to think anyone else would be interested in your original character, it's pretty hypocritical to help yourself to someone else's copyrighted material and then get all pissy about your own ideas.

The best disclaimer I ever read also comes from fanfiction.net:

"Sherlock Holmes is not my bitch."

A Perfumed novel

2009-11-29T16:23:00.003+10:00

I've spent this lazy Sunday afternoon re-reading Perfume, by Patrick Suskind.

I first met this novel about a decade ago, when I was fool enough to be studying literature at university. We studied the sort of books you couldn't generally find at the public library or the local book exchange, so we were hostage to the exorbitant prices of the university bookstore. Except, of course, being students none of us had any money, so while the offending novel sat on the shelves unsold at $59.95 (despite having "RRP 19.95" printed on the back) about 24 of us competed to get our hands on the uni library's single copy.

I usually missed out, but I got lucky with Perfume. I looked it up and to my surprise found that it was not only in, but actually shelved. I climbed the three flights of stairs to the literature den in record time, and could literally see other people from my class also making for the shelves as I took a shortcut through the literary criticism section. Nobody knew about the shortcut, because I was the only one taking the class seriously enough to have even visited the literary criticism section.

I got there first, and my prize was Perfume, mine to read for a whole three days.

Many years later, it's still left such an impression that when I spotted a cheap paperback edition in the bargain bin for $5, I snaffled it so I can now enjoy Suskind's beautiful rich, textured descriptions at my leisure.

There are really at least four books in here. One's a historical work; an intimately detailed portrait of life in 1740s France. Another is a technical treatise on perfume making, with detailed descriptions of various scent-getting techniques brought beautifully to life through lush description. The most delicate of scented flowers are coated in cold oil and pressed between cold glass sheets, to "give up their essence gently in their sleep".

Then there's the descriptions, the rich tapestry of aroma-centric storytelling which is worthy of a book in itself. It takes about five pages to introduce the character of Guiseppe Baldini, and in that time we barely see the character himself at all. But we learn all about his perfume shop, about the scents of ambergris and musk, about the silver herons by the door which fountain out a spray of violet water when the doors are opened. We learn about the pickled onions and the brined tuna on the first floor, the cured sausage and rows of dark amber glassware containing the makings of a master perfumer.

Then there's the actual story. It revolves around Grenouille, born in the stinking Paris slums with two bizzare traits which will make him forever an outcast: he has a super-refined sense of smell so powerful and precise it can identify individual people blocks away, and he has no smell of his own.

This is an interesting work of storytelling, since so much of the description revolves around not what we see or hear, but what we smell. It's a gothic story in the true sense of the word, with the macabre and the weird at every turn. It's a great read.

Yet another meeting

2009-11-15T10:19:00.000+10:00

Dark carpet, beige walls
whiteboards and catering
talk to me
not at me.

H20

2009-11-15T10:18:00.000+10:00

Cool and clear and real
brimming full of promise
sharp drop
shards of glass like tears.

Of books, dodos and the Crimean

2009-11-14T13:49:00.003+10:00

I've been busy. Stressed. Blue. I need a good laugh, or at least something to remind me how to smile. So, I've been re-reading some of Jasper Fforde's Thursday Next books of late.

They're brilliant.

Thursday, if you haven't had the pleasure of her acquaintance already, inhabits a marvellously imagined steampunk version of the 1980s. Genetic technology is so advanced that you can buy an over the counter DIY dodo kit, but people travel by blimp ("gasbag") rather than aeroplane.

Literature is a seriously big deal in Thursday's world. People knock on your door not to sell you their religion, but to convince you that Francis Bacon was the hand behind Shakespeare's work. There's a whole division of the police force dedicated to literary crimes like forged manuscripts. It's here that you'll find Thursday, a single 30-something Crimean veteran with a complicated past and a secret.

As a little girl, she got lost in a book. Not that she was so engrossed in reading that she lost all sense of time, but literally read herself into the manuscript of Jane Eyre, and was nearly skittled by a horseriding Mr Rochester.

So, not only do we have a not-quite-yesterday-not-quite-tomorrow alternative world, but it's able to interact, under certain circumstances, with the world of literature and fantasy.

And that's just where the adventure begins...

Smoke

2009-09-05T21:32:00.002+10:00

Your letters,
cards,
and promises,
postcards from Fiji.

The words
and sketches,
photographs,
your honeyed lies to me.

Old diaries,
dreams and
fantasies,
planning for forever.

Pictures,
cut from
magazines,
I glued my life together.

A dozen years of hopes and fears, five minutes, and a match.

Two inches of ask in the laundry sink
is all that's left of the words you spoke.
And if I cried, it wasn't for you,
it was only from the smoke.

Umbrella (writers club exercise)

2009-09-05T21:28:00.000+10:00

Our private worlds,
our sanctuaries,
our little homes we carry.

Insulated,
eyes cast down,
your ears are full of music.

We bob like seals
through oceanscapes
of bitumen and smog.

Umbrellas black as clouds.
Not mine. It's yellow
like the sunshine.

There's bugger all here (writers club exercise)

2009-09-05T21:25:00.001+10:00

Main street's like a ghost town these daysm
since the servo closed last year.
Couldn't get another job if I tried -
there's bugger all here.

The mob from school went south for Uni,
or some excuse to get pissed.
Now Johnno works at Maccas, and Kate's on the dole,
and I don't think I'm missed.

The harvester picks up more dust than grain
but if it rains next year
a few good seasons might resurrect this place.
There's bugger all here.

Safety (another old one)

2009-02-23T16:27:00.002+10:00

IN the midst of danger
I am safe.
Between raging wars,
in peace.

While all around, the cold wind howls,
The wolf whines at the door,
The deep snow falls, but I am safe.

I swim the stream, and bloom.

The world is full of good
and bad
light
and dark
young
and old
all
and nothing
more
or less.

(Found scrawled on a bit of paper in the bottom of a box in the spare room, along with two childhood trophies, a stick, four pieces of felt, a Christmas bauble, a toy crow, five orange plastic things off printer ink cartriges and two belt buckles. I do not remember writing it at all, have no idea what it's about or how old it is, or whether it's one poem or three related ones.)

Buds (a really old one I just found today)

2009-02-23T16:25:00.002+10:00

The bud is perfect.
It blooms
changes
fades
changes
falls
changes
Yet remains perfect.

Mount Isa

2009-02-21T11:00:00.002+10:00

Orange land sharp against the blue sky.
It rains grass out here, against a ruddy crust of dried-blood earth.

Spring

2008-12-14T12:09:00.002+10:00

Spring is when you remember to live.

It's not the heat, it's the humidity

2008-12-12T12:19:00.001+10:00

Air so thick a slice can be carved from it, the moisture wrung out before breathing.

Build up

2008-11-13T10:49:00.003+10:00

Harsh summer sun beats, persistent drum draining life from the soil.

The land holds its breath. Time stops.

At last she exhales, moisture paints the glass with misty breath, and rain falls.

I was wrong, though

2008-11-03T09:09:00.003+10:00

I thought without you I could not go on, and winter would never end.

Frogmouth

2008-10-31T07:15:00.002+10:00

Still as silence, bark-grey, almost a branch. But the yellow eyes blaze!

Zen garden

2008-10-31T07:11:00.001+10:00

Stone, sand, garden; the world in a dish.

Mackay

2008-10-29T08:18:00.001+10:00

Seven springs passed, this place has changed. as have I.

Feather

2008-10-28T06:34:00.003+10:00

Fierce sun, green lights skittering on dusty black.

Frangipani seed

2008-10-27T08:00:00.002+10:00

Black case splits, releasing feathery life. Impossible canoe floats empty.