Writer's Blog: Graduating to Trolleys

My dad had the rather strange idea the other day. He suggested that I should wear a graduation robe to my pushing-trolleys job. It would be impractical but, as dad said, it would probably raise headlines. The point of this exercise was to highlight the of the job centre. I leave it to you whether you fill that gap with stupidity, short-sightedness or lack of caring. The point is that I have now attended the job centre with A levels and a degree and have noticed no obvious change in the opportunities offered. It makes me wonder how far the stupidity goes. If a person with a doctorate were to be made redundant and had difficulty finding work would they be given a trolley pushing job?

The point, that in a rambling and meandering way, I'm trying to make is simple. When a person is using the job centre their qualifications should be at the core of how they are helped. So a person with no qualifications should be given a different list of job placements to someone with qualifications.

To undermine everything I've just said the job isn't all bad. In fact were a vacancy available I would happily except it. It would give me an income, enough to pay the bills, and allow me to concentrate on my studies. Also being on one's feet and walking for so long is a great way to lose weight.

So I will be sticking with the job for the time being.

Writer's Blog: It Has Been a Long Time

I am now back online after quite sometime without Internet. Its funny how quickly the Internet has become so much of a necessity. When I first used the net there was only one computer in our house - my parents, brother and I all had to share. Now, between the four of us, we have at least twelve Internet capable devices. I was saying to my father the other day that I could, almost, manage better missing an arm than without the Internet. - I don't want to test that theory!

With my work placement still going on posts will be a little sporadic - till the placement ends or I get used to the routine - but I should be posting at least twice a week.

I also have a new site up - https://unstableorbit.wordpress.com/. On this site, which was created as part of my university course, I hope to put longer pieces of work.

I'll be back with another post in a few days.

Writer's Blog: The Internet and the Work Placement

I have been given a date when my house will once again have Internet – 7-10 working days. The problem is now my computer's unreliability. I'm currently sitting in the LRC at university and I'm supposed to have an Internet connection. For some reason this isn't working and my computer only seems able to connect to the router for short periods of time.

If you're reading this it means I found a connection!

I've had a job placement recently – I'm not sure I mentioned it. I won't say where it is for now. What I will say though is that it is a hard job. We're on our feet for nearly the entire shift and it mostly consists of moving trolleys about! I have another four days of this and the potential to continue for a customer service qualification. Though this is very hard work I am considering continuing with the placement. If nothing else the placement is very good exercise. They say that there is no job opening but maybe their will be in another few weeks. I find myself wondering if I was getting paid for this if it would make any difference to how I felt about the job – maybe.

Writer's Blog: Characters

Later this month I'll be posting the next segment of my analysis of Writing a Novel. This will be on the subject of character.

Before I do that I wanted to prefix that with a discussion of Summon the Thunder. This is a Star Trek book and it has, I believe, a bit of a problem when it comes to characters - quite simply their are too many of them.

The characters are reasonably well defined. However I find myself getting confused as to who is who, what species they are and on which ship they serve. Also, and this may just be laziness on my part, I get confused with the names. Mostly I just look at the peaks and troughs of the name, so a 'g' and a 'y' look smiler. Even two names starting with a 'K' can be confusing. Nevertheless the nature of the novel is that it requires many characters. It is slow to start but once it gets going it makes for an interesting read.

Things I've found: Buzz Words

'...the precise correlation between the information you communicated and the facts, insofar as they can be determined and demonstrated, is such as to cause epistemological problems, of sufficient magnitude as to lay upon the logical and semantic resources of the English language a heavier burden than they can reasonably be expected to bear.' Sir Humphrey - Yes, Minister.

In other words I told a lie - or rather I'm about to. This post does not live up to the title of 'Things I've Found' as this item was something I was directed to by a tutor at university. The item is called 40 Publishing Buzz Words. It contains knew definitions for words we're all familiar with.

One of my favourites is: “classroom-friendly”: “kids won’t read it unless they have to”

These come from twitter so there's bound to be more.

I seemed to have had an errant apostrophe in these posts. 'Things' doesn't have an apostrophe - unless it does and this is the mistake!

Writer's Blog: 100 Items

I don't know where my copy of 'Writing a Novel' is at the moment so It'll be a while before a post something else on that subject. In the meantime I just wanted to put up a quick post. This is about an article which I heard about second-hand hand.

It was about a man who decided to limit himself to 100 items only. This is something I want to try to do – to get rid of a long of my junk. I need to lean to be ruthless and throw away, or give to charity, a lot of the clutter.
In a couple of places I'm going to cheat however. For instance I have books, dvds, CDs and various filled documents (like bills) they will not be marked individually. So I'll have my library, my dvd collection and my CD collection as three items, my filing cabinet will also be one item. So I'm hoping to start by getting rid of one hundred items a day. I know that most days I won't make that target but it is a good thing to try.
Could you manage with just a hundred items?

Things I've Found: The Fantasy Novelists Exam

Another thing I've stumbled onto. The Fantasy Novelists Exam. This is simply a list of questions. The idea, I guess, is to promote the idea of uniqueness in fiction.

Rather harshly it says 'Answering "yes" to any one question results in failure and means that the prospective novel should be abandoned at once.'

Examples of these questions include:

• Is your main character the heir to the throne but doesn't know it?


• Does your story revolve around an ancient prophecy about "The One" who will save the world and everybody and all the forces of good?


• Do any of your main characters have apostrophes or dashes in their names?

Take a look and see what you think.

Writer's Blog: No internet

I'm writing this post in a word document, well LibreOffice Writer to be precise, because I don't have Internet at home at the moment. You see – I've just moved house.
I've been living in bit of chaos recently as everything is moved. I've discovered that I have a hell of a lot of junk. I'm hoping to get rid of lots of stuff and limit myself to just what I need. Its funny but although I have lots of stuff, what I use on a day-to-day basis is actually quite minimal: Computer; desk; chair(s); phone; kindle; book(s), food and a few other things. Sorting is hard though and sometimes you come across an item and you don't know what it is, perhaps a lid off something, but you keep it because you think that one day you will find what it is the lid for.
I should say thank you to my mother at this point for her invaluable help in organising the knew house and my too many possessions.
My Internet connection will be transferred down to my knew house in about a week. Then I can get back to wasting my time again. Its quite funny actually – I'm rather enjoying not having the Internet it means there is much less distraction. You as the reader though will notice no disruption in my posts as I have scheduled several to come out over the next few days – at least I think I have.
In other news my Scriptwriting Master's starts tomorrow. Its at the wonderfully civilised time of 1000 hours so getting up will not be a problem. I'm really looking forward to this course as scriptwriting is my favourite aspect of writing. I will write about the first day and, using my parents Internet connection, post it on Sunday. Until then see you soon.

Things I've Found: Religious Nerds

Don't be deceived. I'm not actually as with it as it appears. I'm scheduling lots of posts.

I don't know why I told you that.

Anyway I wanted to share a video with you. It's from College Humor. These videos can be somewhat hit and miss. This one is definitely a hit.



On a slightly different topic... Do you ever get caught in You Tube traps? By that I mean you watch one video and then another looks interesting and another and another. Sometimes I'll be watching many consecutive videos and telling myself 'Stop!' - Its a strange thing.

Things I've Found: Stumbling Upon a Video

This has little to do with writing but I wanted to share a strange video. Its, obviously, an odd song but some how I like it. Its by a band called Swish and Flick.



When I see something like this I wonder if I will ever write something that will be parodied.