1663: Freewriting

Buggered if I can think of anything to write today, so I’m going to fall back on my old “emergency stopgap” measure, which is to indulge in a spot of “freewriting”. For the uninitiated, this creative writing exercise, which I learned at university, involves setting a timer for a short period of time of your choice — I’ve gone for ten minutes — and then you just start writing and don’t stop until the time is up. In this case, I’m hoping that continuously writing for ten minutes will cause something vaguely interesting to pop out of my head. If not, then you’ll get a glimpse of how my thought processes work, because one of the key things about freewriting is that you don’t stop to edit or tweak your writing as you go along. This means you can sometimes end up with very long paragraphs like this one, so let’s nip that in the bud before it becomes too much of a problem, shall we?

Freewriting has, for me, led to a number of interesting compositions over the years. I don’t know if I still have the pieces I composed as part of my Creative Writing module at university, but they were intriguing. Some were purely fantastic. Some were reflective. Some were very literal. All of them came out of my head relatively unprompted, just by sitting down in front of a page — handwritten in this case — and writing. What I’m doing with today’s entry — and have done a couple of times in the past — is exactly the same. (Six minutes and fifty seconds to go.)

Tomorrow, I’m picking up my new car. I haven’t owned a car for a while, so it will be nice to have one again, albeit a “nice thing” that comes with a lot of expenses attached. It was pleasant to be able to go through life without worrying about the cost of car insurance and the like, so I’m not relishing the prospect of a return to that world, but I am particularly looking forward to the ability to get out and about a bit more easily when Andie isn’t here (and, by extension, has the car that we currently share between us.) I’m hoping that having easy transport — and by “easy” I mean “not the bus” — I will be more inclined to do things that involve getting out of the house, like going to the gym, going for a swim or, hell, just going to town for a wander around or something. As I’ve mentioned in previous entries, spending all day every day at home can cause you to go a bit “stir crazy” after a while — I’m sure anyone who has spent any length of time either un- or self-employed will be able to empathise with this.

Four minutes thirty seconds to go and my brain is telling me I need something new to talk about. So what should it be? Umm… maybe the music I downloaded and printed recently? Regular readers will know that I’m a big fan of Square Enix’s MMO Final Fantasy XIV, and I was delighted to discover that a nice chap on YouTube had done some piano arrangements of selected pieces from the soundtrack. I have a good collection of other Final Fantasy piano collection albums that I very much enjoy playing, but as far as I’m aware there’s no “official” one for XIV, so I was interested to come across this chap’s work. Turns out it’s very high quality, so I was more than happy to fling him $40 (about £25) for his hard work in arranging and transcribing 36 tracks over 140 pages of music. I shall look forward to getting stuck into learning and playing some of those in the next few days and weeks — perhaps I’ll even record some for the enjoyment of you, readers. Yes, you. That’d be nice, wouldn’t it? (That wasn’t meant to sound sarcastic, but as I was typing it I realised that it probably does. Oh well. No turning back now.)

I’ve also set up the keyboard amp that my parents dumped on me last time they came. This hulking piece of extremely heavy audio equipment is something I’ve been trying to avoid coming back into possession of for a while, mostly because I didn’t really need it, but also because audio equipment scares me a bit when it makes loud popping and buzzing noises, which this amp has something of a tendency to do. However, now I’ve let it “warm up” and used it a little over the last couple of days, it seems to have calmed down a little bit, and it actually produces a somewhat more satisfying sound than my previous keyboard solution, which involved a MIDI connection to my Mac and using Logic Studio to produce the instrument sounds. Logic’s instrument sounds are high-quality, for sure, but the Mac’s speakers are a bit weedy and subsequently it wasn’t quite as impressive as it could be. (In our new house, there’s also the minor issue that the MIDI cable doesn’t reach from the keyboard to the Mac, but that doesn’t really matter now.)

Anyway. My ten minutes are up, so that’s that. Sorry for the abrupt ending. Apparently I tried to cram too much into such a short space of time, but them’s the breaks. Technically I’m breaking the rules here by going past the time limit, but whatever. Anyway. Now I’m finishing. Good night.

1254: I Typed This Post (Except the Title) With My Eyes Shut

I’ve always been pretty good at touch-typing, so I thought it would be an interesting experiment to see how well I could type a blog post with my eyes shut. This is the result. I apologise in advance if it is completely indecipherable.

It’s interesting, doing this, because it makes me realise how much I rely on muscle memory while I’m typing. I can visualise where the keys are in my head, which is all very well and good, but I can’t tell whether or not I’ve made any typos in the process.

Actually, I sort of can. I can “feel” when I’ve typed something incorrectly (assuming my hands were in the right place in the first place) but going back to correct it when you’re not looking at the screen is actually somewhat difficult.

I wonder how well I’m doing. More to the point, I wonder how many words I’ve typed so far.

I learned to touch-type when I was very young. I learned through the use of an Atari 8-bit computer and the use of computer magazines, which in the 80s tended to include type-in listing s for games and various other bits and pieces each month.

If you’re too young to know what a type-in listing is, it’s this: a program is printed in the magazine, and if you copy it into your computer’s programming language BASIC and run it, you’d have a fully-functional program of some sort to play with — usually a game.

Usually these programs were written in BASIC so you could see how they worked and adapt them for your own purposes. However, sometimes they were written in machine code, which meant they were nothing but a string of numbers in hexadecimal format. Not something you can decipher at all, really.

Anyway, the reason I am so good (hopefully) at touch-typing today as I (possibly) am is because I spent so long copying these listings into my Atari. I’d type with my hands on the keyboard while simultaneously looking at the magazine. The magazines I read came with a special program that checked for typos when you were copying out listings, so you could make sure you’d copied everything exactly.

Anyway, through the process of copying out these programs while not looking at either the keyboard or the screen, I learned to touch-type pretty well.

I hope I haven’t embarrassed myself by this post being completely indecipherable. I am also coming up with this nonsense on the spur of the moment like a freewriting exercise; I didn’t plan anything beforehand. So hopefully you’ll forgive the stream of consciousness that is currently erupting from my fingers.

I wonder how many words this is now. It feels a bit weird to be sitting here with my eyes closed. I’m actually quite sleepy, so I hope I don’t suddenly fall asleep in the middle of typing this. I’ve had a few cups of coffee at my friend Tim’s house this evening, though, so that’s probably unlikely for an hour or two at least.

We’ll see.

Anyway, I think I’m probably running out of patience for this little exercise, so I’m going to sign off at this point and publish the post as-is. If you can’t read it because I’ve made too many mistakes, please bear in mind that I was typing it with my eyes closed. Can you do any better? Show me in the comments if so.

That’s enough. Enough. STOP!

1181: 1:20am Blogging

It is 1:20am and I haven’t written anything here, nor do I have any particular idea as to what to write about. So I’m just going to write any old crap that comes into my head right now. I hope you’ll forgive me for that. This isn’t going to be a “freewriting” exercise as my brain is not awake enough for the mental agility required for that (though doing freewriting when absolutely exhausted is probably an interesting exercise in itself) — instead, it’s just going to be… stuff. All right? Good.

As I was logging in to write this post, I happened to see what my “top searches” are. I find these interesting to look at every so often as they provide a curious insight into how people are finding me here. And it’s not always in the manner you might expect. (Those bloody stickman GIFs I made a while back attracted a lot of people, but that seems to have died down somewhat now.)

My top searches at present are “My Girlfriend is the President Irina Route”, “Candy Crush Features on PC that Aren’t on Mobile”, “You Have Earned a Trophy” and “Cis Male Guilt”. I think that about sums things up nicely, doesn’t it? If any of those things have brought you here, allow me to address them in order: Irina’s route in My Girlfriend is the President was my third favourite route after Ell-chan and Yukino but ahead of Ran-neechan; Candy Crush Saga is a mug’s game whatever platform you play it on, so go and buy a copy of Bejeweled instead; well done, you have earned a trophy; and cis male guilt is one of the most irritating blights on the Interwebs of 2013. Happy? Good.

I’ve had a fairly dull day today, which is why I don’t have a lot to talk about, really. I’ve done a fair amount of work on my game, though nothing significantly more interesting than the stuff I talked about yesterday. In terms of how far through the “plot” I am, though, I’ve officially finished the first “day” in the story and got the structure in place for the next five in-game days to branch off in several different directions and lead the player towards one of the endings. So progress is being made — noticeable progress — which is exciting.

In other news? I had a little play on the piano earlier, but given that the B key above middle C is sticking and making it very difficult to play at times, doing so is an infuriating experience. It is doubly infuriating because I have just come into possession of the piano scores for the Nier and Final Fantasy X-2 soundtracks along with a bunch of fan-arranged sheet music for a selection of tracks covering everything from Ar Tonelico 2 to School Days HQ. I would very much like to play all these and record them to share with you, but without a working B key I can’t do that to the standard I’d like to. So next week I have to take my keyboard to a scary man in Ringwood who will hopefully fix it without too much difficulty.

That’s about it, really. I think I’m going to go to bed now. Andie’s having a night out with her friends and isn’t back yet. I have no idea when she will be back, but I will almost definitely be awake when it happens. Or perhaps not. I have no idea. I’m quite tired. To such a degree that I’m babbling nonsense out through my fingers, so I think it’s probably best for everyone involved if I just cut my losses, click that Publish button and go to bed now. Good night!

1175: Stream of Rubbish

I’m really not at all sure what to write about tonight, so I’m going to indulge in some “freewriting”, if you’ll pardon me. For those unaware, “freewriting” is where you just start writing and keep going for a set period of time without stopping or going back to correct the things you’ve done in order to make them make sense. (When freewriting on the computer, I find it very difficult to break my normal habits of automatically correcting typos for the most part, so I am allowing myself that small indulgence, but otherwise this post will be pure, bona fide stream-of-consciousness bullshit. I hope you enjoy. And if you don’t… well, I don’t really care all that much as it’s 11:33 in the evening and I’d quite like to go to bed. I should probably close these brackets and finish this paragraph sometime soon, huh.)

Anyway. What is happening right now? Not a lot, because it’s 11:33 in the evening and I’d quite like to go to bed, as previously mentioned. I am sitting in front of my Mac frantically typing this blog post while Andie is sitting in the other room watching Family Guy on BBC Three. This must be at least the sixth or seventh time I’ve heard the whole series go around and around and around and I’m never quite sure how I feel about it. Family Guy can be quite entertaining, but it’s one of those things that it seems to be quite fashionable to bash on these days, so I’m never quite sure if I’m supposed to like it or not. I do know that I like it rather less now that it’s been around and around so many times. Certain things remain entertaining on repeat viewings — as I’ve previously said elsewhere on this blog, for me Friends is one of those shows that I can watch over and over again without getting tired of it for the most part — but for me, Family Guy is a bit of a one-trick pony, particularly when they start pulling the “remember the time when” etc etc jokes where they cut away to something HILARIOUS that probably didn’t really happen. What a hoot!

I’m going to stop talking about Family Guy now and think of something else to say. But what? Hmm. How about food? Today we went out for lunch with my parents to Yo! Sushi in WestQuay. I’m a big fan of Yo! Sushi even if it is a bit expensive, really. Go on Sunday, though, and it’s an all-you-can-eat for £20 sort of affair, though, so if you leave plenty of room you can ensure you get your money’s worth. I really like the food there, too. It’s tasty. I’m sure it’s not quite up to the standard of a “proper” sushi restaurant, but it’s certainly very tasty and a bit different from the normal sort of things that you get around the place.

I can still hear Family Guy and it’s a little bit distracting. I will try and maintain my concentration. I set a goal for myself to keep writing non-stop for ten minutes and I’m about halfway through at this point. Lucy the rat is currently running rather aggressively on the wheel in her cage — I can hear, not see her — so I will have to go and check on her in a bit. I like our rats. They are friendly. Lara likes to run up the sleeve of my dressing gown, which is very amusing except when she does a wee in my armpit. To be fair to her, she has only done that once, but it was not very nice.

Anyway, I believe I was talking about sushi before I got distracted by Family Guy. One of the things I like at Yo! Sushi is takoyaki — octopus dumplings which various Japanese video games taught me about the existence of. (I’m specifically thinking of the takoyaki stand people hang out at in Persona 3, but the game I’m currently playing on the DS, Lifesigns, also features a lot of mentions of takoyaki). For some reason, mentioning something repeatedly like that really makes me want to investigate it and try it for myself — and hey, what do you know? Turns out that takoyaki is pretty tasty, though I’m not sure it was quite what I expected when I first had it. I recommend you try it. I didn’t have it today because by the time it came around on the conveyor belt at Yo! Sushi, we were already pretty full on everything else we’d eaten. Another time, dear octopus balls, another time.

One more minute to go. Can I break a thousand words by the time that minute passes? Probably not. I’d have to type a little bit quicker than I am typing right now. I can type pretty quickly, but I’m not sure I can type 250 words in a minute. That would be pretty speedy. Superhuman speedy, in fact.

Oh, time’s up. Time to go. I apologise for the disjointed, dumb nature of this blog post but I thought I’d do that instead of babbling on about Ar Tonelico II again. (I’ll get back to that tomorrow! Just kidding! Maybe.) Anyway. Time for bed. Good night.

#oneaday Day 884: Just Write

I have written a veritable bucketload of words today (including this 5,000+ word epic for the Squadron of Shame) so you’ll forgive me for taking “the easy option” and indulging in some freewriting again this evening. (Technically I guess it’s not truly freewriting if I go back and add a link to that sentence I just wrote after the fact, but eh. I’m going to call it freewriting and there’s nothing you can do about it, really.

Today has been a fairly quiet and unremarkable day, as most days tend to be. There’s nothing wrong with that, of course; having remarkable days all the time would quickly make them unremarkable and thus boring, and you’d get yourself into a cycle of increasing awesomeness, whereby it would take more and more remarkable things happening on a daily basis to make you determine that you had indeed had a “remarkable” day. So yes. Today was fairly unremarkable, which is fine. Though it did see the arrival of our new, massive, comfy sofa, so that was nice. And I guess that qualifies as something vaguely out of the ordinary, though whether I’d actually call it “remarkable” or not is up for debate somewhat.

Today I reviewed Zynga’s new game Ruby Blast on Facebook. As per usual for Zynga, the game lifts game mechanics from other titles wholesale, though in the case of Ruby Blast the game isn’t a straight clone of Wooga’s Diamond Dash (its primary inspiration) but instead combines it with the “Diamond Mine” mode from Bejeweled 3. It works pretty well, though it does all the things about social games that probably annoy you if you’re not already engaged with that particular part of the market. It has an “energy” system to throttle how much you can play, it continually asks you to share things and invite friends, and there’s something just “off” about the aesthetic that makes you want to strangle the personality-free main character. Objectively, however, it’s not a bad example of a social game — it’s fun, quick to play, likely to earn a fair amount of money and actually encourages people to play together with a weekly leaderboard a la Bejeweled Blitz, which still rules the roost for social puzzle titles as far as I’m concerned.

What else did I do? I wrote up that epic Squadron of Shame article I posted earlier. That was the result of an extended conversation between me and my good friend Mr Alex Connolly, who makes his home all the way over in Japan. It’s pretty awesome that we can have such an in-depth conversation across thousands of miles and then publish the (lengthy) results for all to see. The piece even got a shout-out from the developers of the game we were discussing, which was nice.

I also put my foot down on Facebook and determined that I am not going to put up with the facile social marketing crap that most “brands” tend to indulge in on Facebook. My new policy is that the second a game/company/other brand posts something inane, like “what are you having for dinner tonight” or “I like ________” then I will immediately unlike them. This will have little impact on their user figures, but I’ll feel better about it. This kind of social marketing is apparently A Thing, and me saying it is stupid (it is) is not going to make it go away, sadly, because it’s proven to be effective. Just look at any brand page asking an asinine question about what colour sauce you prefer on your kebabs and you’ll see several thousand “Likes” and at least a few hundred comments, possibly more. Meanwhile we struggle to get people out of the house to vote for things that actually matter. Oh well.

I’m not sure where this rambling is going but I haven’t stopped typing yet so I may as well continue for now. It’s been quite warm today, but the night has become a bit chilly. I have the window open as I type this and the cold breeze is actually quite pleasant. I popped into the bedroom to see Andie before I started typing this and it is incredibly hot in there — way hotter than the rest of the house. I’m not sure why, nor do you, my readership, care. So I will stop talking about this nonsense forthwith.

I have had the song “Winter Wrap-Up” from My Little Pony stuck in my head all day. This is partly due to the fact that the other day I had to review a Facebook “virtual world” where it was possible to choose YouTube videos to put on the walls, and naturally (naturally?) the first thing that sprang to mind was PONIES PONIES PONIES. As such, I haven’t been able to get that earworm of a song out of my head ever since. It’s not a bad song. It’s catchy. It has silly lyrics, but let’s not forget it was part of an episode of My Little Pony, so we can forgive it a bit of silliness I’m sure.

I am closing in on a thousand words so I will be stopping soon. I am going to end this post with an embedded video of Winter Wrap-Up so you can all suffer like I’ve been suffering. It’s just a shame I can’t make it auto-play. Oh God, do you remember Web pages that auto-played MIDI files and other stuff? Thank heavens we moved beyond that. Now, we just have superfluous Flash animations and other crap. But it’s been a very long time since I visited a website that had a background MIDI. I sort of miss it. But at the same time, any website that did do that would doubtless get mercilessly mocked. It would probably be a viral sensation these days, to be honest, but for all the wrong reasons.

Anyway. That’s really nearly a thousand words now so it’s time to stop, and the only thing that remains for me to do is this, as promised:

Yeah. Yeah.

#oneaday Day 883: Freewriting

I have no idea what to write about today. So I’ve decided to just start typing and see what comes out. Doubtless it will be a ridiculous flow of consciousness nonsense post, but eh. What can you do.

I’ve used this technique before, of course. It’s called “freewriting” and it’s a good technique if you’re planning on perfecting your creative writing craft. Well, maybe not perfecting, but it’s a good means of practicing the art of getting ideas out of your head and onto the page as quickly as possible. This is an important thing to do, as ideas, if left unchecked, float around your head for a day or two and then dissipate without warning, often before you’ve had a chance to do anything with them. I find that I can generally hold A Good Idea in my head for up to a week at a time, but if I don’t do anything about it (even if that “anything” is simply “make a note of it to come back to later”) then it is gone forever. Usually. (Sometimes if it’s a particularly powerful Good Idea, then it will be back with greater force. This is usually a sign that I should Do Something About It.)

Talking of creative writing, I downloaded an app for the Mac called Scrivener yesterday, and spent a little bit of time going through its tutorial and fiddling with it. It’s a “writer’s toolbox” sort of application, taking the approach that programming environments do for application development, only for creative projects. You have a “binder” in which you can organise the various bits that make up your work, and when it’s all finished you “compile” it into its finished product, whether that’s a short document or a full-length novel. There are all manner of different handy tools in there, including a corkboard where you can rearrange virtual notecards, the facility to store all your research within the single Scrivener project file and the ability to split your work up however you see fit for later recompilation. It looks pretty good, and I’m going to make use of it. I’m thinking that if I actually organise myself to start writing something, I might be able to finish it. Whether or not that will be sooner rather than later will depend on my own enthusiasm for the project and whether or not I’m able to maintain momentum. I made a start today with a couple of character sketches, so we’ll see where I go from there. No, you’re not getting a sneak peek yet.

And now I’m running out of things to say again. I have broken my freewriting streak by replying to someone on Twitter, which was an error on my part. I shouldn’t leave Twitter open while writing. It is distracting. Everyone knows this. Perhaps I was thinking that it would provide me with inspiration for something to write. I guess it sort of has, now. You’re probably wondering what I tweeted about. Well, it’s all in the context, but I told Aubrey “Chupacaubrey” Norris that she is the “secret boss of PR”. She was lamenting the fact that she wanted to be the Final Boss of something (Penny Arcade Report’s Ben Kuchera had been referred to as the “Final Boss of Games Journalism” a few moments earlier) so I said that to be nice. Also she is awesome, and a fine example to the rest of the industry.

Anyway. I think that’s enough for now. Sorry for the lame post (I’m not sorry at all) but it’s very late, I’m tired, I just finished Quest for Glory II at last and now I want to go to bed. Maybe after I’ve sent all my Pocket Planes flights on their merry way.

Night night.

#oneaday, Day 20: Idea Factory

They—I’m not sure who, just, you know, “them”—say that you should never write about writer’s block. Which is why I’m not writing about writers block; I’m writing about how I avoid it. An important thing to consider if you’re going to be writing something every day, I’m sure you’ll agree.

Firstly, I never think “I have nothing to write about”. If you believe you have nothing to write about, you’re not thinking hard enough. There is always something to write about, even if it’s the mundanity of your day, how much rubbish there is on your desk or how much your pants smell.

Banished that phrase from your memory? Good. Now you can start narrowing down all those possible things that you can write about into the one thing that you actually are going to write about.

First of all, think about your day, personally. Did anything interesting happen? Did anything amusing happen? Would other people find those things interesting or amusing? Is it something that you’d particularly like to remember when looking back over random entries months down the line? If not, then probably best to steer clear of writing about your day.

Next, think about the news. Did anything interesting happen? Did anything amusing happen? You get the idea. Did anything happen that you consider is worth commenting on? If so, why not try writing about it? There have been plenty of posts around the One A Day Project recently that are topical in nature, and they’ve sparked plenty of discussion in comment threads and even some complete counter-blogs at times.

If there’s nothing in the news that tickles your fancy, think about the most recent thing that has irritated you. People seem to enjoy a good rant about annoying things, particularly if they can relate to them. Perhaps you can frame it in the wider context of something else, or even start an occasional series of Things That Really Piss You Off About Socks.

If you’re the mild-tempered sort and don’t get annoyed about socks or the declining badger population of our riverbanks, perhaps something has inspired you recently. Maybe it’s something a friend did or said that’s led you on to doing something else. Maybe you’ve made the decision to make some changes in your own life, and you’d like to state them publicly “for the record”, as it were. Even if your blog doesn’t enjoy that many readers, putting virtual pen to metaphorical paper and stating in attractive, clear Times New Roman that yes, you are going to stop scratching your testicles in public because it is Freaking People The Fuck Out is more powerful than just making a resolution to yourself.

If there’s nothing in reality that tickles your fancy, delve into the realms of fantasy and do some creative writing. There’s no one way to be “good” at creative writing, as everyone has their own style. Just write what comes naturally. Perhaps it’s a simple, descriptive piece. Perhaps it’s a short scene. Perhaps it’s a complete self-contained story, or maybe a poem. Whatever it is, you summoned it up from your brain. That’s cool. That guy over there hasn’t done that today.

And if you struggle for inspiration in the creative sphere, try out “Freewriting”. Get a clock or stopwatch, set it for ten minutes, start it and just type. Type type type without stopping, without checking your work and without editing. Let the words flow freely out and see what happens. You may have a surreal, imaginative scene pop out. You may have the things you’re thinking about laid bare. Some home truths may be revealed. Whatever pops out as a result of freewriting, it’s often interesting to glance over afterwards and figure out where on Earth that came from.

Our world is made of language. There’s always something to write about. You just have to find it.

#oneaday, Day 62: Freewriting #4 – I Can Barely Keep My Eyes Open

[It’s 1:33am and I’ve inadvertently forgotten to go to bed just yet. And forgotten to blog. So here is some more musings from the innermost depths of my brain. Clock. Ten minutes. Write. Don’t stop. You know the drill. If it’s crap, I make no apologies for it whatsoever.]

The city streets were quiet. The occasional whoosh of a car in the distance notwithstanding, it looked like something terrible had happened leaving him the only sign of life in the world. His mind wandered back to that movie – 28 Days Later – and a shiver ran down his spine as he thought “what would I do if that really happened?”

Fortunately, the silence was shattered by a noisy drunk staggering down the street, shambling around a corner like one of the zombies in those films he liked so much. He started singing – an incoherent tune, born from some forgotten memory and sounding for all intents and purposes like a small creature being strangled and/or put through a mangle.

He was secretly annoyed that his silence had been broken by this imbecile staggering down the street with all the flair and panache of a dog turd. He enjoyed the night. He enjoyed the peace. He enjoyed the feeling of being alone, free from obligations, free from worries. Night-time was a pure time, when he could truly be alone with his thoughts and contemplate whatever he wanted.

Right now, he was contemplating nothing at all. He was simply enjoying the feeling of sitting on the roof of his building, feeling the cool night breeze blowing over his face and finding the sensations of the air moving around him rather relaxing. The drunk was staggering away now, and the song had stopped. Either he had forgotten the words, had forgotten what he was doing or, more likely, just got bored.

Then the silence was back. He looked up and down the street and once again, all was still. A slightly stronger breeze than before blew and caused the few trees and bushes there were in the area to rustle, swish-swish-swish. It was a sound he enjoyed, and brought back memories of his childhood, lying on his back in the summer sun, eyes closed, feeling the heat of the sun on his face and listening to the rustling of the trees while his peers played somewhere in the distance.

He always was a dreamer. He wasn’t sure what he wanted to dream about, so he dreamed about anything he could think of. He dreamed of far-off places. He dreamed of things he could never do. He dreamed of things he probably could do but was too scared to. And he dreamed of where things might actually go in the near future.

No-one knew. He didn’t know. No-one else was going to be able to tell him what the future held, not his friends, not his family, not his horoscope from the paper, not whatever Facebook app was spamming him with promises of what his lucky colour was this week. The only person who would be able to tell him what the future held would be him, once it had happened. And by then, it would be too late.

He lay back on the roof and closed his eyes like he did so many years ago. The concrete on the flat roof wasn’t nearly as comfortable as the soft grass of the playing fields at home, but it did the job. With his eyes closed, the silence seemed even purer. Devoid of any visual distractions, his imagination began to wander – a fleeting image here, a passing fancy there. But none of them stuck. There was no clear path. It was a fog, a mist, threatening to swallow him if he would let it. But he wouldn’t. He was strong. He knew that he could make it through all the uncertainty, the lies, the nonsense, and that somewhere on the other side of it all there would be something good waiting for him.

Exactly what form that “something good” would take was what he was most curious about. Would it be a person? A thing? Some money? Winning a prize? Appearing on television? Becoming famous?

He didn’t really want some of those things, but they were things that people commonly referred to as being “good”. A programme he had seen on the TV earlier that evening featured a series of teenage girls all proudly proclaiming that their life’s ambition was to “be famous”. For what, exactly, they were never exactly clear. When pushed, one or two of them came out with “well, modelling, innit?” but nothing more than that.

He didn’t see himself in that position. But maybe there was something there waiting for him.

For now, though, it didn’t matter. For now was the night, and it was closing in.

He closed his eyes tighter and let himself drift away slowly into the darkness, unafraid of where he might wake up.

#oneaday, Day 53: Freewriting #3, or What The Hell Is Going On In My Head?

[In the absence of any particular inspiration today, I’m going to start that clock for ten minutes once again and just write without editing, except that which happens on “autopilot” as I type. Let’s see what happens this time, shall we? Three. Two. One. Go!]

Fire light.

A camp fire.

Figures all around. Standing. Waiting. What are they waiting for?

Who knows. No-one knows, not even the woman standing apart from the group, facing the other way, into the forest. She weeps, for something lost and almost forgotten.

The men chant. No-one knows what they are saying, not even then. It is a dead language, dredged up for this ceremony which no-one is sure of its purpose.

The woman turns. The men continue, seemingly oblivious to her presence. Her face is streaked with tears.

She pulls off the shoulder of her fur top, first one, then the other. The garment falls to the floor. She is naked in the darkness, the red glow of the fire illuminating her skin.

She walks towards the fire. The men still chant. Over and over. She walks. Closer. The heat is on her skin now, making her sweat.

What is this? she thinks. Why am I here? I don’t know what this ceremony is about, or what it is that is going to happen next.

A man’s attention is distracted. He stumbles over one of the words of the dead language. No-one notices except the woman. She turns, her flaxen hair falling over her bare shoulders. She locks eyes with the man.

One word goes through her mind. Heretic.

Why heretic? Why is he a heretic when I don’t understand why any of us are here? she thinks.

The man is panicking, trying his best to find his rhythm and get back with the rest of the group. Still no-one has noticed except the woman, now staring at him, the light of the fire reflected in her widening eyes, still glistening with tears.

The man looks away from her, down at the floor, as he continues to mumble the words, missing things here and there.

Eventually, he can take it no longer, and sinks to his knees, his bare legs striking the dirt on the ground and grazing them. It hurts more than he expected, but in a short while it won’t matter.

The woman is filled with sorrow for this man’s fate. She doesn’t know what it is, but a flash of something – a forgotten memory? A vision? Something blasts through her mind, and it is not a pretty sight. She catches a glimpse of the man’s face in her mind’s eye, his face contorted with intense torment and pain.

Then she knows. She has to save him. She has to get out of here. She takes a step forward. Towards him. Moving slowly, her bare feet gliding across the dirty floor.

The kneeling man looks up at her with pleading eyes. Her eyes still glisten. Her heart is filled with compassion for this man, this poor man dragged into this situation beyond his control, just like she was. And she knows that it is time. It is time for this to continue no longer.

She takes his hand. The other men chant, over and over in a forgotten, dead language. They are oblivious to what she is doing, and oblivious to the young man’s mistakes. In a few short minutes, all that will change, and she knows this. She pulls him up to his feet and nods her head towards the darkness of the forest, away from the angry red glow of the firelight.

Where should we go? she asks herself. I don’t know where we are.

Run, he says with his eyes, looking at her, on the verge of tears.

The unspoken communication between the two of them passes quickly, and, hands clasped tightly together, they run into the forest. Plants and branches sting and lacerate their bare legs as they run, but in a few short minutes none of that will matter. In a few short minutes, the ceremony will be over, for better or worse, and all this will cease to matter.

Given our desertion, she thinks, my money is on “worse”.

But she doesn’t want to stick around to find out. And she’s sure he doesn’t either.

Where to go? The forest paths seem to lead in every direction.

The only thing they can think of is the direction they cannot go in – back towards the flames. That way lies only suffering and death.

But where to go from here?

[Yeah, I know. Don’t ask.]

One A Day, Day 48: Freewriting #2

[Here’s another in my occasional series of “Freewriting” articles, where I start the clock for ten minutes and write without stopping – or really thinking as I go along. As a result, the output produced is sometimes not of the finest quality, but it can offer some interesting insights into my own brain.]

Start the clock!

I’m in Costa Coffee. Does the place you’re in when you’re writing affect what you write about? Well, of course it does – the proof is right there. I said “I’m in Costa Coffee” and then started to write about being in Costa Coffee and whether or not that made any difference to what I write about. So yes, yes it does.

I’m having the same trouble as last time with this freewriting lark – being too well-trained means that any time I make a mistake, be it typo or clumsy word formation – I automatically backspace and correct it. It’s an automatic reflex action. I can’t help it. I actually can’t stop myself from doing it. I suppose in so far as bad habits go, there are worse ones to have than an anal attention to detail when it comes to spelling, punctuation and grammar.

I wonder how much I’ll write today? Last time I believe it was in the region of 800 words, which would be consistent with my semi-inhuman typing speed of 85wpm. Can you be semi-inhuman? I don’t know. I’m sure that inhuman things might have more difficulty typing, though, unless they’re intimately familiar with the English language.

One of the toilets here at the coffee shop is closed. The barista has just asked for a “wet floor” sign. One can only imagine the terrors that have undoubtedly been unleashed in the lavatories here. To quote Simon Pegg from Black Books, “One of our valued customers had blocked one of the toilets with Monster Munch! How can we, as a team, get that sorted out?”

Not sure why that popped into my head. I think it’s the sight of a smug Simon Pegg handing a bucket and rubber gloves to a bemused-looking Bill Bailey that is the thing that stayed with me from that episode. Black Books is excellent, incidentally, if you’ve never seen it. It’s completely off-the-wall batshit crazy (and Americans don’t seem to get it, or at least my American sister-in-law didn’t quite seem to get it) but I find it completely hilarious. It’s a very different kind of humour to something like Spaced – absolutely my favourite TV show of all time – but it’s still great, and it introduced me to Dylan Moran, whom I’m constantly confusing with Chris O’Dowd from The IT Crowd. I can’t help it – angry Irish man with curly, wayward hair? Roy from the IT Crowd and Bernard Black have a fair bit in common.

I pressed Shift five times while I was thinking (and typing) there, and Windows decided to do that helpful popup about “StickyKeys”. It’s ironic, really, isn’t it, that the so-called “Accessibility” features of nearly every operating system I’ve used are actually inconvenient to the people who don’t need them. I guess that’s not so strange really.

Three and a half minutes to go, and I haven’t touched my coffee yet. I can’t really touch it while I’m typing though, can I? Not unless I did a very undignified “bend forward and slurp it” sort of manoevre (or however the fuck you spell it – it’s one word I always forget) – but I’ve decided against doing that. Besides, it’s probably too hot anyway.

Hot coffee. Wasn’t there a story a few weeks back about some chav in this country spilling tea over their crotch from McDonalds and attempting to sue, much like the case from America a few years back? Why would you bother to do that? Actually, I know the answer – to get some “free” money. I wouldn’t sue someone if I’d poured hot tea over my balls having been holding the cup between my thighs (as this person had) – I’d be screaming in agony, probably, and refusing to do anything useful for a few weeks, but there’s no way I’d think it was the fault of the person who sold me the damn tea. If they didn’t throw it in my face, it’s my fault for anything that happens once I’ve taken hold of that cup.

Under a minute to go. I wonder if I’ll finish a sentence, or indeed a paragraph in time? I’m up to 734 words… No, 742. WordPress’ word count doesn’t update immediately, so that figure may be off. But still, that’s not bad work for ten minutes non-stop typing, is it? Ten seconds to go. Five. Four. Three. Two. One. Bye bye!