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!

One A Day, Day 33: Freewriting #1

[As promised, here is an example of freewriting. I've given myself ten minutes to just write… or type in this case… and see what comes out. It could be anything – fact, fiction, prose, poetry (unlikely), nonsensical… err… sensical? Let's see what happens. My time starts… NOW.]

It's warm in here. A little too warm if I'm honest, but at least it's nice and quiet. It's good to have peace and quiet while you're writing. I'm in my wife's office, away from my usual blogging spot of in the lounge, because she's watching the "live" episode of Eastenders that is on the TV at the moment. This despite never ever watching Eastenders when it is on TV in its normal form.

Eastenders is a depressing programme and I've never found myself wanting to watch it. I rarely get interested in soap operas at all, though I did find myself drawn to Neighbours a little bit during my time at university, though this was more out of interest in running jokes regarding Harold Bishop more than anything else. Harold Bishop even found his way into "The Adventures of Dave Thunder", an RPG Maker 2000 project which I worked on off and on and which is now sadly lost to the mists of time and the failed hard drive on my old Sony Vaio desktop computer.

I can never type "Vaio" without first typing "Vaoi". I don't know why. It's not as if "Vaoi" is any more a word than "Vaio" is. Stupid really. I should also stop going back and correcting the mistakes I make on here, which is perhaps missing the point of freewriting slightly, but by now it's an automatic response. Anyone watching me write things is always surprised to see quite how quickly I type and how quickly and automatically I can go back and correct things.

Having nimble fingers is probably a result of two things – being able to play the piano and years of typing things in, both for pleasure and from copying things out of magazines. The old Atari 8-bit magazines used to have "type-in" listings in them which, when typed in and saved onto a diskette or cassette tape, allowed you to play the games which the authors had come up with for that issue. There were several authors of these games who were rather prolific, with one in particular sticking in my mind being Bill Halsall. I even went to the effort of putting all Mr Halsall's games on one 5.25" floppy disk and writing my own menu system for the disk. Yes, I was a supergeek even at that age.

Went out for a cup of coffee with a very good friend (and ex-workmate) earlier. It was a nice experience. We sat, we exchanged stories and ranted about the things that were pissing us off. There are a lot of things pissing us both off, and it's always good to share those things with someone else. Neither one of us would want to be in the other's position, I don't think, but it's always "nice" to share your pain with someone else. Perhaps "nice" isn't the right word, but it's – I don't know. Cathartic? Is that the right word? Perhaps.

I haven't stopped typing yet. This is good going. It's 5:51 into my ten minutes. I wonder what other things will pop into my mind. I'm literally emptying my thoughts out onto the paper. Page. Web. Whatever. I'm literally emptying my thoughts out onto… this blog entry. Right. And I'm clearly stalling for time while I think of something else to talk about. I shouldn't think. I should just write. What to write next. What next? Hmmm.

Let's talk about the sound of my fingers typing on the keyboard. When slow typists type, you can hear each key being pressed – click, click, click. When a skilled (or at least fast) typist types, the individual click click clicks take on their own almost musical rhythm, the high-pitched clickity-clickity-click punctuated by the heavier thump of the thumbs on the spacebar. In fact, that's one memory I have of home – I can always tell when my Dad is typing because the old keyboard he has attached to his computer (or had attached… I'm not sure if he still does) was one of those keyboards that clattered to a ridiculous degree while you were typing, and the thump of the spacebar would reverberate around the whole house, with shockwaves going down through the desk, through the floor.

Perhaps that's an exaggeration, but it's a vivid memory. I find the sound of typing quite relaxing. It's the sound of creativity. Sometimes. You hear the sound of typing in boring offices as well as amongst writers, and unfortunately boring offices tend not to be the places for creativity. I temped in a boring office for a while – a "loss adjusters" (a profession whose purpose still escapes me) and I had to type up the very boring men and women's dictation on the subject of subsidence. That's when your house is sinking into the ground and is supposedly the fault of a tree or something. Very dull.

I have ten seconds left, so with that, I think it's time to sign off. Good night!

One A Day, Day 13: Round Midnight

Yes, I'm aware it's after midnight. But the official One A Day rules clearly state (somewhere… possibly not on that page, but I can't be bothered to look it up right now) that the "day" is from when you get up until when you go to bed. And I'm not in bed yet. So there.

It is, however, late, so this entry is going to be somewhat phoned in. Fortunately, there's not a great deal to talk about today. Got up, played some Mass Effect in preparation for the sequel, played some Star Trek Online (which the official Head Start has now begun for) and went to my buddy Sam's for some board games, Chinese and booze. We played Power Grid. I lost. Then we played Carcassonne, and I also lost. Still, never mind. It's the taking part that counts, and all that.

We did rediscover the wonder of gin and tonic though. In recent years, I've found that a lot of booze leaves me with an unpleasant feeling of heartburn very quickly, meaning I can't drink much of a lot of things and when I do, I don't enjoy them that much. The G&Ts we had tonight went down rather too smoothly if anything, and made the already-lengthy game of Power Grid last even longer than usual. That's no bad thing, though, since it's a fun game that taxes your brain.

Tomorrow I may be taking a trip with Sam to take some photos. Haven't got my camera out to take some proper photos for ages, so if we do go it'll be good to get back into it. Interesting ones will, of course, be shared here.

Right. Now it's time for bed. G'nite.