Tag: writing

#oneaday Day 630: Over My Shoulder

I’ve been blogging since July of 2008. Actually, that’s not quite true — I’ve been blogging a lot longer than that, but had a couple of other websites prior to this one. To my knowledge, only one of them is still there, and that was a somewhat abortive effort. This site, then, represents one of the most consistent creative endeavours that I’ve ever undertaken.

For what, though? What is it achieving? I’m certainly not making any great effort to ponce around with anything like search engine optimisation and the limit of my attempts to “drive traffic” consist of auto-posting each entry to Facebook and Twitter as a link for people to click through to. And yet, here I am, day after day, writing something for anywhere between — most weeks — 20 and 100 people. 24 of you readers are subscribed by email, meaning you get a daily dose of nonsense posted direct to your inbox (and possibly don’t count against my views count, you bastards, unless you actually do, in which case you’re not bastards, and I don’t really care anyway) and I have no idea how many more might be subscribed via RSS.

As I’ve said on a few other occasions, though, the main reason I’m writing all this gobbledegook day after day is for myself. I’m not sure if I’ll be looking back on this content in a few years time and figuring out something profound about myself or not, but I certainly like having it all there — and knowing that there are 629 daily posts before this one (and a few more irregular ones prior to that) is quite satisfying.

I like reading back old things that I’ve written. I don’t keep all old pieces of writing that I do, but I have some knocking around that date back to my school days, which are a good few years ago now. It’s sometimes interesting to look back and read your work and consider what might have been going through your mind at the time — or what inspired you to write a particular work.

I think the oldest piece of writing I’ve still hung onto is the Woolworths notebook that my friend Edd and I took on holiday to Gran Canaria. It was 1992, and we were in Year 7. That holiday was memorable for all sorts of reasons — the cockroach attack in the middle of the night, the discovery of Mortal Kombat and X-Men in the local arcade, our first experiences snorkelling. And most of it is entertainingly chronicled in the dodgy handwriting of the 11-12 year old me.

The way you write changes over the years, even if you’re not a writer and if you don’t do it often. Old people using computers forget how to use capital letters and punctuation (except the exclamation mark, which they use with gay abandon) while some develop a clear sense of style and voice according to who they’re writing to. When you’re twelve, however, most of your writing is written in the same register, however many English lessons on formal and informal letters you might have had. My old notebook is a fine example of this, sharing details of stupid in-jokes that Edd and I had at the time, the context of which has been mostly lost to the mists of time save for the written record of the fact that we did indeed compose a short song called “I’m an egg-timer” together and that we found it inexplicably amusing to hum the theme tune from the Whiskas cat food advert while descending a water slide.

Don’t ask. I have no idea.

I wonder if in twenty years’ time — firstly, will this site still be around or will we all have switched to something like the OASIS platform in Ready Player One? — I’ll still be writing in the same manner. Perhaps I will — in some senses, even though I’m (painfully) aware that I’m thirty years old, in others I feel like I haven’t grown up a whole lot. There’s still a ton of things about the world that I don’t know or don’t understand, and a lot of people seem to have a firmer grasp on them than me — or, more likely, simply do a better job of hiding the fact that they’re overwhelmed by everything out there.

Arguably part of this feeling of “immaturity”, for want of a better word, is writing this every day. When I’m writing some nonsense here, I can just sort of “let go” and channel that twelve year old kid who felt the need to chronicle everything on a holiday with a friend. I’m under no obligations to write in a particular style or follow the AP Style Guide or whatever (though you’ll notice I do make an effort to spell and punctuate correctly, typos aside) so I can just sit back (well, forward, otherwise I can’t reach the keyboard) and type whatever is in my head onto the virtual page in front of me.

This is a nice feeling, and that’s why I do this day after day. I appreciate those of you who keep coming back to read my ramblings, I really do. But the act of writing, of self-expressions, of, in some cases, being able to write things that are difficult to talk about out loud — that’s why I do it. It makes me feel good, makes me feel like I have an outlet and am free to express myself however I see fit. And sure, anyone reading can and will judge me based on the things I write. And that’s fine, because after all, I’m posting all this for public consumption. But more than that, this is something for me. This is me. And if you’ve come along for the ride here and read the last six hundred and whatever posts, you probably know me pretty damn well by now.

If, however, you’re new, the archives are on the right hand side. I’ll see you in a few months.

#oneaday Day 614: Joining the Fold

It’s with some pleasure that I welcome a very good friend of mine to the blogging fold. A big hand, if you please, for Mr Kalam Abul. Kalam’s a good buddy from my days working for a certain fruit-based computer manufacturer’s retail outlet, and we both have plenty of unpleasant experiences to talk about from our time there, but now’s not the time for that.

Kalam plans on using his shiny new blog as a form of free therapy — and that, to me, sounds like an excellent idea. After all, at times, it’s what I do here. Talking about stuff is good. If you don’t have anyone to talk to, though — or no-one you feel comfortable talking to, or if you don’t necessarily need to “talk”, more just “get things off your chest” — then writing is an excellent outlet. I know that the last 614 days of writing something every day — though it’s been a struggle sometimes — have provided me with a means to vent my inner frustrations into something vaguely productive rather than sitting around moping, being upset, crying, punching sofas (apparently) or stabbing badgers. This is good.

Self-proclaimed social media experts and people who read Mashable would probably come along right now and say that blogging’s not about the individual person, it should be about your audience, your community, the blogosphere and other pretentious-sounding phrases. You know what I say to those people? Sod off. Your own personal space on the Web is yours to do with as you please. You can vent your frustrations, or you can attempt to provide a “service”. You can express yourself, or you can inform. You can even do all of the above. You don’t necessarily have to have a particular “structure” or theme in mind (though it sometimes helps) — sometimes all you need to do is write.

If I had to pigeonhole this blog, I’d be pretty hard-pushed to do so. The most frequently-occurring topic is likely video games, of course, and that’s probably unsurprising. It’s something that’s in my blood and that I’ve been involved with for almost as long as I can remember — and it’s something I’m involved with professionally now, too. But I certainly wouldn’t describe this place as a video games blog. There’s all manner of other nonsense amidst the rampant enthusings regarding Xenoblade Chronicles and Deadly Premonition. There’s honest stuff, creative stuff, weird stuff, experimental stuff, stuff that didn’t quite work, stuff that I’m incredibly pleased with and stuff that makes me sad to think back on. All of it’s important, and, particularly since I started this daily posting business, all of it reminds me where I’ve come from and — maybe, anyway — where I’m going.

I can certainly say for a fact that this time last year I wouldn’t have imagined that I’d be sitting here right now — though it’s probably fair to say that this time the year before I wouldn’t have imagined that I’d have been sitting where I was this time last year, if you see what I mean. Sometimes things that you take for granted are more fragile than you think — but sometimes the reverse is true, too.

I’m in a reasonably good place right now. I can’t complain too much. There are things I want to achieve and things that I could do better, but after surviving a year best described as “traumatic”, I’m happy to take things a bit at a time and let this place track my progress — either directly or indirectly.

As for Kalam, well, buddy, I hope your site helps you find the same sort of inner calm that writing here has done for me. And if not, don’t hold back. Everyone loves a good rant.

#oneaday Day 583: Creative Breakfast

I’ve reached a decision. Once all this moving stuff is over and done with I’m going to start writing these entries in the morning. There are many reasons for this, chief among which is the fact that by the time it gets to late evening I’m knackered and have already spent the day doing my day job which involves, yes, writing.

Part of this is sheet stubborn determination to not let tiredness and lack of creativity beat me. It would be easy to say I was fed up and tired of writing stuff every day. I’m not; it just feels a bit like it sometimes, particularly when it gets to 11pm and I haven’t written anything — and often haven’t thought of anything to write.

So the plan is thus: get up, eat breakfast, indulge in “creative breakfast” by writing blog in the morning. That way 1) it’s out of the way in the morning and 2) my mind is already in a good mindset for writing.

It also helps avoid filler entries like this one which follow 4 hour drives.

So night night! Look forward to the new regime starting soon.

#oneaday Day 541: Kombo Broken

It’s a sad day today as I hear from my good buddy Ryan Olsen that Kombo.com is no more, with the URL now simply redirecting to GameZone.com, who purchased the site a while back.

Kombo.com holds some particular personal significance for me, as it does for many of the great friends I made while working for the site. Compared to many of the grizzled old veterans who had been working on the site since 2005, I was a relative newbie, only joining the team last year.

As most of you probably know by now, last year was Not a Good Year. Having been forced out of a job I genuinely loved by bullying management at the end of the previous year, finding employment in a primary school 40 miles away from where I lived, discovering that yes, Aldershot is indeed a shithole, even when dealing with 8 year olds, I quit my job in March of 2010 to attend PAX East (to this day quite possibly the best few days of my life EVAR) and around a similar time I started contributing to Kombo.com as a news editor. A short while after PAX East, my wife and I separated and I found myself alone in a flat I couldn’t afford with no job and seemingly no prospects of finding one that wasn’t supply teaching — a career path which would have likely ended rather abruptly with me flinging myself off the nearby Itchen Bridge had I pursued it.

As time went on and my finances dwindled, writing for Kombo every day — even if it was at US-friendly, UK-antisocial hours — gave me something stable to cling on to. This was something I desperately needed during those difficult months. There were many days when I found it very difficult to function as a normal human being, so badly was I hurting. But when it came to time to sit down and work my shift at the virtual news desk, that all went away for a few hours. It was just me, GamesPress, a lot of Chrome tabs and the Worst CMS In The World.

One of my favourite things about working for Kombo, though, was the people I had the good fortune to meet as a result, all of whom I’m happy to count among my friends today. All of them have gone their separate ways since September of last year, when most of us departed from the site due to its heading in a direction that wasn’t for us (with some of us forming our anarchic rainbow unicorn collective The Big Pixels, still ably maintained by Geoff Calver). But we all still talk to each other daily — through email, through Twitter, through Facebook, through G+. It’s great to see that Kombo, despite being a relatively small site compared to the giants out there, managed to give a lot of people the foot in the door they needed to pursue a career in various parts of the games industry. Some went into PR. Some went into development. Some still write on a hobbyist basis while pursuing other careers, and I write professionally.

It’s also been nice to see that diverse members of my groups of friends online knew the name Kombo — even people that I wouldn’t necessarily have expected to. The site will be missed, and not just by those of us who wrote for it. It’s the end of an era and — sadly — the end of some people’s portfolios (archive.org notwithstanding) as the old content seems to have vanished altogether.

Kombo.com gave me a leg-up into the industry and it’s part of the reason I write about games as my full time job now. I’ll miss it, and I invite you to doff your caps and raise a glass as its flame goes out for the last time.

#oneaday Day 535: Updated My Journal

As I sit here on my friend Tim’s spare bed (which just a few short moments ago had the entirety of Helm’s Deep atop it) typing this entry using a piece of software that runs on a computer several thousand miles away from the tiny computer that I’m actually pressing the keys on which has no physical connection to this thing we call “the Internet”, I’m reminded, as I often am, of how much things have changed.

I’m not that old — I’m thirty and, if not proud then certainly “grudgingly accepting” — but I still find the amount of progress since I was a kid to be fairly astonishing when you think about it. Take what I’m doing right now — writing a blog post — and rewind it some fifteen-plus years. I vividly recall as a youngling, early-ish in my secondary school career, writing a secret diary, inspired by Adrian Mole. Said diary was in a really nice part leather-bound volume that said “journal” on the spine and had nice paper. My first entry was about my family’s visit to the National Stone Centre, in retrospect possibly the dullest way I could have possibly started a secret diary.

Over time, though, my writing evolved. I wasn’t writing for anyone in particular, but more just to get thoughts out of my head when there wasn’t anyone handy to share and discuss them with — or if they were thoughts that I didn’t particularly want to share and discuss with people. In some senses it was like a form of therapy, where I could discuss anything I wanted with someone who wouldn’t judge what I was saying, and would simply respond with an unspoken “tell me more” for as long as it had empty pages. My journal became less about “Today I went to the National Stone Centre and we saw lots of stones” and more about “I’ve been thinking about [girls/school/bullies/life] and this is what I feel about it”.

I took to scripting fantasy conversations for a while, particularly when it came to talking to girls, because at least in the pages of my diary I stood a chance with Nikki, the girl with the finest boobs and legs in the whole school orchestra. In reality — well, I never quite found out whether or not I stood a chance with her, but given the general standard of guys she went out with, I’m not sure my greasy-and-crap-haired zit-faced teenage self would have stood up particularly well, however much better at playing the clarinet I was than her other boyfriends.

On one memorable occasion, I recall doing a lengthy post-mortem of an encounter with a girl I liked when my friends pretty much forced me to tell her that I liked her. She turned me down, of course, but the fact I’d actually gone through with it was immensely satisfying — so much so that I recall drawing diagrams of how the event had actually gone — where I was, where my friends were (doubtless watching and laughing at me making a tit of myself) and where she was.

In retrospect, it was perhaps a bit creepy, which is probably why one day I took a look at everything I had written, became hideously embarrassed by the whole thing and discreetly threw the by then half-full book out into the trash, never to be seen again. I often wonder what happened to it, and occasionally wondered if a bin man might have come across it and had a good giggle at my teenage lameness.

The world’s different now, though, and the closest people come to a “secret” these days is posting passive-aggressive tweets and Facebook statuses. I still write — every day, as you’ve doubtless noticed. Sometimes the things I write are still therapeutic and a way of getting thoughts out of my head that are difficult to vocalise, and sometimes it’s just stupid shit that I feel like rambling on about.

The difference now is that after 535 days, I’m not ashamed of a bit of it. Sure, some of it probably only has any meaning to me and me alone, but everything I’ve written here has some sort of meaning and memory attached to it. Which is why you won’t find me ever throwing this blog out in the trash like my teenage secret diary. We are the sum of our memories and experiences, for better or worse, and sometimes it’s good to look back and see how you got to where you are now — and where you might be headed in the future.

The future’s not yet written, as everyone knows. But day by day it’ll reveal itself, leading us ever onward to the end of one chapter and the start of the next.

#oneaday Day 129: Professionalism Is

Skills are a funny thing. Unlike in the world of roleplaying games, it’s extremely difficult to quantify skills. Sure, you can go and get yourself a qualification, but it’s not a simple case of repeatedly doing the same thing over and over again until a chime sounds and the words “LEVEL UP!” appear over your head. (Unfortunately. Because that would have made assessing learning in the classroom a whole lot easier.)

No, the vast majority of skills that you (well, I) have are not quantifiable in any sense. I can write — well — but that’s difficult to prove except with, well, writing. I can’t point to a character sheet and say “Look! 85 skill points in writing!” when applying for a job. I can just say things along the lines of “I’m excellent at writing” and “I have a strong attention to detail and think people who use the wrong ‘your’ should be abused with sledgehammers” or the like. I can also correct typos without too many people noticing.

It’s even worse with IT skills. I can use computers, and I have a knack for being able to find creative solutions to problems if something’s behaving strangely. When putting my new PC together the other day, I found myself frustrated with the woeful instructions that came with it and just worked things out for myself. Sure, it took me a little while to figure out that you can actually unscrew and take out 3.5″ drive bays in order to fit a hard drive in them — I thought it was a bit stupid to expect Eugene Victor Tooms levels of contortion just to screw in a storage device — but I got there in the end. (Also, bonus points if you know the reference.) However, the ability to “find things out” isn’t quantifiable in any way, and short of someone plonking me down in front of a broken computer and saying “fix it!” there’s no way I can prove that I’m “good with computers”.

I guess this is where all those lessons you had in Persuasive Writing back in school come in handy. It’s up to you to convince people that you are The Right Person for the Job by using suitably flowery language and/or carefully referencing things you know about the person in question. And it doesn’t always work, as my year’s worth of “we have decided to pursue another candidate” emails and letters will attest.

But oh well. Some good has come of my skills and abilities — I’m writing for sites I like on a freelance basis, and that in itself is giving me a sizeable portfolio of experience that I can point at should I find myself in the running for a full-time position somewhere. While it may not be a character sheet with 85 skill points in the Writing skill, it’s the next best thing.

#oneaday Day 68: What Now?

It’s coming up on a year since my departure from the obnoxiously-named “world of work”, when I left my employment at a primary school, went to PAX East and had what was to this day the happiest week of my life, then came home only for my life to completely fall to pieces two short months later.

Now, here I am, and some things have changed, and some things aren’t any further along than they were even back then. I have some awesome new people of various descriptions in my life, for one thing, and while most of them are some distance away, none of them are so far away as to make it completely impractical to go and see them. This is a Good Thing.

I also have a sweet writing gig that I’m absolutely loving. I enjoy doing the news posts every day and I’ve had great fun at the events I’ve had the opportunity to attend so far. This is also a Good Thing.

But I get the impression that some Decisions are going to have to be Made at some point. How much do I want to be a writer in the games industry? Quite a lot, as it happens. Despite having been technically “unemployed” for the last year, I’ve been doing a lot of writing and I haven’t reached that “jaded” stage that some writers have got to—the stage where they’ve forgotten to have fun with what was once their hobby. I don’t see myself getting to that point any time soon because I’m a fan of games, the games industry and everything it involves, and hopefully that comes across in my writing. I believe that I’m a good writer and a valuable addition to any of the teams I’ve been part of over the years, and friends and colleagues would (hopefully) back me up on that front. I certainly have a heap of LinkedIn recommendations that would attest to this.

So what’s the problem? Well, as much as I love it, it’s not a full-time gig… at the moment, anyway. Making it into a full-time gig would likely, at this time anyway, involve having to whore myself around to a number of outlets on a freelance basis, without any particular guarantee of a particular amount of money coming in each month. I wouldn’t have a problem with this were it not for the fact that the events of the last year have left me in a terrible state financially. The thing I find myself constantly coming back to is whether I should leave behind “the dream” and get a full-time job instead. Practically speaking, it’s the thing that would probably make most financial sense, and anyway, there’s nothing to say I can’t continue contributing to sites on a freelance basis while I hold down another job.

So I have been applying for jobs. And applying. And applying. And tweaking my CV and cover letter and trying new templates and writing in different styles. And nothing. This is immensely frustrating as I know that I am Good At Stuff. But on paper I am qualified for just two things: writing and teaching. Teaching I have no desire to go back to as it’s nearly killed me on two separate occasions, but I have a lingering fear that it’s the only career path I can all but guarantee I’ll be able to find myself a position in. I’ve held three teaching jobs in the past, all of which were in schools that could politely be described as “challenging” and as such my perception of the profession may have been coloured in a slightly negative light. But I’m not sure I want to risk my sanity and happiness (well, potential happiness, anyway) diving back in “just to see” if I was just imagining it was as awful as I thought it was.

In summary, I’m not sure what I “should” do. A job’s a job, after all, and anything that gets some money coming in is surely better than doing nothing and having no money coming in whatsoever. My quandary is this, then: after this long out of full-time work, should I continue looking for that elusive something that’s going to make me happy? Or after this long, should I just take whatever the hell I can get?

And are you hiring?

#oneaday Day 66: Is Traditional Writing Dead?

It seems every other week, particularly in tech-related industries, there is some sort of discussion over whether this or that is “dead”. Inevitably, the answer is usually some vague waffle about how most people may have stopped using their Nokia N-GAGE but there are a few people out there utterly determined to beat Tomb Raider on a portrait-wise screen on a device which can survive being run over by a bus (I speak from experience) and thus the thing in question isn’t dead, just on perpetual life support. Until it gets run over by one bus too many, of course.

A discussion I participated in earlier today on Twitter regarding grammatical usage of hashtags got me thinking, though. Is the concept of “traditional writing” dead?

When considering this, though, it’s first important to determine what you mean by “traditional writing”. And it’s not an easy thing to define. Is this blog “traditional writing”? It mostly follows grammatical conventions (except when I’m being deliberately obtuse or conversational) and uses paragraphs. But no; I’d argue that it isn’t writing in the traditional sense. Blogs are designed as a platform upon which people can share their thoughts on a subject and invite responses from other people. That last bit—the invitation for other people to respond, whether or not it’s taken up by commenters—is the important part of blogging for many people. The best blogs are “conversations”—or at the very least, pieces which start discussions amongst other people.

You could argue, of course, that persuasive writing, philosophy and the like has had this sort of thing covered for many years, and you’d be right—people still debate Nietzsche down the pub, right? (I don’t go to the pub that often.) But the key thing is that with blogs and their commenters, everyone has a voice of (relatively) equal power. Ironically, though, the popular blogs diminish the power of their own commenters by having so many that people are unlikely to read them all. But at least some of them get read, unlike a weighty tome on all matters philosophical, in which those pub conversations rarely go any further than the pub.

Then there’s Twitter, the reason I got thinking about this in the first place. Here’s the kind of tweet that got me wondering:

We’ll leave @tanaymodi1‘s absent apostrophe and misspelling of “myself” aside for a moment, and look at those hashtags. Being someone brought up on “traditional” writing and grammar rules, those hashtags in the middle of a sentence are somewhat jarring to me and interrupt the flow of what’s being said somewhat. Now, in theory, the use of those hashtags allows anyone reading that tweet to click on either #AngryBirds or #Mac and read what other people are saying on those topics. A sensible idea for hot topics under discussion. But I’ve seen people do it with more vague concepts, such as “I’m writing a #novel” or “Is Sasha Grey a model of fashionable female #sexuality?” that could be taken in all manner of different contexts. Are they still useful?

Apparently so; a number of people came forward in response to my query and said that they find it useful to have the facility to find out what other people are saying on the subject. The only fly in the ointment, however, is that not everyone uses them. If I’m writing a tweet about my Mac, for example, I’ll use the word “Mac” and have never, ever hashtagged it, if only for the fact it saves one of Twitter’s precious 140 characters. The only time I use hashtags are if I’m participating in a discussion about something (like, say, a TV show that’s on at the time) and appending the hashtag on the end of the tweet, for these blog posts or for #lamehashtaghumourthatifindquitefunnysometimes.

This is obviously a different use of writing to how it’s used here on my blog, how I use it when writing for GamePro, how I use it when writing an email and how I’d use it if I were writing a book. But it doesn’t mean that any of these forms of writing are “dead” or “dying”. Increasingly what’s happening over time is that things that were once on a relatively linear path, such as the evolution of language, are splitting off into separate branches with their own contexts and purposes. Some people stick resolutely to one path and thus find it rather jarring when something from one of the other paths invades their consciousness. Other people can happily jump back and forth between the different strands, adapting their language to the situation as they see fit.

So no. I don’t believe that traditional writing is dead, nor is it a niche interest that only a few dedicated souls are continuing with. It’s simply one branch of an increasingly-complicated tree. As we find ourselves with more and more different means of communication available to us, language adapts, changes, broadens. And it will continue to do so for some time.

Where does it stop? Will (English-speaking) people on Twitter end up speaking their own language that looks a bit like English but isn’t? Perhaps not. But it’s something to ponder.

#oneaday Day 62: Too Long, Still Read

I’m almost entirely certain I have ranted on this topic at least once in the past. But, well, it bears repeating, given what I do both here and professionally.

More than one paragraph isn’t bad.

More than 140 characters isn’t bad. (Unless you’re using Twitter, when all the deck.ly and TwitLonger nonsense kind of defeats the object.)

I read an answer to a question on GameFAQs earlier. The original poster had asked something which required quite a detailed answer. One respondee gave a detailed, good answer that was two paragraphs long, probably about 150-200 words or so. He apologised for writing “alot of text” (sic)—and I’ll let the “alot” slide for the minute because there are bigger issues at work here, dammit. (Incidentally, if you’ve never seen this, well, you should.)

No. Stop apologising when you write things. Stop complaining at people in forums if they write detailed thoughts. Stop providing lazy people with “TL;DR” summaries and make them read. No wonder people haven’t got the patience for books any more if they can’t bear to read more than 10 words of someone else’s opinion at a time and inevitably respond with something utterly inane like “lol”. (And I bet they’re not even really laughing out loud either, the bastards.)

Language is an incredibly powerful thing. Look at all the things it’s built over the years. Those things didn’t come about by people worrying about writing an “OMFG WALL OF TEXT” and people ignoring them. Those people had something to say and damn well said it, in detail, and argued their case. Their passion for what they were talking about came through in the power of the words that they chose, their enthusiasm for the topic came across with the depth into which they explored their topics verbally and on paper.

Now granted, there are times when brevity is better than verbosity. Anything from any government agency or law office, for example. I received a letter from the tax office a while back which went on for 3 pages when the single word “no” would have sufficed. These people have nothing to say and ironically spend pages and pages proving how little they have to say. Why? Who knows. To sound “official”, perhaps.

But people with opinions? People debating things? People being—who’d have thought it—helpful? There’s no sin in using a few more words if it might make someone think, discuss or smile.

So stop apologising when you write something, be it a blog post, forum post, Yahoo! Answers answer (well, someone has to write them) or blog comment. If you have something to say, it is absolutely your right to be able to say it without worrying about whether its length is going to put people off (*deftly sidesteps “that’s what she said” gag*). And those who are too lazy to read a couple of paragraphs of comment? Well, they’re probably not the sort of person you’d want to engage in a debate anyway. So F them in the B.

TL;DR: Stop being a dick.

#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.